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It is possible to create an Tower Defense mod for Spring ?

Posted: 06 Aug 2007, 22:35
by Duke_Nukem
Hello all , i am a noob in Spring modding ?
Someone think it's possible to make an Tower Defense MOD ?

It will be very exelent to play with TA gameplay !!! :-)


PS: SORRY FOR MY VERY BAD ENGLISH !!! :cry:

Posted: 06 Aug 2007, 22:42
by smoth
someone has to write the lua for it.

is there a need for this? I can try and do it, there was a group that was supposed to do it but they never did.

Posted: 06 Aug 2007, 23:29
by Duke_Nukem
Someone have try ? When ?
Can you have an contact ? they have not make the mod because it is very difficult ? or not enough motivation ?



If you have the time and the knowledge ,try to do :lol: .
Or just put me in the good way.


But it is possible in Lua script to generate Units and make move them automatically ?

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 04:58
by Foxomaniac
Yes, it's psuedo-possible, but it would fail HARD due to spring's pathing system.

Reason :

Units in WC3 would either change paths or charge and attack the d-fens, in spring, the unit would simply drop dead in place and spam you with errors.

"But fox, can we not simply make a check using LUA to ensure that you can't totally close off a path? as in make it XXXOXXX, if the player tried to place a tower in O it would maek a painful err0r noize & message??!"

Thought of that, but quantum says it's not possible? ;\.

Believe me, I bugged quant a lot - I eventually scrapped the idea :P.

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 06:26
by LOrDo
And why not just play tower defense?

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 07:06
by REVENGE
LOrDo wrote:And why not just play tower defense?
OK. :o

That sounds like a worthless response.

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 07:26
by jK
it is not possible with lua.

the tower placement would be easy to solve (2d array ...),

but the pathing AI got problems with very very long (in path) move orders. so you can't send them through the whole map with only 1 command, you would have to split it in smaller move orders, but how should you split it in a gamemode like tower defense? -> impossible

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 18:40
by Saktoth
I dont see how tower defense would be a problem for pathing. Most tower defenses i know of use a fixed path, with, towers along the sides of the path- though there is the maze-type tower defense, which allows you to build towers (partially) blocking the path of the enemy. Springs pathfinding is relatively good, and accounts easily for obstacles like buildings.

The way it was done in AoE 2 (the TD im used to), which has much worse pathing than Spring, is that at every corner of the path there was a zone that issued a new move order to any units in it, so that the units only had to walk in a straight line from point a to point b.

As for placement- you'd need a custom map, but it wouldnt be difficult. If you cant restrict building placement in LUA, make the 'path' lumpy, or partially submerged, and put restrictions on what sort of terrain the towers can be built on.

The only thing you'd need LUA for, AFAIC, is to spawn the units and give them orders.

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 19:06
by Maelstrom
Saktoth wrote:I dont see how tower defense would be a problem for pathing. Most tower defenses i know of use a fixed path, with, towers along the sides of the path- though there is the maze-type tower defense, which allows you to build towers (partially) blocking the path of the enemy. Springs pathfinding is relatively good, and accounts easily for obstacles like buildings.

The way it was done in AoE 2 (the TD im used to), which has much worse pathing than Spring, is that at every corner of the path there was a zone that issued a new move order to any units in it, so that the units only had to walk in a straight line from point a to point b.

As for placement- you'd need a custom map, but it wouldnt be difficult. If you cant restrict building placement in LUA, make the 'path' lumpy, or partially submerged, and put restrictions on what sort of terrain the towers can be built on.

The only thing you'd need LUA for, AFAIC, is to spawn the units and give them orders.
Doing it this way is entirely possible, and actually sounds very easy from a scripting POV... If someones actually going to make this, count me in as a Lua coder/modeler, it sounds good :-)

Posted: 07 Aug 2007, 21:26
by Foxomaniac
Would be nice if LUA work was started by someone now ;).

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 02:10
by Maelstrom
Foxomaniac wrote:Would be nice if LUA work was started by someone now ;).
I would if there were other people willing to join a team and make it with me?

