Sphere / Torus and in-game respawn; limitations

[j5mello]

stay away from bounties the devs don't want it.

You have some really interesting thoughts.

Right now ur limited to flat plane maps. No curves.

Also the reason the maps are limited in size is because ATI cards can't generate shadows beyond the 30x30 range. If u try the map crashes. Unfortunately the majority of the devs use Nvidia so testing ATI issues isn't exactly a walk in the park. That and ATI doesn't really like OpenGL for some reason (i pray that with the AMD-ATI merger we'll get some better support).

[Risasi]

Okay, flat plane. Check

Now we know in-game respawn is do-able...

As for bounties, yeah I can see where they could become bad news fast.


And personally I like Geforce over ATI. Okay so are there any map size limitations using Nvidia chipsets?

[Peet]

A considerable amount of people have trouble with Supreme Battlefield (32x32), which is insanely huge.

[10053r]

Supreme battlefield is large, true. But I would disagree that it is "huge". That is just a semantics issue though. I'm going to have to see how AA 2.2 reduced radar ranges changes things, but I think you need at least a 50 x 50 map before restarting players becomes feasible. As it is under 2.11, it is simply too difficult to keep a base under wraps on a map where it is practical to cover 100% of it with radar. Restarting in an RTS means a player needs to be able to have at least 20 minutes without being discovered.

Here's an idea. Could there be some command added to the commander that would take part of the map (say a sphere 2 screens across) and put an impenitrable shield around it? The shield would cloak and jam everything inside it, as well as block all units and weapons fire from leaving or entering. The shield would last say 20 minutes (or perhaps this would be possible to set in the lobby), and would trigger automatically when he spawns, and it would never be possible for him to gain another. Make it a lobby option. Then someone entering a game in the middle would have 20 minutes where they would be guaranteed to not be disturbed. On small maps, this would be a way to enforce a "building truce", and on very large ones, a newly spawned commander would have enough time to get air, nuke, ground, and lrpc defense up as well as a fledgling economy.

Should be possible without any major engine rewrites, and give you what you want Risasi. Also, modders have wanted the ability for something to cloak something else for a while, so they would support this kind of addition probably.

[Risasi]

10053r,

That sounds like an interesting option. But I'll take it one step at a time. I'd LOVE if only in-game respawn were added first. At least that would give me the ability to playtest.

I suppose I could do the same with Ground Control II. After reading these forums earlier this week I found out that game supports in-game respawn. Is anybody here familiar with it? If so did anybody actually try using that feature? I am guessing not because nobody was playing LAN, but rather online.

[jellyman]

Is the idea to have a new player on a new computer join the simulation mid-way through, or to have an existing player on an existing computer rejoin after being fried. In the second case, Spring's limitation of having a save state only via a full replay doesn't apply. Thats because the computer should already have the full state of the game as its played the whole game. At a LAN party you could potentially just have every computer join the game anyway, even if no players are on that computer, and then allow players to somehow spawn using a computer that has the full game state. All that is needed is the ability to give a commander to a player, and have that new unit creation synced with every other computer.

And a method so that the whole thing is playable. In a normal game any player coming in late, or respawning wouldn't have a chance. My gut feel is that a map large enough to have a new player join and build a nice base undiscovered will be too large to do any practical attack anyway. My best idea would be some king of the hill scheme. Not sure what others mean by this, but I'd imagine the game keeping track of whoever is the leading player somehow (maybe by metal produced per tick). All players know at all times who the leading player is. And maybe points can be scored as well, by destroying units. Or possibly only by destroying buildings. And points can only be scored by the leader, or by a player attacking the leader. This would encourage everyone to gang up on the leader, and there would be no reason to attack a respawning player who is building up. With 10 or more players it might be too hard for any one player to dominate enough to kill everybody off. Even so you might need to ban very long range weapons - imagine if one player dominated big time and got 10 nuke silos up. You could also boost the coms toughness, and damage when exploding. The idea being that a 1 vs 9 will still be a loss (eventually) for the 1 if the 9 just continually respawn coms and com rush even the most established 1....

[LOrDo]

Don't feel bad for ATI people if you decide to make a huge map. Spring shadows are hardly a loss, and Dynamic Water is a lagfest in a can.

[Shadowfury333]

Could there be some command added to the commander that would take part of the map (say a sphere 2 screens across) and put an impenitrable shield around it? The shield would cloak and jam everything inside it, as well as block all units and weapons fire from leaving or entering. The shield would last say 20 minutes (or perhaps this would be possible to set in the lobby), and would trigger automatically when he spawns, and it would never be possible for him to gain another. Make it a lobby option. Then someone entering a game in the middle would have 20 minutes where they would be guaranteed to not be disturbed. On small maps, this would be a way to enforce a "building truce", and on very large ones, a newly spawned commander would have enough time to get air, nuke, ground, and lrpc defense up as well as a fledgling economy.

True, but in those 20 minutes the other players will have all built up much more (consider the tier 3 plants and Mexes), so the latecomer is still in the dust. I wouldn't mind playtesting it (assuming I can get Darwine to run it) but I would have to see it work well and be fun for all to believe it.

[Risasi]

True, but in those 20 minutes the other players will have all built up much more (consider the tier 3 plants and Mexes), so the latecomer is still in the dust. I wouldn't mind playtesting it (assuming I can get Darwine to run it) but I would have to see it work well and be fun for all to believe it.

