Spring RTS Engine

All I'm a-gonna say is this, Tired: successfully analyze NanoBlobs, where I spent so much time on balance that in the last game I played with a human being, Day and I played for almost an hour without a victory.

NanoBlobs was a failure. A bad game design.

But it was really, really, really balanced. In the strict sense of the word. Save the urge to dismiss it out've hand, it's missing the point here, and if you've never played it with a human, try to get Day to play you, and come back later. Don't play a random nub, unless you are both nubs- and it's actually better to play somebody who doesn't suck.

One of my personal sayings about game design is that if you don't understand failure, you understand nothing.

DRB and I, the two people who brought the original NanoBlobs into existence (I brought him the first Alpha, we discussed it for hours, NB was born), when we talk about game design, mainly critique failure.

The last game we critiqued to death was Warhammer: Tides of Chaos. It had a fairly good campaign, with interesting missions, some deliberately tricky choices, and lots of variety.

However, the basic game design was terrible, and faction balance was absolutely awful.

The main point where the game designers went wrong, having played its spiritual ancestor, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat (one of the finest, if most difficult, RTS games ever made, multiplayer aside), was not an issue of cost vs. efficiency, per se: it was the deliberate choice by the game designers to allow shooting units to fire through their own units without any penalties.

That fact alone, when coupled with a deliberate game design that was about moving formations of units around, broke the game design, because it turned a game that should have been mainly about fanciful, mixed-arms medieval warfare into a fairly static, WWI-style trench-warfare game about ranges, kill zones, and the effect of layered firepower.

There were other areas where we felt the game was weak- there were poor design choices, and units that were far more really useful than others, irregardless of considerations of pure combat power. But it was a basic, coder-level area that really made the game design fail.

There is no way I would consider playing that game online against a human being, unless we both agreed to just use the same faction, pretty much.

You can't see stuff like that with numbers, man. You have to look at the logic behind the engine- what it can do, what it cannot do. Those aren't numbers. They're assumptions, made by human beings. Spring is, slowly-but-surely, turning away from an assumptions-based model, and towards one where we can arbitrarily tackle difficult issues of deep game design.

Knowing that W:TOC is probably based on the DoW engine, I was almost tempted to see whether the hardly-utilized, but available code in DoW, allowing for reasonably physically-accurate interactions between game objects and projectiles was available. If so, then in an hour or so, I could've fixed the projectiles, probably at a high cost in CPU when the game was played, but meh, such is life when working with a closed-source game engine. However, I'd rather finish the next alpha for PURE than waste time fixing a game that I've already blown through both campaigns on, and have no intention of ever playing again. W:TOC was almost, almost, a good game. It failed to achieve greatness due to many small mistakes... and one giant one.



Working on PURE, I am deliberately undermining the things that broke NanoBlobs, so that it will hopefully suck less. I have also studied CA, BA, and other OTA clones, to learn what it is that players expect, in terms of pacing and style.

What I've mainly learned from my experiences thus far is that balance isn't everything. In fact, it takes a really secondary role to the overall structure of a game, which must include critical moments and tipping-points, where one side will achieve victory- the only real issues are ones of time, and the conditions required to reach that tipping-point. A good RTS game is one that's like a mental / physical arm-wrestling match. A bad one is one where either one side will always achieve victory if the other side doesn't counter very specifically with precise timing, or one where nobody will ever achieve strategic success, even if they are playing in a superior way.

Balance, ultimately, has very little to do with cost / benefit ratios- it's more about time and opportunity costs. You spent whole pages talking about combat power, and yet I see very little real discussion of time and economic factors- which is where most RTS games have their heart and soul. NanoBlobs is actually a really good game design to look at, if you just want to analyze combat power, because I made economics somewhat irrelevant. But not entirely- and if you actually aren't just full of pretentious hot air, and take my challenge, you will be able to tell me how the NanoBlobs economy works, in your answer- I think the real answer will surprise you

I really lost sight of this major concept, when designing NanoBlobs, and I think that if you actually sit down and examine that game design, and start to come to some conclusions about how I went about constructing balance, instead of dismissing it out've hand because I abandoned it, you will see why I am incredibly dubious about your declarations, and think your math is problematical.

You've missed 90% of what made that game tick, because you're assuming that everything in Spring is OTA. Or should be. Which is basically saying that you're either incredibly foolish, or you're just too blind to see that games with radically different assumptions own most of the IRL market.

If NanoBlobs is a "failure", and EE is beneath your notice and not worthy of analysis, then OTA should never be studied, either, because StarCraft wiped the floor with it, and before SupCom, nobody ever bothered making a clone of it.

PURE is a lot more like OTA, and yet it also radically departs from your assumptions, and will probably feel less like OTA by the time I'm done than it does now- my objective is to keep a familiar beginning, which is ingrained in the mental reflexes of most Spring players... then gradually sucker-punch their assumptions and get them to see things in a new way.

