Spring RTS Engine

knorke wrote:"kloot ripped it apart" imo must be seen context of time. An engine-dev in 2013 says that a modder in 2009 made something hackish. That is a bit like a NASA tech saying that the Wright brothers 100 years ago had no idea what they were doing. Of course many of their assumptions were wrong, just like Argh maybe was.

What a god-awful analogy. The difference between the Wright Brothers and NASA is probably on the order of hundreds of thousands engineers and scientists, making incremental and revolutionary advances, in theory and through experimentation, over 100 years. In Spring though, was map rendering even touched in those 4 years? Had there been any advances at all to contribute to map rendering knowledge?

"A bit"?

Ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport.

To be fair, making a reasonably good rendering based on a heightmap in realtime is highly dependent on hardware resources on 'average gaming rig', what I'm saying is that it's something that I'm sure is slow to change and depends on how fast current computers are, making an algo that works on 10 year old computers and latest i7 rigs while 'automagically making things work' is impossible - and is not trivial especially since latest generation games look like they support planet-size maps, just dumping my brain here but that could be better suited to vectorial definitions of heights and slopes or something other than heightmaps.

luckywaldo7 wrote:What a god-awful analogy. The difference between the Wright Brothers and NASA is probably on the order of hundreds of thousands engineers and scientists, making incremental and revolutionary advances, in theory and through experimentation, over 100 years.

Sounds about as big a difference like the difference between random newbie-modder caterpillar flapping graphic wings for first time and experienced engine dev mothra. Seems like pro analogy worked.
The point is that saying "it got ripped apart" does imo put Argh's render experiments in worse light than it deserves. Mentioning only that and nothing else, it leaves out too much. That is all.

luckywaldo7 wrote:In Spring though, was map rendering even touched in those 4 years? Had there been any advances at all to contribute to map rendering knowledge?

4 years would mean spring 0.82 or so.
Impotantly ROAM was introduced in 0.85 which was on Dec 22, 2011
Other map rendering stuff worth mentioning might be: voidGround, SSMF (maybe not introduction but changes/new features), map borders,...
See changelog and judge yourself, imo answer is: Yes.

map options code: may 2009
BEHERITH ADDING ALL KINDS OF SHIT FOR MUCH OF 2010
(such as grass params)
map blueprint code: 2011
beheriths animated trees with pretty pixies: 2012
Geometry with sharp cliffs: 2014

these are off the top of my head but yeah, shit is advancing. the problem is there is no point in making anything new. spring has tons of maps already and mostly people just play the same shit all day

knorke wrote:

luckywaldo7 wrote:What a god-awful analogy. The difference between the Wright Brothers and NASA is probably on the order of hundreds of thousands engineers and scientists, making incremental and revolutionary advances, in theory and through experimentation, over 100 years.

Sounds about as big a difference like the difference between random newbie-modder caterpillar flapping graphic wings for first time and experienced engine dev mothra. Seems like pro analogy worked.
The point is that saying "it got ripped apart" does imo put Argh's render experiments in worse light than it deserves. Mentioning only that and nothing else, it leaves out too much. That is all.

If we're going with this analogy, the point is not that his experiments were "put in a worse light than they deserved". It is that Argh's constant utterly unfounded claims about them, usually in essay-posts longer than the Chinese Wall laced with technical inaccuracies or outright gibberish, looked bizarre (for the proper context, this would be like Orville Wright having claimed the Flyer could reach the moon, in the face of all logic and reason, from 1903 right up to 1948 when he died) to anyone with the engineering knowledge to judge those claims. He kept doing this for five years, over and over again, never learning from what he was told (this was clear from the direct dealings I had with him) and it became intolerable, so that by 2013 there was no other light to view them in.

knorke wrote: Imo it does not matter how hackish it was or what problems it had or why it was a dead-end.

