Spring RTS Engine

Anyone ever play any games in the Advance Wars series?

It was made by Intelligent Systems (the guys who make Fire Emblem games). I was thinking of making a mod with some ideas from the main Advance Wars series (Advance Wars + Advance Wars 2, for GBA, and Advance Wars: Dual Strike for DS. The newest in the AW series, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for DS, follows a new story line, and has some changes in the ruleset)

Anyway what I was thinking is, that instead of having ARM/CORE style Factions, you have CO's.

In Advance Wars, each CO has unique strengths, weaknesses, and a special power that builds up called the CO power (the CO power is a meter that builds up as you take/give damage, with the former building it the fastest, and when it fills up, you can activate a special ability that lasts for a short duration)

Take Max (using the first AW rules). He had buffed "Direct Combat", which would be shorter range units (in this case, raider/assault units), but indirect units (in this case, skirmishers/artillery) were weaker.
Finally, he had a CO power, Max Strike, which buffed the attack power of direct units a bit more for one turn (meaning that a realtime CO power would just last a short duration).


Other CO's that would work in this type of mod were
Grit: Weak direct units, Strong indirect, Power gave a slight boost to indirect unit attack range.
Eagle: Weak navy, strong air force, power allowed non-infantry to move a second time (in this case, we could make them just move a bit faster)
Drake: Opposite of Eagle, power did a small bit of damage to all enemy units.
Sonja: Increased vision range in Fog of War (in this case, it would just boost sight range), power boosted vision range even more
Kanbei: Strong units, but they cost more (so we could give those units a higher resource cost + slightly higher build time). Power boosted attack and defense slightly.


The possibilities for a Spring mod are pretty much endless.

For a recap:
Factions are COs, which all have the same units, but they have variations for each CO, which makes for a bit of interesting gameplay.
CO Power meter builds up for taking damage, and also for giving out damage (giving out damage builds it slower). Powers last for short durations, and each CO has a unique power.

For more information on CO's and their unique abilities, refer to this FAQ on CO's in AW:DS (ignore CO Affinity/Tag Powers, and Super CO powers, as those overcomplicate things, also for CO's and moves that have two names, denoted by a /, the names before the slash are rough translations from the Japanese version or European version translations that suck.)

Thoughts?

Surely this is MTR by now

Imagine each word in the previous sentence linking to each of the seperate times this has been posted in the past, I'm lazy

Gnome wrote:Surely this is MTR by now

Imagine each word in the previous sentence linking to each of the seperate times this has been posted in the past, I'm lazy

My post was mainly about a COs + powers idea, which, from what I saw in a quick search of the forums, has not been done.

Feel free to correct me if I missed it, but since I'm a better programmer than I am a modeler, I was thinking more along the lines of a gameplay modification instead of just the units.

offtopic: why do I see people on this forum using text sizes that require me to squint until my eyes bleed, then I realize that I can simply quote the post to see the text at a normal size, like this very sentence.

If you need to squint to read that you desperately need a new screen.

Just wanted to show this, as it's KINDA related.

i'd love to see an advancewars style mod, would be very cute and fun.
and nice to run on older machines i'd imagine.

someone also made this awhile ago, looks very advance wars to me.



BUILDINGS
HQ
factory
shipyard
airport
city

GROUND
infantry
mech
bike
recon
light tank
medium tank
AA
arty
rocket launcher
apc
antitank
flare
missiles
war tank

NAVAL
lander
cruiser
sub
battleship
carrier
gunboat

AIR
battle copter
transport copter
seaplane
duster
fighter
bomber

quite a few units to make, but a lot less than most other projects and the models would be a lot simpler.

also, in advance wars you can't make buildings, they're part of the map and have to be captured, how would this work with spring?

thesleepless wrote:also, in advance wars you can't make buildings, they're part of the map and have to be captured, how would this work with spring?

Buildings would be part of the map and have to be captured. >_>

It's not because BA doesn't has it that Spring doesn't support it. And I'm not just saying it should be theorically possible, I'm saying Spring mods you don't play implemented it years ago.

zwzsg wrote:

thesleepless wrote:also, in advance wars you can't make buildings, they're part of the map and have to be captured, how would this work with spring?

Buildings would be part of the map and have to be captured. >_>

It's not because BA doesn't has it that Spring doesn't support it. And I'm not just saying it should be theorically possible, I'm saying Spring mods you don't play implemented it years ago.

Doesn't Argh have something similar to this set up for PURE?
We can just tweak that system a bit.

lurker wrote:If you need to squint to read that you desperately need a new screen.

It's a laptop, with a 1680x1050 screen (Weird resolution much? I blame China, it's a Lenovo)

dont give up the idea - i'd love to play this

zwzsg wrote:

thesleepless wrote:also, in advance wars you can't make buildings, they're part of the map and have to be captured, how would this work with spring?

