Spring RTS Engine

Then welcome to the finicky balance on the very tight grey line between raving mad/ n00bish and the calm considerate.

Your mistake was making big posts looping voer the sme ground again, which destroyed what you had originally. That and people using capital letters and colours wrongly, such as to highlight words in paragraphs or statements rather than titles. There's simply a lot more to it, and I myself fall foul of it on a regular basis....

AF wrote:Then welcome to the finicky balance on the very tight grey line between raving mad/ n00bish and the calm considerate.

Your mistake was making big posts looping voer the sme ground again, which destroyed what you had originally. That and people using capital letters and colours wrongly, such as to highlight words in paragraphs or statements rather than titles. There's simply a lot more to it, and I myself fall foul of it on a regular basis....

So now it's about me?

Okay, fine, i'll play along, even if you choose to completly ignore all i say and instead put an indepth analyse of my behavior. But fine, i'll respond.

I make "big posts looping voer the sme ground again," since noone seams to understand what i'm saying! Did i ever say that i was agsint big file sized maps? No i did'nt! I did'nt try to fight the filesize! Suddenly pepole are saying i have problems with my hormones and i just got rejected! Did i start a topic named "MY FUNNAY BLOG LOLZ!"? Don't think i did!

I highlight things of importance rather the titles so pepole won't miss them! Aprently, i should highlight the whole godamn post, since noone of you seams to have read and answer'd my orignole qwestion!

Now, i'm gonna ask you to answear this qwestion:

Do anyone of you have a legimit reson for why a person should't be allowed to COMPLAIN on something that put him on a disadvantge?




Then it's a whole other ordeal if you choose to lisen to him or not, or if his complain't dosen't refelet the will of the rest of the community.

If someone could answear that, i would be very happy.

Please kixxie, google toolbar has an english spellchecker. I am not trying to derail you but it is difficult to read your posts.


I am not expecting you not to complain but I am telling you to shut it because we do not CARE. There is no point to complaining because all it sounds like to many of us is something akin to "waaaaah." I am not pick on you in particular. I am just at the point where I think that the critique process is not in need of OMG THAT IS A HUGE FILE.

I would understand if someone made a flat map that was somehow 30megs. However, that is just not the case. I am doing what I can to be considerate of you people on lesser hardware/connections and I am sure most mappers are as well but to try and stifle our creativity because YOU are inconvenienced is another matter entirely.

If you are SO taxed by large downloads start making and releasing low sized maps. I can almost guarantee that the maps will not be downloaded. I have made and deleted 3 maps so far mainly because for the filesize there was not enough to justify a release. I will continue to work for that but I also do not want to download another lackluster map because people worry about your incovienence. I want the artists to create wild maps with tons of details and guess what? consideration for 56k goes out the door on that. However, we are also talking about a one time dowload for a map.

Now, I was on 56k up untill 2 years ago and I had to spend HOURS downloading but I would que tons of them in get it right for overnight downloading but when I would finally get the files lag online was so awful that I simply didn't bother playing. That is where I get vexed by you, even AFTER you get the 30 MEG file you will likely slowdown ANY game you join and you will likely have poor game performance online on your end as well. However, you are going to transfix that frustration on those of us trying to generate content so you can join our game and lag it up.

:idea:

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!

IT JUST WON'T STICK TRUH YOUR THICK HEADS WILL IT?

I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THE FILE SIZES! YOU COULD HAVE 1000000 MEG SIZED MAPS FOR ALL I CARE!



I won't even bother anymore. Do you even try to look out what the guy meant with his post/s while you write it, or do you just make clear assumtions from the words that you can understand since clearly you can't handle bad english! I wonder why noone messes with atlanti if their so up in their pants nazi over grammar. Aprenttly, with words like "answear" and "orignole", you can't DREAM of guessing the orignale contex. But hey, "voer the sme ground " is esay as a dream, ain't it?






I give up. Apprently i can't spell, but atleast i read pepole's posts.

What was this topic about again? I seem to have lost it somewhere around page 2

*Side note*
At least AF knows how to spell. The problem is he can't use a keyboard.

lol, I decided to buy a nice small keyboard a while back, as the one I had was all finicky and encrusted with crumbs (what can I say ym umm bought buscuits, I ate them).

Only it turned out I wasnt used to my new keyboard at all, so I got a typing tutor thing to learn to touchtype, especially since it was touting not having to look but have faster speeds at better accuracy, and it seems it did improve my spelling, but I wasnt typing anywhere near my normal speeds, and I never finished it.

I think I'll have another go at google toolbar, see if ym stepdad minds it.

Kixxe, if it's not filesizes what where you going on about in the first place =s?

It seems to me you can dish it out but you cant take it. Please, calm down, you're only encouraging everyone else in doing so and no doubt they encouraged you to begin with.