Yes, it does. Argh kept building Da Vinci helicopters in the 21st century utterly convinced they would surpass all existing designs (and he would not hesitate to tell everyone this, despite having access to resources that allowed him to know better), and nobody gives out "revolutionary" awards for proven unworkable dead ends.

knorke wrote: Argh's bullshit claims in blablabla-topics were at least based on his attempts to do something, it was a technical approach and made sense in a way

The "at least he attempted something" excuse only goes so far when the person behind the attempts considers them far more than their actual worth and stampedes around ridiculing all who do not see that imagined value, including the NASA engineers kindly telling him multiple times why he might need to rethink his approach.

It does not matter what someone's other accomplishments might be, patience gives way very quickly.

Picture shows three different peoplepersons with three different ideas of flight:
If one looks at the other, he sees something totally bizarre.
(either he does not understand it or can not grasp how someone can seriously believe in such approach)

Wing-horse might say: "I propose we grow wings and run really fast! Derp! Then we can fly!"
Rotor-man responds: "That is wrong, propellers are superior."
So those two have a disagreement about wings VS propellers.
Rotor-man might not know how to produce enough power for the propellers but it is clear to him that a winged horse is impossible.
NASA-tech might facepalm that Rotor-man is so naive: The propeller is too small!
But Rotor-man's principle idea of flight was right. (NASA-tech might not agree but compared to the winged horse...?)
On more advanced ideas, like flying to the moon Rotor-man is helpless. But only handful of people ever went to the moon anyway.

Sounds a bit like Argh was cluessless idiot who just happend to be slightly less clueless than other idiots, but that is not what I am trying to say.
I agree that Argh's posts were often of this long "gibberish" nature.
So many other discussions or feature requests were worse. ("What about spherical maps?!?!" or "Let units shot units!" etc) I get impression that people did not even try to think there.
Classic example are feature-requests that are just way too vague, nothing will come from it.
Then Argh posts some Lua and everybody acts as if that doomed the thread?
No, the thread was clearly never going to go anywhere anyway! It was a horse with wings.

tl;dr:
NASA-tech says "Wow this annoying guy and his silly propellers!"
And Wing-Horse joins in: "I know right?! The worst!"

Look, I don't think it is right the way you are painting argh as a martyr or a visionary. I don't have the time to produce some huge wall of text and frankly I think you are being quite selective about your memory considering how many of his posts had to be outright deleted knorke.

There were many threads that argh personally scuttled because he wanted this or that when it wasn't even his thread. EVEN when asked politely to stay out.

Back in the day lua WAS NOT as powerful as it is now. Many things have been added since. It blew my mind when I was working on trepan's morph gadget all of the older ways he had to do things. (still not done with this gadget so don't ask)

his "lua it" was often without HOW he expected people to lua it.. it was akin to..

Poster
"how do I..."

argh:
lau it
???
PROFIT.

am I going to cite specific examples? NO, I am not here to rail on argh because A: he is not here to defend himself and B: I wasted enough time over the years trying different ways to get things done around here fighting him coming in with some sort of bullshit post which completely disregarded the request and how things worked within the engine. Most of arghs posts were miles long, terribly offbase if not downright bad advice and hugely inaccurate! In before your sperg like accusations that i am no better, I at least try to grow from the advice and improvement advice given in my threads!

I don't want to debate with you, I don't like talking badly about people who are not here and frankly I don't want him back. I think you are misrepresenting the situation as it was.

NO, PURE was not nearly as polished as s44 or SWIW. EE and AA had better gameplay! I'll even go so far as to say gundam was more polished. Argh had a lot of really really derpy animations and functionality that didn't really work that well. Many of his videos and pictures do not display that fact. I think what you are doing is wrong and even if argh wanted to come back to this community he was one of the MOST toxic content devs in the history of spring. He used to bully me so badly I still get upset every time I see these threads and even hesitated making this post because of his threats to bring about IRL stuff to me and my career! I am not trying to defame or slander, I am trying to set the record straight. Now can we please lock this thread as nothing of value will come of poking it?

And locked it will be. Argh has been gone for way too long for this to be a genuine concern..
If you want to discuss mapping stuff, make a new thread!