Spring RTS Engine

Old known bugs here illustrated in videos (Latest Spring build):

Some canons refuse to fire at ground targets, and sometimes defenders hit each other when standing close.
http://www.fileuniverse.com/uploads/FFC ... Firing.avi

Jethro's rocket hits a neighbour unit instead of the target one from two shots.
http://www.fileuniverse.com/uploads/fri ... eUnits.avi

This is mainly because of the bounding spheres on the units that causes these problems, I suppose you could either have an OTA style fire through friendly units rule or could have the weapon trajectory recalculated to fire OVER the unit, so there wont be as many refusals to fire.

As for the friendly fire accidents, that's mainly because of the bounding spheres, hopefully we will have bounding boxes on individual unit parts soon...

Yeah, why not make the units fire through friendly units like in OTA if it's not too hard to implement.
Cause for lasers and missiles(non-ballistic) you couldn't calculate the trajectories not to hit friendly units sometimes when they are in their way.

coz that would suck. period. it would look absolutely shite, ruin the gameplay and make samson swarms the only option X(

In TA:
- Your own shots always went through your own units. You could build a very tall fusion plant in front of the punisher, the shell would get throught. Only exception are walls and dead units.
- A unit was immune to the damage of its own shots
- It was allowed to force fire at your own units. It would target the ground and not the unit most of the time, but still it fired

That meant that in TA, the only friendly fire you could get was from splash damage, and you never had any of your shots accidentaly colliding with one of your units


In Spring, on the contrary, a shot can collide even with the unit that fired it, and will damage it.


It might be a good thing to revert to TA way. Losing units because the round exploded in the barrel was never fun. Not being able to have a group of unit without losing them to friendly fire isn't fun either. Gameplay would be improved if we followed TA ways for shots collision.

- Your own shots always went through your own units. You could build a very tall fusion plant in front of the punisher, the shell would get throught. Only exception are walls and dead units.

For me, this is not a good thing. I prefer the way spring handle friendly fire.

In Spring, on the contrary, a shot can collide even with the unit that fired it, and will damage it.

It's a bug, and not a flaw in the desing.

I agree, spring has some bug, and the way it handle collision is not perfect. But I don't think making unit that can fire through allies is a good idea. For me it's one of the best thing in spring. It add some kind of strategie, some placement decisions.
Sorry to say that but :

You could build a very tall fusion plant in front of the punisher, the shell would get throught.

is really bs.

Even if I thing that some collision sphere is a bit too big.

spring way is good just needs to be improved. improved collision spheres sound good but it seems like it would eat CPU power, the TA way SUCKED ASS...i mean you could build 3 ROWS of punishers and they'd ALL FIRE!!! i mean it was funny and quirky but offered the spring way i'd take it over the TA way ANY day whats so good about completely unrealistic gameplay??? :S

We could make units immune to eachothers shots... But that would remove a whole lot of gameplay.

What about we make so that ''certain'' units arent damaged bye their own shots? LRPC'S, Goliaths, missile units can damage other units (and themself) but peewees, brawlers, storms and any other wouldt...

I mean, it's not like it's a big strategy going on to make rokos not fire at eachother.

whatya think?

Your own shots always went through your own units. You could build a very tall fusion plant in front of the punisher, the shell would get throught. Only exception are walls and dead units.

This is a 3d game. That would look incredbly strange. Also, dosent the shots go true units on landing? whatabout the shots going right true the fusion, and then exploding at the ground? THAT would be strange o.O

How do other 3D games handle this? i'm sure games like Generals, Ground Control and Warcraft 3 have a way to figure this out.

I think we should look at other games for a sollution.

Friendly fire going through friendly units? That would suck! Friendly fire should always do damage in my opinion. GroundZero: In these other games the battles are not realistic. Like in Starcraft most units can not miss (except for seige tanks, lurkers, etc).

TA had friendly fire going through friendly units and realistic trajectory where shots can miss. It was good.

"It was good"
It was generally good for gameplay (samson swarms <,<) but now its better. it could be better yet if collision spheres became collision polygons

hehe, I'm happy to have the same opinion than min3mat^^

With all due respect - and not with the intention of pimping my mod - samson swarms being so effective in TA is not a flaw of the friendly fire system, it is a result of flawed balancing. Look in just about any rebalance mod such as AA and you'll find that these "invincible" strategies like samson swarming can be solved by modifying the units, not the underlying physics.

Yes, it's more realistic to have friendly fire on. In my limited experience though, the TA way had a lot of benefits.

Now that I think of it, it's true that the current state of affairs has its advantages as well. A clever attacker could attack from an angle that the defender could not fire his guns at.

I don't know. Personally, I think that the old, "TA" way was better for gameplay. I've only played a handful of multiplayer Spring games since I focus mainly on TA, and I never noticed my units fighting ineffectively due to friendly fire rules. But, most of those games lasted less than an hour and I can easily see how units' inability to fire if there was a chance of friendly damage could be frustrating. I mean, imagine, you have 600 stumpies but only those on the very front of the formation fire. It's more realistic, sure, but not so much fun.

One compromise I can think of - and this would be a horrifying amount of work, I'm sure - would be to analyze a unit's weapon firing points and have the formation AI automatically have the units shuffled around so that they could fire most effectively. Instead of:
...They would automatically format to:
Well, whatever... conclusion: gameplay > realism every time.

Caydr wrote: Now that I think of it, it's true that the current state of affairs has its advantages as well. A clever attacker could attack from an angle that the defender could not fire his guns at.

Happened to me, was playing a game on CPIA with a friend who is quite pitiful at the game, like many nooblar he decided to go with the "Build one Krogoth as fast as I can, and don't build anything esle" strategy. Anyway his Kroggie comes lumbering over from the south west, going north, then going east toward my base. At this point I'm not too worried as I have a giant hoard, but I do notice that my Berthas are not firing due the the fact they were build upon my front horizonal wall. Although, toggling high trajectory fixed this nicely.

the AI formations would rock but firing through friendly units is a no-no in terms of both gameplay AND realism...i mean you could build a wall of solars and have your units fire THROUGH them at attackers... :s it would just suck!

Caydr wrote:... A clever attacker could attack from an angle that the defender could not fire his guns at.
...

Done it. Sufered it. Many times before!
This happens alot with the early rushed of peewees and jeffys, mostly runing past missile towers and LLTs to go hide behind the solars/Winds/factories as to not get shot. (even though the laser towers have greater range in XTA, this makes very hard to defend against these early rushes)

Caydr wrote:... I mean, imagine, you have 600 stumpies but only those on the very front of the formation fire. It's more realistic, sure, but not so much fun.
...

I was attacked once by a swarm of Stumpies. That did not happened. Since they fire in arc, the back rows fired over the front rows and it produced a great effect of raining fire. I was really impressed by it's effectivenes.

About the change in physics, in old TA, you had the perfect top down camera. In it, the rocko's missiles passing through the other rockos would go unnoticed. But we have diferent cameras, now, in which ones it would clearly show the missiles passing through friendly units.

Athough the old TA physics system might have some good benefits over the Spring system, i can't really think of any right now (except for the fact that it might be easier to play with and maybe to balance but these can't probably be called benefits)...

I think the sphere are often big and sometimes really too big. A box system should have better results.

Or having allies sphere collision 30% smaller could be a solution , no?