Spring RTS Engine

As i said before Voh has no plans, but if someone here is interested in doing it i could ask him for permission.

well, I think that is why you are getting to sort of replies you are getting here. People are aware TA has limitations, we assumed you were looking to port it considering your other thread.

I didnt post this in the development thread (this is the OFFTOPIC thread). So i assumed you guys know that this is not a Spring mod.

I know the thread. Doesnt mean that an a Spring version of TA Zero will happen. You are assuming way to much.

Smoth is making quite reasonable assumptions based on what's happened in the past; often people come here and are interested in porting their game/idea to Spring.

I don't want to pour water on any amibitions you might have but realistically most people from here already have projects and aren't likely to be that interesting in porting

Well np i wasnt planing on porting in the first place anyway. Its not even my project (its made by Voh), which i repeated several times. So its not up to me to decide something like that and Voh has no intention to port it too. Thx for the replies and cu guys.

bye and thanks for all the fish!

New work in progress screenshots:

ARM T2 Radar Jammer: Blocks enemy Radar in a certain AOE.



ARM T2 Stealthed Sniper/Saboteur Kbot: Able to cloak, armed with a sniper rifle and able to self destruct (with an AOE explosion able to destroy T1 factories).

CORE T2 Electronic Warfare Hovercraft Artillery: Does extra damage to stealthed/jammed/cloaked units and has an extra (dgun) attack that deactives enemy shields for a certain time.







If someone is interested in testing the WIP builds send me a pm.

Its nice what you've done with the engine, no question, but its pretty hard to get excited about the TA engine after Spring.

I understand. Trying it once does not hurt though.

I tried OTA again a year ago, it went somthing like this

Want to put factory on repeat
> No repeat button

Want to queue metal extractors
> one at a time, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click

One of the metal extractors is on a slight ridge
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there

I want to zoom out so I can see where my scouts are without taking an eye off my base
>NOPE

I want to move my rockos in a line
>NOPE

I want to automate my metal makers, pressing 1 - on , 1 - off every 3 seconds is awful
>NOPE

Regardless of the game, using the controls and camera feels like wearing a straightjacket after the absolute beauty of Spring controls and camera. For people who like micromanagement, it might be of more interest..

In TA Zero most of the stuff you were missing in OTA is available. Except for the formation thing.
For example there is a mega map (mousewheel) now where you can zoom out and you can linebuild or build around another building with one click + hotkey(x). Also the pathfinding is improved. Although there is no repeat button you can queue 5 units each click (by pressing shift) or 100 units each click (by pressing ctrl). In TA Zero you are also able to select the exit point of the unit leaving a factory by pressing d and select the side.

1v0ry_k1ng wrote: One of the metal extractors is on a slight ridge
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there
> Construction Vehicle: I Can't get there

Although this can be spammy, it is still better than silently dropping the order.

In spring, if something doesn't work, the order is silently dropped, for instance choosing bombers to attack something that died or cloaked: bombers will just stop where they are and not fly to the attack coordinates.

I haven't tried TA Zero but do you have

• Command insert
• Area commands
• Priorities
• Target commands independent of movement
• Smart units

The 'formation thing' is arguably the most important innovation in modern RTS. Trying to control armies without it is like write with a pen held in your fist. Try it, you'll lose your patience for other games.

I tried it. Still do not lose patience when playing hard games.

TaShadan wrote:I tried it. Still do not lose patience when playing hard games.

Correction: you still do not lose patience when using weak controls and a camera that places an intentional limit on your awareness and ability to multitask across the map.

Thats understandable if it is what you've grown up using and spend most of your time using now -- people tend to dislike progress when it makes their skillsets redundant -- but if you started out with excellent controls, going backwards is really difficult.

I wonder what is your problem?

TaShadan wrote:I wonder what is your problem?

If you didn't grow up learning to play text-adventures with a notebook at the ready you would see needing to write down a map and the hints and clues you find as "needlessly difficult".

Old RTS games not having the "ease of use" features present in modern RTS games makes them seem similarly "needlessly difficult"...

So it's not that they are hard... plenty of good games are hard... it's that they are less enjoyable because they are hard in ways that make them tedious and unintuitive rather than "challenging".

I wonder what is your problem?

I dont think my reply was hostile or untrue, so nothing - this is a forum for discussion.

An otherwise identical game between otherwise identical players except with worse controls is not by definition harder (or easier) to win for either player than with good controls. It does mean a higher proportion of each players time is spent manipulating their perspective of the battlefield, and that much more interaction with the controls is required between 'I want this to be happening' and 'I have now given all the commands to make this happen', which in turn leaves less time for considering 'what you want to happen' and places a greater manual cost on the player to turn conception into command. Less automation also means that a player is required to divide their attention into various subroutines in order for their units to behave intelligently and economy to function optimally.

Most of this just translates into a steeper learning curve, which is either good or bad depending on your preferences. I play at about 30 commands a minute, which is enough to play Zero-K multiplayer at an above average level. I can't get physically faster than this, slow hands, so I like games where clever beats fast - in RTS that means automation of all processes that I always want to happen but dont have the spare micro to perform, and powerful controls.