Spring RTS Engine

So as to not derail Mr.D's, but to continue this rather interesting discussion, ill make a new thread. Ill quote WZ in the entirety so people know what im responding to.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:Heh, Saktoth, that's why you should use the icon system we specially designed so that you can easily identify your units from a distance

You can see a shot of that striped pattern from a bit further away here. Same dark map though. I mean, most people would identify items by silhouette/profile and shape at a distance, rather then yellow stripes. The reason why I have included yellow stripes on that unit is mostly for the use of new players who can identify that it is a "support unit", not a combat unit (something I've tried to carry as a motif throughout the SW:IW textures). Further, as I said, we've got a radar dot system in place where modders can provide plenty of control in terms of UI from a distance, allowing players to identify their units at range using radar dot UI. I know when I'm playing competitively I'll generally have my unit view distance turned down very low for ease of control. I only turn it off when I take screenshots.

In my opinion, resorting to playing with radar blobs is sort of like admitting that your graphics are unsuitable for the actual game and giving up. This is what Supcom did, essentially conceding that the game is unplayable at the scale they wanted it to be fought on (IE, a realistic scale) and that you would have to play Defcon Advanced in order to get any gameplay quality out of it. If you are going to take that approach, you might as well save your graphics for pre-rendered cutscenes and save yourself the CPU power.

When playing with radar dots, you lose all sorts of information- unit facing, turret facing, hp and related stats (Such as reload, XP, EMP, all the other stuff that shows up with jK's widget). Even if it just comes down to determining a units role and use, an icon is never going to convey the information an animated 3d model can (The aforementioned yellow stripes, for example).

More importantly though, it is a terrible waste of an awful lot of work. If the majority of models are not even seen in game most of the time that is a terrible, horrible shame. Such beautiful and painstakingly crafted models should be enhancing the game experience, not swept away as an impediment to it.

It is my firm belief that graphics should exist within a game to convey meaningful information to the player in a clear and accessible fashion. It is perfectly possible to create attractive artwork that serves this purpose, and the attractiveness of the artwork is enhanced through its connection to the gameplay itself (Though, i have my doubts over the s3o format and/or springs method of rendering it).

Id cite Homeworld as an example of a game that remains breathtakingly beautiful, massive in scale, easy to play, and represents meaningful gameplay information in a graphically stunning fashion.

The problem with that for SWIW is that they have a defined universe to use and SW's stuff wasn't designed to work for RTS use, the scales are meant for near-ground cameras. The games I've seen where infantry remains visible enough to use without icons have such an awfully low maximum camera distance that you have a hard time getting a larger picture. In Spring the zoom isn't restricted and IMO that's good, you often need to see larger areas of the map. However it's just not possible to keep infantry visible at such ranges without making the infantry huge (Lolimod's units are roughly the size of Gundam's mechs).

Hrm, if I'm going to debate with you, Saktoth, I'd rather debate about SWIW balance Either way I don't particularly feel like being dragged into a prolonged debate - the topic is interesting, but I feel the result is unlikely to go anywhere, as I'm effectively being forced to 'defend' my mod.

In my opinion, resorting to playing with radar blobs is sort of like admitting that your graphics are unsuitable for the actual game and giving up.

I don't think it is a cop-out at all. I think in an RTS, your job as a designer is to ensure your players always have full control of your units.

Consider this image:
piccie

Which highlights the challenge I face in dealing with the Star Wars universe. Can you honestly tell me, at a glance (you can by squinting, but we don't expect our players to play with magnifying glasses), which stormtroopers are light ones (with the basic weapons), and which ones are the heavy ones (with the flamethrower and eweb). The one's that are firing don't count!
A player needs to be able to identify these very quickly and with little difficulty, both if they belong to him, and if they don't. The decisions made when facing a heavy infantry and light infantry are significant, and their relative impact on the battle is also significant (each having a particular effect on the game which needs to be considered).

Your primary suggested solution here, from the other thread, was that I needed to make my textures 'high contrast'. KDR reasoned clearly that I cannot really do so given the universe I am working in (should I brightly colour my stormtroopers?). As a general comment for all mods, the original disagreement that created this discussion (that is, that pure yellow and white on the construction vehicle would make playing easier for players then dirtying the yellow and ripping the black a little bit) - I do not agree that sacrificing realism in texturing for bright and highly contrasted textures is a necessity for player control. My arguments, which were somewhat drowned out in the thread (and fair enough, it was a derail) where:

- That the simple dirtying of a texture does not make it unreadable from a distance. All my textures, and any textures of any texturer worth their salt, will contain a reasonable amount of contrast on the model. It creates interest, highlights elements of geometry, and makes it easier to distinguish from afar. What I was suggesting did not compromise this.
- That the primary means of identification for units is through their geometry, rather then their texture. Take a look at the screenshot I provided earlier. All my vehicles are reasonably dark and reasonably grey (As military vehicles tend to be). I can still easily tell them apart at a glance, purely because of their geometry.
- That, on top of this ability to identify units through geometry and then textures - there exists a complex radar identification system that allows players to control their units.

