FAQ

NOTA vs other games – differences (EN)
NOTA strategy guide (EN)
First NOTA (not only multiplayer) game (EN/CZ)
Godde’s NOTA Strategy Guide (EN)

Spring FAQ
Spring tactics

Controlling game – Default keyboard layout

Spring Default Keyboard layout

More about keyboard layout on Springrts
How is NOTA related with TA (Total Annihilation) and other Spring games (BA, XTA, ZERO-K,…)
Answer gives you the NOTA_OTA_differences_guide
Is there a real difference in CORE and ARM? except for the unique units.
There are some basic rules how the side units created and some types of army have so unique units (navy), that we can say there are no only clones of the same type of unit on both sides (like in OTA) – so CORE has havier stuff (= more HP), brutal power (= riot guns, napalm, flamethrowers, more weapons on some stronger variant of basic units), in the air “spread damage” (napalm bombers, vashps, flying fortress), ships are multipurpose (have AA, S-S-guns, torpedoes) VS units of ARM, that we can call partysans, rebels, so their units are faster (= more speed), hidden (= cloaking, radar invisbility), light ones and one purpose aircraft and ships (so stronger in one strike or in type of weapon). But there are exceptions of course, for example CORE has infiltrators (supercloacking specops, bombers) and so on. More info in tactical manual.
How to host/create the game?
The easiest way is to join one of the authost bots – servers prepared for players (Battle list -> one of Nitrogen rooms (doubleclick)). There you can play single or multiplayer games.
How to change the map in autohost?
You choose it via “select map” button or just write !map name_of_choosen_map in chat.
How to start the game in autohost?
You click “Start battle” button or just write !start in chat.
When I add some AI, the game crash.
The most of the Spring AIs are broken for NOTA (AAI, HughAI, KAIK, NullAI, NullJavaAI, Null00JavaAI), only the test AI works (CppTestAI – does nothing). Working AI enemies are: N.O.E. AI – Easy, Medium, Hard enemy (plays as classic player for ARM or CORE), all Spacebugs AIs – Easy, Medium, Hard and Insane enemies (playing spacebugs mode) or E323AI (but its not updated for playing NOTA, so you need to give to AI classic commander and expect AI will use units randomly). Theres new working Shard AI module for NOTA, get it on forum.
I see just Shard, NOE and Spacebugs AI in Notalobby, where are otheres?
Go to lobby Settings -> General and there select Advanced AI button. This is only for experienced users and adding not working AI can cause unexpected issues.
Tried to get friends to play, but every time we try to load, they are unable to connect, They can join the battleroom, but when I start the game they cannot connect (some countdown). What’s going on?
Some people are unable to host the game, becouse their network or pc settings (firewall, ports, antivirus,…) prevent some needed parts of connection.There are many ways how to solve that, full long and actual answer is here on forum.
Shortcuts
Do you know, what is KOTH, BA, XTA, FFA, ZERO-K, A.K., PoW? Ask here if not.
How do I upgrade (not install again) Notalobby?
Run Instanota, select lobby only, click update.

If you need to know something, ask here!

25 Responses to FAQ

  1. Daniel says:
    26/09/2012 at 21:36

    running NOTA when i try to open on mountain lion os x i get this message: Parse error ‘square bracket to close section name expected’ in buffer at line 1 column 92 near
    PK

    Thanks

  2. Pepe Ampere says:
    01/10/2012 at 13:35

    Does this problem appear after doubleclicking on NOTA.exe or when launching the game?

  3. Navarrobase says:
    01/10/2012 at 21:24

    Played NOTA 1.69, i noticed that i can’t use the unit restrictions in Spring Lobby. The list is completely empty. However if i go into NOTA 1.66 the list is full. Also, the Core Tier 2 bombers do not seem to work. The Napalm bomber does not refuel or drop its payload?

  4. Daniel says:
    02/10/2012 at 04:25

    When launching the game. NOTA will open when I click on it but there is no game in the index

  5. Pepe Ampere says:
    02/10/2012 at 10:31

    Navarrobase: Yes, there are still some bugs with planes becouse changes in engine (napalm bomber refueling, maybe some others). Will be repaired soon. But about unit restrictions I dont know. Will check. If you find some other bugs, report them on NOTA bug forum.

