Spring RTS Engine

This is a request for a cannon, for private games between friends and for messing around. Since i don't have any experience in TA unit making, but always dreamed of such a weapon since the dawn of the game, im asking here. This idea may seem stupid, even retarded to certain people, but if it does, you didnt read the first line i wrote...

The Apocalyptica

A new model is not required, but if you're a nice human you are welcome to create a new from scratch in other case, a plain ol' Big Bertha should do.

The weapon itself, should be a one-shot mechanism. No big flashy gattlin' gun or such, exactly like original Bertha. Although the reload time should be enourmous, and im talking about a 20 - 30 min reload time.

And now all you balance freaks go nutz. The fired shell should have the power equivalent of 10 commanders exploding on same time. In other words, a explosion 10 times the size of one comm death. Thats the reason for the name.

Other than that, the range should be unlimited. For other reasons, a more rapid fire version should be made too.


Thats it. If its a bad reply, then dont reply at all, thx!
(If this aint allowed here, please remove it)

I'm actually not sure if its possible to create an explosion larger than the commander boom.

At least, not graphically, which is what I'm sure you'd want.

Other than that, its a pretty straightforward unit edit - just changing values in the weapon .tdf.

If nobody else speaks up, I'll go put a modified bertha.ufo together.

go open up AA or XTA or whichever one you want to mod, then go find the entries for the Big Bertha and Intimidator cannons ([ARM_BERTHACANNON] and [CORE_INTIMIDATOR]). Change the range ("range") to over 40,000 if you want, change the damage (the different values under the [DAMAGE] category) to as high as you want, you'll probably need to double the weapon velocity ("weaponvelocity"), if you want to make it fire faster, make the reload time smaller ("reloadtime"), to make the boom wider, increase the AoE ("areaofeffect").

Make sure to save the weapons.tdf as another file so that you don't ruin your copy of XTA or AA or whatever you are using, for when you want to play a game with someone else.

FYI, The Vulcan uses the ID "[ARMVULC_WEAPON]" and the Buzzsaw uses "[CORBUZZ_WEAPON]"

Unfortunately mutator style play doesn't work in the current spring. So if this were to be done it would have to be included in a mod which would mean for every special unit added we would need a whole new mod download.

Ok, i got it to work. My cannon now fires a shell that blows up the WHOLE Flooded Desert so there is only black sea left. the problem is, that the shell that is fired, is just one big blob of light (like the small orange shell has been stretched out), what setting causes this?

Also, what causes the HUGE cloud? :S
My GFX card almost burned down...

Sweet... I think those tags are in the weapons.tdf... let me check... http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Units:Weapons ... well not very specific, but the link to http://www.tadesigners.com/guides/Maestro/maeweap0.htm looks promissing.

In most large explosions there is a large cloud left behind, mostly debris thrown into the air, dust , sand etc

Otherwise it's just unrealistic...

You might consider using a weapon based on a model rather than a plasma projectile and having ballistic trajectory or raven type missiles with a much higher range/yield, raven type missiles should make for some unusual play at those yields, do send us a screenshot if you use them instead of the bertha weapon.

Thats a very interesting idea, and ill look into it

But first. I have now made several very amusing units, that i would like to try out in Multiplayer. Unfortunately, the way i currently do it does not seem to work correctly. I sent the files i had changed to a friend, and told him where to put them. When he joined me (And other way around) we got bad synch, and can't launch. If we change mod, it works, so it IS the changes i have made that causes this.

The only way is apparently to make a whole new mod??? The problem is though, that my units are based on AA1.44, so how should i do this? Other than that, i have no idea how to make a new mod at all.

Since doing a copy of AA1.44, and changing the name does not work, it would be greatly appreciated if anyone would do a ready to play copy of AA1.44, but with the name AA1.44 Chaos, for me. Then i could use that mod as a base, in which i could freely change settings, and release when ready. That is if this is at all possible!

But ofcourse, if anyone has a easier way to make your custom unit settings work in Multiplayer, please tell me!

you can just drop a .ufo into the main spring folder of all the players, and then you should be fine.

Otherwise, you have to zip up an entirely new mod and send them that. I think there's a way to have a different varient version of AA1.44, but I'm not sure how to do that.

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Mod_specification For making new mods appear in multiplayer

What you want to do is to grab 7-zip and unzip one of the AA modification files, as in the -s, -f, or -b modifications (not the base one). Then, edit the modinfo.tdf file, following the instructions in the wiki link. Add your new unit into the right place in the folders you unzipped, then zip the whole lot up again. When you start the client now, there should be a new mod in the mods list.

AA uses nonstandard menus... to add a unit to a menu, don't use a download folder (as is probably described anywhere you look), but rather modify the sidedata file in the .... ..... .... it's a folder. A folder in the archive. It's there, trust me.