Spring RTS Engine

there are many suggestions floating around the place in the battleroom etc.. i just wanted to kind of summerise them here and for any1 to add any of ther own.

gaia player (in monthly topic rotation)
i really like this 1 actually. seems that it would be fairly easy to impliment from what ive heard.. just basic things that would make terrain more realistic.. things like waterfalls would be possible errupting volcanoes clouds rabbits.. mutant killer alien spacship.. =] i assume that the map makers would have to design and ai them all. but after sum1 programs clouds and the like it could be shared with many players...

as i see it there would be 3 types
active innactive and terrain

active things like aliens with guns sandworms etc (extra enamy units that can be destroyed)

innactive weapons that are in disrepair.. like huge cannons etc that can be resurected

terrain things that dont interact with players like birds clouds and waterfalls

(volcano would be classed as active but would have to have 1,000,000,000 or similar insane amount of life.)

XTA commander leaves behind corpse
uhh ive already posted this twice in the last half hour but just again... i kinda seeing alot of comm bombing hatred after some games so i think this solves it as comm bombing gives your opponent an extra comm. and if your rushed the comm can be reborn

i think thats about it on my "I WANT" list =] anyone else have one or want to comment?

new gui request

in the mythical new gui could we have an assist/repair button on the con vehicles.. it would be similar to the guard button except the unit will prioritise healing the unit it is guarding instead of what its building

Well, i dont like the commander corpse thing in AA and wouldnt really want it in XTA (where the commander is MUCH more fragile compared to AA).

Btw: would the commander be exploitable in low-ressource teammatches?
SD one commander, reclaim the xk metal and rush the enemy?

Spring has a GAIA team already, team number 17 I think, but it isnt the best solution. Argh has said somethign that fits as prefect way of doing GAIA, but I havent got a link to it and I dont remember specifics.

Thus for all intensive purposes we already have environmental GAIA, but you cant really use it without using a lua mission script to place the units. Making the map loader check if a featurename is a feature or a unitname and if so adding it to the GAIA would be a simple enough change to make though.

just because AF needs to be mocked on a regular basis

AF wrote:intensive purposes

would mean something along the lines of "Goals to Strengthen"

You mean "Intents and Purposes"...

oh, and you don't need to SD the com, you can just reclaim him, and you better off just setting the second commander to asist build the first commanders base if you are trying to go for a quick start as the commander would be worth more resources then you could feasably store at the beginning of the game... people always turn me down when I suggest it as a strategy though...

Please, if you mock me I have a big red button here and I'll press it.

Dont mock me unless I've said something terrible to some innocent poor soul thats truly distatseful, such as taking a n00b in a thread and pummeling them into a pulp with words for no reason, or insulting someone based on their cultural background for no reason whatsoever, or joining a thread and randomyl insulting for no reason.

Dont mock people for the sake of it.

Oh, and you don't need to SelfDestruct the com, you can just reclaim him, and you're better off just setting the second commander to assist build the first commanders base if you're trying to go for a quick start, as the commander would be worth more resources than you could feasably store at the beginning of the game... People always turn me down when I suggest it as a strategy though...

I tried to make a constructive post, giving what I knew and referring to what others have said and some other stuff, and I get the following post as someone who has picked apart my post and found a grammar error for the purposes of trying to mock me? Dont be so stupid, it's that sort of stuff that'll drive away all the precious developers there are, and where will you all be then with your abandonware RTS engine?

I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to be mean about it.

I use the termology "for all intensive purposes" all the time as well.

AF: Have a bit of a sense of humor man. It's not like he's calling your mom names. You spell terrible all the time, don't be shocked that people have made a running joke out of it.

well if it's so simple, why don't program it?

Because it's part of the forbidden knowledge.
As you know, it's says in the prophecy that "He who spawns a bot with no commander, shall unleash the eternal gloom of sorrow upon the community."

But, disregarding that, I'd really really like to see a gaia side, or equivalent. At the very least, some static features on maps like in good ol TA (ruined buildings and what not).

hmm, if you spawn NTAI with a con kbot instead of a commander it still works...

ok ive decided i shall make a map with a gaia, however long it takes i shall learn and make it... (by the time its done it probably wont be the first)

i assume that the Gaia will have to have an AI written for them and stuff but how would i go about getting the Gaia to spawn at the beginning of the game?, with the feature map?

First off you'd need a way fo assigning units to the gaia to begin with, sicne the map would spawn everythign as a feature and not a unit you'd end up buggered there.

The second option would be a lua mission where you assign an AI to the gaia team and give the gaia team starting units.

Or you could set an AI to the gaia team and force the AI to spawn virtual units (using the DrawUnit() interface but they wouldnt be animated, and they'd be totally still unless moved by the AI in which case they'd float like ghosts), unless you typed .cheat and the AI used the cheat itnerface to spawn th GAIA units. Or if the GAIA AI had been assigned the GAIA team and was usign a specially made GAIA race in that mod.

The only AI that could be forced to act as a GAIA AI currently is NTAI XE, which si done by simply not building attack units, or not adding them to attackers.txt and scouters.txt. An Ai with a buildtree with an empty scouters and attackers.txt would build but never attack or scout unless attacked. It would fire special weapons such as nuke silos though, and it would autofire at objects in firing range.

well ok ive just learnt how to create maps (working out mistakes atm)

gaia as i see it could be classified up as IMO

interactive - stationary (volcanoes sand traps)
interactive - mobile (aliens moving tiles etc)
non iteractive - stationary (features)
non interactive - mobile (birds rabits animals in general)

all of these involve unit creation which is my next step

after that (and when im less nieve about the whole matter) i guess the NTAI is the next step

there is a way to link models to the map (as features) i guess the next problem is linking an AI to these features.. which i need to look into more.