    Daniel: The point is, there are 3 components everytime – engine called “Spring” (you need OSx version you get on springrts.com), lobby (Spring lobby, TASClient or NOTAlobby – thats that “nota.exe”, and this should be OSx version, too – you get on forum), and the game file (nota169.sdz in games folder – you get here). So two things of these three are your OS dependant and using bad one couse fail.

    Btw, when lauchning the nota.exe, theres no mission in the list, but when you click on Battlelist, you should login and see running servers (with different games)

  6. bomberman says:
    17/11/2012 at 17:56

    what is PoW ?

  7. Pepe Ampere says:
    18/11/2012 at 15:01

    bomberbam: PoW is Admiral of NOTA, leader of NOTA veterans fleet, experienced player, but some people say hes just small slovakian kid. Thats all I know, except some dark personal secrets :mrgreen: .

  8. Sage says:
    08/06/2013 at 05:33

    Is the N.O.E AI able to use navel warfare?

  9. Pepe Ampere says:
    08/06/2013 at 19:17

    Current N.O.E. is not able to use naval units (and there is not other such AI), but if there would be huge interest in it, we can push development in this way in July, August. Commenting our work on AI forum page can encourage us to take more care about AI development.

  10. owl984 says:
    02/08/2013 at 19:01

    Hi there, Can you explain me how to install nota in ubuntu?

    I download Instanota_32.tar and have it in desktop.

    Please,a little help. Thanks.

  11. Malina says:
    02/08/2013 at 21:26

    1. Unpack it using some Archive applications
    2. Run start.sh

  12. dude says:
    07/08/2013 at 21:01

    I heard about this game for the first time and I tried to find information about the game from this web site and I must say that I’m a bit lost here.

    – Why don’t you tell the most inportant information on your front page? This includes:
    — What is NOTA (imagine telling that to a random person surfing the web). E.g. “NOTA is a GPL/BSD licensed, cross platform, multiplayer, RTS game. Its biggest differences to competitors are…”
    — I’m assuming it is dual-licensed by GPL/BSD licenses (because of the engine), you should tell this somewhere clearly.
    — Status of the project (with a few words + link to more detailed description + is someone working with it? + Do you need help with something? Links to more detailed pages would be enough in the summary. )
    — Link where to download the source code
    — Link to bug tracker
    – Why are you polluting the web pages with images such as this: http://nota.machys.net/wp-content/uploads/installer_1.0.png
    These images contain a lot of text and images, but the information value in them is very small, which makes it very hard for new users to find what they are searching for.
    – Assuming you want to keep the “news” section on front page, I would advice separating it clearly (e.g. using a big title “news”) from the main content (that gives the basic information about what this site is about). As that lets the reader know that he won’t find more basic info from there.

  13. dude says:
    07/08/2013 at 21:30

    “If Lobby can’t start the game, you also need to install SDL libraries.”

    What is a lobby? After installing and starting start.sh a window opens. The window title is “single player” is “single player” the lobby? (Note there is a bug in the window title, the title should tell which application this is, for the obvious reason that it would avoid these kind of questions.)

    What SDL libraries? Which versions (e.g. Ubuntu has several versions)? Why doesn’t the installer take care of this? Why doesn’t the lobby give detailed error message of what is missing?

  14. Pepe Ampere says:
    10/08/2013 at 04:23

    dude: short answer – yes, page needs maintaince, but theres no time and manpower for it, because all slaves work hard on game.

    Seems your lobby is working, log in via “multiplayer” button, find a NOTA room and ask some NOTA player if any problems.

    Some links you asked for (they are currently listed in right column navigation):
    – forum – detailed questions and help: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=55
    – source, bugs, downloads: http://code.google.com/p/nota/
    – info you asked for: http://www.lgdb.org/game/nota

  15. Belmakor says:
    04/11/2013 at 03:07

    The installer doesn’t seem to work under OS X Mavericks at all – I get an instant crash when trying to run the downloaded package. Might be something to do with qt version?

  16. Belmakor says:
    05/11/2013 at 04:26

    Did some more research – it definitely is the QT version you have built against – I saw quite a few threads about it – happened to a lot of apps. Simply rebuilding against a later version of QT should fix the problem for Mavericks users.

