Spring RTS Engine

Forboding Angel wrote:I think that spring games tend to minimize the overall impact of those points.

Nope.

Johannes wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:I think that spring games tend to minimize the overall impact of those points.

Nope.

Custom formations. Your argument is invalid

@knorke, I don't think you understood what I meant. Of course I would lose in ZK because I'm no good at ZK.

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example. I wasn't saying that those "tools" only exist in evo/spring, but I was using evo/spring as a firsthand example. Savvy?

@google, really good points. I'm glad I posted what I was thinking instead of not mentioning it till I had something implemented. Gives me the ability to see it from more angles than my narrowed view.

I like the idea of the supply buildings serving more function than only supply though. Like in sc2 you have pylons which provide supply and power, depots which serve as retractable walls, and overlords which can be used for scouting and transport. It's a minor detail that gets overlooked and/or taken for granted, but it's a bit of a big deal really.

Never is building a pylon/depot/overlord completely useless, because whether you use it or not, they serve more than one purpose (even if that secondary purpose is minor).

Of course I would lose in ZK because I'm no good at ZK.

So think about what makes you "no good" at ZK but good enought in Evo. Does it really have to do with ui tools?
If it was the tools you would be able to use them in zK too, but appearently there are other more important factors.

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example.

But not only the bad player gets better with these widgets, the good player improves too: I doubt it narrows the skill gap. Some things will even only give advantage to the good player, for example waypoints: If the bad player does not think ahead so much then given long queues of waypoints is a useless feature for him.

RUSE was all about how you played the game, your strategy and your tactics, as opposed to how fast your could act and how accurate your clicks were (I'm overgeneralizing).

Chess is even more so but it does not even the players skil...

Forboding Angel wrote:

Johannes wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:I think that spring games tend to minimize the overall impact of those points.

Nope.

Custom formations. Your argument is invalid

@knorke, I don't think you understood what I meant. Of course I would lose in ZK because I'm no good at ZK.

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example. I wasn't saying that those "tools" only exist in evo/spring, but I was using evo/spring as a firsthand example. Savvy?

Custom formations doesn't really take away the importance of controlling your units precisely, it just raises the bar of how well everyone must do this to stay competitive. It's not an automation thing that'd make everyone similarly skilled in micro.

And there's really no tools that'd help you multitask better - constantly reposition several lone scouts, optimising your economy on when exactly to build wind, solar, adv solar, nano, etc., control different armies consisting of mixed speed units, take advantage of the fact that buildings and wrecks block bullets... SC2 is in many ways mechanically easy compared to BA or TA.


Hell even a simple game like KP demands great multitasking ability to get anywhere.

knorke wrote:

Of course I would lose in ZK because I'm no good at ZK.

So think about what makes you "no good" at ZK but good enought in Evo. Does it really have to do with ui tools?
If it was the tools you would be able to use them in zK too, but appearently there are other more important factors.

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example.

But not only the bad player gets better with these widgets, the good player improves too: I doubt it narrows the skill gap. Some things will even only give advantage to the good player, for example waypoints: If the bad player does not think ahead so much then given long queues of waypoints is a useless feature for him.

RUSE was all about how you played the game, your strategy and your tactics, as opposed to how fast your could act and how accurate your clicks were (I'm overgeneralizing).

Chess is even more so but it does not even the players skil...

There are different ways to create a skill gap. it can be about mechanics (fast mouse and keyboard), or understanding of the unit balance and tactics (what to chose and how to use), or about general overall strategy (managing investments). Actually games tend to have all of these, just to different extents.

Forb's point was that the skill gap in Evo (and generally Spring) is much less about the mechanics part. Of course, it is entirely possible to still have a skill gap. I would guess that since Forb doesn't really play ZK, he knows much less about the unit balance bit, which is a *very* important aspect of ZK because it has so many quirky units and relationships.

So yes, in the end you are right; you can have all the same tools and your performance can still very greatly. Actually, this is the exact reason I get frustrated when people say that starcraft's interface limitations are "intended" because they "need to drive the skill gap".

Johannes wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:
Custom formations. Your argument is invalid

@knorke, I don't think you understood what I meant. Of course I would lose in ZK because I'm no good at ZK.

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example. I wasn't saying that those "tools" only exist in evo/spring, but I was using evo/spring as a firsthand example. Savvy?

Custom formations doesn't really take away the importance of controlling your units precisely, it just raises the bar of how well everyone must do this to stay competitive. It's not an automation thing that'd make everyone similarly skilled in micro.

And there's really no tools that'd help you multitask better - constantly reposition several lone scouts, optimising your economy on when exactly to build wind, solar, adv solar, nano, etc., control different armies consisting of mixed speed units, take advantage of the fact that buildings and wrecks block bullets... SC2 is in many ways mechanically easy compared to BA or TA.


Hell even a simple game like KP demands great multitasking ability to get anywhere.

I think the point isn't that custom formations removes the need to control units, it just makes it more accessable because you don't need to be playing super fast to do it. Another good example feature in spring is strategic zoom. It doesn't remove the need to reposition your lone scouts around, it just makes it easer because you can have them all on screen at once.

So maybe there is a higher theoretical skill ceiling because it opens more opportunities to be effective. But the idea is that it lowers the skill floor so you can do a good job of playing the game even if you aren't pro at it.

Really, it's a win-win situation if you can accomplish both.

knorke wrote:

But, what I mean is that spring has a lot of built in tools and thanks to widgets and gadgets, spring games are much easier to play for people who don't have great mechanics. Custom formations being a perfect example.

