Spring RTS Engine

Pxtl, this is my friend Mr Pyro.

Mr Pyro, this is Pxtl, i'm sure you'll both get along like a house on fire..

^^

oh, congrats for the excellent baseplates for the factories!

Cabbage wrote:Pxtl, this is my friend Mr Pyro.

Mr Pyro, this is Pxtl, i'm sure you'll both get along like a house on fire..

^^

Good point - I just personally find that zippers are better for the "ignore the front line and go straight for his fusions" porcbreaker attack.... but maybe I'm just not using the Pyros well-enough.

arent pyros more of a fast assault unit, and zippers more of a fast harassing unit...?

Pyro's are like the Wave of death unit, and Zippers are like ... target practice?

A somewhat heretic suggestion: To mainly increase game speed at later stages when there are lots of big battles, reduce fire rate of many units and increase damage and splash correspondingly to keep them at roughly equal strength.

That should result in fewer projectiles in air and reduce lag and improve FPS.

For example tremors are horrible spammers. It's their core idea yes, but could they do with 30% lower fire rate and 30% more damage per shot? I bet now a few tremors can lag the game a lot.

One could also (this is getting really unorthodox!) lower the fire rate of peewees, flashes and brawlers. Increase damage per shot of course to make up for it. Early rushes would produce much less lag.

And the final thing, nano sprays could be lessened in particle count somewhat, although I understand they work differently and don't cause that much network traffic. They still are detracting for FPS. I understand this might require ugly hacks for now so a Spring update is preferable.

TA was never really internet optimized when the units and weapons were designed, but nowadays...

It's been done in many games. For example Quake 2 had problems with some weapons, so they were done differently in Q3.
The nailgun and supernailgun in Quake I were lowered in fire rate for team fortress since TF had big team games and it would have lagged them unbearably. Some gameplay designs are always troublesome and it's easier to design around the problem than to try to push through with technology.

tbh thats probably just your connection, assuming your host has a decent one and you do too, then it should be no worries. just get 8meg broadband. making the game less graphically impressive while games all around it get more impressive is for the lose.

Actually, now that I think of it, it's an FPS issue and not a connection issue. That's because spring uses client side simulation meaning only the commands have to be moved over the net.

(Yeah my computer sucks )

(With OSRTS it'd have to be different as it's supposed to be a dumb client.)

Anyway, people complain that games get slow in the end or if there's big combat. I guess that's because of the low FPS of the lowest spec computer (that has to be waited for because of sync).

FPS dosent cause games to slow down, it's cpu usage. Someone could be playing at 2 fps on their screen, but aslong their CPU can cope, then the game will not actually slow down for anyone, just appear really jerky for the person with the crappy gfx card.

Don'y play SM or GF and this isn't really a problem for most people :O

Cabbage wrote:FPS dosent cause games to slow down, it's cpu usage. Someone could be playing at 2 fps on their screen, but aslong their CPU can cope, then the game will not actually slow down for anyone, just appear really jerky for the person with the crappy gfx card.

Unless they have integrated graphics, in which case a large component of the graphics processing is done on cpu. Slowing down everything else (just ask anyone who plays with me regularly).

maek 2d trees

ban planes

Unless they have integrated graphics, in which case a large component of the graphics processing is done on cpu. Slowing down everything else (just ask anyone who plays with me regularly).

Then get something better

What modern game is designed with intergrated graphics in mind?

Some minor issues with BA 4.5 i encountered in a game yesterday:
When you set a waypoint for Arm's tech 2 Kbot Lab Fatboys won't follow it, they just keep standing in front of the lab. As far as i saw that didn't apply to any other tech 2 Kbots.
Also, Arm's level 1 air transport is able to lift bulldogs, fatboys and all level 3 (even banthas) except for razorbacks. Lifting heavy stuff (at least banthas) should be the job of the level 2 airtransport imho.
I didn't test Core's transport but you might want to have a look into this.

Alright, we seriously need better effects, sounds and walk animations. I'll go look into all of this now.

Cabbage wrote:

Unless they have integrated graphics, in which case a large component of the graphics processing is done on cpu. Slowing down everything else (just ask anyone who plays with me regularly).

Then get something better

What modern game is designed with intergrated graphics in mind?

What game PERIOD is designed with intergrated graphics in mind?

Cabbage wrote:FPS dosent cause games to slow down, it's cpu usage. Someone could be playing at 2 fps on their screen, but aslong their CPU can cope, then the game will not actually slow down for anyone, just appear really jerky for the person with the crappy gfx card.

Don'y play SM or GF and this isn't really a problem for most people :O

Uh, high cpu usage gives low FPS. It's the same thing (as long as graphics isn't the limit, which it mostly isn't in spring's case).

With less spammy units the CPU usage could potentially go down.

(This isn't about graphics but entity/projectile number or sth like that)

Err a crap gfx card will give up long before a half decent cpu in spring.

with a crappy gfx card you can already be barely into double figure fps with general map settings up high.

The display on your screen will be slow and jerky, but for anyone else in the game, there won't be any problem as your cpu will still be running simulation just fine.

FPS is not the same as lag. It dosent affect the game for anyone else, thats entirely down to CPU load.

A minor graphical glitch in BA 4.5:
The Banisher's muzzle-flash appears approximately 2 seconds after it fires its rocket, not instantly as it should be.

Cabbage wrote: What modern game is designed with intergrated graphics in mind?

SUPCOMZ!!!


errr...

wait...