Spring RTS Engine

I'll be the only arrogant e-elite grammar Nazi here, thanks.

I think you two should settle this dispute with a game of AATA

3 should settle over a game later

Felix STOP FLAMING/MOANING

Now now, calm down

Righto, I've implemented the category changes seen as noone had anything to say about them - they will require ALOT of testing, i.e. spotting units that don't fire at the right kind of target or fire at the wrong kind of target, etc. As well as discussion on if any should be modified.

Just waiting on Spiked's modified aircraft to finish of the category work, then we should be looking at a new release (I cut flag output in half, on the resource side of things, incase you were wondering).

Also, rather importantly, I've found a crashing bug - one which had been reported but had confused me - engineer weapons crashing. This was a by-product of Spiked experimenting with weapon-based mines, rather than unit-based mines, these weapons crash Spring. This could also indicate why aircraft seemed to be involved; aircraft overfly the base where engineers are, and the engineers attempt to fire mines at the plane.

HOPEFULLY, this is the issue which has been dogging us.

Zerox007 wrote:3 should settle over a game later

Felix STOP FLAMING/MOANING

I'm not flaming, I jst have a prblm when ppl typ lke this w/o important stuf lke vowls and punctuatn, k?

Now FLOZi, the only reason that I didn't comment on your proposed changes is that I haven't a clue what you were talking about. Perhaps you should explain it in layman's terms so the non-modders of us can give you input on it as well? As it is I have no idea what happened and what we're supposed to be on the lookout for.

hehe

the basic idea, is that:
Smallarms fire at infantry and light vehicles - but with priority for infantry
Canon fire at light vehicles, armour and structures - but with priority for armour
Artillery fires at whatever it pleases
AA fires at whatever it pleases, but prioritises air targets.

We lose a little realism (tanks wont fire their main gun at infantry - unless i implement the 2weapon-ammo system) but also gain some (don't fire MGs at a Tiger, f.ex.) but mainly we gain unit intelligence, i.e. a tank will enagage infantry with its Coax MG and enemy vehicles and structures with its main gun - prioritising vehicles.

i found a bug in aai causing it to go more or less idle when running aata... i hope to fix that soon, so aai will be able to run aata.

if aata-devs are interested in a fixed aai-version for testing send me pm...

submarine wrote:i found a bug in aai causing it to go more or less idle when running aata... i hope to fix that soon, so aai will be able to run aata.

if aata-devs are interested in a fixed aai-version for testing send me pm...

Good news!

How well will it cope with the restricted weapons? I expect as it is a learning AI it will deal better than the others, (Though I suppose this depends on how it learns)

i've not quite finished yet. since aai does not have any geothermal power plant support yet it most of the time fails building air units.

yet aai most of the time builds infantry

btw: couldnt you ask groundzero for his "mg-fire"? imho ta:wd mgs look much nicer...

If it's the laser type tracers you mean, we intend to. We're going to redo all weapons, Spiked is currently redoing aircraft weapons as well as giving them the new spring tags to improve their behaviour.

Just so many hings with a higher priority right now But soon.

Interesting that it focuses on infantry, we've found in multi games that even large numbers of infantry can be demolished by vehicles, though this could partly be due to the slowdown such large numbers cause and the corresponding inability to control them effectively.

Yes, infy is useless. As far as I've guessed directional LOS is impossible in Spring, so that's a bit less micro that we're capable of with infy. What can we do? Send in one small group, and hit 'em from another side while the tank is distracted? No. Infantry is far too slow to do that. The tank(s) will easily wipe out the one group, then turn and kill the other. So where's the micro at? Right now, AT units can't get close enough to fire. There are no city maps that I know of for spring....any supposed close-range advantage has no meaning for infantry since they're too slow to get into that situation.

How about this. I'm not sure how you programmed the tanks' speed...i'm guessing that you used their maximum speed, right? How about this...you keep the tank's speed in-game exactly the same, but rework the infantry's relative speed as if the tank was going at it's cross-country rate instead. Ergo:

Tank speed IRL 30mph; Tank cross-country speed IRL 15mph
Infantry speed IRL ~8mph, cross country the same

Tank speed in game now: 30mph/8 units per second (random value)
Tank speed after change: 15mph/8 units (same speed)

Infantry in game now: 8mph/2 units or so
Infantry after change: 8mph/4 units (new speed relative to the changed tank speed)

Looking back, I couldn't explain that very well, but it works inside of my head!

ok im done with an experimental version of aai that supports aata (at least the version i got: 0.9b1.5)

if it makes testing easier for you and you re intersted in pm me and i'll email you the binaries....


a few other suggestions:

- fortified guns generate a lot of "unit move failed" messages, though i dont know if that is a spring issue

- it seems to me as if all vehicles are moving pretty fast (im playing with speed lowered to 0.6-0.8 and it looks more realistic)

- the los is great, aata is the only mod i know which has sensible los

submarine wrote:ok im done with an experimental version of aai that supports aata (at least the version i got: 0.9b1.5)

if it makes testing easier for you and you re intersted in pm me and i'll email you the binaries....


a few other suggestions:

- fortified guns generate a lot of "unit move failed" messages, though i dont know if that is a spring issue

- it seems to me as if all vehicles are moving pretty fast (im playing with speed lowered to 0.6-0.8 and it looks more realistic)

- the los is great, aata is the only mod i know which has sensible los

And I thought the consensus was that LOS needed a boost!

I understand what Heroes is saying, I think. Base move speeds off of cross-country speed values rather than top speed values. Essentially, slow down the tanks. (Actually, I'd go for speeding up the infantry; computer games should be a bit faster than in real life.)

sorry i didnt read all the posts carefully. increasing los? humm, maybe, why not :)

anyway, i cant stand those "a unit cant see more than three treelengths"-mods anymore. combat units (not artillery) should have a greater los than their weaponsrange

speeding up the infantry is a good idea, at least a little bit

are there any newer versions of aata available?

Ah, sorry, i knew that wouldn't be clear...I meant keep the tanks the same speed, but make the infantry relatively faster so it would seem that the tanks were at cross country speed relative to the infantry.

ah ok, but i really think tanks are to fast, especially there acceleration is too high

I shallanswer all your qusetonstomorrow when i am less drunk.

Faster infantry/slower vehicles is a future possibilty, methinks.

Fortified guns - have a yardmap that encloses the unit... so it's not supposed to go anywhere, of course Spring doesn't realise this.

I think LOS has improved with the resize, but still needs better balancing between infantry and vehicles.

Submarine, new version will becoming sometime this week I hope.

One fix for the concrete gun positions is to have the yard build 'special editions' of the normal towed guns (different unit stats, same model and buildpic). Just give them a large turnrate but zero movespeed, and maybe make the yardmap a tad larger so the units can spin without issue.

Or maybe you've tried this already, just a thought.

Spring would still try and move the units out of the gunpit