I feel that you're just starting to understand balance in the context of a single design- one that you didn't originate. That's a great starting place, but you're exhibiting all of the flaws of someone who starts within a very small logic-box. It's not like I sat down with Spring, having never played OTA before, and said, "who cares about AA, I've got these crazy ideas" NanoBlobs was, when you get past the purposefully-silly art, my personal exploration of the things I liked best about OTA, and did not find in the BSR-rebal-clones or XTA.

It's not that either of those paths is terrible, but they're just two paths, and I think you're missing the most important concept here: all games should not have the same basic assumptions, or they'll all play the same, just with different artwork

As one of those "content" people you belittle, despite the fact that I doubt if you could model your way out've a paper sack, and know zero about what you're demeaning, I think it's even sadder that you not only don't understand why content matters, but you also don't really understand that game design for an RTS does not ultimately boil down to one, ultimate, perfect game.

If that was the case, we'd have all just stopped developing after StarCraft came out, because, by your own logic, it must be perfect. The fact that those of us who actually create new things aren't doing that should probably tell you that, since by definition we can't be idiots, since idiots do not build FX code, script complex animations, and design art, even new stylistic approaches... that maybe we see things you are failing to appreciate.

Basically, I asked you a basic question about game balance, which goes outside of your comfortable little box of assumptions.

Let's analyze the question. I'm probably going to make a couple of errors along the way, since this gets into some fairly nasty math, but the statements will be true.

The real relationship, in mathematical terms, between Armor table values, damage as a factor of ExplosionSpeed and EdgeEffectiveness, and AutoHeal is as follows:

1. EdgeEffectiveness is only a factor if movement of the actors or random variation of the projectiles' points of impact are a real factor.

2. ExplosionSpeed influences the amount of damage actually inflicted, but, like EdgeEffectiveness only actually matters when the projectile's relative point of impact is uncertain.

3. Armor tables and Spring actors interact in a direct fashion. There are no random-damage tables in Spring (at this time- LUA will almost certainly provide that at some point in the near term). So a relationship between a given Damage value, as listed in the weapon's TDF, and the Armor table is a simple lookup operation:

Weapon does X damage to Units in Y Armor table.


If you really, actually knew what you were talking about, you'd have at least told me that several of my operant assumptions were invalid without more data about the problem of game balance we're solving. You don't know what you're talking about, you don't understand Spring, and you're wasting time if you ignore my advice to actually understand that we're dealing with an engine and its capabilities, which gets into very complex, case analysis stuff here.

So, let's take a simpler case.

What is the relationship between weapon damage (assuming one actor, always static) and Autoheal?

-Snip-

I never really counted nanoblobs as incredibly well balanced... Well, at least to say it became so focused on spamming masses of explody shit that you never really came to a point where strategy and unit usage were very relevent at all. Nanoblobs was poorly balanced because there was no counter strategy to spam, except superior spam, and when that is the measuring stick, you might as well just be crashing cars together. There's no depth of skill involved, who ever is heavier wins in the end. It's not real balance, at least it's not real GAME balance, but ya, sure, it's still hard to pronounce a real winner in the end in the case where both players are equally proficient at spam.

Well, think on this: can you win a game of NanoBlobs, using only one unit type?

If you think so, let's go play it

Again, I fully admit, it ended up being a terrible game. You're right, in the end, there is no way for the two players to get around the spam- it's what did it in.

I could have solved those problems, by making things that effectively either allowed bases to be destroyed, irregardless of spam(see "nuke", oh game-design genius), forcing more than one real layer of spam (see "aircraft"), which would force players into gradual problems of micro overload, or allowing areas to be controlled, eventually causing the defeat of an inferior player(see "MPC / LRPC").

I failed to do ANY of these things. Hence, the game sucks, even though the ground-level spam part is "balanced" in some sense- you must include various types of Units to keep from losing.

I have now warned you both. Either be civil and respectful of the intellect and opinions of the other, or do not post.

Anybody who takes Tired seriously after he completely failed to re-examine his flawed conceptual understanding of balance is going to get what they deserve- broken, boring gameplay, rigid assumption that OTA is the only true game design, and fatal errors and omissions in balance that will bite them later.

Balance, people, is built from two things:

1. What logic does your game design follow? What is victory? What are the rules your pieces must follow? These are, and probably always will be, fundamentally human choices. They are what separate "game" from "sim". Even "sim" wanders very far down this path- the goal of "sim" is to produce mathematically-acceptable facsimiles of real-world behaviors.

Spring allows for many logical constructs. LUA is going to expand them greatly. If somebody gave me LUA code that allowed me to define victory in PURE as "capture this percentage of random things on the map", for example, I would then have a game where the fundamental assumptions were completely different than OTA.

