Spring RTS Engine

Let's face it, FPS mode is pretty gimmicky.

The ability to micro a single unit in a very precise manner, however, is not and could be exploited to create interesting (maybe novel) game mechanics in an RTS.

I propose removing the guts of hard-coded FPS mode in favor of allowing it to be implemented mod-side using lua. I mainly take issue with the FPS camera view that is used. Direct control is substantively useful when you couple it with a top-down RTS style or 3rd person style camera.

I used to love FPS view. Then they made it no longer work properly. IIRC there should be a tag that disables it on a per unit basis. Unless that was removed... either way. I am all in favor of luafication of it. IMO it has no place in the engine, are you volunteering to do the lua gadget?

smoth wrote:I used to love FPS view. Then they made it no longer work properly. IIRC there should be a tag that disables it on a per unit basis. Unless that was removed... either way. I am all in favor of luafication of it. IMO it has no place in the engine, are you volunteering to do the lua gadget?

I've had a short discussion with BrainDamage about writing a gadget. I need to review the engine code for FPS mode again as I'm not certain exactly what parts can be replicated with lua as-is and what might require new lua functions.

It might be possible to implement this as a gadget, now that gadgets can easily and transparently inflict their will upon the unit's animation state.

The only part which Lua could need would be to issue strict move orders i think, but setting unit movegoal could account for that. Kernel Panic's hero units work somehow.

Your biggest downfall will be latency. Either engine FPS, or gadgetized solution will both suffer from massive lag, and would be best used in single player.

Anarchid wrote:Your biggest downfall will be latency. Either engine FPS, or gadgetized solution will both suffer from massive lag, and would be best used in single player.

It's too laggy for "FPS" mode, but fpsview is shit to begin with, it is not useful. As is, directcontrol is plenty useful when used with a different camera mode.

Projectile range exploits are easy to stop.
* max range by a projectile's time to life
* by gravity and projectile speed
* burnblow

Micro exploits would be easy to stop too:
* The better you micro 1 unit, the less time you have for your other units.

But: How easy is it for newbes? Is it fun to play a game with this features?

my !vote (depends on hotkeys and gui)
And on lag-free games (no 16v16 games with fighter spam)

stop, please.

NeonStorm wrote:Projectile range exploits are easy to stop.
* max range by a projectile's time to life
* by gravity and projectile speed
* burnblow

Micro exploits would be easy to stop too:
* The better you micro 1 unit, the less time you have for your other units.

But: How easy is it for newbes? Is it fun to play a game with this features?

!vote (depends on hotkeys and gui)
And on lag-free games (no 16v16 games with fighter spam)

Please, just Stahp :-/

Remember Argh's frustration at trying to get a unit to simply *follow a straight line* without movectrl? He wanted cars driving around in his little PURE cities but they'd always waggle because of the pathfinder's little idiosyncracies.

The direct unit control provided by the FPS interface, if gadgetized, might've solved that one.

To be honest I think putting this into lua would be alot of work for a feature that not very many people care about.

How many is a lot?

Silentwings wrote:To be honest I think putting this into lua would be alot of work for a feature that not very many people care about.