Spring RTS Engine

<There have been topics on this but not M.A.X. as an Spring RTS>
You might know that I had the idea of making custom units in Kustorion mod which could have any weapons you set(Like in Warzone 2000). Problem was it can't be done that easy(Regret's mod is an exception(Because player controls the unit)).

Well the TBS game M.A.X.(Mechanized Assault & Exploration) had another way on custom units. You couldn't change weapons that a unit had but you could upgrade almost any stat of the unit(Damage, shots per turn, ammo).
Having both types of customization in Kustorion would make it complex.


But the question is not really about kustorion but about M.A.X. as an RTS. M.A.X. 2 had a option to be RTS but I don't remember how it went out. Another feature that MAX had was surveying which would be revealing metal map.

Would M.A.X. as an RTS work?

max2 was an epically bad game. don't know if there were any patches for it, but what was released seemed like an alpha build.

having said that, lua can take you pretty much anywhere.

imbaczek wrote: having said that, lua can take you pretty much anywhere.

That is not what I wanted to talk about.

A kustorian system where we can upgrade chassis/weapon/propulsion + a stat system to change damage, ammo capacity, armor, etc. would be great, but as imbaczek said it'd pretty much have to be done with LUA.

Never played M.A.X., was it a fairly popular game/genre?

MAX was a TBS focused on economics more than fighting (that's IMO of course). Most games vs AI could be won by turret creep (upgrade artillery turrets for +1 shot, +4 or so (more is better) range and as much +dmg as you can afford, watch the fun).
Base building was quite complex - first of all, to be able to use something provided by other buildings (like power or stored resources), buildings had to be linked by connectors. Second, there was a possibility to build anything in water - make a 'water platform' and it counts as land for all purposes. Third, there were buildable roads (twice movement range for land units moving over them) and bridges (allow both land units and ships to pass).
There were 3 mineral resources (metal, fuel and gold), all mined by the same structure (you could control what it extracts if there were different resources under it), there was a powerful upgrade system (you could spend the gold to upgrade some stats for a single unit type, or you could build a lab and research an upgrade for 1 stat for ALL unit types).
There were Alien units - inactive units found somewhere on the map that you could capture. There were Infiltrators who could do the captures or just disable stuff. There was many more to MAX than this, IMO one of the best games in the genre.

MAX needs quite a bit of micro-managing I think.

Surely possible, i suppose... would need a resource management window and such, but also needs to connect stuffs...

Also, using more cons to build stuff is unbalanced, it shouldnt be any different than original... Each fab also needs a config window for building stuff at different speeds...

Certainly possible with enough effort.

Ah, yes, I forgot about the way 'fast construction' was handled there. Basically you couldn't assign more than 1 Engineer or Constructor unit on a building, but you COULD make the building faster. That was done by using x2 and x3 buttons on the con, they made it spend twice or thrice as much resources, but do the job twice or thrice as fast. The same worked for factories - you could pump units out at 4x the speed, with 1 factory using as much resources as 4 normally would. And that means not just resources per turn, but resources per project (so a power generator could cost 8 metal on 1x with a buildtime of 2 turns, but 16 metal on 2x with a buildtime of 1 turn, etc.).

WELL OF COURSE IT'S POSSIBLE(All features of MAX are possible with LUA(Ignoring time spent))!

But what I really asking is about gameplay of this kinda mod in Spring(NOT M.A.X. gameplay, as yuritch explains features of M.A.X. and it as a TBS). How do you see that work in Spring?

Spring is not Grid like(Well not that Grid like). Managing resources in Real-Time might be a pain unless a widget similar to metal maker manager widget controls. While fighting you might notice some tanks coming.. thinking base defenses will beat them, but then look at their HP, range and damage and realize that they been buffed up quite severely. Or look at a artillery turret that can't reach your units and then at one moment it just gets it's range buffed up and you need retreat a bit.

Just thinking it might be chaotic in real-time!


P.S. I am not remaking M.A.X. Just thinking if I could replace the weapon selection setting to weapon upgrading setting in Kustorion!

All of that would need per-player unitdefs and weapondefs as I see it. Or maybe some lua trick can do that, although I don't see how exactly (short of luaing all the weapons and bypassing Spring weapon code entirely). Every unit in MAX can have its own stats not related to other units in any way - after buying upgrade, you have to apply it to every already built unit (by driving it to service building), new units get the current upgrade level automatically. That means there could be dozens of types of the same unit per player on the field at once (Tank mk.I - basic version, Tank mk. II - with +2 armor, Tank mk. III - same but +1 range, etc., and a few units of each type).

I agree, realtime changes in things like that would be hard...
Like I said, micromanaging that much stuff is a bit hard.

Id think the whole gold -> upgrade thing wont work well in realtime, but maybe the research would be ok...

Damn now I want to play some MAX again in realtime :p

Spring is grid-like enough.. I think it will work fine. But the whole upgrade things in realtime will be hard.

Gimmicks. Focus on solid gameplay concepts.

If you want to do it as an experimental project, cool.

If you want to make a fun, playable game out of it- meh.