But not only the bad player gets better with these widgets, the good player improves too: I doubt it narrows the skill gap. Some things will even only give advantage to the good player, for example waypoints: If the bad player does not think ahead so much then given long queues of waypoints is a useless feature for him.

It isn't the same though. In starcraft, you must have excellent mechanics in order to get a perfect concave, and in many cases must individually control units. Think blink stalker micro as an example.

Now, compare that to custom formations. To get a perfect concave, you just have to draw it. This puts both players on equal footing and shifts the importance over to knowing when to retreat, army composition, etc.

So it evens out the mechanics, and puts the burden on strategy and tactics.

Just because you make something mechanical easier to use, doesn't mean that you make a good player great. You simply make it easier for him, whereas a crappy player can become good, because the mechanics involved are suddenly within his ability to do the same thing that the good player can do. It may take more concentration for him.

I approach all of this form an evo standpoint where, as you know, army control is critical... Controlling your blob as I believe google called it once Evo has grown up a bit since that time, but the principle still applies. It is very much about controlling your army. You can look at some of the semi-recent games I've posted on youtube as perfect examples of this. Course both of those were a 2 on 1 situation, but you can tell how effective my army was because I controlled them really well.

I'm not a great player, but I'm REALLY good and drawing move and fight lines. I am pretty good at strategy and tactics though, which is why the vast majority of those fights I came out on top. Because I knew when to retreat, and when to strike.

Unfortunately, even winning those battles, I still did not have the army strength to keep a continued push going, but those vids do a great job of showing how mechanics in spring games and the ease of it shifts the focus to strategy and tactics as opposed to raw mechanical skill.

Edit: didn't see waldo's post...

Yeah, I don't actually understand ZK's gameplay. I have played it a few times on noob servers (and won, even though i don't really know what I did that caused me to win... Levelers are apparently really good though).

ZK seems to have a very intricate unit balance and relationships (which I can appreciate... It's pretty neat). From a standpoint of not understanding those relationships at all and being a total nub, me playing zk devolves into me doing what seems reasonable at the time. But as I don't really know how to play the game and the strats involved, I could not beat an even remotely competent player in zk.

luckywaldo7 wrote: I think the point isn't that custom formations removes the need to control units, it just makes it more accessable because you don't need to be playing super fast to do it.

If your opponent is playing super fast and you're not, you lose.


If you want to have a game with low emphasis on mechanics - multitasking, muscle memory etc. - you cannot achieve that by giving the player more precise tools. You get to that by either simplifying and/or automating stuff so that there is no way for an experienced player to outperform a newbies unit control, or by just emphasising other parts of the game, making different units counter each other very hard.

I disagree. Speed isn't everything. Especially in Evo. Slow speed with a better army composition will beat speed with a crappy army composition easily.

How do I know? Because I've lost to nubs who weren't good players but had much better army composition and were able to 1a their way through my army.

I remember this happening quite recently actually. His composition was better and basically straight up countered mine. He wasn't a good player, but he still rolled me all the same because his army just tore giant strips through mine.

You are treating this as though it is black and white, where in reality, there is a giant grey area that you seem to be ignoring.

I'm not treating anything black and white here... These are strategy games not rhythm games, so of course you cannot win purely by playing "fast", whatever you take that to mean - and really you cannot play fast unless you very much know in advance what you are doing.

But when you said that SC2 all about mechanics, apm, multitasking, and Spring games tend to minimize the impact of those - that's simply wrong. And more black and white than anything I wrote, I'd say.

They do minimize it but some aspects utilize it

What puzzles me is is this way of thinking:
So Forb wins (sometimes) against Godde. The conclusion is "he can do that because of the tools."
Hm, what about the fact that it is his own game?
Or that evo is less complex than for example zero-K or BA? In less complex "easier" games players skill will be closer together.
To reduce the discussion to UI is missing the point.

I'm not sure 'the fact that it's his own game' makes it any easier to beat Godde, from personal experience. (Not sure how many times /if ever Nemo did either)

To the contrary, in less complex game, personal skill matters much. In more complex games you can compensate a lack of raw skill by knowing the game more.

To the contrary, in less complex game, personal skill matters much.

Games can be made in ways that skill does not matter so much. I can think of two ways:
a) luck is more important
b) the game is simple (=less complex) so that there are no skills to learn or to "master"

In more complex games you can compensate a lack of raw skill by knowing the game more.

hm of course both players have to know the game, else it is not really a fair game. If one player wins because he was the only one to know "dgun needs energy", that was not skill. But if he built windmills because he knew "dgun needs energy", that would be skill imo.

But what does "complex game" mean anyway? The rules of chess are simple and quickly explained but the resulting game is quite complex (think conways game of life) and "deep" and thus skillfull.
I am sure there were boardgames in kindergarten where explaining the rules is more difficult but then the resulting game is "easier" because it is more shallow or luck matters more etc.

More concrete example in Spring, first minutes of a game when players build their base.

Start of BA game:
Players has to make 3 mexes and some energy, a factory and maybe some turrets. How, where and in which order he does that matters because the commander walks so slow. If you make a mex here and then a turret over there and then walk back to make another mex, you lose lots of time. But maybe it is worth losing a bit of time to walking if it gets you that perfect turret placement? Decisions, decsions!

Start of zK:
Like BA, but the factory can be plopped. Since you can now not stall on resources anymore while making the factory, I would say this makes it a bit easier compared to BA.

Start of Evo game:
Buildrange of Commander is so large it covers the whole start area, the problem of "walk around in optimal way" does not exist.
Less ways to make mistakes but also less ways for good players to get ahead: the buildup phase is less complex and easier.