As someone said on celebrity big brother last week about pete burns "he may not care how he looks but we care what we're looking at". You have the right to walk in the streets wearing nothing but underpants, or inside one of those big plastic bubbles, but that doesnt mean you have to do it, or that people will think any better of you. People who constantly complain are an emotional drain, and there are other ways of doign ti save complaining. I'm saying this as a general statement though for everyone, not just you kixxe (I know if I didnt sya that that's how you'd interpret it))

Holy crap, that was legible.

Okay, sorry for being crazy, but after posting 5 times about an issue and no one is getting it, it feels like talking to a brick wall, or a recording of English muffin recipes.


Now, Recap.

"Pingu" starts a thread about how spring need better Graphics.

Discussion starts

"Caydr" Brings up Map files sizes.

"Gnome" argues that bandwidth isn't free, and it would make alot of people unhappy.

a short Ping pong play of discussion starts, questions are raised, solutions, counters ect...¨

"Zaphod" shows off some awesome map (built with the new map format?)

Continuation of discussion, some players say cake, other say ice cream Ect...

aGorm makes a post about how people shouldn't complain about features and stuff they don't like, Quote: "And you can stop complaining about what you don't like."

"Kixxe" founds the post, and specially the sentence, stupid, and makes a post how people have the right to complain if they have a valuable reason to(Eg it takes forever to download huge maps on slow connections.) and marks that you don't have to listen if you don't want to, or respond. Eg it takes forever to download huge maps on slow connections. and suggests that he should formulate in another form.

"aGorm" Says that Kixxe missed the point, and argues if people Whines and complains for no reason will make mapmakers stop making maps, and says that "no-one forces you to download a file just cause its big." and that "If you payed £50 for something and it turned out crap you have the right to take it back and complain.
If you spot something you want, don't want to pay the cost (IE: Time) you don't have the right to complain. IF you did it would be a crazy world. "


"Kixxe", still annoyed bye the stupid sentence: "You can't just think that they will be happy with a 20 megabyte extra, witch equals a half hour on certain speeds."
"I would personally be angry if the maps increased 40 megabytes, (Witch they won't, right?) since that would mean almost an hour of download. And if that becomes standard, i would have a crapfull of shitty maps that i waited a half hour to get! "
"Besides, it's still not a big issue... how many really make stupid comments per thread?"

"smoth" Obviously got a nice connection: "I do not care if the maps end up being 80->50 megs. Frankly, even if a new map sucks people will likely not play it which means you will not need to download it"

"AF" Comments on Kixxe's hormones and his "cutesy avatar"

"FizWiz" suggests trouble in Kixxe's romantic life

"Kixxe" more annoyed since no one seams to be getting the point, writes another post, pointing out that he don't care about file sizes, and tries to wrap it up with this sentence: "I'm just saying that dailup speeds have the right to be angry if they want to, and their opinions are not crap because something is gonna happen that will be very annoying and bad for them. And that aGorm is wrong."
He also counters aGorms "Mapmakers can't handle whining with
"That would be true if "alot" of people did that... right now, a whipping number of "6" players have said they have a slow connection, and everybody else are not effected. Yea, I'm sure all map makers are gonna go crazy when "6" players choose to voice their opinion, but hey, you always got the other 64 players on your side, right?
Besides, no one has ever used those words, or similar, in this thread. Where exactly aren't people not facing you or other with arguments?"

No one listens and/or writes something completly diffrent.

Kixxe tries aging.

No one listens and/or writes something completly diffrent.

Kixxe tries aging.

No one listens and/or writes something completly diffrent.

Kixxe finally SNAPS, writes an angry message and gives up.

Kixxe writes this recap and hope pepole will understand.






Get it? Pepole with a slow connection have the right to argue(Not whine) since they don't like long download speeds associated with larger map sizes, but since their a minority, the good of the community is to have big file sizes. But they still have a right to voice their oppinion!





Future?: Kixxe does a victory dance since pepole finally understand his point, and dosen't blame it on his hormones, his relationships, his standpoint on huge filessizes or pepole say that pepole are to whiny (witch they arn't since someone would have quoted one of these extremly whiny persons your talking about...)

Future?: Kixxe takes first flight to the country where the one who can't understand what's laid down on the floor infront of him and stabs him in the face.

Get it? Pepole with a slow connection have the right to argue(Not whine) since they don't like long download speeds, but since their a minority, the good of the community is to have big file sizes. But they still have a right to voice their oppinion!

*cough* bitching about filesize *cough*
Do you see what I am talking about?

Future?: Kixxe does a victory dance since pepole finally understand his point, and dosen't blame it on his hormones, relationships, huge filessizes or pepole whining(it's not about that, reread).

but that is EXACTLY what you are saying you should be able to complain about!