Buildings would be part of the map and have to be captured. >_>

It's not because BA doesn't has it that Spring doesn't support it. And I'm not just saying it should be theorically possible, I'm saying Spring mods you don't play implemented it years ago.

i know it's technically possible in spring, but how would you actually go about it?
where would you specify the buildings? in the map file somehow? or as a lua script maybe? randomly generated?

There were two Advance Wars mods under marginally-active contruction, but they sadly never saw the light of day, I would love to see it done, either as a turn-based tactical or RTS with CO-Powers and building capture instead of contruction.

thesleepless wrote:where would you specify the buildings? in the map file somehow? or as a lua script maybe? randomly generated?

The plan, I believe, was to do something similar to what Imperial Winter does, have an algorithm to place them automatically with the option of including a map-specific definition file to place them specifically.

One thing I'm noticing is that all the tanks being shown here are non-turreted. Non-turreted tanks are a PITA.

But yeah, an Advanced Wars mod would be fun. Simple unit-sets, simple resource-model, and the nice trick of the powers you get from your CO.

thesleepless wrote:i know it's technically possible in spring, but how would you actually go about it?
where would you specify the buildings? in the map file somehow? or as a lua script maybe? randomly generated?

An idea can be borrowed from Spring: 1944. In that game, a flag is placed at every metal patch on a map, and units would have to get within range to capture that flag. Just tweak a certain things, and I'm sure it'll work out right, no?

Sorry about the late reply, had some stuff to do, anyway, I think we should worry about the CO's idea first, (specifically starting with CO variations to units rather than just factions, and then trying the powers) and then work our way into buildings and units.

thesleepless wrote:i know it's technically possible in spring, but how would you actually go about it?
where would you specify the buildings? in the map file somehow? or as a lua script maybe? randomly generated?

I would copy Cuberor's Finest's gadget that detect metal spot and spawn neutral buildings on them.

This is related to only the CO power part of AW, which would be pretty cool on it's own (it would really fit into the Gundam Universe for example... I should go bug smoth...)

CO-Powers Mutator:

So, if we are going to go with a nominally traditional Spring game design you already have an essential commander unit, which would act as your CO.

There would be an additional team for each of these COs so you would have something like:

Core - Captain Awesome
Core - Mr. Incredible
Arm - Red Leader
Arm - General Knowledge

in your list of teams, this would specify which commande you would get.

We would need to come up with some kind of feature for these special commanders to provide, examples would be:

X Times Hitpoints
X Times Weapon damage
X Times Experience Points Gain
X Times Energy Gain
X Times Metal Gain
X Times Capture Rate


Of course these could be made unit specific like:
Captain Weaselly:
2 Times Hitpoints for Weasels
0.5 Times Cost To Build Weasels

Captain Hippie:
10 Times Energy Production From Solars
10 Times Energy Production From Wind
10 Times Energy From Geothermal
2 Times Damage With Stationary Buildings

It could also include Unit block lists to offset other bonuses, for example Captain Hippie might not be able to build offensive units.

Then you get to the powers and super-powers...
As you kill units or take damage you gain some third resource (let's call it Star Power), and each CO has special abilities that cost Star Power to execute.

Examples would be:
10 Times Resource Gain For 100 Tics
Energy Resource Gauge Fills Up
Air Strikes or Orbital Lazer Strikes
All Units Do 10x Damage for 100 Tics
All Damaged Units are instantly healed.

Now for flavour, it would be really cool if when you were selecting a CO-Command you would get a picture of that CO, and the units noises were CO specific. Also when a unit triggers a special ability you could have a big old anime/fighting game "I'm taking you down" picture show up.

Here is a mockup:

I had this idea a while ago but clearly won't have time to do it, I completely support this idea and I'm glad to lend a hand any way I can.

Sorry about the disappearance for a bit there.


On the units:
First off I have a question, I know you can create sprite particles that always face the rendering camera... but would it be possible to make these particles a unit or an interactive object or something along those lines?

This would make save us so much time and/or effort for the implementation of units.

On the CO's idea:

SinbadEV wrote:

A large sprite of a sharp dressed man of the law with flamboyant hair and an obnoxious catchphrase?
APPROVAL!
:P

I'm so making him a CO, his power will shield the commander from all damage for 15 seconds.

SinbadEV wrote: Captain Weaselly:
2 Times Hitpoints for Weasels
0.5 Times Cost To Build Weasels

Captain Hippie:
10 Times Energy Production From Solars
10 Times Energy Production From Wind
10 Times Energy From Geothermal
2 Times Damage With Stationary Buildings

It could also include Unit block lists to offset other bonuses, for example Captain Hippie might not be able to build offensive units.

Great template, all we need is someone who can get implement this.
Unfortunately I need to spend some more time with Spring (modding and generally playing around) before I can do this.
(which I haven't had much time to do lately, once I sit down and do it I'll learn fast)

Interactive particles? Please explain what you want better.

lurker wrote:If you need to squint to read that you desperately need a new screen.

I have to squint, too.