Spring RTS Engine

Here are my thoughts, feel free to fill in:

* Fix the hammers/cannon velocity of some units. Everybody knows what this means.

* Make LOS consistent, meaning things should not be visible outside of it. Things currently visible include reclaim effects, weapon projectiles (should be visible within radar), some weapons such as pyros... Also sounds should be limited to LOS (or much quieter outside of it), in order to decrease audio clutter.

* Fix the commander selection widget to work with initial queue and adv. playerslist. Migrate global ready button to widget. Maybe add unready button.

...take out lame commander animation

Jools wrote:* Fix the hammers/cannon velocity of some units. Everybody knows what this means.

Unfortunately the only person who doesn't know what this means is also the dev

Sounds:

D-Gun is far to bass heavy, always bugged me, and my room m8s

Under attack sound drives me fucking nuts. Too load, all too frequent, and frankly a little embarrassing at times.
There was a "call of duty-black ops" alarm sound, when ur playing as the Russian dude against a German Arctic base. That sound, or something similar would be MUCH appreciated. Maybe some magic lua to stop it from repeating it self over and over again frustrating the hell out or me?

Hell its not like were going to get sued for using it, n ide prolly do the d gun lower bass sound edit myself. shouldn't take long in audacity, although i havent used it in years haha.

Jammers/Radar:

Jammer tries to attack and wonders off when set to guard(follow) com, seriously NOT cool. Not sure if the radar bot does the same....has the repeat sound bug been fixed? Cant remember right now. Bit pissed, as usual....

Cloak

This is a little odd, but about com cloaking. Cloak doesnt seem to work all to well like it used to. [engine code or modder adjustment?] And many players are annoyed with this.
Also in a loltastic game last week, cheeky babbles walked into MY base using MY own jammer against me. I.e, my jammer hides enemy cloaked units. (his com! which promptly bent me over a barrel and shatter my pelvis!) Shorley MY jammer should give me an advantage, rather than a disadvantage in battle? Its my unit, not his!¿?

I know in BA they got some anti jammer jammer jammer shit going on, which im sure no one in the "xta club" cba'd with. But is there an interest in doing something about this? Or am i the only one?

VTOL

EEEErm, apart from gunships shooting at other vtol, llt's fire rates being able to take down bombers, & popup reload speed being too fast...i really like and APPRECIATE the modding thats going on with the current version of xta.

Despite this as im currently aware, there was no request, or advanced post about the drastic changes to vtol balance. Appart from the damn fighters decloacking coms. I would, as others " i presume" would welcome more discretion, or debate about such changes for vanilla xta.

Once again ide like to re-alliterate the appreciation to all the animations adjustments and efficiencies that DKN has done, his effort and technical marksmanship has simply been staggering.

Apart from the 9.12 coms being set on "wonder off into firing line mode" at the start [Im still not sure how that exactly effects balance]. As a personal preference ide prefer one or the other being pre set in game settings, rather than a choice at the start. Despite this i was impressed with Jools's concept and implementation.

Overall balance of XTA is good IMO, apart from Raven being too FAST even for its cost. Compare its cost and speed to that of the core tank arty and its size and speed....COMMON PEEPS THIS IS CRAZY! In a bias opinion i prefer the weapon settings for ravens in "xta-speed" although i never changed its actual speed, lolz


On another topic, fresh blood to the xta community is dry as a grannies pussy. We need some advertising, webpage, intricate video tutorials. If theres one thing i learnt in uni so far in H.C.I (human computer interaction) and that is

"dont make me think"

XTA in retrospect to other aa or aaa titles is a complex game to get into. Especially as the majority of us have been playing for years. And dicking about for a game to start coz of bitching about player balance as we know each other so well is bloody ridiculous. many players appear to be in the mid 20's if not older, older players have left to younger bitchier player (such as "vintage") but the dynamic U.I of spring and the way the units are used, not armour tagged balanced separates xta from the rest.

That is important!

We should celebrate this and advertise on this, although in comparison, to crappy BA; where shit fx and low polly molly models and armour tags make all the difference, xta as the older and unit used based balance defines use as a group!

Just my drunken rantings, forgive me. Hopefully during the summer ill make some +FX setting for xta with those crazy fx i made last summer. Till then ill try n keep some decorum about my persona. Although that would be kinda out of character for me roflmao

One more thing:
As ive noticed, forks in xta or other *ta mods never do too well. Preferably ide like to see devs work together for a better xta altogether.

