Spring RTS Engine

Why not just override the starting metal/energy to give the player a little more breathing room - the 1000 x 1000 figure can be overridden by the mod, and it would block SpeedMetal freaks who want to start with 50k + 50k.

I'll grab the latest spring build and try and find time some time tonight to give it a second look.

Why not just override the starting metal/energy to give the player a little more breathing room - the 1000 x 1000 figure can be overridden by the mod

I just tested that, and it doesn't seem to work. Setting the MetalStorage and EnergyStorage does not override the start-script values, at least when running in SpringSP. I'll try it in Lobby, but I bet it doesn't work there, either.

Nope, doesn't work at all.

Ok, I've tested sight distances and the other stuff, and here are my conclusions.

1. Despite all statements to the contrary, raising the sight distances of all mobile / defensive units / structures to 1024 did not result in a giant performance hit. I think partly this is because of the LOS mipmap dealio, where it's really half that, but meh... whatever, it works and wasn't a big hit. Moreover, when I looked at real gameplay changes, it wasn't a huge hairy deal on balance. So, that's a keeper.

2. Halving the time / cost necessary to put up a Landfactory was less icky than I'd initially feared. Players still face serious stall if they just clone out multiple factories without building their economy up, so meh, that is also a keeper. I'd rather get gameplay going than have everybody feel like there's just too much hangtime- the only bit that I think requires more testing before declaring yay / nay is whether this results in early rush play completely dominating any attempts to counter it.

3. I tested Assault Shells in a variety of situations, and I might want to nerf them slightly, but not much. They actually die pretty easily except if 1 v. 1 with most things- when it's 3 v. 3 or higher, it becomes increasingly weighted against them because of a lot of factors. 1 v. 1, they should be very dangerous- the only unit that kills them every time is the Tank. That's not a bug, folks- Tanks are supposed to be one of their counters.

3 v 3, though, it gets more complicated- depending on terrain, even 3 Sniper Shells can sometimes win against 3 Assaults, so meh, I don't see a serious problem, frankly. And AssaultTanks win, every time, because they negate the Shells with stun effects. I think that if you're playing a human who knows what they're doing, you're probably going to use Assaults, but only in niche roles- for the costs, a Heavy Shell is a much better buy for most situations, frankly.

told ya man . I have units with over 1300 sight distance

In the match I played there was talk about micro making assault shells damn good, did you try your examples with "dumb" units or did you micro them?

I realize you did it because the SVN has features the current spring release doesn't have... but still... it's a really bad idea to release content exclusively on an engine release that we have no way of guaranteeing is either stable or safe to run...

Well, how else are we going to fulfill the "must have public release" requirement for installer inclusion or get some meaningful test data before the SVN is officially out? The other option would be to strip all SVN-only features from the mod but that's stupid.

this mod looks extremely cool, totally original and great effects, but NTai (new build for PURE from darkstars) doesnt seem to build - any other AIs support this mod? or anyone know why it might not work?
thanks for the release

NTAI requires configs, it can't play an unknown mod.

Did NTai give any error messages? More details please!


edit:: damn you people editing posts

engineeringteam isnt an option IIRC, I got NTai working fine, are you sure your setting ti all up using the overmind faction? (shouldnt overmind be the only available faction anyway?)

right, if i change the bot's side to Overmind it builds.
is NTai supposed to work on resistance?
as resistance is the default side, this will probably catch lots of people out.
thanks for your help.

Wow, it looks impressive! Lots of great work in this!

Shame you dont have a job now.. try to cut spending and get some slack reserve money..
First year I worked as independent contractor I lived in overcrowded 2 room flat with 5 other people for 50€/month and had no other expenses (except food which I got from cheap ------- for schools) - all just for the fear I lose my income.. I bought other stuff like proper flat, car etc just only when I was sure I can maintain my lifestyle for at least 1-3 years just from backup money.

Impressive but the mod goes tits up when i try to use my mouse wheel, starts throwing cob errors at me and zooms right out or right in, proper annoying.

I found some cob errors too, that may have caused my sync errors (I was desyncing in some test game).

I changed spring to actually give error messages instead of just accessing invalid stack entries (ie. uninitialized memory -> possible desync).

Try with 5021 or later to view the errors. I think it must be errors in the cob scripts, but I don't fully exclude the option of it being Spring bugs.

Think i will just wait for the new spring, i don't play much anymore anyway

I found some cob errors too, that may have caused my sync errors (I was desyncing in some test game).

I'll check out the COB errors, and see what's up. I have a hunch... but you're really not going to like the answer. I brought up COB doing strange stuff earlier, and if this is what I think it is... it's bad, and it's in Spring's COB interpreter code.

That said, lemme look. I can get Scriptor installed over here (I'm snowed in, at my parents' home, so I'm not going anywhere today). So, lemme list out people's wishlist:

1. Longer sight distances. Done.
2. Faster build on Landfactories. Done.
3. Nerfed Assault Shells. Done.
4. Reversing the order of rotation, Artillery Shell, combat (although I do not think that will actually change anything, mind ye- I think this has to do with changes to the TryTarget aiming code's handling of MyGravity). Done, as soon as I fire up Scriptor.
5. Some sort of quick logo that has the acronym correct I'll fire up GIMP and see what's possible, I just don't know GIMP well.
6. Fixed video, same problems.
7. Maybe look at the Airtransport, and see if I can make it as non-buggy as Spring's current code allows?

Looks like most of this can be done here, with minimal tools. I'll start hacking away and put out a bugfix release that addresses these issues. Heck of a way to do QA, but meh, thanks for the bug reports.

From codesamples you posted it looks like you define "local variables" by adding more parameters to the function than are actually supplied. Use the freaking var statement!

@KDR: that used to be OK. In OTA, you can use parameters the same way as local-vars. It's an area where Spring is now "correct", but no longer follows how OTA did things. I know there are other people who wrote their COBs like that.

At any rate, it's easy enough to fix that- not fast, but easy. However, I've already tested, and using local-var assignments within Create() just doesn't work, I had to use static-vars. Luckily, it's stuff that gets referenced once and then never again, mainly.