Spring RTS Engine

I'm sorry I have to do this, but the truth is I'm not familiar anymore with who the big names in mapping are so I can't just do this via PM. So I'll just post this in hopes it draws more attention to my thread in games and modding, where I hoped it would get more of the attention I'd wanted.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=21177

In particular please read this post which clarifies what I'm trying to achieve:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 37#p394037

The target audience of my post is mainly modders and mappers, but also experienced players are more than welcome to participate.

Basically: The values currently in use for terrain slope tolerance for "infantry"-type units and "tank"-type units, buildings, depth tolerance for boats and land units, etc, etc, etc, create an unnecessary headache for you and I am trying to help address it. I'm reasonably sure that with some clever mod-side Lua there will be no compatibility problems with existing maps, while future releases of mods could take advantage of the new standards we come to together.

No, I am not trying to take creative control away from you, quite the opposite. No, I am not trying to enforce anything upon you, I am trying to eliminate the restrictions that you currently deal with but have gotten used to designing around.

Mappers read the other areas of the forum, and this doesn't add anything to your earlier post.

Your purpose would have been better served by asking game developers to furnish public standards for their specific projects, somewhere that the mappers can access at need.

Thank you for sharing your opinion, but I do not share it and the post I made shouldn't be missed by the people who frequent this forum, so I felt it necessary to post here.

While I might not entirely agree with what caydr has said so far I do think he is genuinely trying help where he can.

With quick glance, I agree with you. There should be somekinda standardization for parametres like slope tolerances, metals, tidals etc. Especially for slope tolerances!

Imo, for future maps, slope tolerances should be lowered, resulting more "natural" looking maps with detailed height varieties. Atm, TA based maps are pretty boring in what comes to heights.

SirArtturi wrote:With quick glance, I agree with you. There should be somekinda standardization for parametres like slope tolerances, metals, tidals etc. Especially for slope tolerances!

Imo, for future maps, slope tolerances should be lowered, resulting more "natural" looking maps with detailed height varieties. Atm, TA based maps are pretty boring in what comes to heights.

If you do that to slope tolerances, you also need to do stuff to your heightmods and think long and hard about the relationship between cylindrical and spherical targetting units.

Pxtl wrote:

SirArtturi wrote:With quick glance, I agree with you. There should be somekinda standardization for parametres like slope tolerances, metals, tidals etc. Especially for slope tolerances!

Imo, for future maps, slope tolerances should be lowered, resulting more "natural" looking maps with detailed height varieties. Atm, TA based maps are pretty boring in what comes to heights.

If you do that to slope tolerances, you also need to do stuff to your heightmods and think long and hard about the relationship between cylindrical and spherical targetting units.

Well, if you people want more realistic maps, in long-term run you need to accept and start to move your mods forward to larger maps and higher heights.

Damn I typed up a post and my browser ate it

Anyhow, mostly what neddie said.

"I am trying to eliminate the restrictions that you currently deal with but have gotten used to designing around."

Could you elaborate on these restrictions? Im not sure I get what your talking about, and dont want to misunderstand it.

Also, a typemap style passability map could help with different levels.

SirArtturi wrote:Well, if you people want more realistic maps, in long-term run you need to accept and start to move your mods forward to larger maps and higher heights.

*clears throat to draw attention...

One thing to say for mappers is that please make it visible what can pass where. Too detailed heightmap is really annoying for gameplay, if the texture does not clearly go with it. Like for example here, you can't easily tell where youre able to place buildings, where vehicles can pass, where bots can pass. Makes you hit f1/f2 frequently and microing is more annoying due to speed changes you cant reliably foresee. Its a pity since otherwise the concept and the maps looks are good but this uncertainty makes it bad to play...

And unless someone fixes the heightmap changes being visible, keep flat areas or at least starting positions totally flat so you cant see the enemy start without scouting like on Altored Divide. You might say its a bug and ought to be changed so that you cant see that stuff but its like that now and you shouldnt make maps based on how you think the engine SHOULD behave...

/rant

Yeah the asteroid maps were made purely as showcase maps. I take full responsibility for their unplayability.

maps do not have to have OBVIOUS cliffsides. I think the map was fine behe.

@Smoth: Yes It's great map, realistic, I know. But it's designed for YOUR mod, which is the whole point of this issue....

JohannesH wrote: And unless someone fixes the heightmap changes being visible, keep flat areas or at least starting positions totally flat so you cant see the enemy start without scouting like on Altored Divide. You might say its a bug and ought to be changed so that you cant see that stuff but its like that now and you shouldnt make maps based on how you think the engine SHOULD behave...

Mapping along these lines makes the design very limited. Atm, It's the mappers that accept it and try to live with it, not the "engine."

If most of the mappers - Beherith is sort of exception with his experiments - would make maps thinking how engine should behave, there wouldn't be maps like altored divide, but rather more kinky ones...

Considering the gigabytes of maps that exist, what is wrong with a few maps for gundam specifically? After all who else is going to really sit down and do maps for grts?

What makes it for GRTS? The lack of metal map? Can that not be luaed? The height? that can easily be changed. I don't see the point.

SirArtturi wrote: Imo, for future maps, slope tolerances should be lowered, resulting more "natural" looking maps with detailed height varieties. Atm, TA based maps are pretty boring in what comes to heights.

lolpwned.

Yeah, talus is a masterpiece man!

no one plays it but its definitely a playable ta map with plenty of height variance

hunterw wrote:no one plays it but its definitely a playable ta map with plenty of height variance

You should start hosting it again :D

So far I'm only talking about slope tolerance and general terrain stuff, but yes metal, geothermal, and tidal output and distribution are other equally important things I'd like to discuss in a later thread.

Lots of people like to say things like, "metal placement is a mapper's decision", or "more metal just means a faster game". It's true that metal placement is up to the mapper, but if the mapper wants his map to be enjoyed to its fullest, and obviously he does, there are certain common-sense rules that need to be followed. And, more metal does NOT mean a faster game.

Consider DSD. It's got shittons of metal. All this results in is a division of the gameplay into two major player segments: the simbase people who have a fusion up in 10 minutes and then whoever gets the most nukes/krogs wins, and the rusher people, who are actually sort-of playing the game. However uber-rush also defeats the purpose of building defense, since there is so much metal to go around that losing units hardly means anything. It becomes a game about getting lucky and sneaking one unit into your enemy's energy centers and taking him out of the game.

High metal is not necessarily a bad thing at times, but it completely eliminates the usefulness of about 2/3 of the units and structures. Granted, I am not an expert on BA in its current state so I can't say yes definitely all those units/structures are viable anyway, but that's beside the point.

TA balancing, which AA was based upon and which BA probably still resembles at least somewhat, relied on each player having an average of 2-5 metal at each start location and perhaps one geothermal per team. Each map had only a tiny number of +2 metal spots, and they were the center of every conflict.

Not every game/mod needs to follow these rules, but they've proven conducive to fun gameplay for 12 years. It would be beneficial not just for current mods but ones developed in the future if they could be played enjoyably on the same maps, although certainly with different "energy" and "metal" economic dynamics. GEM and AWS, even in their half-unfinished, unenjoyable states, are intended to be fully playable on existing maps and require no special design. Were I ever to get off my ass and make a public release it would only be ~20 mb, so players would immediately have everything they need to enjoy them, because they already have a huge collection of compatible maps and widgets. This would be crucial to getting a typical player to give them a fair chance.