Spring RTS Engine

There was a guy that posted about adding a third resource, and that he was tempted to do it.

My question is... Can you do it? Pretty please?

I would absolutly LOVE to see more resources feasable... I'm not sure how much work that is for the game engine though... I have a sickening supicion that it's probably pretty hardcoded for the dual resource model.

I'd like to have a personnel resource, it would be very slow to reproduce from like things like training centres and such, but the more you have, the faster it would go up, personnel "storage" would be handled by barracks.

ofcourse OTA type mods would not have this.

Fully mod-customizable resources would be the ideal:
-isMapped: does this resource have an associated map (i.e. metal map for metal)
-isWind: does this resource have an associated map-defined level for land generation (i.e. wind speed)
-isTide: does this resource have an associated map-defined level for water generation (i.e. tidal strength)
-BarColor: color of the resource bar at top
-Name: durr

you forgot -isNotTiberium

what could the extra resource actaully be used for (assuming it's in infinite supply ala TA)?

i love the idea of having windy and fast flowing parts defined on the map itself...the only problem is the game could potentially become very complicated to play

I wonder if it may be sensible to make the ressource model completely abstract.

You could always map ressource[0] to energy and ressource[1] to metal per default, but there should be no reason why a unit shouldnt cost 5 ressource[2] and 500 ressource[3], while a shot with weapon a cost 1 ressorce[4], for example.

Imho, those flags are the wrong way to handle it. The metal map, the geotherm spots, etc. are already good. I think the "isWind" and "isTidal" would be better handled by the buildings that use them. For example, you could have a wind-based-plasma-generator. So the maps remain the same (metalmaps, geotherms, etc.) but the buildings change. What you'd need would be new unit tags to represent wind-based generation of non-energy resources, mexx-based of non-metal resources, etc. You can already do geothermal-based generation of metal.

For the resources themselves, I'd also want "instantaneous" resources - that is, resources that are constant, value defined by a constant value for units - such as supply. So you have infantry is -1 supply, and farms are +10 supply each. With multiple resources, you could do complicated unit limits - for example, air units could have a seperate "supply" concept from land units.

And simply relying on a status bar isn't ideal - you'd want to have different bar styles for each resource - some invisible, some numerical, some status bars. Unimportant tertiary resources (like secondary supply values) could be tiny compared to the main materials.

Ok, a completely abstract resource definition.

lets say ResourceTypes.tdf

[RESOURCE1]
{
name=energy;
sources=tidal,geo,wind,native;
stored=1;
instant=0;
}

where stored=0; means it has a physical on map representation, e.g. wood in populous or crates of resources, rather than vanishing into a storage bar at the top. And native means generates, aka a solar collector would be native.

Hence here the tags for resource usage and cost and production would be in the form say xxcost where they'd all be the same only we'd prefix them with the resource name e.g. energycost metalcost moneycost manacost powercost tiberiumcost etc.

instant=0; would give OTA style gradual use, otherwise instant=1; would give starcraft style resource use where the resources needed to build are deducted as soon as construction starts rather than gradually being used as production occurs like in TA.

And in time we can add harvest to the source list. This would give us a fully abstract resource implementation capable of emulating a huge number of resource types from around 90% of all RTS types.

Another suggested improvement would be a resource interval tag defining at what interval resources are added with a default of 16 which is what's currently used. This could allow CC Generals style resource drop buildings

I've always figured this would eventually come, if the devs really want to make Spring more than just OTA mods.

This idea would allow for gameplay like Age of Empires has.. would be awesome! Can some dev, (AF?) tell how difficult this actually is?

That would be cool. I was planning to implement supply limits by giving all units negative storage and supply buildings positive storage with everything costing some of that stored ressource so you cannot build if your ressources are negative.

EDIT: Another idea, how about allowing the faction definitions to hide certain ressources from a player of that faction? So e.g. one side could have Waaagh energy while the oher has to mine crystals instead?

how about unit specific/individual resources pools? IE having a resource that is only accessible to the unit, ala mana in TAK used for special attacks...

This could be used for AoE population limits if combined with unit limits as smoth originally intended to implement but decided not to.

It would take some work btu I could do it given a few weeks if I had nothgin else todo.

Sadly I have NTai, 3 websites and AFLobby to think of.

Above and beyond this, the ability to define a unit to have its own resource supply stockpile, and define a radius within which other units draw from its supply stockpile and outside which its supply stockpile is unavailable, and define a way to represent this on-map, would be sex as well.

Off the top of my head two applications for this would be supply lines in real-world mods (units require "supply" [a third resource, or one of the two, irrelevent here] to move/fire, and must get it from "supply trucks" which slowly run out of supply), and emulating the Zerg and Protoss from Starcraft.

If hth ever got up then the third resource could be peasants/people/human resources, or maybe a metal type

Like copper and tin required to make bronze?

It could be amazing!

A 3rd resource?
hmmm... im thinking...rain! only this time its both good and bad!

The more factories/powerplants/etc you make, the more pollution and the more acid rain you get which slowly damages your base/reduces unit speed/kills trees/reduces energy/metal produced or something along those lines. Being nuked would mean getting a lot of acid rain!

However you have a choice of either make:

a factory that "collects and refines" the acid rain to make certain units (slightly) more powerful (e.g. ballistic units more powerful, laser unaffected). This factory would have a small range (about the radius of a shield from AA)

or

a factory that purifies the air and reduces pollution so that your units/economy is unaffected by the rain. This factory would have a larger range (about radius of medium jammer from AA)

More factories would obviously also be needed as pollution increases and advanced factories would yield much better results.

hehe global warming meets TA :D

BoredJoe wrote:A 3rd resource?
hmmm... im thinking...rain! only this time its both good and bad!

The more factories/powerplants/etc you make, the more pollution and the more acid rain you get which slowly damages your base/reduces unit speed/kills trees/reduces energy/metal produced or something along those lines. Being nuked would mean getting a lot of acid rain!

However you have a choice of either make:

a factory that "collects and refines" the acid rain to make certain units (slightly) more powerful (e.g. ballistic units more powerful, laser unaffected). This factory would have a small range (about the radius of a shield from AA)

or

a factory that purifies the air and reduces pollution so that your units/economy is unaffected by the rain. This factory would have a larger range (about radius of medium jammer from AA)

More factories would obviously also be needed as pollution increases and advanced factories would yield much better results.

hehe global warming meets TA :D

uhhh... lay off the drugs

aaaaanyways, an abstarct system with a high limit would be perfect. Of course a system would also have to be implimented to allow the assigning of wind, tidal ect... to seperate resources as well as some additional ways to gather reasources prehaps (*cough UNIT LIMITS *cough*). This would be very nice if properly impliment, but imo there are more important things for the devs to do first unless someone makes a massive patch =P

aaaaanyways, an abstarct system with a high limit would be perfect. Of course a system would also have to be implimented to allow the assigning of wind, tidal ect... to seperate resources as well as some additional ways to gather reasources prehaps (*cough UNIT LIMITS *cough*).

*AF points at a post he made further up the thread, say about a screen upwards..*

AF wrote:*AF points at a post he made further up the thread, say about a screen upwards..*

*Hunter agree with AF and admits that post was a ploy to respond to the drug-induced acidrain post*

"realises he just did it again*

*bangs his head against the wall*

Hunter0000 wrote:

AF wrote:*AF points at a post he made further up the thread, say about a screen upwards..*

*Hunter agree with AF and admits that post was a ploy to respond to the drug-induced acidrain post*

"realises he just did it again*

*bangs his head against the wall*

at least my ideas are original unlike some in this thread