Spring RTS Engine

It would be awesome if the host (and other authorized players?) could go around the map before the beginning of the game and place units for any sides they want.

This way, instead of the standard "everybody starts with just their commander" game, we could have "assault the base" missions in multiplayer.

Of course doing that once the game is launched would be time-consuming and boring for the players, so ideally you should be able to do it from a (text?) file.

But even better, we could use the game as an editor! Launch the game in single-player - or a special multi-player mode -, activate cheats, and place units (we need an unlimited build menu and instant-build anywhere). You'd also have to change sides to place the units for who you want. Then when you're done, press a key, and your changes are saved to a text file.

When you host a game, you'd just have to select that file along with your map, and presto, a custom game!

A side effect that is way cool, is that you'd be able to use that "save to file" function from a replay, provided you activate cheats. So you'd be able to create what-if scenarios from famous matches.

OK lets start again:

In the lua forum you'll find a thread requesting 'deploy game mode' followed by trepan posting pictures of such a mode implemented via lua as a mod gadget, and me saying it could be done via a lua start mission script so not all games of that mod or variant are deployment based.

We've had lua msisions for a veyr long time fnordia implemented it at least a year ago. Hugh perkins added a script.txt tag allowing any script type to be referenced. So it is possible for collaborative missions via lobby. But betalord has not implemented anything via tasclient or the server protocol to allow for it.

Once again I suggest you read the lua forum.

Lol, thanks for answering all my posts so fast. I knew about the lua missions. I try to keep up with what's going on, but I didn't realize that so many feature requests are ending up in the lua forum.

Actually I just found the thread you're mentioning. It's great news, but each player places his own units, rather than the host setting up things for everybody like I proposed.

Still, we need the ability to place units on the map, or load a replay, and then save the results as a script.txt. It would make this accessible to non-programmer modders. We also need Betalord to finally make lua missions accessible through the lobby. More kinds of gameplay = more happy players.

Mod mutator + LuaRules = multiplayer scripted missions
(with a lot more capability than lua start-scripts). This method
does not require that the lobby protocol be modified, and has
the advantage of showing that it is a mission script in the lobby
battle list (as the mod's name).

.cheat
.give