Spring RTS Engine

Dragon45 wrote:

AF wrote:Ok here are the big list of reasons
- Lack of innovation in the mod scene. TA based mods arent innovating, they're just fixing glaring holes when they come up and swapping out models and sfx, the mod still plays the same and theres nothing new. Players are getting bored.

Wrong. There are innovative mods. But players do not like them. They prefer to cruely bash them without even trying, while flocking to the lastest _A mod. (Fill underscore with A,B,C,....)

Here we go again....

I should prolly clarify

i personally feel that there are unique mods, but noone plays them. becuase noonep alys them, no new players will play them. Spring is all about multiplayer. ergo, these mods may not as well exist


part of the problem is that all of spring is still geared towards marketing the engien as a TA spinoff. The website neesd to be totally revamped. I mean for cripes sake, the image banner up to says "TA Spring is a project aiming to create a new RTS. The current goal is to make it run content from the game Total Annihilation"

!!!

hey dragon, fyi buddy, there is no point to that, the people have voted TA is the way to be..

this community has a motto and it goes like this: If it aint TA, I wont play..

There arent any played non TA mods, because people dont want to play non TA mods.. its a self powering cycle.. stop trying to fight it..

ironically the only thing really TA about most TA mods is their untis. They completely fuck over balancei n the ass and bend it over and insert horse into it while slapping it with a big fat set of


but people are weird

but again everything on this site is geared twoards TA-only. The devs have sadi they want it to be an engine and not a game extension, but they've made noeffort to make it into an engine and not a simple TA rehash in practice


its all about the marketing at this point

Single player would be an important step to make people play other mods. I think everybody started by playing single player TA. And most of the strategies I played I played first in single player. So when we will have a package that will contain campaigns for all the good mods out there the situation will change.

Dragon45 wrote:its all about the marketing at this point

Well, hopefully it will help.

Dragon45 wrote:
its all about the marketing at this point

telling a shitload of people to download spring in its current state honestly won't be that helpful, because

Relative wrote:
The underlining problem with this has to do with the nature of spring. Spring is free, open-source, and easy to access with a sub-30 MB file size with the regular installer. In this case this is not a positive trait as the user has not needed to invest into the game. Thus, the drive to get the software running will not be as great than if you just paid $50 for supcom. You have likely come across this in your own experiences. You buy a relatively expensive or exclusive product, but it doesn't work out of the box. You then invest hours and possibly over a period of a few days to get it to work whether you succeed or not.

Without the drive to repay your investment you give up and move onto more rewarding tasks. Therefore, to make spring go more mainstream it is important that things are as user friendly as possible.

Dragon45 wrote: but again everything on this site is geared twoards TA-only. The devs have sadi they want it to be an engine and not a game extension, but they've made noeffort to make it into an engine and not a simple TA rehash in practice

you really do not know what you are talking about...

Guessmyname wrote:*deep breath*

Fire arcs
More than 3 weapons per unit
more 256 weapons and units
more than 4 possible sides
UV maps, textures, glowmaps etc
3d camera
deformable terrian
groundplates
script-firable weapons
veterancy you can fiddle with (script wise, though this may be the next version)
Scriptable moving speeds
Trajectories
Ability to detect what weapon hit the unit (next version)
Aircraft that never land
Rediculously large units
Seismic detection
Shields / Deflectors
Impulse / units going flying
Fiddlable repairing / reclaiming etc etc
Team Colour choosing
Optional Nano-spray
Scriptable SFX
LUA UI + Widgets
All the LUA stuff that will be possible next version
Zoom
Maps that aren't tile-based (TA maps always looked blocky, except for Bryce maps - which tended to be huge in filesize)
Unit Limits
Planes that land on the water's surface
Buildings building buildings
mobiles building mobiles (although the AI could do it in TA, the player couldn't)
Unit Icons
Nuke subs
Area Commands
Line Commands
Repeat Commands
Wait Commands
Units in construction can be given orders
Moddable FF
Probably something else as well

Guessmyname wrote:Team-colouring in TA was choosing from a number (12 I think) of colours. In Spring, you can choose custom colours

Some other stuff I thought of:
Beamlasers
Start boxes
D-gun limiting
Ghost buildings
Jammers jam your radar too
Start boxes
Shared Commanders
Mutators
Fuel
Wobble effect with missiles
Build anims
Death anims

In all honesty, I do not see you playing EE, gundam or kernal panic.

