Spring RTS Engine

smoth wrote:

AF wrote:Smoth your arguments about professionalism are subjective. You may not need to bother with it at the moment, its not a big problem for you. But it IS a big problem for them.

How so? also the last sentence, I don't follow.

typo

why is it a big problem for them?

smoth wrote:There is no ai that supports gundam

Argh wrote:Bigger problem though, as I (and zxswg and the S'44 crew, I presume) ran into, is that there are all of these other major parts missing- single-player support is basically a wasteland, there is no explicit support for Missions and Campaigns, the front end, while considerably improved, is not really anything like a professional game would support, etc.

And without a Mission Builder that is maintained, that area is now going fallow very quickly. I wish I had time to build an all-Lua one, but I just don't atm.

All of these things are major issues.

I found out the hard way that you should not rely on external AI or mission builder, because they'll break, author won't bother to fix for several monthes if not more, and then all your Single Player system is gone. Luckily KDR_11k made a Lua AI, and I've made a Lua skirmish generator, a Lua rudimentary mission thing, a Lua Single Player frontend. It is much better because Lua code, I can fix and improve myself, as well as any other actual Spring modder (as opposed to TA statsheets tweakers). I hope to port them to other games soon.

smoth wrote:That isn't the argument. Stop bringing the popularity argument to the table. It is infuriating.

smoth wrote:My point of bringing up the perceived worth of something has less to do with popularity and more to do with people giving something a try.

Ok, let's say I used the wrong wording. Replace "popularity" by "willingness to try" in my previous post. Point still stands.

smoth wrote:The argument is that the term mod is misleading and confusing for new players. The same players who have a hard time understanding how to make the spring thingie work.

My point is that the new players should not even have to be read the word "mod", and should not have to figure out how to make the Spring thingie work.

smoth wrote:as far as lobby configuration, what TASClient? the dev of that project has a beef with me and has been known to put code bombs in his shit when he doesn't like something.

If you're paranoid about that, disable autoupdating and thoroughly check every TASClient you pack.

smoth wrote:Springlobby is not configurable like tasclient...

No, it is configurable in a different way

smoth wrote:This is a freeware project... not a professional project. Professional appearance is irrelevant.

It is relevant insofar as having your project being taken seriously, as showing your project can stand on its own feet like a real game, instead of leaning on a seperately installed game like a mod.

smoth wrote:Complete installer would force a spring version.

smoth wrote:And the user would be stuck with that version of spring.

smoth wrote:Quake doesn't have updates weekly and when it did, the players playing said mods didn't have to update to play online.

Then redo installer everytime Spring updates. Doesn't take long wit a well done script. I'll even give you a Gundam NSIS installer script so you don't have to waste time writing it. What takes long is finding and fixing all the bugs new Spring version introduces. Which has to be done even if Spring is bundled separatly. Or shall I say, which has to be done even more so when Spring is bundled separatly.

smoth wrote:I have... it is pretty easy, install spring, double click the files in the gundam zip...

You forgot the part about putting yourself in the shoes of a newbie. Oh well, I knew about everybody would fail at seeing how what we take for evident here really isn't.

smoth wrote:Hosting is even more impossible as most of the time I am required to host. Feel free to keep blaming me for the lack of gundam games on the server, I'll happily take the blame when players can readily host.

Run an autohost.



I'd also like to point out most of your issues have nothing to do with the "game" vs "mod" terminology. Which shows how irrelevant it is.

zwzsg wrote:My point is that the new players should not even have to be read the word "mod", and should not have to figure out how to make the Spring thingie work.

my issue with it being called mod has less to do with the spring dir and more to do with assholes in the community confusing players by telling them gundam or other projects are mods. The players get confused and start looking for the game they belong to. See original post. I think the actual thing I am fighting here was confused with a curious request about the spring dir.

zwzsg wrote:If you're paranoid about that, disable autoupdating and thoroughly check every TASClient you pack.

Could take hours to dig through the code and if satirik wanted to be clever he could hide it well. so lets assume 1 hour(which is generous IMO) and +1 step.

zwzsg wrote:Then redo installer everytime Spring updates. Doesn't take long wit a well done script. I'll even give you a Gundam NSIS installer script so you don't have to waste time writing it. What takes long is finding and fixing all the bugs new Spring version introduces. Which has to be done even if Spring is bundled separatly. Or shall I say, which has to be done even more so when Spring is bundled separatly.

Ok so say I add it to the core release, a release that is roughly 200 something megs. That is about 2 hours upload for me. Then all users have to redownload gundam for an engine update. When the engine asks to update they will be confused.

I also will have a new release for what? an engine update vs features added?

so we have ~3 hours plus 2 extra places things can go wrong and added user confusion?

