Spring RTS Engine

About this Warzone 2100 thread:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3224
I was looking at some buildings and i thought about this possibility:
Is it possible for a factory to build more than one unit at the same time?

I was looking at the building in the center of that image and i imagined it building 4 units at the same time, one in each side.
That king of factories would be very nice!

how would the buildmenu's work?

I see two ways:

- Someone go code a proper support for fused units! You would build one factory, and it would come by default with another factory fused to it. They would look like one building, but each would have its own selection square and its own buildmenu, and its own buildpad. Health would be somehow shared, as the killing the "main" buildings would also kill the "attached" building. It would be as simple as a couple FBI tag:
FuseUnit1type=ArmLab;//UnitName of the unit to attach
FuseUnit1piece=bigpad;//PieceName where to attach it to
You'd have to synchronise the buildtime of the fused units, too. Or let the fused one appear just when the bearer is done built.


- Or just let Spring use multiple buildpad: When Spring see that QueryBuildInfo(piecenum) doesn't return the same pad, it would understand that it is a multipad unit. The buildmenu would work like that: You order 50 units to be built, Spring build one on pad1, another on pad2, and when the one on pad1 is free again, it builds a third on pad1, etc... Thought I'm not sure it could really work, since there are still a few problem, like, not being able to tell which nano-emitter goes with wich pad, or not closing pad independantly when done building.

i think it would work fo, for example, double vehic factory. however a kbot/vehic factory combo would be weird, how would it know which pad builds which units?

pads 1,2,3,4 as defiend byt he mdoeller.

If pad 1 is beign sued, use pad 2, if pad 2 and 1 are used, use pad 3, etc.

Or the engien could ask the cob script for which piece is to be used as a build pad, and if the script returns 0 or nothign then that means the ordr should beq ueued cus there're no available pads.

This would be a godsend for mods.


Imagine an Infantry Boot Camp factory that would crank out troopers in batches of 5 or however many.

zwzsg wrote:Someone go code a proper support for fused units!

I really wish this would be done. Then I could just have the Leman Russ chassis be pumped out from a factory, and then have the player choose what turret and side weapons it has. That would make life far easier and the factory build menu's far smaller...

Dragon45 wrote:This would be a godsend for mods.


Imagine an Infantry Boot Camp factory that would crank out troopers in batches of 5 or however many.

Or an aircraft carrier that had ten or so building pads that built aircraft. Then make it move, like zwzsg did

we still need multiple air repair pads fixed so that they can use more than one pad.......

Terrible Suggestion, but has to be said.
Or, you could upgrade an existing factory to have an extra build pad. The factory would upgrade itself rather than a construction unit. (a la Starcraft.)

Min3mat wrote:how would the buildmenu's work?

Could be:
#1 - Each unit you would assing for building would get built 4 times.
#2 - For each assigned order for the build queue, it would, in order, fill up the building slots.
Or something.

I think fuseunit is the best option. Plus imagine how cool it would be to have base structures that build onto themselfs, or have large structures that you could shoot the guns off of. Fused units is one of the big deal things that could add tonnes and tonnes of options and possibilites to this game once a beefier scripting system is in place.

For buildmenus, I'd simply have fused construction buildings be fully seperate units attached to the child. So let's say we have some sort of mega-land-cralwer unit that creates crawling bombs and aircraft -well it just has two factories stuck to it - one is the land factory, one is the air factory.

More complicated things require that the (a) construction buttons can launch script, and (b) script can launch construction jobs. Plus, they have to be able to pass on cancel orders and the like. Very tricky.

Writing a "batch" system for multiple pads all slaved to a single construction facility would be tricky. Far simpler would be to have a single unit that, on completion, splits into multiple units. Wouldn't work for aircraft carriers, but would work fine for "barracks" that make units in batches.

World Devastators... it could even build more turbos etc onto itself as it killed mroe stuff...


damn.