Monthly Topic Rotation: Difference between revisions

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*[http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2820 The #1 item on my wishlist]
*[http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2820 The #1 item on my wishlist]
*[http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4711 northern tactical advantage... fair?]


===Day and Night===
===Day and Night===

Revision as of 19:40, 28 April 2006

"Monthy Topic Rotation" is a term coined by Gnome referring to the fact that people keep coming into the forums and posting messages on the same subject. It seems that as Spring becomes more popular, more new people keep coming up with the same ideas and questions... think of this as the "Is your idea original?" FAQ as opposed to the "real" FAQ.

Now in some situations it's okay to repost on the same topic, if it has been only mentioned before in other people's topics or if you make reference to the fact that it is a known issue you are addressing with new ideas... but that doesn't excuse you from the list. One way or the other, the community might make fun of you for rehashing old topics, expecially when they aren't forgotten so much as people are bored of talking about them.

This has now turned into a sort of game. You can see the current scores here: http://maelstrom.niiil.com/?l=mtr (Note from a visitor: link seems to be down)

The Topics

List of Generic Topics with brief discussion and list of topics posted on these subjects for quick reference:

OTA Style Music

Requests or Suggestions that the engine include music playback, especially music that changes depending on what kind of action is happening in game. Associated with requests for a sound track of any kind or asking for a link to get the orriginal TA Soundtrack in MP3 format.


As a subnote, many of Spring's pre beta members have been working on code to get the music working, while yet others have spent time studying other games and their setups. Current thinking is of a THE SIMS style, where you can specify your own music.

Raise/Lower Terrain

People suggesting or requesting some kind of better control over deformable terrain or some king of terraforming unit. Often associated with people posting pictures of cool effects they have achieved through the use of the current "blow a big hole and then restore to the desired surface" method.

Camera Angles

suggesting changes to current camera angles, popularly related to the inability of the rotatable and FPS cams to go outside the map boundries, making it difficult to see units close to the edges of the map.

Also, there's the problem of the world stopping at a rather steep drop.

The New GUI

Anything related to how bad the current GUI is, suggestions for features that already exists but users do not know about because they are barely documented, or simply threads asking for or about the new GUI.

Multiple transport load sharing via cable hooks

Seriously WTF, this isn't even a good idea, why does this keep coming up?

Mobile factories

Rotatable buildings

Partly, Spring's pathfinding and collision assumes buildings align themselves with the map; no-one's made any detailed claims about how much code this would affect, other than 'lots'.

Even if you stick with 90 degree rotations, there's still figuring out the controls for rotating a building.

Day and Night

Wouldn't it be pretty to see a tank's headlights in the dark? Even prettier would be to have a dynamic sun to go with it. =) Watch the mountain's shadows lengthen...


Fog of War, Line of Sight

Particularly when in 'possession' mode, people unconsciously assume that their unit can see further than it can, typically to how much terrain they can see.

Some have suggested using FPS-style line of sight.

And there's 'building memory', seeing greyed^Wfaded out versions of buildings when the originals aren't in line-of-sight anymore.

Some find being able to see the whole map, but only being able to see units in their line of sight, somewhat disturbing.

FPS mode hud/movement changes

Lots of people don't think the FPS mode implimentation is being all that it can be. They love to make forum topics about it.

Game lobby moderators

A well known issue. People always seem to request it...

Gaia Player

Subject specific threads:

But this request appears in random threads every now and then.

Improved feature reactivity

Bridges that you can acctually walk on, better hit detection, there are lots of improvements that could be made to the way spring units, models, and features react to eachother in the most basic sense. Often they are mentioned in the same topic.

Spherical/Looping/Endless maps

A number of options are available for making the map "go on forever"... and apparently the new new map format includes support for extanding the map behond the playable area of the map (no more ugly edges).

Usually what is being suggested if for maps to just loop, refered to a sphere but more like a "double cylinder" or "Torus"... some people basically think we could just "warp" units to the other side of the map, but issues have been brought up with ranged weapons, line of sight and figuring out where shots are coming from. If you go WAY WAY back you can even see this idea included in an idea for an MMORTS based on the spring engine.