Locking yourself into a model where "balance" discussions only take place within a very narrowly-defined set of logical assumptions is the way of the fool. Free your minds! See possibilities.

2. Within the constructs of logic, one has numerical values that have very complex and often seemingly-contradictory relationships. For example, the Knight in NanoBlobs is an excellent application of the concept of AutoHeal vs. damage vs. frequency, in Spring. Knights can be killed, 1:1, by some units, 2:1 by others, 3:1 by others, etc., in different curves that have nothing to do with standard models of DPS.

Damage-per-second is pretty meaningless, in the specific context of the Knight. Why? Because even if the unit it's attacking can theoretically kill it instantly, it needs to:

A. Hit it.

B. Damage it.

C. If it cannot kill it in one hit, then the frequency * damage must be greater than the base hitpoints + AutoHeal.

Add in Spring's code that adds hitpoints to a Unit as it gains Experience, the fact that the Knight has a rapid-fire weapon that gives it Experience in bunches if it closes... and you have a very unusual Unit, that is initially fairly weak, but rapidly becomes more powerful, but in a diminishing-returns curve, due to the fact that AutoHeal is a constant, while the growth of the Knight's hitpoints is linear. Eventually, AutoHeal would be such a small percentage of the Knight's total hitpoints that it would be nearly-irrelevant.

However, in practice in the final game design, just as one practical example of where all of this complexity gets one into trouble, I made sure that so many Units in the game could kill Knights that they became almost 100% worthless.

I still remember the one moment, when I thought I might actually have a chance to defeat Day. I diverted a fair chunk of my economic stream to build a large number of Knights, losing some ground on the map in the process. Then I rushed his base, with a huge mass... and watched in horror, as the static turrets, whose values as defenses I had constantly tweaked and re-tweaked, over months of balance and rebalance, efficiently tore the entire swarm apart


That's balance, people! Understand it! Learn from it! It's not a simplistic formula! It's practical experience, with people, that should finally determine how a game works.

Argh, Tired never asserted that mathematics was the whole of balancing. Please, control yourself.

I'm done, Neddie. I've finished off his main arguments with all of us though, which were, to wit:

1. Math is an entirely effective balancing tool, and can be used to create balance. Even rough balance.

Not so. Math will take you very limited distances, only under certain circumstances, and only within the scope of very simple problems. What I wanted to do was force him to solve unfamiliar, yet vital problems. He failed to even acknowledge their validity, which is fine but undermines his entire concept here.

2. His major argument with all of us mere "content people" who actually make new game designs is that we're ignoramuses who should just make OTA, and that we fail because we're not popular.

That's the part that really gets my goat. He's managed snide insults throughout this thread, like his gentle belittling of EE, when he has never built anything even roughly equivalent.

If we don't innovate, we're just making "content", and it's meaningless window-dressing. If we do innovate, and we fail to attract an audience, then we're just weirdos with bad ideas. It's the problem all game designers face. Not acknowledging that without failure, that there can't be any real improvement, he assumes the mantle of a success that wasn't his in the first place- it was Chris Taylor, and his team's! And it was critical success, not success in the actual marketplace... y'know, the final, real arbiter of what is "good".

If we accept that argument, we have no reason to build games with this engine. I don't, and I am pointing out why.

TIRED'S NICE, POLITE, AND TOLERANT RESPONSE TO ARGH'S PAGE OF QUESTIONS:

You'll find the answers to most of your questions, Argh, within either the content of my original post, or strung out throughout the remaining pages of this thread (you can skip the page dedicated to you).

Please read the content of a thread carefully before asking questions about the subject to allow the conversation to remain coherent and prevent redundancy. Thanks.

SwiftSpear wrote:I never really counted nanoblobs as incredibly well balanced... Well, at least to say it became so focused on spamming masses of explody shit that you never really came to a point where strategy and unit usage were very relevent at all. Nanoblobs was poorly balanced because there was no counter strategy to spam, except superior spam, and when that is the measuring stick, you might as well just be crashing cars together. There's no depth of skill involved, who ever is heavier wins in the end. It's not real balance, at least it's not real GAME balance, but ya, sure, it's still hard to pronounce a real winner in the end in the case where both players are equally proficient at spam.

well TA was all about the flash being spewed out as fast as you could?

unit usage is very relevant in nanoblobs the last time i played it. and yes, there were counter strategies to spam like a few towers in good positions and those guardians. also archers in hidden positions shooting your sheeps is a bitch to your own spamming of knights who just get raped when they enter the range of 2 towers and 10 guardians

There's no depth of skill involved

now this is just bad judgement ;\


I think mathematic designs help to create the layout of the units. But you should take into account, that units can Always be exploited by the player. If you take a look at TA for example, the hawks were supposed to be the anti-air fighters afaik and brawlers the air to ground dmg unit. But in the end people learned to hawkdance and suddenly hawk became air to ground dmg dealer too.

