Spring RTS Engine

It is not about discussing the bugs and shortcomings in detail. There was a time for that but that time has passed, so now we should lynch forb

ftfy

knorke wrote:

smoth wrote:Was on the frontpage, not any more, for some time.

The point is? That is not as bad that a broken spring is on steam because it is not on the front page anymore?

It isn't broken for me. By that logic, many games should not be on steam, there are many games that have stabilitiy and/or don't run well for everyone. Hell you should have seen the wolfenstein new order release where people just didn't have the CPU for it.

knorke wrote:

smoth wrote:He understands some of lua, but personally I think it is just something that is unknown and bewilders the guy. I have been there in the past with different things and still get there.

He knows nothing.

He knows SOMETHING.

You have an opinion and will not hear anything else. I am outta here.

He already got lynched by steam users.

smoth wrote:It isn't broken for me.

What nick did you use for playing?
Neither "smoth" or "smoth2" or "smoth3" have any played matches, only a few spectated ones.

And yes, FA's understanding of scripting is zero. I think beyond editing a few lines and copypasting stuff together (with instructions and help given by others) he has never written anything. Prove me wrong though.
At very least his talent is extremly limited. There is nothing wrong with that, but acting as game developer, ignoring all advice and publish stuff without thought...no words for that. Sorry, but that is not possible to state in less offensive or less ignorant way: If after years you struggle to write some while-loop or similiar "hello world" things, then you have no place to make such decisions.

It's not broken for me either. Username(s) MetalSucker ..was JimFoo2

I really like the game.

Coding is one of the many skills needed.

I haven't seen any actual Evo RTS bugs that affect me.

I deleted it because you posted it in the wrong forum. You have a vendetta against me that has next to nothing to do with evo.

What are these bugs you speak of? There are none that I'm aware of (other than that the paladin currently costs 3 supply instead of the listed 5, which I have fixed but not released a new version for).

I didn't get lynched by steam users. I bore the brunt of their frustration, which is 99.9% lobby related. Should I then turn around and pitch a bitch fit at Ikinz, CarRepairer and Anarchid?

The fact of the matter is that the engine devs do not see the dismal lobby situation as an issue. Until they do, there is little that can be done. ZK lobby forged it's own way, and it has TONS of issues and fails to sync very frequently. ZK's launch will be better in the fact that they have a dedicated core of many people who will help newbies. Evo didn't have that.

Instructions are provided at http://www.wiki.evolutionrts.info .

Tutorials at this time are not feasible. Nubtron in zk is not readily adaptable to other games (I spent some time working with it), and it is the closes thing to a decent tutorial that I can think of in spring. RTS is not something that lends itself well to tutorials. The missions state in spring is pretty dismal as well, with little to no end in sight.

ZWZSG's mission system showed promise, as it was version independent, but they are difficult to set up and in many cases not really worth the effort. They also lack a good front end for them.

The ZK mission editor continually shows promise, but it isn't full featured enough yet to accomplish what you want. I did do a tutorial mission once, but unfortunately the trigger system when detecting when things get built is very flakey or doesn't work at all, which instantly torpedoes most wanted tutorial methods.

The only "bugs" that evo has are caused by spring and/or bad hardware (usually ATI). There is a small issue with sell locals that crops up about 1 in 100 games where it crashes at the end of a game because a player sold all his stuff and the game ends before the countdown finishes, but it's so rare as to be a pretty much non-issue. I spent some time trying various methods of fixing it, but after a few hours I deemed it unnecessary when it only happens at the end of games and doesn't crash anything else (and only happens once in a blue moon).

Many evo steam users have disabled the filter and play zk and xta pretty often. This was by design. There was never any attempt to keep them from discovering the rest of spring, I just wanted them to see evo first and foremost (considering that that is the game they downloaded in the first place).

Knorke, development involves a lot more than pushing code around. When it comes down to it, lua is a pretty small part of the massive amount of work that goes into a project.

Lets take spring tanks for example. It's a cute little game, and it's a shame you don't do more with it, but it's fucking ugly, it has no style, it has zero presentation and has pretty much no effects and about the only thing good about it is that it has actual working capture the flag in spring (thanks to your luaz). Being a developer is not only about the code you write, but also about how you design the project as a whole. It took a long time (years) to get the design of evo to something that I actually liked, but in the process I learned a lot.

Wrt "talent" and "development", I have nearly single-handedly developed many sites for enterprise level customers, and as a commonplace I develop sites for small businesses, and am very deep into sass/php/html and also the design of these things (photoshop)(see, I am capable of designing and coding). I also happen to be extremely good at the things that I get paid to do (and a lot of things I don't get paid to do), but your approximation of my "talents" focuses solely on lua in spring, and ignores absolutely everything else, because you suck at everything else. All in all, if you want to pull out dicks and start talking about talent, mine far exceeds yours in all but a single area (Spring Lua).

FA can not program at all and has no idea of spring modding beside changing some numbers.

Orly?

I guess all those models and artwork and scripts and sound effects, etc just poofed their way into existence then eh? Good to know.