To come back to the topic :

A cool things would be to allow modder to set the explosion bitmap from the explosion type.
As I've understand, every explosion came from an projectile Handler.
I'll try to understand better how it work to see if I can do something.

smoth wrote:

Get it? Pepole with a slow connection have the right to argue(Not whine) since they don't like long download speeds, but since their a minority, the good of the community is to have big file sizes. But they still have a right to voice their oppinion!

*cough* bitching about filesize *cough*
Do you see what I am talking about?

Future?: Kixxe does a victory dance since pepole finally understand his point, and dosen't blame it on his hormones, relationships, huge filessizes or pepole whining(it's not about that, reread).

but that is EXACTLY what you are saying you should be able to complain about!

Meant: not whining (That is, pepole are complaning, not whining, witch is what your saying. Or "bitching", but whatever. Any protest in the world can be called "bitching" Just as homosexuals can be called fags and mentaly ill retarded. I'm sure those who protested agsin't the Irak war was just "bitching" to.

And Huge file sizes... another bad formulation... I meant you thinking that i have something agsin't huge file sizes, witch i don't.

Will update it now i guess.

Edit: Updated. you understand what i'm saying now?

Kixxe wrote:Meant: not whining (That is, pepole are complaning, not whining, witch is what your saying. Or "bitching", but whatever. I'm sure those who protested agsin't the Irak war was just "bitching" to.

And Huge file sizes... another bad formulation... I meant you thinking that i have something agsin't huge file sizes, witch i don't.

Will update it now i guess.

English is NOT your primary language is it?

Bitching complaining about something that doesn't matter.

Complaining this only counts when you are COMPLAINING about something of consequence.

So if you are going to be and ASSHOLE and bring the "war(read: extended skirmish)" into this you cannot equate that disscussion. In the WAR people DIE that is at least little more then the MINOR inconvienence that you experience because you are on dailup. do not even begin to equate the two things. Wow, you know I thought maybe you were a cool dude but you know.. jst BRINGING UP THE WAR in a discussion like this shows you have NO RESPECT for the people who have died in this whole fucking thing. BURN IN HELL.

This thread makes me want to have moderation status and the ability to put people in digital cardboard boxes.

Fuck this.

<i was abaut to say something stupid but i stopped writing it cause IT WAS STUPID AND SO SHOULD U>

Not to barge in on what seems to be a sparkling interplay between my peers... but... uh... did Pingu even bother posting here again?

Do most of these posts even have anything to do with his request?

I mean, let's be real here:

Really nice maps do not have to be huge to be pretty. If they're huge and pretty, they're going to be expensive. This is just a fact. Don't spaz, go on at length about how Map X which is mainly concrete and roads (good tiling surfaces, duh) is 3 MB whereas Map Y which is the same size but features beautifully lifelike terrain of an Earthlike forest during the fall is 45 MB... it's a silly comparision. Those of us willing to take the time to download something that big will pay the price to see the beauty. It's not like, say, playing Counter Strike on Steam, where everybody must update their clients, and the updates include some really huge (if beautiful) maps. Spring is about choice- and if you don't like huge maps that take forever to download... then don't download them... and don't whine about it, unless you're ready to step in and make maps that are beautiful but small in filesize.

The above is pretty much a law of design in 3D game engines- while yes, we can see more optimization, there is an inherent tradeoff between beauty and performance. People whining about it... should just stop, because it's pointless, and it just shows that you need to upgrade your hardware. Don't like that? Tough... go back to OTA.

I can't afford the latest super-rigs out there (my specs are currently below the midrange) but I haven't had serious performance problems related to graphics on most maps. Most of the FPS load has been related to AI, pathing problems, and other things, which ultimately slow down my rig... when I have a few thousand things going on at once (shots flying, sounds playing, particles spawning, etc.).

But, if I was playing a mod that was smaller in overall scale (i.e., fewer units) I'd have zero problems. I will be building a mod fairly soon (after my current mini-project is completed to my satisfaction) that will feature a game design where less is more, and it will run very nicely on anything but the slowest systems. Also, keep in mind that, as uv-mapped models using DDS come into play, we should actually see some performance gains, if these models are done correctly, because the Spring engine won't be wasting GPU cycles on double-rendering polygons (and culling them) and other things that are serious perfomance drains. When Spring models are all closed-surface, tri-only and feature mipmaps (and, perhaps someday, LODs) we will see really nice performance compared to today's stuff... with the same hardware. So... what we're seeing here is baby steps towards pro-quality performance.

And if you're not a modder, AI designer or core programmer... be patient- whining does NOT HELP, and it effectively makes you sound like llamas. It's not like we game designer-types don't take performance into account, ok? We're smart enough to build the games you play- we're also smart enough to aim them at an audience's hardware. Current giant mods like AA and GA aren't necessarily good mods for people with low-end systems... but as we move forwards, this stuff will get taken into account. Right now, we're looking at kludge conversions... give it time.