That ofc is contradictory to my previous efforts to boost xta popularity, but if u cant lol at yourself; you dont deserve the right to lol at others!

Cant your guys fuse together to make a super cool new version that us players can be proud to play and be apart of ? Just implement some polling for major decisions and let the players (the life blood) of xta make the choices. Or at most a mod option for differentiation!

Just my opinions, i hope i dont offend anybody with my rantings.
Peace love n rainbows n all that shit.

Giz

p.s
may edit some crap out of this tomoz. just fyi

radar jamming doesn't jams the radar signatures of your units, it jams the radar in an area. AKA radar doesn't work in that area, not just enemy radar, but your own, its indiscriminate. It isn't an XTA thing, it's an engine things ( could eb changed via lua probably ), and it's been that way ever since radar jamming support was added to the engine

First of all, thanks for the input. How could the modder know what people want if no-one tells him? Don't be afraid to critisise bad things too.

About the jamming, doesn't it work the same way in ba too? OTA jammers didnt jam own radar, but the change has been around forever in xta, and babbles is notorious for using that tactic. Remedies include to periodically turn off your jammers and check (you could bind this to a group such as ctrl-9, then you can just press 9+x to toggle on/off). Also, use mines within your own base to prevent commander incursions. Remember that a small mine can kill a commander if it hits well.

Has the cloaking changed? I feel that it's now easier to target cloaked units, but the only change I am aware of is the visual brief display of the silhouette when something hits the cloaked unit. Or is there some change in the engine? AFAIK, modders havent touched this.

The commander selection is a modoption, you can still set them pre-game if you choose so.

ShineSmith wrote:D-Gun is far to bass heavy, always bugged me, and my room m8s

This is a 2 line fix, personally I never found it too loud or too bass heavy.

ShineSmith wrote:Under attack sound drives me fucking nuts. Too load, all too frequent, and frankly a little embarrassing at times.

Yeah I get annoyed as well, IIRC there's an updated version in BA, might take a look.

ShineSmith wrote:Jammer tries to attack and wonders off when set to guard(follow) com, seriously NOT cool. Not sure if the radar bot does the same

Never notticed that, jammer/radar units are usually on maneuver, maybe set them on hold position by default, just need to be added to hold pos widget. But I do know that minelayers tend to attack enemy units even though they don't have a usable weapon (but they have that overload, which is why engine thinks they have a weapon)

ShineSmith wrote:Cloak doesnt seem to work all to well like it used to.

Jools wrote:the only change I am aware of is the visual brief display of the silhouette when something hits the cloaked unit.

That's the only thing that happened with cloak and that's ever since I intorduced LUPS to XTA so ~1 year ago.

ShineSmith wrote:Also in a loltastic game last week, cheeky babbles walked into MY base using MY own jammer against me. I.e, my jammer hides enemy cloaked units.

I have no idea about that, if AF and you are right, then this is a serious engine bug, nothing I can do about it other than some serious LUA faggotery that would cause needless CPU usage increase.

ShineSmith wrote:I know in BA they got some anti jammer jammer jammer shit going on

It's called seismic detector, and it works only for land units IIRC. Also units don't autotarget seismic blips as they do with radar ones.

ShineSmith wrote:EEEErm, apart from gunships shooting at other vtol

They where able to do it in OTA, just where bad at it, as are in XTA.

ShineSmith wrote:llt's fire rates being able to take down bombers

If it can kill a tank why should a bomber be spared?

ShineSmith wrote:popup reload speed being too fast

It's reload speed is exactly the same as always, the projectile speed is faster.

ShineSmith wrote:Once again ide like to re-alliterate the appreciation to all the animations adjustments and efficiencies that DKN has done, his effort and technical marksmanship has simply been staggering.

Thank you, but I'm kinda getting tired of it, mostly because players whine about balance and never try to do anything themselves. (If you think something is unblanced, make a mutator and let's test your solution, if it's good, it'll be included in next release, simple as that)

Correction of an incorrect statement:

ShineSmith wrote:...that DKN has done...

DnW

ShineSmith wrote:Apart from the 9.12 coms being set on "wonder off into firing line mode" at the start

Side-effect of satellite strike weapon having range of 1300, which is disabled until com reaches 1.2XP, so com moves into range of available weapons. Happens only with autougradable/automatic/wanking commander.

