Hi there,

I currently am a Student of Game Design, and as my next semesters project I am planning to do a turn based strategy game (or rather, a vertical slice of one).

Right now I am considering what Engine would be the best the use, as I am not very proficient with good engines for rts/tbs games.

A few notes for the game: It should be turn bases, Multiplayer enabled (maybe even AI), simultaneous turns, zone oriented gameplay and the scaling of the units should be very big...it would features pretty big mechs.

How "easy" would that be to implement with the Spring Engine ? Would I need a full fledged programmer or would a Scripter be sufficient ?

I have looked a bit over the basic information provided on the webpage, but I would like to hear some practical tipps, so I dont necesseraly have to dive deep into the engine before I even know if i want to use it.

Other engines in consideration right now are to make the game as a Starcraft 2 Mod or in the Unity Engine.

Thanks in advance for your help !

greetings
Kevin

you want to both make spring a tbs and write an ai in one semester... please tell me this isn't a one man project.

Spring is Real Time Strategy (RTS), not Turn Based Strategy (TBS). Wrong engine. Look elsewhere.

Of course it is not a one man project.

As I said the AI is with a big questionmark...everything depends on what is how fast possible with the engine.

@zwzsg: I am also aware of that....one part of my question is how much work it would be to make a tbs with the spring engine.

Compared to Starcraft2 & Unity Engine, Spring will be the easiest platform for you. Because it isn't limited as Starcraft2 and isn't as basic as Unity (you nearly have to implement everything yourself in it).
Still it needs a lot of Lua code in Spring. Mostly for the turn based mechanism, the zone handling is done quite easily.

what JK says is true and honestly if you figure out the lua you can probably purloin models from projects that have them as pd, see ZK.

Sounds good, thank you.

Would you say that I need someone from the programming department or is someone proficient in scripting sufficient ?

Unity Engine: costs money and quite advanced i think?
If you were "good enough" to use this engine you probally would not need to ask or consider a Starcraft 2 Mod as alternative

Wesnoth seems to be popular among turnbased players:
dunno how easy it is to mod that.
http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Create

Can you describe the game more or give names of similiar games?
ie both "Worms" and "Civilization" are turnbased but very different...
Is there a reason for turnbased?
Based on a grid? Hex, square grid?
How complex is combat? Simple like in chess or like in some tabletop games with armor and all that?
Is there economy and factories or just combat?

I think there was some sort of techdemo that made Spring turnbased by pausing&unpausing. Still you will probally have to script that all over again since it is probally lost in the void or does not work anymore

Also might want to consider making the game from scratch, a 2D turn based game is not that hard to program. Though not a project for a beginner.

I think scripter is the better word maybe. Stuff is scripted in the Lua language and you generally do not have to worry about programmer things like memory managment and all this detail stuff.
This is how such a Lua script (called "gadget") can look like:
http://code.google.com/p/conflictterra/ ... mining.lua
This is how the "unitdef" of a spring unit looks like, it defines all the parameters of a unit like speed, weapon damage etc:
http://code.google.com/p/conflictterra/ ... lttank.lua

Here is a guide that explains how to put it all together:
http://springrts.com/wiki/The_Complete_ ... pring_Game

Maps are made from greyscale heightmaps with a texture on them. There already are hundreds of maps made:
http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps

Define "AI." I made the spring tanks AI in half an hour and some people complained that its too hard

Probally best if you just download Spring and try out some of the games.
ie this is a complete installer including everything you need to play:
http://springfiles.com/spring/games/kernel-panic-4

Thanks for that elaborate answer knorke !

We do have a Unity version here at the school so thats not a problem, also we have programmers with experience in unity, so that would also be not a problem.
2D is not really an option for me, I would like to do it in 3D, we have access to good artists here so that is also not a problem (if the engine can handle it)

The gameplay would reseemble mor a Civ like gameplay with a simultaneous execution of each turn.
As mentioned, the playing field is predivided into different territories. I think there won┬┤t be any basebuilding but I want to have capturable buildings on some of the zones.

As I said, right now I am in the researchphase, exploring what options I have for implementing the game, especially because it is important for the teambuildingpart as I have to know what kind of people I need.

the sort of thing where everyone has x amount of time to give orders, and then afterwards the units go off on their paths? intriguing, i've never played a TBS game like that

you have my interest

you never played Battle Isle?

It depends on what you define as scripting. The Lua interface in Spring is very low level (=mighty), you have access to a lot of things (even direct opengl rendering). So a lot of gameplay code can be done in Lua scripts.
But you don't need someone with c++ knowledge, and Lua is learned quite fast.

(wiki about Spring's LuaInterface: http://springrts.com/wiki/Lua_Scripting)

Thanks JK for your answers.

I guess I will have a look into the engine and see what i can do, and then maybe I will make the project with Spring and you will hear from me again.