Kernel Panic is pretty much the only mod on spring i've played that didnt feel like a TA rehash :S


Resources are the most fundamental thing about RTS and when they all use the same system they are going to play pretty similar on a fundamental level

EE didnt feel like TA.
Anyway, all you need to get a regular playerbase is host a game that contains players once a night. if a game is up with people, more people join.

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:EE didnt feel like TA.

past tense already?

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:EE didnt feel like TA.
Anyway, all you need to get a regular playerbase is host a game that contains players once a night. if a game is up with people, more people join.

I had a game of AA2.11 up last night for an hour before someone joined (and didnt just spec)

TA based mods arent innovating

Think before you post.

non-TA mods have the current flaws:

- They feel like TA a lot

this will change in some nonTA mods with the use of lua, however lua isnt a quickfix its a tool and how its used will determine the success of the mod. For example mod A introduces a complex mechanism and mod B adds a new but simple innovation, as a result all the nonTA players flock to mod B and scorn mod A.

- They look like TA

Not all moddders have taken advantage of the nanospray tags I added. The only people I know who have replaced the build animation are smoth in testbuilds of gundam, and argh in nanoblobz, and fang talked about it but probably never got around to it.

- Direct competition

nonTA mods compete for players with TA mods by being listed directly with TA battles. This is silly as these mods arent established enough in their playerbases to compete. Hopefully I shall remedy this via the lobby.

- Conflicting signals

we have TASclient, TASpring in the banner, we dont even have a TA mod, just uberhack/AA variants and XTA.

- No returns on investment

When a user downlaods somethign they want an immediate return on their investment, they look at/watch the DVD they just bought, play the game they just got when they get home, listen to a new song after theyve bought it, and tis the same with spring.

New players want to play the map theyve just downloaded, the mod theyve just installed, and usually they get zero return on their investment. That map never gets played, that mod is never hosted. The user ends up feeling cheated.

- lobby

The current lobby we have was intended to do 1 thing, work, it was a very utilitarian approach. Sadly we seem to have lost site of what we really need in a lobby were tasclient is concerned, development should have focused on a new user orientated lobby in a better language such as c++ c# or java. Instead extra features have been bolted onto the existing client and very little has changed.
The entire approach by the current lobby people is rather negative with regards to lobby development as a community. There are those who like how it currently is and want to protect the power they've gained, that could be lost should other lobbies servers and systems gain a foothold. I wont go into specifics for fear of naming names and situations.
The overall effect of this has been a drastic slowdown in lobby development in the direction it really needs. Lobby devs have tired to emulate tasclient rather than take the opportunity to redesign it, and people are ignoring the lobby when they look for solutions and reasons why things arent working as they want them to.
User friendliness has taken a backseat, and the lobby is the first thing the player sees in the 'spring experience' that gives the first impression, and it isnt a very good one.

My immediate reccomendations for v0.75 would be:

- to switch from tasclient to iamacups version 'spring client'
- bundle Spring SP with the installer
- perhaps bundle an autohost bot?
- redo the html help documents that come with spring so they look pretty, and arent out of date.
- improve the content that comes with spring, namely the maps, this looks like tis already in progress, tobi already outline dplans to include a mass of map features with spring to help mappers make use of more map features.

In the longterm:

- Replace tasclient with aflobby/lobby++/spring lobby
- Replace this website with something easier to use
- Sort out the wiki
- TA mods should innovate more. TA mods are scared of deviating away from TA and insist on balancing the cavedog units rather than moving them in the techtree and even removing them. All the OTA unit role changes and weapon changes were mostly done before the mods were ported to spring.
- Encourage development help. We have far too few developers working on the spring base. Go make AI configs, key bindings, lua widgets, help develop a lobby or make things all modders can use, map features etc.

And remember, dont advertise spring untill its ready which it most certainly isnt.

smoth wrote:

Dragon45 wrote: but again everything on this site is geared twoards TA-only. The devs have sadi they want it to be an engine and not a game extension, but they've made noeffort to make it into an engine and not a simple TA rehash in practice

you really do not know what you are talking about...