ShineSmith wrote:Despite this i was impressed with Jools's concept and implementation.

He modified the existing BA gadget/widget, but it's not simple as well.

ShineSmith wrote:On another topic, fresh blood to the xta community is dry as a grannies pussy. We need some advertising, webpage, intricate video tutorials. If theres one thing i learnt in uni so far in H.C.I (human computer interaction) and that is

That's an age old issue, it can't be changed overnight if at all.

ShineSmith wrote:As ive noticed, forks in xta or other *ta mods never do too well. Preferably ide like to see devs work together for a better xta altogether.

The only other pseudo-active XTA dev is Jools, I can't make him work more than he wants to. Also anyone (ok, not just anyone) interested in deving XTA can get access to it's repo and help current moddevs.

ShineSmith wrote:Cant your guys fuse together to make a super cool new version that us players can be proud to play and be apart of ?

Well I'm occasionally working on a new *A game YAAG, which so far is considered a cool new concept. It's playable, just need to get it filled with the rest of content (units and balancing) which is more of a grunt work and annoyingly boring, that's why I'm kinda avoiding it.

Radar jamming own radar has been in since forever, just no one utilises it

also, vintage asked me to make this, but I never did anything with it

http://www.facebook.com/pages/XTA/135989519783815

i always play with sound superlow or off, because the volumes are so random.
annoying sounds from top of head: dgun, some wuuiish wuuiish missile sound (raven?)
iirc selfd-ing lots of stuff at once is also very loud.

roaming commander:
in game_initial_spawn.lua add
Spring.GiveOrderToUnit(unitID, CMD.MOVE_STATE, { 0 }, {})
to put commander to "hold position"

It's more complicated than that, because if user changes commadner then you have to execute that function again. Well, it has to be done after game has begun.

About the sounds, that's why I'd like to change the way the sounds work. Now they are in fact localised, but they depend on where you have the camera zoomed in. But since nobody actually plays with the camera zoomed in, the current functioning is quite irrelevant, so it would dbe nice to only play those sounds that are in LOS. IMO LOS is a better localisation methoid than camera zoom.

Also, it is possible to customise the alert sounds, it's a widget now. Personally, I have it just disabled, since the 5 second or so spam protection is way too little. And it should be made a bit smarter too.

Jools wrote:It's more complicated than that, because if user changes commadner then you have to execute that function again. Well, it has to be done after game has begun.

i mean like this doesnt work?

If it doesn't, try

I fixed it already in the SVN, sorry to not posting it here too. It's just that I have computer problems nowadays and have been around just IRL.

babbles wrote: also, vintage asked me to make this, but I never did anything with it

http://www.facebook.com/pages/XTA/135989519783815

That link goes nowhere, it directs me to fb home

Why are game end options missing both Com ends, and Kill all enemy commanders?

Why is it impossible to start with a vanilla, non-upgradable, non-masturbating commander?

Really shocked to see this "progress" upon my return

Added to the todo list.

Pintle try XTAR! It has slightly less retarded balance than "official" xta but possibly won't play well on sea maps.

To address a tiny amount of the garbage above:

"llt's fire rates being able to take down bombers"
"If it can kill a tank why should a bomber be spared?"

Because gameplay is more important than realism perhaps?

"Also in a loltastic game last week, cheeky babbles walked into MY base using MY own jammer against me. I.e, my jammer hides enemy cloaked units."
"I have no idea about that, if AF and you are right, then this is a serious engine bug, nothing I can do about it other than some serious LUA faggotery that would cause needless CPU usage increase."

Or an obvious part of the game for anyone who has ever accidently hit the L key

"popup reload speed being too fast"
"It's reload speed is exactly the same as always, the projectile speed is faster."

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. I thought you caved and fixed this already?

Final note, the effort spent making so many todo lists could have been spent fixing the 5-6 major qualms which populate every new todo list

Are you making fun of my todo lists?

Here's a list of things accomplished:

- rewrote commander selection interface
- initial queue, adv. playerslist now working with side changes. Any more widgets need fixing?
- The latest beta now has a plain, normal commander

- Will now try to fix a kill all commanders death option...

Jools wrote:- Will now try to fix a kill all commanders death option...

<3