No an installer would be appropriate if we had the ability to run whatever version of spring we want on the server(which we may have now but last I checked we don't) And if spring was more stable, which it is not. We have not had a stable solid release for years.

zwzsg wrote:You forgot the part about putting yourself in the shoes of a newbie. Oh well, I knew about everybody would fail at seeing how what we take for evident here really isn't.

No i didn't. They are using a pc and cannot open a zip file... then how would they even install something or find the shortcut. I was a t.a. in the intro to computing courses on my college campus and I taught the retarded kids in my highschool how to use a pc(don't ask, community service type thing). If the user cannot open a zip file, an installer would be equally confusing for them.

zwzsg wrote:Run an autohost.

how does noob know how to work autohost if noob cannot operate double clicking a zip file?

zwzsg wrote:I'd also like to point out most of your issues have nothing to do with the "game" vs "mod" terminology. Which shows how irrelevant it is.

They are replies to your post.

here is what we were supposed to be discussing:

smoth wrote:

<emilio> is 1944 Liege V2 a new mod
<[S44]Nemo> map
<emilio> this is what it says in the info page
<emilio> Alright hereÔÇÖs a little masterpiece (all 90 MB of it) that was designed specifically for spring 1944 (yes ÔÇô this is a mod, try it sometime). The Map includes a village in the middle surrounded by hills and has a river flowing through it with 3 crossings along the way.
<[S44]Nemo> nixa means S44 is a mod

So for clarification:

smoth Oct 13, 2008 wrote:Spring started as an engine to run content(units etc) from TA. It is an engine with no specific game but many games you can play. It is a very flexible engine.

Spring has mods and games.

Mods: modification of the game.

Games: Projects that have all of their own content created from scratch. Most of the spring games are in progress because games take a long time to develop.

*A: What most people here call *A would be the projects like, CA, Xta, NOTA, BOTA, BA, SA, you see the pattern I am sure. They are all TA mods, meaning they are based on the game total annihilation. There is some controversy to this because the content was stolen from TA but most of us own TA so we don't care.

However, some of the devs wanted to argue that spring was using "mod"ules.

smoth wrote:correct, but the standing idea among the devs and a few of the spring people is that mod can also mean Module. For some reason they believe that the term will some how acquire a new meaning just because they wanted to be different. This whole thread will not change anything as the concept is dead set to them and frankly I am doing little more the repeating posts I have made in the past. It is just all pointless. Still I manage to post here, like a moron, each time this thread happens.

yes, to gamers mod means modification.

I have always felt this was just a lazy excuse to not rename the /mods/ dir and frankly... mods and maps really can go in just /content/ Feature request maybe?

anyway...

smoth wrote:because, mod is mod. When players come here they know that mod means modification.

I argued that the projects should all be called "packages" or "content packs" but no one has opted to end the confusion.

as I have said before, right now people see spring.. they think it is TA and see that most of the stuff is TA then they see a bunch of mods, most of which are ta mods and assume that mod means modification.

I feel strongly that spring would be more appealing if it could be described as an engine with several games and mods running in it versus an engine with several mods.

esp with the general assumption that spring is TA engine 2.0. It was that mass assumption that started my crusade against the title mod and moder.

that is why independent content packages should be called games and all of these heavily derived *a projects should be called mods.

Argh - I'd buy P.U.R.E if it was on Linux.

A Linux port is one of the requirements for 1.3's release. It was one of the major screwups of the launch. To get there, I probably have to port KP's interface for Linux users, so that mission support has an inherent UI. It's a high priority when Pylon Wars is a bit less of a prototype.

smoth wrote:my issue with it being called mod has less to do with the spring dir and more to do with assholes in the community confusing players by telling them gundam or other projects are mods. The players get confused and start looking for the game they belong to.

Asshole will always be asshole. Forum post won't change them. The only solution is to build a system where new players are kept away from assholes until they played a few Gundam games.

smoth wrote:Could take hours to dig through the code and if satirik wanted to be clever he could hide it well. so lets assume 1 hour(which is generous IMO) and +1 step.

I was not saying to change at the source level. Anyway, no one by Satirik can build TASClient, because of the peculiar dev environnment it needs.

smoth wrote:Ok so say I add it to the core release, a release that is roughly 200 something megs.

Yep, GUNDAM1.21.zip is 250MB. Adding the Spring engine and installer resources would only add 20MB.

smoth wrote:That is about 2 hours upload for me.

Doesn't matter, as these are not 2 hours taken from you. You don't have to watch the progress bar, you can do whatever else during upload.

smoth wrote:Then all users have to redownload gundam for an engine update.

No. New Gundam players get the new engine, but previous Gundam players can update only the engine.

smoth wrote:When the engine asks to update they will be confused.

When the installer is already up to date, the engine won't ask for an update, duh!

smoth wrote:If the user cannot open a zip file, an installer would be equally confusing for them.