  17. DanielB says:
    01/12/2013 at 04:22

    Im getting error to load nota, is something related with spring,

    When i start.sh run, in launch game, i got the messages

    Script file /home/danielb/.spring/start_script.txt written.

    SpringLauncher :: Start Spring ""/home/danielb/.spring/engines/94.1/spring" --config "/home/danielb/.springrc" "/home/danielb/.spring/start_script.txt""

    Appear the message

    Error: ERROR Could not set video mode:
    Couldn't find matching GLX visual

    Im using intel card

    glxinfo | grep render
    direct rendering: Yes
    OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset
    GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp, GL_NV_light_max_exponent,

    Have some idea?

  18. danil_kalina says:
    11/12/2013 at 19:31

    Engine has dirty issues with Intell cards. The best option is to ise nvidia cards.
    The latest QT doesn’t allow to compile on mavericks. I did a mistake, i could build lobby on previous osx. So, wait…

  19. Roman Kapl says:
    18/12/2013 at 22:10

    Hi, I’ve tried to host multiplayer game using the “Local Host” option. The game does not start, it reports an error binding UDP port. I’ve removed the ” HostIP=;” line in the startup script and the game loads OK. I a running Nota Lobby 4.6 on Arch Linux. Also note that I am behind NAT, so that the game probably fails because the requested IP address is not bound by any interface on that machine (they are bound to the internal LAN ip). There is no interesting information in the log.

  20. Pepe Ampere says:
    18/12/2013 at 23:52

    Roman Kapl: Hi, I’ve tried to host multiplayer game using the “Local Host” option. The game does not start, it reports an error binding UDP port. I’ve removed the ” HostIP=;” line in the startup script and the game loads OK. I a running Nota Lobby 4.6 on Arch Linux. Also note that I am behind NAT, so that the game probably fails because the requested IP address is not bound by any interface on that machine (they are bound to the internal LAN ip). There is no interesting information in the log.

    Yes, seems issue arrising from engine/protocol/settings upgrades or unitsync.dll upgrades – lobby startscript creation (maintaince, debug) is primary aimed on multiplayer gaming so its possible we missed this in last release.

    Fast (maybe silly, but proved) solution is to use autohost servers even for singleplayer until lobby is fixed. There is allways empty one (new spawned automaticly). There are other lobbies, too, but thats another long story.

    Btw, there are two kind of logs:

    • infolog.txt created by spring engine (./NOTA/SpringData/infolog.txt)
    • lobby.log created by Nota lobby (./NOTA/NOTA/config/lobby.log)

    (those are Windows paths, im not sure how it is placed on Linux)

    If you clean vital info about your computer from second log and send it to danil (or share somewhere), we will be able to say more.

    Btw, yes NAT may be issue, but never was for local host if i remember correctly. And some lobbies are able to use NAT traversal (TAS Client,…)

    Btw2, notalobby devs work now on single player skirmish setup window so local host wont be the only offline way how play alone with notalobby.

  21. Roman Kapl says:
    10/01/2014 at 17:04

    Ok, here are the two logs.
    http://rkapl.cz/uploads/infolog.txt
    http://rkapl.cz/uploads/lobby.log
    BTW, I am no trying to play singleplayer, but multiplayer over internet(I have port forwarding setup, works with springlobby).

  22. Pepe Ampere says:
    19/01/2014 at 03:41

    Roman: Seems your logs are no longer there. Can you send them on my e-mail “machys” on gmail? Btw i missed your message because it was catched by our angry anti-spam plugin :/.

  23. Vitaliy says:
    29/03/2014 at 12:04

    Hi. How i can load my saved game in multiplayer game with AI only?

  24. Cumsume says:
    31/03/2014 at 17:16

    yellow im on mac/osx mavericks
    when i click the icon, it just crashed it don’t do anything

    Error report
    http://pastebin.com/sLyVSBZj

    any advice?

  25. Pepe Ampere says:
    05/04/2014 at 16:54

    Vitaliy: As I know “saving” game is not possible in multiplayer, even singleplayer save has not great support. I never tried saving skirmish game i expect it doesnt work.

    Cumsume: send all reports on danil.kalinichenko[at]gmail.com, our installer creator try to check it.

Leave a Reply