Spring RTS Engine

This might sound alittle silly if not stupid to those in the code department, but although ive heard of such a thing before is it possible that in team games an update be put through not a utility but the actual spring mod XTA or something that allows you to hit a shortcut on your keyboard enabling you to see the cursors of your allies? if you think about it, this would be a major help you could better coordinate attacks and watch what everyone was up to or looking at within your team to warn them of stuff they were missing. It might seem alittle bit weird, but doesnt anyone think that it would be a good idea?

you can already draw on the map for your allies to see, so this is kind of not useful.

You can see what they have drawn but if you need to know where their view is at at some point in time or what they are messing around with, it could become alot more useful than drawing plans on the screen.

others have said it might affect privacy of their style of play, but if it was optional to a host, or not included in replays, or even you could choose who to share your cursor with it could be purely between clan members

Would help for watching replays - see where each person has their cursor so you can see what they're doing through the game while watching, instead of having to hold shift and wait until a new order is assigned to see whats going on.

wasn't there a groupai for this??? i could sworn there was 3-4 versions back... yes its all coming back to me... it was with NTAI i think. not sure if it works now though...

If it did work before then it should have possibly been more integrated, i saw something about it with Ntai but it would mean not everyone could do it and use it to communik with their allies, i just figure that clanwise if you think about it, it could get rid of those points where your ally assumes your doing something somewhere but instead your up to something completely different and before you know it an assumption between allies causes a tactical loss that could affect the outcome, ok that didnt come out to well but hopefully somebody gets me

The cursor position wouldn't be that useful since it'd move too quickly to be kept up to date and may just end up confusing but I think displaying their camera views would be useful.

This would require changes to the netcode I think. Dunno if cursor positions are transmitted. I doubt that it'd be of any use though.

sure there was a ntai tool or some group ai that used to be able to do this, myg barto and i used it now and again. it was fascinating to watch how other play and the speed of other and there train of thought during game play. personally via replays or specking it has the potential to be a vital way of studying other players micro.

I don't think it'd be major changes though, just tack a set of coordinates onto each update. Doesn't even need to be updated faster than, say, once per second.

while i think this would be awsome..

there is a sleight problem.
the curser exists within 2 dimensonal space.. which are different depending on where your camera is...

to show other people your curser it would have to be a 3dimensional thing...

the only way i can think of it as possible is... if you draw a line between the allies camera position (x,y,z) and their mouse pointer, this would put the pointer somewhere on the ground, problems include hills. as the mouse could be in more then 1 place at 1 time. aswell as if their pointer is over the sky.

dunno if that makes any sense. but yeah =]
D.R

On a similar note- allied buildqueues, or at least the little green footprints when you hold shift, should be shown.

That's easy, just project the cursor position on the nearest surface.

yay happy feedback, if even the cursor vote fails, there should be the choice to share soemthing more of your activity perhaps, glad to see so much response :)

What we need is the allies viewport rectangle shown in their color on your minimap, like what was implemented in the demo recorder.

id be happy with anything like this, im not strictly after the cursor, most mods are best as team games so making it mor eteam active, and seeing the other humans stuff just make sit more cool and funner and such if not for technical reasons :p

i dont think thats so useful

if the cursor is on the minimap, then the cursor and the camera are in different locations

if i issue orders through groups and keyboard you cant really tell what am i paying attention to

if i do all that at high speed you won't see my cursor anyway


i think drawing+chat is more useful than following a cursor, if you want to improve communication.... maybe adding special sound signals, like "i'm ready to attack" or "help"....

could something like ~ + 5 + click somewhere -> add a point labeled "need backup here!" or "I'm ready to attack!" and a new, special sound be feasible?

this would surely laaag

AF made a groupai for this back in the day. Was cool, but it shouldnt be forced.