You're all forgetting the fact that the entire existence of World Builder shouldn't be. While it's a somewhat ingenius tool, it's little more than a bandaid fixing a broken development creation community, a glorified hex editor.

I think a large part of the reason Spring is so far behind (and most other open-source projects) is the overwhelming inferiority of design tools. Most of the most popular commercial titles (popular both in people playing them and mods being created) they've all got highly advanced SDKs, some of which are completely independant all-round systems which can build maps/worlds, create objects, code animations, hex edit and much more.

There are a couple of things which I think are seriously hampering any effort any of us make, regardless of our personal skill or determination:

Skeletal animations
Map creation program (a la C&C3's WorldBuilder)
Normalmap support

Those three things alone would greatly enhance Spring. Skeletal animations would be an immense boon to any and all mods using organic units. A map creation program (which allows heightmap editing, texture editing and feature placement on a rendered map in real-time) would benefit everyone, especially map-makers, and we'd be able to see really terrific maps (some of the maps we have now are really terrific but with an actual dedicated program they'd become glorious) and normalmaps would increase the quality of all content, visually.

If I had those three things, just those three, in that order of importance, I'd be happier than a cop in shit.

I agree.
I remember someone saying spring needs a map editing program but he was shouted down.
Some said its better this way since only the most dedicated mapmakers will take the time to understand how it all works and thus maps will be better cause only dedicated smart people will be makign them Oo....anyway...here we are...
You need to buy tons of tools just to make decent maps and not take forever to do it.

I don't agree,however,that spring is not being played more cause it lacks those tools.
Well,at least that's not he only cause.
Spring is nowhere to be see on any free games lists or open source game lists or free rts lists or anything..
try googeling those..

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=16341


spiked someone is working on it

HOT FUCKING BUTTSECKS

Alright, so one down, two more to go. Though the normalmap support is really just a bonus and not a requirement. Skeletals are however absolutely essential.

For mapping, give WICed a try, except for the feature placer, which is handled very well by springmapedit, you get real time texture and heightmap editing. You also get normal map support.

Also check out Artturi's Avalanche map.

I think i can see Anakin in the corner there..

Unfortunately WiCEd appears to require WiC in order to work

Unless there is another way...

Dragon, I reckon you might already know this, but for procedural map generation, I just stumbled over this, and thought it might be interesting:

http://oddlabs.com/procedurality.php

I've not looked at it in detail, but they have a detailed paper (as in scientific paper) on the methods they use, and a program or library that implements that.

Regards Sean Heron

Edit for clarity: I think the program is just for the hightmap...

We don't need more programs to generate an OMGWTFHUEG texture for us... we need a way to tell the engine, hay I have this texture, this other one, and a third. Where the ground is flat I want you to lay this texture, where it is sloped, lay this texture, where it is cliffed, lay this texture.

Sm3 failed because of the blendmaps imo. The engine should be laying the texture. That's how the big boys do it, and that is TRUE splatting.

Now... to find someone who'll make it happen...

On the mapping end, all we need is normalmap and specmap support to be added to SMF. Could be reasonably easy to add that to the content specification, and modify MapConverter to dice up those image files as well as what's currently in them.

On the game models end... where's Zpock's supposedly-almost-done support for MD5 exports from Blender? It's about the only thing that's missing now. We have the rest of the modern content-creation toolkit (or it's imminent).

How the hell would you add normal and spec map to a massive non tiled, pre blended multi layer texture?
Ya ok lets make a two channel 8k*8k bitmap for those, to include with the texture.
If your gonna be adding proper tiled bump and spec, you might as well just rework sm3 instead of trying to patch up old, outdated and very limited smf.

sm3 has specular. :)

I've started using Frostregen's SpringMapEdit. A couple of bugs but it seems very stable and is pretty damned awesome. Already made a map! (tbr soon!)