Comments - Forboding_Angel

You left before I had a chance to reply and/or help in the lobby.

Ikinz alerted me about 4 minutes after you left. Your issue is simple. The lobby was just hanging up on grabbing a dependency. It's an easy thing to fix and wouldn't ever happen again. I am not one of the lobby developers, but ikinz is.

He could have helped you out if you had stuck around.

He said this to me after you left:
ikinz | [Evo]Forboding_Angel: this guy just made me realize how confusing it must be to try to play evo for the first time if you're not familiar with spring

At which point I explained what the problem was (it's a lobby issue, not a game issue).

To directly answer your question, the lobby IS an installer. It installs maps, game, and engine for you automatically.

If you log in again and say [Evo]Forboding_Angel in the chat, I will get notified. I can solve your issue in 20 seconds (by making the lobby grab the dependency manually) :-)

Can you please post in the forums? This is nowhere near enough information to go on.

Forums.evolutionrts.info

50 minutes? The file that is downloaded from desura for evo is less than 1mb, so I have no idea what you would have spent 50 minutes downloading.

What browser were you using for weblobby? If internet explorer you will need the Google Chrome Frame plugin ( Google.com ) installed (weblobby prompts you to install GCF if you're on IE).

Other things to consider: You need to have java installed, and you can get the latest version here: Java.com (Chrome users need to install 32bit java due to the fact that chrome is not 64bit and does not support 64bit java)

WebLobby uses a java applet for the lobby and downloads and such, so when you get the prompt that java wants to run on this site, you of course need to allow it.

The best browsers to use for weblobby are Chrome or Firefox, but it will work in anything except Internet Explorer (However, it will work in internet explorer if you have the google chrome frame plugin installed).

I still have no idea what you could have possibly spent 50 minutes downloading... Whatever it was, it wasn't Evolution RTS.

Also, just because it really annoys me...

Y U NO USE FORUMS? Forums.evolutionrts.info

In firefox or chrome, just go to Weblobby.evolutionrts.info

:-)

Yes, you can. That said, the engine and changes you made to it must remain under the GPL.

Springrts.com

Thanks! =D You should enter!

Linux is supported (not via Desura), albeit the support is not up to the standard that I would like, but it works, and it works pretty well. That said, Desura Linux support should be coming within the month (if the new engine version is released within that time frame).

Played through the game in story mode tonight, ManMode style and recorded it in 1080p. I didn't have my mic turned on, sadly, so you can't hear me cussing and my exclamations of "Oh **** me!", but you can tell pretty easily when I'm scared as **** by how the camera shakes.

You can see the post (With the link to the video), here: Plus.google.com

3 Minutes in and I got the **** scared out of me. I'm a pretty manly man when it comes to playing games like this. But holy crap le mini heart attack.

Love the implementation of story mode. This is great!

Forgot to mention that as of Lobby version 4.0, hosting your own games locally (offline/online) should be a possibility. I need to stress that in order for anyone to be able to play with you, you will need to have your ports forwarded. There is a nat transversal ability, but it will not always be 100% effective with every router out there, etc etc etc.

But even when this ability is present, the dedicated hosts aren't going anywhere.

Singleplayer Missions are coming, but to be honest, they take a while to make, and test for bugs, etc.

They are also somewhat difficult to maintain, but I have some ideas on that. You can of course play skirmish games by yourself. Just log on, join a server, add a bot and hit start, but I assume you are mainly referring to singleplayer missions.

Coming Soon (tm) :-)

Thanks :-) Yeah the bots can be a little braindead sometimes but they generally do fairly ok =D

1. Download and install Desura
2. Click "Play Evolution RTS"
3. Create a username on the server

That is it. Desura will take care of updating maps and the engine for you (so that you don't de-sync with other users when something gets updated). It will take care of filtering battle info so that you only see relevant information. It sets all of your graphics settings for you AUTOMATICALLY.

And, in general, it takes care of everything for you. Could I do it without Desura? No. Because I have no way of informing your version that it is outdated, and the server doesn't care, so it will happily allow you to start a game with the wrong version of the engine, causing desyncs and player irritation (mostly aimed at you for being the "stupid noob").

This isn't some game company here, this is one guy. I don't have anything nice to say, so I'll just stop at this juncture, but remember that this game is free. I have poured over 4 years of my life into creating this game. The least you could do is not be a jerk when you're complaining (In other words, complaining is fine, Just don't be a jerk about it!).

And after all that, you will be sorely disappointed when you try to play a game and get kicked out of the host because you have the wrong engine version. Evolution RTS doesn't necessarily use the latest and greatest engine version all the time because the engine devs sometimes accidentally break crucial parts, so in order to spare users form that discomfort, we use an older version of the engine until the new version is fixed.

All this coming from the guy who tried to convince me that the Spring Engine (which this game is built upon) is better than the engine Evolution RTS uses.

Allow me to speak for all indie devs when I say, GTFO! *******.

Are you finished? Oh, then allow me to rebut.

It's a free game, you self-entitled twat!

You may know how a computer works, but you obviously have no idea how google works.

There is a way to install the game without using Desura, you just didn't bother looking. Feel free to head over to springrts.com and download the barebones engine, which, is just an engine. There is no game content included.

Then head over to the packages repository to download the game content.

Ok that's all fine and good, you have the engine and the game content, but oh damn, no maps.

So head over to springfiles and download all the Evolution RTS maps.

Yay! I now have the game, engine, and the maps/ Lets fire up the lobby!

