Spring RTS Engine

I took the download down while I work on the next version. Should be along in 0-3 weeks.

Game goes like this:
Three mobile units. Rock, paper, scissors. Their interactions are fairly predictable. Note that the counters are "soft", so all of them can be reversed given large enough numbers or fast enough micro. Each of them takes 10 seconds to build.

Two stationary units. Fac - builds rock, paper, or scissors. You only get one. Anni2 - fires absurdly powerful death rays for 1000 metal each. You only get one. These are the most effective way to deal with enemy facs, which are otherwise very time consuming to kill. They will bring a fac to about 50-100hp with a good shot, or utterly annihilate loads of units (just take care you don't devalue your own stock too much...)

Here's where life gets interesting:
The cost of rock, paper, or scissors adjusts based on player demand. If lots of people are building rocks, rocks become more expensive to buy and existing rocks become more valuable. Conversely, if nobody is building rocks, after 20 seconds the cost of rocks (and value of all existing rocks) begins to slowly drop, down to zero. Also, as rocks are sold or destroyed, the other rocks become less valuable.

You can sell any of your mobile units at any time for 90% of current value. Damaged units are worth less.

There is no resource gathering, metal making, farming or anything of the like. You make money by selling units for a profit - the more units you sell at once, the higher your profit margin. It is possible to make a profit by 'investing' in a particular unit type, but this obviously leaves your armed forces somewhat unbalanced. Building one of each unit type will give you a well rounded army, but will quickly drop the value of units depending on timing, player investments, and battle outcomes.

Have fun. Hopefully the functions aren't as broken this time around.

Need pics! (Spoiler: looks like simbase)

The constant spam of the chat is really annoying.
Lua yourself some frame to write the three cost (rounded, please)
I see we start with a huge orbital laser, why? To suck up all my metal? There wasn't even any warning that the stockipiling would cost that much. It seems there is an anti-paper shield "somewhere", but no idea where because I only see the deflection effects which I first I mistook for GPU artefact. Make it more obvious there is that shield!

(And no, half a second wall of text during load up doesn't count!)

zwzsg wrote:Need pics! (Spoiler: looks like simbase)

Double spoiler: it's made from simbase

I was going to use rock/paper/scissors for my devkit/tutorial mod.

Did you already mention the specifics of your units when you told me about this nemo?

I did not do these things because I don't know how to deal with openGL even a little bit. As for the paper shield...rocks attract paper shots. It doesn't take much to figure out.

Doomlaser: its there for whatever you want to use it for. I did write in the first post that it sucks down 1000 per shot, and its on the load screen (which does load quickly, fair point). The entire point of this design is for me to have as little role as possible in determining how the game plays - I haven't decided unit 'roles' or anything like that. I mean, it probably won't be played enough for such a design to make sense, but oh well. life goes on.

zwzsg wrote:Need pics! (Spoiler: looks like simbase)

The constant spam of the chat is really annoying.
Lua yourself some frame to write the three cost (rounded, please)
I see we start with a huge orbital laser, why? To suck up all my metal? There wasn't even any warning that the stockipiling would cost that much. It seems there is an anti-paper shield "somewhere", but no idea where because I only see the deflection effects which I first I mistook for GPU artefact. Make it more obvious there is that shield!

(And no, half a second wall of text during load up doesn't count!)

FLOZi: I don't remember. Maybe?

There is no resource gathering, metal making, farming or anything of the like. You make money by selling units for a profit - the more units you sell at once, the higher your profit margin. It is possible to make a profit by 'investing' in a particular unit type, but this obviously leaves your armed forces somewhat unbalanced. Building one of each unit type will give you a well rounded army, but will quickly drop the value of units depending on timing, player investments, and battle outcomes.

You just blew my mind. Best idea evar.

Um, haven't had time to play it yet, but I'm wondering... if it doesn't have a strategic goal that can tip the balance of power, then how does it end, assuming that both players know what they're doing?

Somebody gets the everliving crap blown out of them by the giant doomlaser that everyone gets at start (for 1000metal a shot).

You can turn a profit just by building one unit type and selling them repeatedly, so if nobody attacks, somebody dies once the sky-blasts of death start raining down

To be more specific - there is no 'optimum' build economically - it purely depends on what the other player is doing, and everybody knows the cost of the units at any given time...so when units start hitting a certain cost level, its safe to assume that someone is close to having a doomlaser shot, and either go attack after they've sold the units for money, or sell your own of that type and undercut them.

Gotcha. Sounds fun

awesome idea

Bump. Anyone played a multiplayer game and have feedback? If people are finding it worth playing, I'll see what I can do about changing chatspam to a proper window (blagh), and adding icons, but if not, may as well spend time on S44.

Yeah, while I barely (read: don't) have time to play IW, and therefore don't have time to play this, I'd love to see how this sort of game works out in a multiplay environment, as I had a game concept vaguely similar to this.

I wonder if tobi can teach craig to play this one

i can make some icons, what would you like?

Rock paper and scissors would be brilliant

And then whatever you find appropriate for fac/doomlaser. I can probably use the fac icon from s44.

these okay?

I'd imagine they would need to be 1 bit images.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:I'd imagine they would need to be 1 bit images.

No, just brighter because TCs get multiplied with icons and dark icons can't get brighter, only darker.

Well, sorry if I wasn't precise - I'm aware you can do greyscale icons, but I think they'd be more practical if they were 1bit. All of the icons you've made there could be used as bases for 1bit icon designs.

eg;

light enough?