I see no flaw in simply giving players a means to identifying their units from a distance using radar icons. It is simply the next level of UI, and not a failure of the visual design content at all. I played supcom competitively for about 6 months after it came out. The icons were a brilliant system that allowed me to control the battle from afar. It gave me the strategic information I needed to make decisions on the larger scale, which is precisely what the UI needs to do.

Saying that the gameplay is 'unplayable' without dots at that level is not a direct criticism of the game. SupCom, and now Spring, have simply been pushing the boundaries of scale in RTS's. It is the next logical step to use radar icons. At the scales you can view units in both Spring and SupCom, we are talking infantry being a pixel wide, and tanks being a handful of pixels wide. You can make your tanks neon green and you won't be able to tell them apart at that distance.

Yes, to an extent unit information conveyed by a direct view of your units is lost - but - by the stage that your units have converted into radar dots, that sort of information is no longer relevant to you. The radar dots cull what I consider to be 'tactical' information in favour of important 'strategic' information. (I should also note as a side point that at the stage where radar dots are necessary, you would need a magnifying glass and a freeze frame to work out most of the stuff you note as being important)
When the survival of individual units is important, and their positions on the field is directly relevant, I will zoom in and control them. When I need to make larger decisions regarding swathes of units and deployment zones, I will zoom out and control the radar dots. You are simply transitioning between two zones of control, both of which are important, and neither of which should be compromised for the sake of the other.

Further, I agree that potentially my work will be missed some of the time due to dots; but I think the likelihood of my work being seen in a game is far greater if I can provide players with a game that is playable, fun and challenging - which requires a broad and encompassing UI.

I also disagree on the homeworld example. It was a stunning game - but the scales are ultimately totally different, and the decisions required (given the map has little to nothing actually in it other then resources) are very different. You typically have a number of larger craft which can be readily identified (well, to an extent, I always battled to tell frigates apart), and fighters which were generally either moving in convenient groups (to the extent that in HW2 you could only build them in groups), or in an enormous mess in a battle.
Battle control in homeworld could typically be incredibly messy and confusing; the saving grace was the excellent unit AI - in that you could select a fighter group, tell them to behave 'evasively', and they would do so, which was really all the input you needed, apart from the occasional 'concentrate your fire here'.
Further, if you watch competitive players playing homeworld, you'll see that Homeworld also has an icon system, and that most of those players will typically be controlling units using icons exclusively too, because they need as much information to be conveyed from a distance as possible, as quickly as possible.

[to counter the possible retort - yes, information is lost through the switch to radar icons, as you noted, but at the stage where icons kick in, almost all useful information is lost anyway. Icons simply return as much important information to the player as possible, and is relevant, allowing them to make strategic-level decisions]

We're forgetting here that supreme commander is not the origin of the fabled icon war, if anything it is an improvement over past experiences.

Why? Please go play Homeworld. Any half decent player knows that you spend most of your time in overview mode with the icons rather than up close with the pretty sfx.

As another side note, can someone look into vector line based icons rather than textured icons? tiny icons in homeworld were far more visible than textured blobs in spring despite those blobs being double the size onscreen at some points.

AF makes a good suggestion regarding vector based icons.

Ill admit i never played homeworld competitively, and that it is significantly different, gameplay wise, than what spring is even capable of. Id also agree that a lot of the time, you cant see units (especially fighters- but thats precisely why the jet trails were such a great idea).

Your primary suggested solution here, from the other thread, was that I needed to make my textures 'high contrast'.

Actually, my suggestion was to Mr.D. CA will be using his models, and the gameplay and graphical design is not suited towards using radar dots in the slightest (though, i assume you were just talking about IW when you suggested that). Having the units be as visible as possible is very important in CA. This is why i contested the notion that its okay to throw on some dirt and dull down the colours.

I agree regarding the SW fiction, and the realistic scale. Its a problem s44 has too. This is something you dont really have much choice in, if you dont want to resort to comic abstraction. I was trying to avoid talking specifically about IW because i dont want to make this about 'defending your mod' but more a broad discussion about the role of graphics in an RTS.