Yes, most computer users can unzip a file. But they won't know where to unzip because they'll have skimmed your instructions, they'll go to Spring website and get lost here, they'll miss the line about needing the Spring engine and sit on their .sdz wondering what is that, they'll be offline when they'll realise they forgot to copy the Spring installer to their flash drive, they'll fail at finding back where was Spring installed, archivemover will pry the sdz from their hands and do something stupid with them such as moving to the wrong place or disabling the files because they were already in the proper place when double-clicked, even if they managed to correctly put the sdz in place they won't know what to do from that point, etc,etc,etc....

You want to know what sort of experience newbies have when they first install Spring?
I didn't have that much trouble installing Spring myself I'm on Ubuntu and you can get Kernel Panic, CA and a ****load of maps all at once off Synaptic. Then again you have to configure your Software Sources and so on which Spring many times more complicated than most Linux games (which just give you a link to a .deb). I say most: one game I actually had to compile myself. Fun

On the other hand, I had a lot of trouble configuring Spring, getting the LuaUI to work and so on. Remember this?

wilbefast wrote:Hi guys, I'm new here so please go easy on me

Couple of questions that may or may not be insultingly easy to answer - see how many you can fire through in 5 minutes
edit: yes, I have looked for answer to these questions before posting!

• How do I make the camera zoom in when I scroll the mouse forwards rather than out? There's no "invert zoom", only "zoom speed". I'm way too used to other RTSs and Google Maps...
• Does Spring play music? None of the mods I've tried seem to have any, not even the TA-based ones (eg - Complete Annihilation).
• There are no unit-response sounds playing for Complete Annihilation, although there are explosion sounds. Is this normal? I'm an old fan of TA and I miss the "bajoing-donk" sounds.
• A pop-up keeps telling me that "LuaUI is not loaded" - how to I make it stop/load "LuaUI"? What is "LuaUI" anyway? A user-interface in lua clearly, but what is it and why do I need it?
• "Customisable GUI"? That'd be "LuaUI" I suppose...
• Fog of war can be turned on with 'l' and ';' in game but turns off again when I start a new game. Is there any way I can have it turned on by default?
• I can jump to a location on the map by right-clicking on the mini-map: is there any way of changing this so that I can jump with left-click and issue orders with right-click? Old habits die hard...

There are resources and helpful people everywhere but even so there's a lot of work involved getting everything working correctly. I recently tried to open a port on my modem for example - ended up losing my connection completely and having to reset it manually
I'm not a good example though because I'm at least a little savvy. A better guinea-pig would be my little brother in Australia. I really wanted to have a game with him but for 3 weekends in a row we tried and failed to get a game going. He did get to play some Kernel Panic in the end (with Zwzsg no less!) but I'm not sure if he'll be coming back for more

Believe it or not one of the main problems was actually the Kernel Panic installer! I advised Guthrie to use it because KP seems like a pretty good ambassador for Spring, and I wanted him to get the full experience, with music and everything (players expect music!) Trouble is it only installs the KP AI, and adding more AI isn't exactly a walk in the park.
Not all the games/mods have their own installer, and even if they did that would mean installing the Spring engine several times in slightly different places.

Another problem is the maps - there are only about a dozen mods of note so it doesn't matter if you just send the links to jobjol, but getting the maps (without Synaptic) is a real chore.
Spring Lobby apparently has a built-in down-loader but it has NEVER worked for me, and given the amount of people who request and offer links I don't think it works for that many other people either. People would be less hesitant to try new maps/mods if the lobby would automatically download them, but for the moment you have to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt.

wilbefast wrote:Not all the games/mods have their own installer, and even if they did that would mean installing the Spring engine several times in slightly different places.

No. I make my installers so they support both installing over an already existing Spring install, and installing on fresh computers. It's sometimes a bit ankward to hit the right balance between both, but having one installer handle both case still make things simpler IMO.

wilbefast wrote:Believe it or not one of the main problems was actually the Kernel Panic installer! [...] Trouble is it only installs the KP AI, and adding more AI isn't exactly a walk in the park.

No other installer installs NTai and Baczek KP's AI. Why should I install other AIs when other installers don't bother installing the AIs I need?

The other AI do not work with Kernel Panic. They fail in befuddling ways, driving away first time users (see Recognition101's comment). I don't want to ship my product with broken AIs.

Zwzsg - when I said the problem was with the Kernel Panic installer I didn't mean that there's anything wrong with it, just that since we were trying to install:
- CA
- S44
- The Cursed
on top Kernel Panic, and not everyone has an installer... well, sometimes it's just simpler to use the Spring installer and then get the sd* files separately. Obviously it's a no-brainer if you just want to play Kernel Panic though.

Or you can use Linux and get everything via Package Manager - <3 Linux

What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. -shakespeare

Dotz stop with the thoughtless one liners. you reply to stuff without reading it.