You know the best part about evo? It's open source and it's on Github! You could help (although, unless you plan on learning how to work on weblobby, I dunno what you plan to do), but you prefer to whine.

knorke wrote:And yes, FA's understanding of scripting is zero. I think beyond editing a few lines and copypasting stuff together (with instructions and help given by others) he has never written anything. Prove me wrong though.
At very least his talent is extremly limited. There is nothing wrong with that, but acting as game developer, ignoring all advice and publish stuff without thought...no words for that. Sorry, but that is not possible to state in less offensive or less ignorant way: If after years you struggle to write some while-loop or similiar "hello world" things, then you have no place to make such decisions.

So either Knorke has a vendetta against Forb, or his sanity is completely slipping away.

http://www.twitch.tv/evolutionrts/c/5075759
Watch from 1h 15min to the next few minutes.
In this video (stream from get-together of 2 weeks ago) LuaUI crashes.

The interessting part is not the bug itself, as that is an easy fix.
Interessting is that this bug was on bugtracker Jul 4, so some weeks already.
But actually this bug was first reported to you a year ago, when you released on desura.
I know that because I re-opend the issue on google.code bugtracker but then was repeatedly told by you and smoth that this is not an issue, that it only happens to users with pre-installed and "messed up" spring versions etc.
Even after I had posted how to fix it, you did not take it serious.
In the video you say "and the fix breaks it!" but that is because instead of doing the posted fix, you did this:
https://github.com/EvolutionRTS/Evoluti ... 524700301f
That makes absolutely no sense.

here is a small issue with sell locals that crops up about 1 in 100 games where it crashes at the end of a game because a player sold all his stuff and the game ends before the countdown finishes, but it's so rare as to be a pretty much non-issue. I spent some time trying various methods of fixing it, but after a few hours I deemed it unnecessary when it only happens at the end of games and doesn't crash anything else (and only happens once in a blue moon).

Another case where you did not apply the posted fix.
After your commit I even commented again "this will not work, you only did half the things" - but no use.

Knorke, development involves a lot more than pushing code around. When it comes down to it, lua is a pretty small part of the massive amount of work that goes into a project.

Excactly.
The most important part of anything, unrelated to spring or even computers, is recognizing problems, looking at situation and coming up with a solution.
You already fail at first step: You are unable (or unwilling) to reocgnize problems, even if others tell you about them, until it is too late.

Forboding Angel wrote:[...]The missions state in spring is pretty dismal as well, with little to no end in sight.

A more honest summary would be: You are unable to make any missions/tutorials because you have no idea how to use/fix/adapt the existing tools that others have made.

I didn't get lynched by steam users. I bore the brunt of their frustration, which is 99.9% lobby related. Should I then turn around and pitch a bitch fit at Ikinz, CarRepairer and Anarchid?

In some -now deleted- steam thread, you already did that.

I also happen to be extremely good at the things that I get paid to do (and a lot of things I don't get paid to do), but your approximation of my "talents" focuses solely on lua in spring, and ignores absolutely everything else, because you suck at everything else.

Are we discussing spring modding or something else?
Lua in spring is currently the only thing that matters because that is what it always comes down to:
You want to fix a bug in gadget - you need to know Lua.
You want to look up something in engine - you need to be able to read code.
You want to animate a unit - Lua.
You want to avoid always having small mess-ups like "the paladin currently costs 3 supply instead of the listed 5" - Lua.
You want to make missions and like none of the tools - You need to program your own tools.
You want to fix the AI - also not possible in photostop.

luckywaldo7 wrote:

knorke wrote:And yes, FA's understanding of scripting is zero. I think beyond editing a few lines and copypasting stuff together (with instructions and help given by others) he has never written anything. Prove me wrong though.
At very least his talent is extremly limited. There is nothing wrong with that, but acting as game developer, ignoring all advice and publish stuff without thought...no words for that. Sorry, but that is not possible to state in less offensive or less ignorant way: If after years you struggle to write some while-loop or similiar "hello world" things, then you have no place to make such decisions.

So either Knorke has a vendetta against Forb, or his sanity is completely slipping away.

My vendetta against FA is that he has regularly violated all forum rules and everybody closed both eyes "because he is a content dev." That is however unrelated to what I think that of FA's talent as developer.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ano+points
FA has a script that switches between 2 nanopoints. He needs help to make it switch between 3 nanopoints.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 35#p554275
FA has found a script that looks like http://springrts.com/phpbb/download/file.php?id=6086

if randomPick == 1 then
PlaySoundFile("sounds/unitdeath/e1.wav",15, x, y, z )
elseif randomPick == 2 then
PlaySoundFile("sounds/unitdeath/e2.wav",15, x, y, z )
elseif randomPick == 3 then
PlaySoundFile("sounds/unitdeath/e3.wav",15, x, y, z )
...
elseif randomPick == 32 then

He is unable to think of anything better on his own. Oh, and he had asked the same question earlier:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... ua#p485729

There are dozen of more examples. Most his question could be answered by anyone who has done the smallest amount of scripting. Well, maybe not the questions where he just flat-out asks others to basically fix everything.
Actually, maybe you can show the oppossite? Any example where FA has written anything original, that is not a copypasta of old TA scripts?