WTF IS ALL THIS?!?!? (You get swamped with popups asking you to do this or that, telling you to do something or another, when starting the engine lobby)

You finally make it into the lobby. Where are all the Evo games?!?!!? (Because the engine lobby shows every available game that uses the engine, so you'll have to wade through a hundred games.

After you find an open server in the lobby, you wait around, people join, game starts.

WTF? Why is my screen resolution at 640x480??? Why does this game look like crap? It looks nothing like what is in the videos!!! (You have to set all the graphics settings yourself. Resolution, and 5 pages worth of rendering information, half of which you won't know anything about)

After all this, if you didn't just delete everything and say "Screw this!", I would be very surprised.

This "bloatware" as you call it allows me the game dev to bundle everything up for you in a very nice neat little package. You have to do 3 things to play.

Sure, got $100? :-)

Eventually, and singleplayer missions are coming, but at the moment the lobby does not have the capability for you to host your own games (and when it does get the ability, players will need to forward their ports).

All in good time. Supposedly next engine version will allow for static linux builds, so evo on linux desura will actually happen.

Your computer has issues with Desura? If your computer has issues with Desura, it will most certainly have issues with the game, don't you think?

Short answer, you can't. You can go over to the spring site at Springrts.com and download the engine and do everything manually, but what you get when doing that is far below subpar.

That can only be accomplished with a static build of the engine due to the fact that there are so many linux distributions.

That said, lucky for you JK has been working on static builds and informed me about a week ago that in the next version of the engine, supposedly a static build will be available for linux.

This is not normal spring. This is a standalone install (think left4dead as opposed to halflife and CSS).

You don't have to do anything. It's all set up for you form the getgo. Just log in, and play.

For the sake of curiosity, care to expand upon your comment?

Most likely. IN the settings there is a checkbox for "ATI Hacks" which basically applies workarounds for some of ATI's driver shortfalls.

It should work fairly well, but you might have some trouble with higher unit counts. The saving grace is that in evo unit life is generally pretty short so overall units on the field generally doesn't stay super high for long.

You'll probably need to put most of the settings on low and work up from there.

In the next version of the lobby there will be settings presets for people with super low hardware. Unfortunately new lobby version is taking it's sweet time on landing -_-

If you have issues, post on the forums ( Forums.evolutionrts.info ) and we'll get you sorted out :-)

It states "Multiplayer & Singleplayer" because it can be played in multiplayer and singleplayer. Singleplayer is not synonymous with "offline", and nothing guarantees that you can play a game while offline, nor have I stated as such anywhere.

If you were to click "Cancel" on the login screen you would notice that you are presented with the lobby as per normal, except there is nothing in the battle list.

If you were to bother to read back a little further on newsposts, you would realize that this lobby is pretty new. It also doesn't have the ability to launch singleplayer missions yet.

Singleplayer is very much available, but at the moment you need to be online to use it, as currently there is no mechanism in place to facilitate you hosting your own game yet. From what I hear, in the next version of the lobby, that has been added.

Atm, log in, Join an empty game in the list, click "Add Bot", click start. You will now be playing a singleplayer skirmish vs a bot.

I doubt there is an issue with having to register, considering that all that is required is a name and a password. That is not much to ask. You do have internet capability, so that obviously isn't the issue.

You would have answered your own questions and statements by simply logging in., or maybe reading the newsposts, the development blog, or perhaps the wiki: Wiki.evolutionrts.info

Suffice it to say, this version of the lobby doesn't have that capability yet. It's not as though, I or anyone else working on this project or any other on this engine are actually making any money from it. We work on it in our free time. You are, however, welcome to lend your skills! I could always use talented help! :-)

In this case, it builds destroyer class units. Basically, giant stompy stompy of dewm.

It's from the map "Rocky Glacier".

No, it doesn't increase their productivity, but it does provide more power to an area so you can build higher tech stuff there. In this case, I had build that much power because I had a giant army that was draining my energy every time I got in a fight.

So I went with obvious solution #5, building craploads of power and storage :-)

There is no "Offline" mode. Not really anyway (yet). The way you start a singleplayer game is to join a battle on the server, add a bot, hit start.

There are other ways to make it happen, such as starting via sandboxing but even then the AI wouldn't show up (Sandboxing is used for dev testing). Moreover, unfortunately due to the unpredictable nature of Shard (IE it's broken every other engine release and it's maintainer doesn't bother to fix it), I can't include it with the game, so the only SP atm is Survival Mode.

The "real" sp experience will mostly be in the form of the campaign.

You should have a look at the dev stream on G+. I post small dev updates there that aren't worthy of the fanfare (not to mention effort and time consuming process) of posting here and on the Evolution RTS website.

Check it out here: Gplus.to

At the moment, Never is looking to be about the most promising. As mentioned on the comments on the main page, there has been no shortage of attempts:

Springrts.com
Springrts.com

Youtube.com

They are on youtube first, then I upload them here.

As you can see:

Springrts.com
Springrts.com

There has been no shortage of attempts.

This game does not deserve such a low rating. It's cute and entertaining. Very well worth the price of admission.

Even so it's still a bit of a nightmare due to the way the engine is set up. I have tried in vain to use cde and koshi tried using erlang to get a dep free build of the engine (and by dep free, I mean packing it all in the executable).

Here is my beef. All I care about is supporting ubuntu and ubuntu derivatives. Unfortunately, the engine devs do not see it that way and basically want to support everything debian (and other distros as well).

For example if the following distros were supported I'd be happy:
Ubuntu
Lubuntu
Kubuntu
Xubuntu
Linux Mint (my favorite)

The problem is, it isn't that easy, and tbh I'm kinda burnt out on it.