I agree, it would have to be fun, but anything is more fun than having to sit out the rest of the game at a LAN party because you can't join again. Even if it means teaming up with one of the guys still in the game it's better than twiddling your thumbs for the next two hours.

Obviously this isn't mainstream. I'm just looking for a host switch that can be turned on and off.

Anyway, thanks all so far for hearing me out, and for all the other ideas that have surfaced. There have been some interesting ones. I'll be offline tomorrow. Have to check two of the networks I maintain, and test a dozen Xerox printers that came in today. I'll be back on the forum next week.

[10053r]

JellyMan Wrote:

In a normal game any player coming in late, or respawning wouldn't have a chance. My gut feel is that a map large enough to have a new player join and build a nice base undiscovered will be too large to do any practical attack anyway.

I don't know if you ever played on "epic" maps in OTA. On a 50 x 50 maps, the game tended to take the general form of the cold war. That is, players rarely attacked each other directly until the end of the game. Instead, they built forward bases and duked it out until one player's forward bases were destroyed. Only after all the forward bases were destroyed (that protected the main base) could you attempt to take out the main base against a skilled player. It was often possible to get a significant base up and running before you were discovered. With an impenitrable jamming and cloaking shield, it might be a lot easier (no need to build early defenses).

Jellyman Wrote:

Not sure what others mean by this, but I'd imagine the game keeping track of whoever is the leading player somehow (maybe by metal produced per tick). All players know at all times who the leading player is. And maybe points can be scored as well, by destroying units. Or possibly only by destroying buildings. And points can only be scored by the leader, or by a player attacking the leader. This would encourage everyone to gang up on the leader, and there would be no reason to attack a respawning player who is building up.

This is a great idea! However, the leader still might want to attack respawns, so they still need the shield.

Shadowfury333 Wrote:

True, but in those 20 minutes the other players will have all built up much more (consider the tier 3 plants and Mexes), so the latecomer is still in the dust. I wouldn't mind playtesting it (assuming I can get Darwine to run it) but I would have to see it work well and be fun for all to believe it.

Not neccesarily. In a game on an epic size map, it has been my experience that unit limit is as important as resources. A player may be making 40K energy per clock tick, but if they are limited to 500-1000 units, that doesn't give them enough to be conducting attacks against 3-4 players simultaneously. And if this "king of the hill" style game is going to be played on any sort of computer that exists today, 500-1000 units will be limit.

[rattle]

About small and large maps, resizing models and adjusting speeds and weapon ranges can quadruple the size of a map out of a player's point of view. They don't get any bigger but more players fit on it. Has been done twice, once by hacking it in an early spring version and and the other one was the Epic version of E&E (though weapon ranges were made realistic instead of tweaked down).
It requires some effort however or a way to scale models without changing them, by FBI tag or some tag in the modinfo for instance.

[Shadowfury333]

Not neccesarily. In a game on an epic size map, it has been my experience that unit limit is as important as resources. A player may be making 40K energy per clock tick, but if they are limited to 500-1000 units, that doesn't give them enough to be conducting attacks against 3-4 players simultaneously. And if this "king of the hill" style game is going to be played on any sort of computer that exists today, 500-1000 units will be limit.

Hmm, I had considered unit limit, but I wasn't certain how important it was.

[Risasi]

...but leaving. Headed out to Kansas tomorrow to fix a probe camera, reprogram a Cisco PIX, and fix some security cameras.


But enough about that...I saw saw your last post before I left town Shadowfury. I decided to start a game before I left, running the latest version of spring.

I just now got back today, and turned the monitor on for that machine. Very interesting results. What I did was took one of my spare 1800+ workstations, put it in Spectate mode, then threw in four AI bots. (P.S. I noticed the NT bot is gone). It crashed after running for about 45 minutes. So I scaled the settings back. I think I had turned on the reflective water, etc. Anyway I restarted it on a smaller map. I can't remember the name, the one with the roads and small hills.

So I get back and turn the machine on and the whole map is covered in four different colors. So far the game time is about 39 hours and 50 minutes. I'd estimate the unit count is around 500-600 each color. They seem to have stale-mated. Nobody is attacking anybody, and there are carcasses everywhere, generally in the middle.

I wish I had paid more attention to what I'd set the unit count to, etc. So this is kind of an invalid test, other than I see the whole machine slows down if zoomed out and viewing all units. To a crawl almost.

Anyway I said all this because I think I'm going to take some systems and start play testing in earnest. I've got four spare 1800+ - 2500+ AMD units that I'm thinking of hooking up to a switchbox and adding 8 players to the game. Four bots on separate teams, then the four workstations. Each teamed up with a bot. That way I can control teams if I want. You know throw them into huge battles, etc.

These machines only get used about once a month or so for game playing. I'll probably start a new thread for this later when I get back toward the end of this week.

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P.S. Rattle, you are right. In fact I have done this before with RON. Basically I would create a scenario map that had start points with just enough to wood and area for farmland. Then one small mountain for each player. THEN the special resources I would make very scarce. Including oil. This would cause all sorts of trade wars, unholy alliances, and back stabbing. It was great.
With slow research and a population cap set to either 50-100 it would make the game play very much like Civilization, only in RTS. So rather than playing a long drawn out board game that took 30-40 hours, a person could play an entire game in 6-8 hours.

However the drawbacks were that only 8 people could join, no wrap around maps (like civ) and once you were out that was it for you for the night. You were resigned to playing quake or something the rest of the night. That's why I want respawn. But I'll quit harping on that for now.