I find your self-righteous buttmad to be highly amusing.

My vendetta against FA is that he has regularly violated all forum rules and everybody closed both eyes "because he is a content dev." That is however unrelated to what I think that of FA's talent as developer.

I went for like 2 months without posting anything here, and even now I rarely post anything, so this little tirade (while amusing) seems to have little basis in anything that matters.

Btw, if you think that spring needs something proper on steam and/or desura, then feel free to put spring tanks up.

You gloss over all the months and years of work I put in to make any of this happen (Desura and Steam).

Also, what self respecting script language uses a separate if statement for items that should be in an array in the first place? BOS has no self respect :'(

Hello! I'm back, guys!

Have there been any recent advances?




...But honestly, I visit these forums every three months or so, and the one thing that endures is this ridiculous drama.

Get some perspective, guys (esp. you, Knorke). The Spring Engine and its projects are valuable and important and all, but you're worrying about the impression some 1,500 players (if that) will have about some marginal engine because of some marginal RTS's instabilities. It's a drop in a big, fat, galactic space-ocean!

If you care so much about people having a buggy experience, go fix bugs. If you think Forb is overstepping his boundaries, tough luck, it's his game! There's nothing directly hostile going on here, and surely nothing that warrants this kind of attempted public roasting!

Also, these are the Spring Engine forums. You don't see people go and post on the Unity forums that the makers of Crappy Unity Mobile Game #3549 need to have their apps removed because they're shit. If the game is bad, people will chalk it up to the game, not the engine. If there are so few active games for the engine that one game's failure will reflect on the engine, you've got other problems.

I think the important thing to take from this is that games must be treated as complete packages. People will not gain magical interface comprehension skills while using the lobby part of the package. It is not useful to release without first making sure that the lobby works really well or to ignore lobby problems when they arise.

Most of the work required for ZK on steam is in the lobby.

Google_Frog wrote:Most of the work required for ZK on steam is in the lobby.

And for the first week the lobby is likely going to fall flat on it's face, repeatedly and frustratingly and there is no amount of preparation that will save you (although it will help soften the blow). But as I have stated elsewhere, I think that zk has the support structure it needs to come out of it smelling like roses.

It can be avoided, by having fallback mechanisms. Basically you feature reduce your system, until there is nothing left but a autojoin to the next open game.

But you know for someone raging - knorke comes up with quite a lot of evidence.
Just dont understand why he is spending so much time on evo.
I mean, why not rage on zero-k or BAR - those guys know what they do, and will fix there stuff.
Problems solved.


Sorry but Evo aint a big thing. Had a chance to become one, botched it and thats about it.
And nobody is forced to help forb.

Google_Frog wrote: Most of the work required for ZK on steam is in the lobby.

Maybe we need a separate forum for lobbies. I don't mean a separate subsection in springrts but a separate domain. If something is bad it can be fixed with less cooperation, that usually works.

Can free things be released as "Early Access" or "Beta" on Steam? I feel like a lot of the ill will that Evo got there was tied to people seeing it as "unfinished" because the lobby/install stuff had so many problems out of the gate.

Can free things be released as "Early Access" or "Beta" on Steam?

Depends slightly on what you mean by released, but yes

Knorke wrote:I found something and was not satisfied it met the standards of a AAA game. Here is a long list of vaguely described things written in lengthy prose I think need addressing

MTR

MidKnight wrote: Hello! I'm back, guys!

Have there been any recent advances?

<3

MetalSucker wrote:registration registration registration

Yes the forum registration was required around 2005/6 after spam reached epidemic levels and the 'anonymous' user trolled excessively. Things improved vastly very quickly once it was done.

MetalSucker wrote:Lobbies

The proper solution in hindsight had a catch 22. The protocol was too complex with too many features. AFLobby never reached feature parity despite spending at least a year on it, and more features have been added since

The perfect lobby for say Forbs situation would get rid of all that and simplify things, but that means you can't play on the same server as everyone else and expect it all to work. Back then nobody had the critical mass to do that outside of *A, so why do it.

Of course Evolution RTS could do it now, but who would build the lobby? I made designs and plans in private with Forb, and he passed them on to other people, and it didn't happen, probably because of they didn't like them. I'd have done it myself a long time ago but as I said on my site, I moved on.

Lobby problems won't make any significant headway in the next year towards fixes, just as they haven't in the last 5. The only major up ending of things we've seen in lobby-tech has been DSD-Dry, autohosts, and the ability to do 16 player games or higher

Lobby problems won't make any significant headway in the next year towards fixes, just as they haven't in the last 5. The only major up ending of things we've seen in lobby-tech has been...

That's not entirely fair - besides autohosts there is now multi-version support, incremental downloads, weblobby, ZK planetwars/etc, TrueSkill balancing, ...

The current setup with SL & friends is well very suited to the development side of Spring, and imo its natural and good that we have them. But I'm certainly not disputing that games which want a standalone release will also want access to a different style of matchmaking/singleplayer experience to the develop/playtest together kind of platform that SL & friends offer. I may even be quietly making designs on writing one

Incremental downloads are all good but sometimes you also need to get the file itself without an installer, and that's not possible in ZK.