By the way, there is an opensource project to recreate the MAX engine for Windows/Linux (using the original graphics from the game). Some screens from there. They are aiming for the original style, so no 3D.

yuritch wrote:All of that would need per-player unitdefs and weapondefs as I see it. Or maybe some lua trick can do that, although I don't see how exactly (short of luaing all the weapons and bypassing Spring weapon code entirely). Every unit in MAX can have its own stats not related to other units in any way - after buying upgrade, you have to apply it to every already built unit (by driving it to service building), new units get the current upgrade level automatically. That means there could be dozens of types of the same unit per player on the field at once (Tank mk.I - basic version, Tank mk. II - with +2 armor, Tank mk. III - same but +1 range, etc., and a few units of each type).

Wouldn't be that hard if /editdefs worked which should allow UnitDef, WeaponDef changes that are only affected to newly created units(Obsolite unit would be destroyed and recreated to the new mark standart!). But as I said IF THAT FUNCTION WORKED!

By the way, there is an opensource project to recreate the MAX engine for Windows/Linux (using the original graphics from the game). Some screens from there. They are aiming for the original style, so no 3D.

There is also another German project of MAX but AFAIK they are not making it real-time!

Well, affecting only the new units is only a part of the problem. Affecting only that player's units is the rest. You surely wouldn't want your Missile Crawler +5 range +20 damage upgrade to spread to all the Crawlers in the game, especially enemy ones? And that is exactly what would happen if the basic unitDef is edited.
Of course upgrades can be restricted to stats that can change per-unit (that includes HP, armor, speed, ammo, sight range and even fire rate, but not weapon range or shot damage), but that wouldn't be quite the same.

For reference, original MAX had those upgradeable unit stats (I hope I haven't forgot anything, played MAX quite some time ago):

Hit points
Armor
Weapon Range
Weapon damage
Number of shots per turn (aka rate of fire)
Ammunition capacity
Speed
Sight range
Metal cost (could only be reduced via research, not by using gold. Directly influences build time)

Weapon range and weapon damage look like something that could only be per-unit if weapon system was at least somewhat rewritten in lua. The rest is more or less doable with minimal lua interventions.
Experience gain will also need to be restricted - only the Alien units could gain exp to improve stats (but they had no 'regular' upgrades like human units did).

Just have editdefs done before creating a unit with unit stats of the specified player. Though I don't know if you can hide the /editdefs <unitname>... from appearing in text box+ with "Cheating enabled! (0.01 sec) Cheating disabled" which would tell all players that a player created or upgraded a unit! But who cares editdefs doesn't work and trepan didn't send a reply to my PM even when he was here.

yuritch wrote: Experience gain will also need to be restricted - only the Alien units could gain exp to improve stats (but they had no 'regular' upgrades like human units did).

Infiltrators could also have XP which increased chances of successful operations.

Also

I agree, realtime changes in things like that would be hard...
Like I said, micromanaging that much stuff is a bit hard.

Id think the whole gold -> upgrade thing wont work well in realtime, but maybe the research would be ok...

QFT.

Listing stats that can be changed with Lua on single units:
metal cost(no use. Needed to be changed for factories)
energy cost(same as previous)
building time
max HP
experience
fuel
metal extraction rate
build and other con action speeds
Spring.SetUnitArmored?(remove armor? What about changing?)
shields
radar, jammer, los and cloaking

How to change speed, rotation speed and turret rotation speed?
Other than that what else might be needed for units?...
Oh... might be:
amphibious,
maxslope.
nothing else comes to mind


Weapon stats that can be change with lua:
reloadState?
*reloadTime
*accuracy
sprayAngle?
*range
*projectileSpeed
*burst
*burstRate
projectiles?(amount of shots fired each burst?)

* - might be constants
missing:
EMP dmg,
impulse.
anything else?


Overall stuff that would be needed for M.A.X. is in... except armor, but "armor vs weapons" in M.A.X. there is no difference of what is fired(hp(20)+armor(5)-dmg(20)= hp(20)-dmg(15) = 5 hp).

Pendrokar wrote:...Weapon stats that can be change with lua:
...

Are you sure those are per-unit and not per-weapondef? As I said, you'll need to apply all the changes per-unit, and as far as I know at least some of those listed aren't tied to a particular unit.

yuritch wrote:

Pendrokar wrote:...Weapon stats that can be change with lua:
...

Are you sure those are per-unit and not per-weapondef?

Nope haven't tried.

I really don't think MAX works well as an RTS. As a TBS game it requires a huge ammount of micromanagement, and that's absolutely fine in that genre, fun catagories of micromanagement are what make TBS games rewarding. But generally speaking I don't think that translates well to RTS. The things that make an RTS fun, unit interactions, different unit combination, and explosions... MAX wasn't incredibly heavy on.

Well, there were enough explosions in MAX imo. And more than enough different unit combinations. For example, combine a Missile Crawler with an air transport and you receive what many players consider a cheat (and ban or punish such things in multi) - a Crawler that can move (via air trans), fire and then move again (air trans picks it up and flies away), all in 1 turn. Works with any ground unit that usually loses attacks if it moves. Another unit combination - Ground Attack planes and empty transports. Fly the transports into enemy AA, watch the turrets kill them (and spend shots on that), then fly the Ground Attacks in and blow the base up (as the AA turrets have no more shots that turn).