There is no doubt that a limited, less visually spectacular GUI is probably going to be able to convey information more clearly than one with realistically rendered units in a realistic scale. But is this the future of RTS? Have we come this far, graphically, to have fully 3d simulated enviroments, only to go back to abstracted sprites on a 2d map, for gameplay reasons? I just think thats unfortunate...

I should have taken shots from last nights gundam match where I epic vehicle spammed.

However, to the debate of high contrast or not.




one is toyetic the other isn't. The shape and colors of the model are quite distinctive. In starwars many many units are metallic blobs of random sci-fi bits but they have distinct shapes to them. It is the shape that gives away the unit.




individual units with different weapons are hard to tell apart, gundam has that issue as does s44. My suggestion and it is one that I have only partially applied in gundam would be different running stances, firing stances and in some cases different moving speeds while firing.

for example, snipers stopping movement to aim and fire, riflemen walking while shooting, rpg units stopping to fire etc. Past this, having the rocket guy or heavy weapons guy lugging along with his weapon will also help convey that they are different. Hell having light weapons troops sprinting along until they meet an enemy is also viable.

anyway, I need to run and get some work done. I hope this has added to the convo.

The key is to have large areas of completly different coloring and brightness, like that container plane. If there's some scratches and dirt on top of that doesn't matter, it melts together at a distance. The problem is when you're just staying at 100% zoom or closer to the texture and painting on little details on the same background color that you get the unidentifiable blob.

Also remember that some colors altough might seem different are pretty similar, like the MR:D green camo and the gray metal on his models. When I think of it, at a distance, light/dark makes the best difference and colors start looking the same, due to the nature of the human eye (it has way more light/dark detectors then color ones).

Look at the raider for example:


Here I did some quick changes in photoshop to try and get more contrast:


You have to look at what the thing actually looks like at this size and experiment.

Here's what it looks like not scaled down:


My changes:


Notice how you can't even tell i changed the turrets base in the little pic to the more dark gray. Also the saturation change on the camo didn't seem to help much in the small picture... Also notice how the brightness change on the track covers is much more obvious in the little pictures.

Id have to agree that large areas of contrast are important. One of the good thing about the raider is the light treads and the dark body, this helps for determining its orientation. One of the problems is that the gator has the same light treads and the same dark body, even though their dimensions are relatively different. For a tank, it is difficult to make its profile anything other than a variation on a square, so the texture plays a large role.

One of the other areas where large blocks of colour are needed is teamcolour. The Jeffy in CA has a lot of teamcolour, but it is in stripes and strips. At a distance, those just become blurred into the model. Still, i think this may be a problem with s3o as 3dos teamcolour is usually quite clear.

Animation is a good way to distinguish units (as well as give them personality), but its hard to do on a tank- other approaches must be taken. Still, infantry seem to be a major stumbling block, so it might help there.

Saktoth wrote:Still, i think this may be a problem with s3o as 3dos teamcolour is usually quite clear.

No, it is a problem with people and how they are doing their team color. People like argh actually do teamcolor as solid bands of barf in my mouth disgusting. Others see teamcolor as secondary to the texture rather then work it into the texture. I think when you texture, you should have a clear idea as to what will have team color and what will not. Most of the time people are doing team color after the fact.

It does bother me when people also do the team color alpha over actual textural information and thus muddy up the texture. They do it because the default colors are BRIGHT but the thing is, that sort of forced muted color is stupid. ESP when players like myself already have muted colors pre made. If I wanted to have NEON tanks though, I should be able to.

Also zpock, you are using a dark tank on a dark texture in a BRIGHT board. It will make it that much harder to tell the unit apart. If you had the unit isolated in a green feild or something less contrasting with the forum you would find that the changes you made make little difference.

yeah saktoth, a tank is a tank is a tank... however, using different areas of team color(I.E. one has team colored turret the other has team color treads) will help.

How about Standardized Pannel Tests before Release?

Every Unit one Example, PlayerStandardview& Zoom - Screenshot- and now lets see how many of the Betatester can remember there Toys.

Ok, the background was a poor choice, but I don't think you can shoot my whole point down on it smoth.

here's another example, how I think the construction vehicle could be improved, with green background now. Also here you can judge for yourself the effect of (a lot of) dirt.

Actually the texture is pretty clear IMO. I haven't had issues telling it apart from any distance yet.

Oh well, the blue default team color is hard to spot indeed but you can't have everything. It's either full team color but can't use dark colors at all or slightly washed out team color but a broader spectrum.

Just like Zsinj, we don't have much as far as flexibility goes when modelling and texturing units -- they exist as they are and there's nothing we can do about it.

