Supcom/Moho engine rewrite

SlightlyGrilled

A new version! (now working with faf 3841!)

https://github.com/ThomasMonkman/rts-core-engine/releases/tag/v0.2.1

Lua Debugging

Thinking of developers, both for the game and modding, i have added debugging! you can see in the video below

breakpoints
conditional breakpoints
seeing variables
running code live in the console, such as in the video with SetHealth on the scout

this can even be used to debug mods! here is me stepping in to the hooked files of the RNGAI mod (credit to @relent0r)
https://youtu.be/3pvMWk2clw0

to try this your self, you can look here
https://github.com/ThomasMonkman/rts-core-engine/blob/main/docs/guides/debugging-lua.md

Improving the stats bar:

The stats I use to see at a glance the performance of the game, both sim and rendering, but it was messy, time for a face lift. Thanks to @MayeulC for prompting and giving ideas for this work.

hover on fps

hover on sim

and to show off the networking, a very cool networking simulator, now you can pretend to be in Australia (or further) even if your not!

Next a series of bug fixes

Units turn for factory roll off
Trees now correctly blown away by explosions
Functions implemented that RNGAI used, which means RNGAI now works :), thanks relent0r
Mods and maps are loaded with case insentivity, so they now load on linux
Tree correctly blow away from explosions!
Blast damage now impacts shields
Diskwatch now reloads lua,textures,models, etc...
A vault folder without maps/ or mods/ still mounts
Closing the second monitor's window closes only that window, instead of shutting the game
Selection brackets are centred on the mesh, and range rings scale with the map when zoomed out
Intel is now fully parallel
Follow weapons are also now fully parallel
Improvements in movement with turning and corners
Aircraft refuel while being repaired, and dock at the nearest air staging platform
Eco stall for both mass and energy now handle like the base game

Also thanks to:

MayeulC a PR for improving issue onboard, and for detailed bug reports
relent0r and an94 for bug reports

SlightlyGrilled

@Xiaomi So yes your right, i think I'm approaching the ceiling on what can be done, although I'm sure there are always clever tricks to go further.

Do bare in mind though that, that trace is a 64k air battle, the normal balance of the game simply doesn't run in to that kind of unit count, even if you played with 64 players.

I do think a lua thread pool api could be introduced similar to love2d , but that would really only help with big chunks of work like ai and such.

with this i would imagine some task api where you opt in to certain data (unit position, eco, intel, etc...) to be copied over to an isolated lua thread, then you would set a duration of ticks for the work to be completed in, such that it remains deterministic, if it hasn't completed in time the sim would wait.

something a bit like this in the sim (this is pseudo code just to illustrate the idea)



-- Plain-data arguments, deep-copied at post time
local taskArgs = {
    thing = 5,
}

local dueInTicks = 10

-- Which parts of the sim to copy over
local unitsView = {
    fields     = { 'Position', 'Army', 'BlueprintId', 'Health' },
    categories = categories.MOBILE,
    armies     = 'enemies',
}

local access = {
    Units    = unitsView,
    Terrain  = true, 
    PathGrid = { 'Land', 'Amphibious' }, 
    Economy  = 'own',
}

-- Which task to run: a module path and a function in it
local taskModule   = '/mods/myai/lua/tasks/threat.lua'
local taskFunction = 'Compute'

local pending = Pool.PostTask(taskModule, taskFunction, taskArgs, dueInTicks, access)

-- do more stuff

local ok, result = Pool.WaitForTask(pending)  -- resumes at exactly post tick + 10

then the worker script


function Compute(args, View)
    local units = View.Units
    local count = units.Count()

    for i = 1, count do
        local position = units.Position(i)
        local health   = units.Health(i)
        -- do stuff thats slow...
    end

    return args.thing * 42  -- plain data, handed back at the due tick
end

This has the advantage of allowing devs in the lua to break up work in to as many threads as they see fit, and with so many cores now available, more tasks are always better.

https://love2d.org/wiki/love.thread

There is also robloxs thread model where you can have read only access in parallel, and write access is then serialised.

https://create.roblox.com/docs/scripting/multithreading

but yes you are right, it is in conflict with how supcom was made, perhaps another possibility would be to allow some wasm runtime (still allowing scripting of a sorts, just compiled), but I'm not sure if those are actually that much faster than the luau vm.

of course you could move the whole game to native code, but then you lose modding and such...

interesting none the less