Spring RTS Engine

zwzsg: since I couldn't catch you on the lobby, I'll post my feedback on the missions here (or rather, only the hero mission).

• In general, the missions seem impossible to win through any kind of gradual push; the only way is to kill the homebases and then all the builders so they can't rebuild. The game could be retooled to an ONS-style mode, but that would require a way to make minifacs stay dead when killed (perhaps just making them not be rebuilt, or giving the player side more units to secure and build on the newly liberated geovent).
• Ports and Connections are too hard to kill by conventional means: hit them once and they spawn a dozen Packets to kill you, and they can do this remarkably frequently.
• You can change the Kernel's build order with the KP buildbar, which is useful for spamming some Pointers to suppress the Network AI opponent near you. Is this intentional?
• It just gets too laggy during the second half of the game with all those units.
• At one point, one of the Connections built a Terminal which the player can't fire. Is this a one time glitch?
• Worms are too annoying to hunt down and kill once the game is over; the player should just win when all factories are destroyed.

Incidentally, all the missions also crashed when I won, eg:
http://spring.pastebin.com/m77d1fb77
...though this may just be my PC.

I'll post my feedback on the missions

Thank you!

In general, the missions seem impossible to win

Agreed. I really have an issue there, that I can't seem to ever make an easy mission even when I begin with the specific intent of making a really easy introductory mission. I must learn to restrain myself on enemy unit count.

require a way to make minifacs stay dead when killed (perhaps just making them not be rebuilt).

Technically, that'd be easy to do: I'll just have to remove the enemy builders. Makes me wonder why I though it was a good idea to have a Regenerative AI in the first place though. And wish I had coded a way for bugs to be rebuildable only at their native place (because right now, a single window, given enough time, will repopulate the 170 bugs of the team. And a single hole, can rebuild everything.) In newer versions of the mission, I removed some datavents. I should probably remove more datavents, so that only a few minifacs are rebuildable.

giving the player side more units to secure and build on the newly liberated geovent

The blue allied system in the middle was meant for that. I hoped it would send builder to secure the newly liberated datavent, and send units patrolling to prevent the enemy from regaining lost territory. Though that didn't work out so well, as lone assemblers are easy prey to the massed enemy, so unless you take upon yourself to carefully escort them, they fail. And anyway, I'm pretty sure that the allied system was added to that mission after 6.732. Though, you had your own kernel spewing unit, which ought to amount to the same.

Ports and Connections are too hard to kill by conventional means: hit them once and they spawn a dozen Packets to kill you, and they can do this remarkably frequently.

I noticed that too. Plus the packets laser are instahit, so you can't dodge them like other weapons. And spawned packets often stay there, which means the more failed assaults, the more spawned packets around the port. Adding a network side to that mission was a bad idea, in retrospect.

You can change the Kernel's build order with the KP buildbar, which is useful for spamming some Pointers to suppress the Network AI opponent near you. Is this intentional?

I hoped people wouldn't notice. But that won't be possible anymore. I added a mod option to allow or forbid giving orders to other units in "hero" gamemode, and set it to forbidden for that mission.

the only way is to kill the homebases and then all the builders so they can't rebuild

Truth. And that probably does not make the mission fun. I have to rethink the whole thing.

It just gets too laggy during the second half of the game with all those units.

I took upon myself to actually try to play that mission from start to end, and noticed that as well: after killing purple, and while green was mid-killed, game lagged badly. Like a half second hiccup every three seconds. And then it went smooth again once green was fully dead. From this, I deduced the cause of the lag, and fixed it. Basically, when half the units are dead, and half the units are alive, for every dead unit, for every live unit, it runs a complicated check to see if the live one can build the dead one. Which lags as much as (dead units)x(live units), so lags most when you killed all factories and builders but still have all the bugs. So I added some sort of cache, to remember for each unit type if the AI had tested it can be rebuilt yet. In short, that lag issue is fixed.

At one point, one of the Connections built a Terminal which the player can't fire. Is this a one time glitch?

I hope you mean assembler, not connection. The AI running ur dudes would have fired it. Eventually. Maybe. It would have been possible I mean. In theory at least. But simply disallowing terminal for that mission would be best I reckon.