Iconwars may not be as fun, but it's a necessary step when making a game which plays on maps more than a couple of screens wide. Technology hasn't caught up, so what're we supposed to do? I'd love for our units to look like jazz close up, even if they're not often viewed from that range (it's too late now, anyway!), it makes those times when you do zoom in all the more rewarding. How many games are there out there where you can amass armies of hundreds of units and command them strategically, and then zoom in and watch a battery of artillery launching shells halfway across the map, or watch battle droids rolling through hills and forests, and think "Shit, that looks fucking nice".

Oh well, the blue default team color is hard to spot indeed but you can't have everything.

I stopped including team colour on my textures months and months ago... lol

Damn, I accidentally erased my post when the forum told me there are new ones available...

Again:

Can you honestly tell me, at a glance (you can by squinting, but we don't expect our players to play with magnifying glasses), which stormtroopers are light ones (with the basic weapons), and which ones are the heavy ones (with the flamethrower and eweb). The one's that are firing don't count!

You could make the Stormtroopers distinct using only colors, contrasts, and maybe a little bit shapes: compare Marines and Firebats in StarCraft, and also Tie Interceptor pilots and Stormtroopers.

On radar blobs (icons) and zoom level:
MAX was truly a great game. (And it's so similar to TA that I wonder which game was copied by which one) It had unlimited zoom (with radar blobs), but also very customisable units, complex ressource and ammo system (also fuel in the beta), realistic maps ("3D" with level curves in MAX2), overlays like Defense Range, "Metal (+fuel & gold) Spots", Radar, Earth-Sea-Air combat, and contrary to TA it had great graphics (with really distinctive units!). (IMHO TA should have used bitmaps/sprites, you just can't make 3D rendered units look good in 640x480 when you can only have a handful of pixels per unit.)
I can't understand why this game was so underrated... I would still play it a lot if I could find other players, and if it wouldn't be so hard to make it work under XP...
All these features are only seldom used in games, even if they start reappearing in some titles like SupCom/Spring (obviously), but also Space Empires V, Galactic Civilisations II, Sword of the Stars...

MAX and SupCom really changed the way I look to TBS and RTS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWeekod30wQ

It is the next logical step to use radar icons.

No, the next logical step is to use icons up to a certain distance, then use LUA to recognize when the camera has gotten far enough away from a given group of Units, and use a single, clear icon telling players that there are, say, 30 Units of either a single type (single, large icon) or mixed types (some other icon), de-cluttering the interface and keeping icons large a visible even at extreme distances. There is no reason this cannot be done, and it's really the way to go- IRL, generals push around icons that stand for whole platoons, companies, battalions, etc., why shouldn't Spring work that way?

People like argh actually do teamcolor as solid bands of barf in my mouth disgusting.

No, it's just my reaction to people's demands for this feature, and then their commentary as I evolved it more over time. Blame Rattle, if you want to blame anybody- he was the one whining that he wanted to see bright lit-up teamcolor to improve visibility.

Personally, I think if you're too much of an idiot to know where your people are by quick, you deserve to lose, but I don't speak for players, I hear what they actually want and try to accommodate them when it doesn't interfere with the overall goal. Giving people very clear, obvious teamcolor is what they asked for, and I don't really see why you're whining about it, Smoth.

Icons for groups of units? That's a REALLY good idea... Also it would be great if you could set up such groups with custom formations before the start of the game: scouts far in front, tanks at the middle, artillery on rear, both advancing at the same pace...
Also, do you see group numbers in radar mode?

Argh wrote: No, it's just my reaction to people's demands for this feature, and then their commentary as I evolved it more over time. Blame Rattle, if you want to blame anybody- he was the one whining that he wanted to see bright lit-up teamcolor to improve visibility.

damnit rattle..

Argh wrote:Giving people very clear, obvious teamcolor is what they asked for, and I don't really see why you're whining about it, Smoth.

your problem wasn't that the team color wasn't bright enough, it was that it was TOO small on the model. you needed some solid panels on the tops of the units to go by, instead you use little slivers. Also, not whining, I think it looked crappy and detracted from your mod. however, you don't listen to me so I didn't bother. Argh, you are always talking about how hard and cumbersome team color is but you seldom do it right.

Blame Rattle, if you want to blame anybody- he was the one whining that he wanted to see bright lit-up teamcolor to improve visibility.

Blame yourself, you released it without clear team indicators. Yes, tiny, washed out team colors strips that can't even be seen from close up are no team indicators to me. You might as well thank me for pointing it out, unlike the lot of yay-sayers.

Keep it clean guys, just about everyone who has posted here is significantly talented and has added a snotload of content to spring, so I think there should be a mutual level of respect. It's shown so far with the interesting discussion.