Guessmyname wrote:*deep breath*

Fire arcs
More than 3 weapons per unit
more 256 weapons and units
more than 4 possible sides
UV maps, textures, glowmaps etc
3d camera
deformable terrian
groundplates
script-firable weapons
veterancy you can fiddle with (script wise, though this may be the next version)
Scriptable moving speeds
Trajectories
Ability to detect what weapon hit the unit (next version)
Aircraft that never land
Rediculously large units
Seismic detection
Shields / Deflectors
Impulse / units going flying
Fiddlable repairing / reclaiming etc etc
Team Colour choosing
Optional Nano-spray
Scriptable SFX
LUA UI + Widgets
All the LUA stuff that will be possible next version
Zoom
Maps that aren't tile-based (TA maps always looked blocky, except for Bryce maps - which tended to be huge in filesize)
Unit Limits
Planes that land on the water's surface
Buildings building buildings
mobiles building mobiles (although the AI could do it in TA, the player couldn't)
Unit Icons
Nuke subs
Area Commands
Line Commands
Repeat Commands
Wait Commands
Units in construction can be given orders
Moddable FF
Probably something else as well

Guessmyname wrote:Team-colouring in TA was choosing from a number (12 I think) of colours. In Spring, you can choose custom colours

Some other stuff I thought of:
Beamlasers
Start boxes
D-gun limiting
Ghost buildings
Jammers jam your radar too
Start boxes
Shared Commanders
Mutators
Fuel
Wobble effect with missiles
Build anims
Death anims

In all honesty, I do not see you playing EE, gundam or kernal panic.

amazing, everything you put up there is basically TA + new features. Most fo the stuff is a no-brainer - more modern modelling systems, star boxeds, commander sharing, animations, effects in general...


AF is right (gasp) again, most every mod out there now orginally had its roots in TA and so plays very simialr to it (dont flatter yoruself smoth) or other mods developed in TA.

and also, its still being marketed as fex

- Conflicting signals

we have TASclient, TASpring in the banner, we dont even have a TA mod, just uberhack/AA variants and XTA.

and tell me, what's being bundled with Spring anywho? What mod?

But where's things like completely different interfaces, genuinely cool new things implemented with trepan's LUA stuff that's been aroudn for a while? true dynamic environmental effects, full GAIA usage by modders and mappers, etc? All the radical stuff everyone is scared of touching and seen no progress on that front.

Dragon45 wrote: and tell me, what's being bundled with Spring anywho? What mod?

What, in the content free install gundam uses.. ha ha ha, I believe that would be NANOBLOBS!

Dragon45 wrote:But where's things like completely different interfaces, genuinely cool new things implemented with trepan's LUA stuff that's been aroudn for a while?

Like widgets and luaUI? that can be disbled by the player which means you cannot setup any rules in it!

Dragon45 wrote:true dynamic environmental effects,

using what? YOUR hot AIR? because guess what? we don't have luagaia just yet... but you obviously knew that!

Dragon45 wrote: full GAIA usage by modders and mappers, etc?

Gaia doesn't exist yet.

Dragon45 wrote: All the radical stuff everyone is scared of touching and seen no progress on that front.

what like oh, I don't know.. NOTHING?!?

Shields, used!

Fuel limit(not a modern or TA feature), USED!

Oh, I don't know .....


VARIABLE MOVEMENT SPEEDS(NOT A TA FEATURE) USED!


Lets see here... hmm.. oh I don't know SEISMIC.. USED


Wait what's that, units not shooting through each other(NOT USED by supcom, ta,generals,ta:K, dow, C&C-1-3,starcraft, warcraft1-3)

oh, arced shots to better use 3 dimensional space? Totally in TA(NOT!)

oh, lets see, fire arcs which can control a unit's behavior in combat... funny... not in TA!

Wait what? that is right... not it TA..




moving on... lets see, oh, wait, all the mods in one directory and files that easilly call dependency on each other meaning it is quick to make mod versus mod battles NO OTHER RTS IN EXISTENCE!

seriously, don't quit your day job!



dragon, really? Plays like ta? are you retarded? do you know how many complaints I get about how the MOD doesn't play like TA? Are you just that far separated? Oh, I am sorry, I forget you have never played it.

smoth wrote:dragon, really? Plays like ta? are you retarded? do you know how many complaints I get about how the MOD doesn't play like TA? Are just just that far separated? Oh, I am sorry, I forget you have never played it.

say you added fuel limits, shields, seismic detection and some other random stuff to starcraft and made a mod for it. that mod would still play like starcraft, right?

If that was the ONLY thing you added yes. because you would still have protoss, terran and zerg.

bad example there boi, starcraft is a 2d sprite based game, so half this stuff would be somewhat silly to speculate about, bringing starcraft into a 3d world ala spring would be a massive alteration to its setup and balance just because.. also starcraft already has shields..

What are you people arguing over anyway..

If non-ta mods feel to much like ta that is only because of engine limitations, I however dont think a further deviation would be of any use.. there is no purpose to this..

ok, say you added all the stuff in guessmyname's list and made a mod that had three different races, maybe zombies pirates and ninjas.