Worms are too annoying to hunt down and kill once the game is over; the player should just win when all factories are destroyed.

Good point. I left the end condition at "kill everything" because I though slaughtering all the bugs at the end would have been enjoyable. But I can understand how having to hunt cloacked units, when you control one single unit and on such a large map, must be quite irritating.

Incidentally, all the missions also crashed when I won

Known bug of Spring 0.80.5.1. Get 0.80.5.2.

Wait did you just say you won all the missions? Even the "Tight Camp" one?

Made two mistakes in the OP:

zwzsg wrote:I hope you mean assembler, not connection.

Right, assembler. Don't know how I got those confused.

KingRaptor wrote:the missions seem impossible to win through any kind of gradual push

By this I meant "mission" as in the singular, meaning only Charge of the Hero. Sorry for confusion.

With Heavy Divide it's a matter of sniping windows and worms with pointers, pushing across the river (a Terminal can be very helpful here) and getting your pointers in range of the Holes.

For Tight Camp, I figured out that the trick is to use the assembler to repair the byte. Not only can it tank an absurd amount of damage, it can fire its mine launcher multiple times. The mine launcher is invaluable for gibbing worms, so this is very useful.

EDIT: Not related to missions, but this is also an issue: byte mine launcher really needs to be a targeted ability like pointer's NX flag, or at least tied to turret facing rather than unit facing. It's pretty annoying to see the mines going in the exact opposite direction you expected them to.

Zwzsg: how are you creating the missions? I'm hoping to do a set of S44 ones in the next month or two, but mission editor seems to fail.

It's pretty simple.

You run a game, through any means. (Lobby, SP launcher, ....)

You use /cheat /team /give alot to spawn all your units.

You type /dump MyMission

Et voilà!

Ah, ok. So you don't have preset orders/'objectives' so on and so forth.

Use the shift key to enqueue orders. >_>

Though my code was incompletly debuggued and polished, so it tends to save commands that are uneeded, has trouble restoring some (in particular, I didn't finish the bit of code that translate UnitID), might issue state change command at the wrong time, and generally you should manually inspect and clean the generated startscript.

Or you could directly handwrite the command queue.

For exemple:
u1= kernel Position 4096 3072 build 5 byte 1 asm 5 byte 1 asm 4 byte 1 asm 4 byte 1 asm 3 byte 1 asm 3 byte 1 asm 2 byte; // Gives the kernel a build list. No repeat so the AI will take over when it ends.
u21= obelisk Position 3488 2912 TW4 Repeat TimeWait 10 Attack 2394 2476; // Make obelisk keeps on attacking the ground
u5= assembler Position 3458 2590 Patrol 3458 2590 Patrol 3318 2422 Patrol 3621 2419; // Make assembler patrol between those three or four points.
u18= bug Position 1032 1947 Rotation 190 TimeWait 45 Fight 2816 2830; // Wait 45 seconds before attacking the player's base

In truth, for the missions of KP, after the /dump, I have done plenty of hand fiddling with the dumped startscript.

Also, for mission, I made a "Regenerative AI", that rebuild and reassign orders to any lost unit. So for instance in the third exemple, the AI would keep on rebuilding the bug and re-assigning it command queue to wait and attack, so I effectively have periodic attacks.

BTW: The Spring built-in wait command couln't be used, I had to write my own wait command. Along with a few others, not all of which are implemented. I like "transfer", which gives the unit to another team, can be used for tricky stuff like an AI that has three factories and many units, the unit keeps getting rebuild until you kill the factories, but when you kill all factories and units, it can still rebuild from a cons given by another team.

There are no "triggers" or "mission objectives" yet, but hopefully that will come one day.

Also: Currently all the code to restart game, write startscript, generate game, display menu, dump unit orders and etc... is unorganised, contains some KP specific stuff, and is generally ugly. I eventually plan to port it to Gundam or EvoRTS or The Cursed and clean it up in the process, so that afterward it'll be easier to integrate in any other mod. No promises or expected release time though.


More info in the thread:
Using Mission Editor with Kernel Panic