Spring RTS Engine

Aha, I was hoping you'd use that model filled with ridiculous amounts of awesome.

Yeah, I thought it was too cool not to get done. I think I requested it at the time it got done, but for whatever reason it fell through the cracks. I hardly even changed it- the gun's no longer a gatling, and I just moved four verts to give it an Overmind-style "face"- that was pretty much it, other than mapping and painting it, of course.

I'm debating whether to add some pipes or something on the back, though, as that part doesn't feel right to me somehow.

It looks really nice in-game, my only real problem now is determining how it's going to work, balance-wise, because it just doesn't feel right as a flimsy assault unit now.

Oh yeah, and I was gonna ask GMN... was this referencing my Wheeler unit, for OTA, or was it just a happy coincidence that the wheels looked like that? The Wheeler is probably the most ancient thing I ever dared release for OTA in public, and it looked like this:


...and yes, it sucks. I never did get very good with 3DO, and this was my very first public release, so I concentrated more on, er... originality... than on making it cool. Storm gave it an acceptable rating, back in the day, but it makes me shudder to look at now.

Which, in terms of certain things, like the distinctive "plow" wheels and the double gun arrangement, really isn't a lot different than this:


I've been wondering if that was a coincidence or not, it made me chuckle when I saw it in Wings the first time... thankfully, I resisted the urge to recreate that awful color scheme again

It is slightly inspired by that, but I had no idea you made it. Personally, I've just had the idea of a literal 'wheel with guns' that could move at speed and make a mess out of anything it ran over.

It has occurred to me that the Resistance has no dedicated ground anti-air unit (the Overmind has the rocket tank). So I made one.



Fun Fact: this is the second time I made an anti-air trike. The first version ended up as the Resistance rocket artillery.

I haven't had time to give input yet, but soon I shall.

mmm, can this aim sidewards? The problem with artillery on a three wheeled vehicle is that you just don't have the dimensional stability that you have from a 4+ wheeled/legged unit. If that fired in any direction other then directly forward or directly backwards, I'd imagine it'd roll over.

That and the obvious clash between a three wheeled unit which is typically associated with speed and manueverability, and artillery, which is usually associated with heavy thickset chassis.

It's anti-air, not long range artillery!

It's Anti-aircraft artillery.

Decimator wrote:It's Anti-aircraft artillery.

4wes0mezxxxzzzzzzzz!!!!!!11!!1!1!111one!!1!11

Dealing with the tipping issue's pretty straightforwards- have weapon gases stabilize the recoil, or add spades that deploy when the unit aims, like the MortarTank, or something- it's not like this is a really big deal, given that we're not trying to emulate a real design. My only real issue with the design is the length- at scale, it'd be quite long, it's scaled like a dragster

Neither side really has a dedicated AA unit, it's just that the RocketTank's probably the single-best unit Overmind has for that job (along with shooting over small hills, and other specialized tasks that a vlaunch is useful for). And the BikeTank already does a stellar job at shooting down aircraft- I may have to make some changes in its behavior, and make it more ground oriented, to give this thing a specific niche.

I wish there was a FirstPriority flag for dealing with targeting bitfields, it'd help units like this function even better in a dual-use role but meh, that's minor.

Oh yeah... and lastly, beta-testers, you have until sometime Monday / Tuesday to get beta reports in. Unless some major new bugs are found, everything but the Widget stuff is fixed, I think, and I'll want to release a new Beta at that point.

Decimator wrote:It's Anti-aircraft artillery.

Oops...

Cool screens of the moment:





Oh, and the next beta's coming out tonight. Sorry, the 'site downage screwed up my schedule.

Very nice explosions.

Krusty the clown would hit that.

Rollermines??!

EDIT: Hmm. Replacements for the energy artifact thing so that they don't have to flatten (and thus uglify) the terrain on creation?

Replacements for the energy artifact thing so that they don't have to flatten (and thus uglify) the terrain on creation?

Yeah, that's what it's for, and it was an interesting modeling / uvmapping challenge, too Along with the new Assault Shell and the Heavy Mech, those are all going to be in the beta release.

Beta 2 has been released, to all beta-testers who sent me a completed quiz, etc.

I'm downloading, but it will take a few hours. Did you address the points I mentioned to you? When, fellow testers, will you be around for an actual game? I was unable to track a partner down to play with.

I would like to play a multiplayer game but none of the servers accept connections from svn spring anymore.

Beta-testers: I've gotten at least part of a new animated cursor set done, and I'm going to be working on the Lua UI stuff for awhile, and final tweaks, etc. I don't think I'll have time for any major new units, etc., so this thread's going to be pretty quiet.

I'm thinking it'll take a little over a week and a half.

I expect to have one more beta release before I try and figure out how we're going to go about doing MP playtesting to get balanced straightened out somewhat before Spring 0.77 is released, so please make sure to test and give me some feedback by this weekend, and no later than Monday of next week, so that I have time to fix all the bugs, etc.