Corporal Shine? But seriously... Upon coming back to play Empires during the holidays, I was first pleased to see people still play it but second saw that a few things stand out (big and small): 1. Lack of AI commander. When no one wants to command or the commander stinks, all you want is someone/something reasonable at the helm to give you a fighting chance. 2. No ability for the commander to communicate his overall plan of attack. Veterans generally know what it is according to the map but noobs dont know what to do without specific orders. The ability to mark up a map with arrows and labels and stuff would be great. 3. The infantry key map should show as part of the loading screen. 4. The infantry upgrade drop down should default to class specific. 5. You should be able to see what's in a research branch without having to research it, the tooltip helps but only shows 1 level deep. 6. Server configurable option to prevent team switching - should be based on steam id so it's persistent. 7. Player persistence with the match (re-join and you have the same upgrades, etc).
1 is non-trivial and highly unlikely to be implemented in even a semi-satisfying way (its mainly the building placement stuff, automating research shouldnt be that hard) 2, 3 and 4 are decent/realistic suggestions i can fully support.
A tactic screen 30 seconds before game starts would be great. 30 seconds obligatory tactical screen that only commander can edit
AI commanders are a bit of a pipe dream I think. That'd have to be constructed from the ground up, and while it doesn't seem like too much work compared to field unit, it'd still take a lot of effort. Then again, I know exactly 0 things about how AI code works. From a mapping perspective, it'd add more work for a mapper as they'd have to designate nodes for structure locations - where to put a barracks, VF, radar, and so on. In the end, I wish they were a thing anyways. It would be absolutely fantastic to somehow make better use of the loading screen than just showing a progress bar. Sadly, IIRC the engine doesn't allow us to do that. Loading screens were one of the unfortunate casualties of a Source update we underwent years ago. All skills should show up on a single screen, with some sort of divider put up to separate general and class specific ones.
well yes you could have preplaced point entities spawn the buildings, that sure be an option and probably not all that hard either. but that also requires you to put them on all the maps or you wont have it available on this one custom (you dont have the vmf of) where noone wants to comm. also concerning the loading screen tips, what a pitty
Presuming Source uses a nav mesh, you decompose that into closed 2d poly lines and find the location of the constrained rectangle to find building placement. No need for manual pre placement.
What about buildables though? Bridges, barriers and so forth... I'm thinking slaughtered here and plunge...
Then you would accept the limitations of an Ai commander. I'd rather that then have them automatically build everything.
@duke Could it be described as commander "autopilot"? Since it would place buildings, perform research, and possibly give targets... But it wouldn't have any understanding of strategy, and would need to be aware of dangers to the command vehicle. Otherwise I can forsee an early APC rush just ending the round.
Yeah it definitely wouldn't cover everything and would be quite dumb in some respects. Research would be based on a random choice of path so people don't pre-empt it, and have the ability to react to observed technology. For example, if an enemy tank uses tech X against the ai's team, he researches counteracting tech Y.
This is a thing. Like, a legit thing. It's about halfway done but was abandoned when Beerdude left. It's still there though...
alot of these things like the tactical menu and loading screens are about half done but for some reason have been put on the side burner until the entire gui has been converted to html. couldnt say why other than that they still have some bugs
I know in ns2 the research was somewhat automated by default, I think this might help new players quite a lot honestly. Sure there's all sorts of things that a commander could research to more effectively win, but there's some default research that could work just fine. Or even an idea if you want it to be a tad random. Like pick a tree, grab armor->engine->weapons->meds->heavies. Personally I feel research is one of the biggest hurdles for newer comms, because the rest of the team relies so much on winning from it. The rest of the team can't help carry that new commander if they don't have the tools to do so, and not having some basic things so late in the game is just frustrating which makes players even less likely to help new comms.
Honestly with the current tree balance this would work like 80% of the time, people might not even notice that it's automated. But mechanical would be the bitch here as there's no weapon, to reduce the coding difficulty I would probably take chassis out of mechanical and give mechanical ranged cannon.
There wouldn't be much coding difficulty. Just avoid mech-eng. And surely the optimal research path is armour/engine -> chassis -> weapons? Because what is the point of spending time researching weapons you just can't use at the moment.... Having a 2 slot cannon When nothing can use it is a waste of research...
you can have a prebaked navmesh, but what about already built buildings, player deployables, tanks, and players? on top of that comm can only place buildings in proximity to players, and you really need forward bases. comm also needs to rebase on certain maps. yeah, no, its not impossible, but its not so trivial either and will require a lot of time and effort (better invested in porting to a new engine scnr) - especially not in a satisfying way where it doesnt feel completely random. also all that aside, i wonder if a comm ai wouldnt make comm obsolete as people would use it as excuse to not comm. sure its a decision not to, but if it doesnt give good results, the game might suffer. a lot of empires flavor comes from the teamwork part - and not only teamwork as 2 or 3 players, but as a whole team.
Any engineer buildables and carcasses in the way get recycled, any friendlies in the way get a move order, any enemies in the way get an attack order. Then, once clear of enemies in a certain radius, drop building. Implement some sort of way for the AI to keep track of what buildings are where. Also a proximity check or some other way of ensuring the building is actually placed. It sounds possible to my uneducated head, but again, that's a lot of effort, probably not comparable to an engine port, but a lot of effort nonetheless. And while AI has the potential to be outright superior to any living commander, the level of sophistication going into such a program is way beyond our scope. There are efforts at making an AI that can stand up to StarCraft progamers, but that is still early in development and humans beat the computer handily. Whatever we would end up with would be basic and limited in comparison to what the Xyas and Lawliets of this world can do.