QUick note, Argh: Irregardless isn't a word. Irrespective, or regardless.

edit: I don't think you can say that Starcraft wiped the floor with OTA - Starcraft had many of it's own (but different) faillings. SC was wonderfully balanced and clear (where TA was sloppy and ambiguous), except in terms of micro. Many units required obscene micro to capitalize on properly.

Still, I think the problem with Nanoblobs was the economy, not the combat-units - the unlimited geometric econ rapidly reached a scale where the gameplay became too difficult to properly manage. I think you could probably do well to resurrect it as a small, tactical mod instead of a large-scale swarm game.

I suppose since it's GPLed, though, any player could do that.

Mr.Frumious wrote:edit: I don't think you can say that Starcraft wiped the floor with OTA - Starcraft had many of it's own (but different) faillings. SC was wonderfully balanced and clear (where TA was sloppy and ambiguous), except in terms of micro. Many units required obscene micro to capitalize on properly.

Ehhh, the micro in starcraft is what most fans consider so good about it...

It's also thought that the balance between macro/micro in starcraft is very good, as compared to warcraft3. Macro meaning basically base management and micro unit management, in starcraft terms. WC3 was much more "micro" focused where players would spend 90% of their time controlling their army. There's currently a huge rift in the starcraft community over UI enhancements from WC3 and more being put into the game. Especially the ability to select and build from more then one unit at once, and peons automatically starting to gathering resources after being built. Many feel that this will make players spend much less time on base managment and just micro their armies all the time. Many top players are known for their alignment to being more of a micro (boxer) or macro (OOV) style player, and it's felt that much diversity in playstyle will be lost.

It's true tough, from a balance perspective, that some units in starcraft require too much micro to be used effectively, like the ghost, so it's very rarely seen used.

Zpock wrote: It's true tough, from a balance perspective, that some units in starcraft require too much micro to be used effectively, like the ghost, so it's very rarely seen used.

The ghost was the exact unit I had in mind. The scourge unit was another - both inexpensive, important units that, if left to their own devices, are functionally retarded... for the exact opposite reasons. Ghosts won't use their abilities unless told, and thus are wasted. Scourges will swarm towards a single target, often causing freakishly excessive damage... which is a bad asset in a kamikaze unit. Before Brood Wars, decent airborne-anti-air was nigh-impossible with the Zerg.

Well, it's not just that these units are too micro heavy, their pretty underpowered in actual numbers as well. Scourges are actually used a lot by top players, the queen not so much. Might be that the queens abilities are kinda sub par however, not just that it requires attention. Ghosts fall in the same I think. Units like the science vessel also needs a lot of attention but it's pretty much a staple in terran vs zerg play.

Zpock wrote:Well, it's not just that these units are too micro heavy, their pretty underpowered in actual numbers as well. Scourges are actually used a lot by top players, the queen not so much. Might be that the queens abilities are kinda sub par however, not just that it requires attention. Ghosts fall in the same I think. Units like the science vessel also needs a lot of attention but it's pretty much a staple in terran vs zerg play.

I would disagree about Ghosts being "not worth it" - the damn thing costs only 25 mineral, and can lock down any mechanical unit, while invisible. If that's not horribly powerful, I don't know what is. The problem? Lockdown is a manual action.

Irridiate is also manual action. Pro gamers use it all the time vs zerg. Ghosts have been used like once by Boxer. Ghost's are only useful in very few situations, its not really any powerful at countering anything outside of theorycrafting and easily screwed up. Then you have to pay lots of minerals to get to the end of the terran tech tree and rearch all the upgrades like the cloak and lockdown, another major reason why the ghost is underpowered.

Starcraft just lacked any kind of depth when compared against TA, which had weapons that could fire across an entire map, factors like height and accuracy, radar and LoS that actually mattered, etc. Also, AI helpers to spam lockdown faster than any human could unassisted /= challenging micro.

What was with the Protoss being able to violate population caps, btw? How fair was that? 0o

Tired wrote:What was with the Protoss being able to violate population caps, btw? How fair was that? 0o

That was the final straw for me.

Zpock wrote:Irridiate is also manual action. Pro gamers use it all the time vs zerg. Ghosts have been used like once by Boxer. Ghost's are only useful in very few situations, its not really any powerful at countering anything outside of theorycrafting and easily screwed up. Then you have to pay lots of minerals to get to the end of the terran tech tree and rearch all the upgrades like the cloak and lockdown, another major reason why the ghost is underpowered.

oh, its like i've never seen anyone lockdown carriers Or nuking expos with a science vessel (emp+nuke=gg nexus)

For the record, btw, presuming that the starter was determined with a coin flip, Checkers is the most balanced game of all time. Balance out of context means nothing.