It takes more than a couple of spare hours to make uvmapped models, script them, and incorporate them into a game design. And, for those folks (like me) who have zero interest in porting over OTA mods to Spring, it's just going to take awhile to get game designs clean and ready for you. Be patient- things are still evolving, and they will get better and better. A year from now, I suspect, people's ideas on what high-performance means will be very, very different. If you doubt me... go open up NanoBlobs... and see how effectively I've gutted XTA (which is what I started with) of all of the junk code and other things that weren't needed. When everybody's mods start to look this clean on the inside, then Spring games will really start to work better... that and model/texture optimization will be a big step towards better graphics (Pingu's original complaint) and better performance at less download cost for what we get (Gnome's point).

Will this mean that maps get much smaller for much greater beauty?

In some cases, yes! I have some very specific (and already workable) ideas on this topic, but I'm waiting to get a rough demo of this working first. But I will tell you right off the bat- I think that in the future, AI developers and modelers/scriptors will be playing a much greater role in terms of how we view map design. Right now, it's in the hands of Photoshop gurus, which means that we're getting pretty pictures. This is great, and I am glad we have some great talents here, but we can have so much more... in smaller packages.

In the future, I predict, it will be a much more mixed picture. I'm not getting into this too much yet, as many of you don't know me at all yet, and will assume I'm spouting bull... but I'm not, and you will see what I mean as time goes on.

So, to sum up... in a year, this "discussion" will seem pretty silly. There will be mods, for example, that are aimed at people with low-end machines. I will be building one, for sure, and maybe others will, too. They may not be XTA with zillions of units, but they'll be real alternatives that will run well even on lower-end machines.

There will be mods that are aimed at the latest-greatest uber-boxes... and there will be a lot've middle ground. 3DO will get replaced by S30 by modders who really care about performance, because it will ultimately look better... AND play better in Spring. And maps will be both more automated, more random, and much less dependent on the Photoshop guys to make them cool... which will mean, among other things, that smaller file sizes can still result in great beauty and variety.

If any of you want to help with all of this... help the community learn better techniques, help mod projects convert to S3O, and pay attention to the stuff that's going to be coming down the pike... Spring is going to rule when it all comes together

good post.

yes, at the moment we are just doing spring as a kludge conversion. I know that I will not start any kind of S3o work while spring is still in beta. There is still another 40% to go, I do not intend on making a spring specific mod because spring is incomplete(largely). When spring is complete then I will start moving over to a spring specific format.

However, I do not care about low end machines. If one has a hard time running warcraft III I do not intend on catering to these users. By the time spring is complete MY machine will be old news and I am sure people will bitch about the LACK of detail in my mod. In preparation for that I'll likely uvwmap my mod but at the moment I am going dual OTA and spring. Since spring is LARGELY incomplete.

However, as spring implements features such as custom explosions and the like I will be there generating content.

Just poped in and found a rather amusing thread, which actully seems to center around somthing I said. Kinda Odd...

Anyway, Kixxe is still missing my point entirly. I never said all map makers are now goona make 40 meg maps. Frankly I'd be disapointed if my maps rose above 10 meg. Although with features I can see it may do that.

What Kixxe fails to grasp is, I'm saying if someone makes a map tahts a large file size SO WHAT. If you dont feel like downloading it because it will take so long, then fine. You can download another map (or several infact) that are smaller. No ones going to stop you doing so. However anyone that then feels they have a right to complain to the maker of the map about its filesize is daft, its that size becasue thats what teh map maker found acceptable. To rant on and say "MAPS SHOULD NOT GET BIGGER THINK OF THE POOR DIAL UP USERS" is like saying "HAY I CAN'T REACH THE TOP SHELF SO ALL THE CUPBORDS SHOULD BE MADE CLOSER TO THE GROUND". No-one would adjust all the cupbords because then teh tall people would complain "Its to low i have to stope down and get back ache now."

(PS, this is nothing to do with short people, its an analorgy or somthing, if
Kixxe happens to be short, then I didn't know that and its not ment as any form of personla remark.)

Some people have a slow conection. Fine. There are small file size maps that they can play. Some people have a fast one. They can have large map file sizes. In teh end does it matter because its free anyway. On that baisis who has a right to complain? No body.

Finaly, like you even mention yourself, 56k users are few and far between, so there is no reason why everything should be made specificly for them. Also as they are catered for in some respect, I see no problem (and they are, there are loads of low file size maps).

aGorm

Anyway, just defending my stance there.

I dont know what to say now but..

Any protest in the world can be called "bitching" Just as homosexuals can be called fags and mentaly ill retarded. I'm sure those who protested agsin't the Irak war was just "bitching" to.

I found that extremely offensive.

^^
watch it with the shortass comments!