Spring RTS Engine

Can someone walk me through the process of making an NTAI config. I haven't figured it out to any satisfaction on my own.

1) download the config maker
2) run the mod with spring and NTAI
3) find the blank config made by NTAI

there are two ways of telling NTAI what to do with units. one is marking the unit as an attacker; this causes it to be sent in attack groups to attack the enemys strongest point.
the second is tasklists. you assign units tasklists in the unit list, and write tasklists in the tasklist maker/editer.
if you select multiple tasklists for one unit then each unit of that type will randomly select one. when a tasklist is finished it will randomly select one of the tasklists selected for it and start again.
a tasklist lets you give builders orders, for example, make a metal extractor then a factory. then, you could give the factory a tastlist of units it makes, then give any builders contructed tasklists to build more mex or factories, and make a config for the new factory etc..

just takes some messing around to get used to it, download and open the XTA config for a look at a finished one maybe

Remember, units wont follow tasklists by themselves you have to assign the lists to units.

This looks like a lot of work, couldn't there be a way to group all the builders, factories and units with weapons together so I don't have to sift through each and every unit?

well you dont have to manually pick out the untis and check the atatcker checkbox on each, there si the quickset tab that lets you just click on the units and set them all at once.

And units can share tasklists too.

If your trying to make a BA config or an XTA config its bets to start using an existing config (they do exist, DJ has a BA config and IK has an XTA one)

Ok... I went through and put order lists on a bunch of units, but the commanders are still braindead when I start the game. What do I have to do to make them move?

Where would said configs be?

I gathered I could let units share lists. I didn't get the regular attackers ones, only the builders or factories. Do I need to add lists for attacking units as well? Will that help my braindead AI problem?

Did you remember to save the configs?

yes

you should delete the learning files if things seem to be broken, it worked for me

Nope, tried it, the bot's still dead as Frankenstein before the lightning.

can we see your config?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7zuuw0

it'll be up for a week after the last download.

Thats because there's nothing in your config. Its what I call the 'default config NTai spits out if it cant find one', the clean unmodified config file.

Also, it would be a great help if people would send me configs packaged using toolkit rather than the individual file in the configs folder. I cant open incomplete configs using toolkit and sometimes the learning file is the cause of issues.

I suspect you have to recreate your config from scratch everytime you open it? Are you sure you save it? and that you open the correct file?

Something needs to be done about this whole opening the wrong file business. I added a file saying specifically not to open the configs folder in its filename the NTai folder at installation, put messages around the open button, and put an error message when people do it anyway....

Your right, that is a blank file. Weird, I had one, but it appears to be gone now. I saved it and it reloaded just fine. I did hit the save button. I don't know what happened to it.

There's so many units it's such a pain to recreate, even if it did work it's a lot of effort to make the config, and some parts assume that the user knows all the unit designations.

Isn't there some way you could distinguish between armed and units with construction abilities? Or some sort of build tree? I just know working through a long list of units is daunting.

What's the bare minimum required to make a commander build some sort of base?

make a task list and give it to the commander.

And there is the quickset tab for lots of attacking. Pick attackers from the drop down list and check all the units thatre attackers then apply.

But dont rebuild from scratch everytime. Fix the saving issue first, its probably a read only file type problem.