Spring RTS Engine

IMO just reducing the poly count on them would be best. A cube doesn't give the nanoblobz feel to it...

That is one fugly swimsuit.

The spheres were in the last major version. Honestly, they use hardly any texture space, and they don't hurt framerate much.

[scraps nifty idea]

I forgot, I cannot assign team-colors to animations. Bummer. Ah well.

Argh wrote:That is one fugly swimsuit.

...NOT!

What's with the new knight? Got scrapped?

No, no... just haven't had time, what with getting everything else done.

Rebuilding all of the FX code, while people are still coding it, as well as figuring out a bunch of other things... has been... challenging... and I also did some nice things for future modders, like the whole fake-dynamic-lighting bitz and other things... I basically haven't gotten much sleep the last 48 hours.

I got the new AutoFac done this morning when I reached that point where it was obvious that I wasn't going to get more than a short nap, basically... just ripped through it in 2 hours.

I might have enough energy tonight to skin it (animating it is, obviously, very trivial) but I dunno... I didn't sleep last night, and I'm going to be happy if I can get home from Work in one piece in a couple of hours

Do you have any idea how to change things so that wolves aren't pretty much always the best unit to build in any situation? Maybe stop Demons firing rockets at them as they never hit.

The pictures look very nice.

edit: problem is ARCHERS ARE AWFUL. The missiles often come back and hit them, killing them horribly and most likely the ones close to them. They aim too slowly.

The Archer has become artillery again, because of problems with Spring's missile code, which I have complained about at length elsewhere. The Demon hasn't fired missiles at air targets for several versions now, and won't be firing at them in this one.

As for Wolves... Springers eat them in cost-efficient droves. Try mixing some in with other streams. To counter Wolves during early game, simply build 4-squads of Sheep, and set them to Repeat Build Wolves, to put them up as an early defense against Wolf rush, and to give your base some additional warning, while putting up your early economy. It's quite effective. I have raised the buildtime for Wolves slightly, to make them ever-so-less easy to spam, but it's not a huge change.

Holders are also very effective anti-Wolf defenses, but it's usually not cost-efficient to put them up until after the initial rush.

Argh wrote:stuff that makes sense

Oops. I managed to work out the Springer thing but I kept using Archers, sure that that was right. Thanks. I'm still confused about half of nanoblobs but I'm slowly working it out.

Nice mod... just think that the way to identificate units should be diferent... How about colored circles draw on the ground around the units?

I like how Nanoblobs is always using the newest avaible spring technology
I'll download and test this version tommorrow when I've more time..

Oh, and all the screenshots are on Nanoarena..Do you really play 'blob games on this large maps? Its 16x16 I think which is way too big as the blobs get uncontrollable and also so many units cause a lot of lag..Imo small 2x2-6x6 maps are much better.. (The Chessmaps, Cliffrun, Duck,..)

Do you have any idea how to change things so that wolves aren't pretty much always the best unit to build in any situation?

Some archers or springers make quick work of them.
Also, if he is building wolves you can always just rush in with some knights...

I played alot of games on this one Chessmap with the woodtable and a wolves were never gameending. We usually just used them as "noise" to disatract fire or when trying to get a sheepblob to explode. (but archers can do that as well)

Colored circles around the unit might be possible, if I use transparency then I might even be able to make it low-poly... dunno. I'll look into that tonight, but no promises- Spring's transparency is strictly on/off, so it may not look very good, and getting this arranged may be a pain- I just don't know yet. Personally, I think the spheres look fine, but I am always looking for alternative methods of displaying this information to players.

Well, the best would be a toggle-option like with the healthbars.
If the healthbars could have a border in teamcolor, that would rule.

<shrugs> that would be rather hard to get done, methinks- it'd require changes to the core code of Spring. I've put in a Feature Request for a smaller change that would actually be a lot more flexible, and allow for animated textures, among other things.

New Features:

1. GPL'd rewrite of SmokePuff and good ol' SmokeUnit.h, using non-shadowed puffs. Could be extended/extrapolated for any number of damaged-based FX, and runs faster than Spring's defaults, which are animated and cast shadows.

2. Completely scripted death sequences for the Lord and Demon, including calling weapons that cause damage over time (think "area-denial" after a Demon blows).

I'm still working on flashing mini-lights for the wings of the Wolves... I think it should be relatively "cheap". I am also investigating how I can reserve slots of customExplosionGenerators for future use, for generic things that I'd want many units to use (sparks flying, small grease fires... y'know... typical FX for a sci-fi game). Basically, there's a tricky thing in the way that these are called... you cannot just assign numbers out've the blue. So, if I want most of my scripts a solid set of Includes, instead of having to custom-script it for every bloody unit, I need to figure that out. I think I have that solved now, not that most people will have the slightest clue what that's going to mean. Short version: if we want lots of small, fast FX that are common to a wide range of things and may get called in all sorts of situations... it's a necessary thing to code, and I'm going to put an example into NanoBlobs, which hopefully people will learn from.

New feature:

Units can have lights that flash. It's an extension of the "dynamic lighting" for certain weapon FX, basically. I'm only using it for the AutoFac for now- I think it's too expensive for the Wolves. Maybe for expensive/rare critters like Demons and Squares. Dunno yet.

Now that I've done a bit more optimization, I think I'm almost done. Just a couple of tests, then I'll deliver the mod to Yeha. I don't know when you guys will get your hands on it, but trust me... if your computer can handle it... this is, by far, the most incredible visual experience you will have in Spring. Period. And it's a very neat game, too. But I will be the first to say that this version demands a faster CPU than 0.63... all the effort spent optimizing the previous versions has been at least partially "spent" bringing those who can actually run it really, REALLY superior FX code. The rest of you will just have to turn the particle-count down to minimum, but you're probably already doing that, and I've said it over and over again- if you're playing Spring on a Pentium 3, it's time to upgrade

That looks like someones taken photoshop and just added green blobs, why are they green anyway? I'd have thought they'd be yellow like those lights.......

imo try placing them over the yellow lights and changing to yellow, and maybe making it a bit less opaque than it currently is...

So you're still using nanospray?

@Alantai: <shrugs> again, it looks pretty good while moving... you'll see. It's not perfect, but it certainly doesn't suck. And what the hell, it was more of a last-second stunt anyhow...

@KDR: Yeah, the irony is that I now have all the tools I want to get rid of nanospray in a visually-convincing fashion, but was too busy with other stuff to get to that...

I'd still change it to yellow or blue, it clashes....

Please, PLEASE dont make Nanoblobs so cool looking no one without a super computer can run it

Half the reason I play Spring is cause its one game my computer can play well. Flashy graphics are good and all, but so is having a game that doesnt put your computers in cardiac arrest.