I can do basically everything except balance, and design cool models/textures.

So, someone that knows their way around a tower defense game, and someone to either do concept art, or model/texture.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 03:56
by REVENGE
Maelstrom wrote:
Foxomaniac wrote:Would be nice if LUA work was started by someone now ;).
I would if there were other people willing to join a team and make it with me?

I can do basically everything except balance, and design cool models/textures.

So, someone that knows their way around a tower defense game, and someone to either do concept art, or model/texture.
So now that concept is viable, are we saying we want a Total Annihilation based tower defense? Like, from LLTs to Vulcans / PeeWees to Krogoths and Krows...

The pole is edged out with TA style as the winner.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 04:52
by Foxomaniac
Who said we're limited to TA units only?

I'm thinking of wintermaul-style "elements" to pick from at the start of the game.

Each element has it's own strengths and weaknesses, etc etc.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 06:44
by Maelstrom
For starters it could just use TA units while we model the rest, the actual models used can be discussed later. For now, we need Lua Scripts! Actually, we don't need that many scripts at all really, just a spawner (easy to make), a redirect thing (fairly easy), an upgrade system (already made), and a map to test it on (I'm trying to make one, but my mapping skills fail)

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 07:02
by smoth
What kind of map do you guys need?

how big?

What if the units moved in water(that way buildings could not be built in their path)?

I have turrets in gundam I can donate.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 09:34
by Maelstrom
Try about a 6x6 for now, see how that works. The path should be something like this:

Code: Select all

_____              _____
 ^   \            /
 |    \__      __/
 |     ^ \____/
 |     |   ^ 
 |     |   \_ Water for the creeps to walk along
 |     |
 |     \_ Tower build space, accesible by creeps
 |
 \_ High ground, inaccesible by creeps
Just a couple of straight corridors wandering across the map, a large open area at the end, with a ramp leading up from the large area to the high ground for testing purpouses.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 14:46
by smoth
I just woke up and frankly I am going back to sleep but I'm on it when I wake up I will crank out a test map. I am going to use colors to represent areas as well(since this is for testing).

red(walls)

blue(hilltop)

Black(Water)

white(tower area)

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 17:25
by Saktoth
Seems like we're getting a team together.

We wouldnt want to use TA units, i dont think. We should definately use the full physics system available with Spring, im sure no other tower defense has that!

I dont know what sort of theme we are going for. Spring doesnt have any fantasy mods, so i guess we might as well go that route. Ive got at least one model floating around thats appropriate:

Image

Should the tower areas really be accessible by the 'creeps' though? Every tower defense ive played, the 'creeps' cant attack the towers.

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 18:38
by Sleksa
Should the tower areas really be accessible by the 'creeps' though? Every tower defense ive played, the 'creeps' cant attack the towers.
i think they shouldnt be able to access the towers, altho this might not be the case if you want to create special waves that are spesifically meant to attack your towers

also i think fantasy td is not that great of a idea, there are already hundreds or thousands of those in other games, instead you should make

ROKKITS'N LAZORS TOWER DEFENCE
(hell, its got mizziles 'n freaking lightning guns goddamn why arent you downloading this yet!)

some basic concepts of td towers with familiar weapons from ta. ->


rocket= projectile moves slowly, but has good aoe and damage (splash tower)

lightning = (slow but powerful attack)

emg = DPS tower ( fast attack but low dmg/hit)

missile = long range (sniper tower)

and something as a ensnare ( dgunlike "go-thru-unit-to-hit-the-others-behind" kinda weapon?)



thats, unless you actually want to create some orisinal content :O

Posted: 08 Aug 2007, 18:47
by Duke_Nukem
An exemple of TD classic map , with colour for smoth .
Image

also i think fantasy td is not that great of a idea, there are already hundreds or thousands of those in other games, instead we should make
+1 :wink:

TA gameplay with plasma canon and laser gun and ..... Tower from Gundam mod , Star wars mod etc ... ( if the creators are ok for that :) )was never seen in TD