[Idea] Awaken Tower Defence

Okay you know how if you join a server the server keeps the SIM? Well where does it get unit information from? Answer- the player hosting servers client game information. This should mean that if you change your client files and host a server, everyone will join the server and be sent the information for said server.

Again a dedicated server has no player that creates it. It creates itself. Out of nothingness. Nothingness has no methods to push a mod to the server.

Where does this nothingness gets its information? A player starts a dedicated server through the .exe; this server must get unit, ammo, etc... information from somewhere. I'd imagine it must be your PA directory.

Well yeah. But if you changes those values the server won't tell the client. The server assumes that the client has the same data.

Well the other client won't download and have the mod if that's what you mean, but it will recieve information from the server about sim and unit data. Just edit your settings and join a server, your ggame stats won't change because the server is still using and giving you the vanilla information.

If you add completely new units and stuff I am 99.99% sure it will completely crash and even if not the UI will be missing vital informatttion.

The ui would be missing units, but I have no idea why the game should crash, I'll give it a try some time.

It's definitely not gonna be playable, that much I am certain of.

Why do you think so? It works perfectly fine with vanilla, even with a modified client.

So for example what if the server mod adds a new unit with a renamed model? Where will the client get that model from?
What if the server mod modifies planet brush data? Where will the planet builder in the client get that data from?
etc
There is a reason why the client has that data and why it is in sync between server and client.

A single little value won't break it, but for example if your client thinks unit A has a visiion range of 200 while in reality it only has 10 your fog of war will look wrong.
That's the not-so-bad case. The bad case happens when your client is missing a full unit json file for a newly added unit and runs into "file not found" errors when it tries to look for the stats on that unit. Or for the 3D model. Same with planet generation stuff and a lot of other things probably.

EDIT:
Seems the client is not as picky about missing files. Removed the vehicle factory from unit list and deleted the whole folder for it from my PA. Played online vs AI.
Result:


Though I would not call that playable.
I mean who likes to play with opponents who have access to units that you can't even see or know anything about? Or play on planets that look vastly different from what you see?
xD

Well, yeah that is a issue. Though we could use already existing units and just mod the AI to always send units to attack instead of build.

Though the down side to using already existing units is that in order to make the waves more difficult, there would just have to be more units per wave. then there is the issue of Towers.

The best planet type for this type of game mode using the Metal planet objects to create lanes and just spawn the units in the pits, I would prefer to use something better to look at like the unit cannon to spawn in units or a teleporter to warp in units. Beats spawning in from nothing

Overall, right now this would require everyone to download the mod from PAM in order to get a interesting tower deference going.

As for weapons, the only solution I have found for that is to switch out all weapons used by the waves with bomb bot type weapons.

Well we can just use a transient server mod. People would need to install the mod to play. Not perfect, but not a horrible issue. I mean most mods need to be installed before being played.
The thing I am most worried about is the "mod the AI to make it give just attack attack attack commands".

Boom bot weapons are a good solution I think. I guess it would be possible to spawn in units very very close to a teleporter that has a very small collision box so the units kinda appear directly inside it. It's probably even possible to spawn them with effects, as the commander landing explosion is triggered by a server script that calls something like "spawnEffect ..."

The ideal set up for tower defense would have 1 set of units and have the HP increase by a ingame script per wave instead of cloning the same unit 10+ times for different armor / hp values.

But yeah the ai is complex without region or location control it's going be tough.

True, though that's more of a technical nitpick. From a users point of view nobody will notice that we have 20 different copies of unit X that just increase the hitpoints and from a modders point of view it will not matter after writing a few lines of code that automates the generation of those files.

well, thinking about the the visuals of the boss round, I'm thinking of using spot lights and scale change for the boss.. I wonder if we can change the color of lights in general ^^;