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A collection of ideas which could improve Spring.

• clean up, sanitize, and implement a consistent error handling scheme in the engine
• add general serializing to the engine, which touches the following:
  • Implement saving/loading. There are a lot of direct LoadSave() functions in the game code, but the easier way would probably to finish the serialization in the class registration type interfaces (rts/System/creg), so everything can be serialized automatically.
    • Requires: C/C++
    • Time: ~3 months
    • Level of difficulty: medium - hard
  • Implement re-sync. After a sync problem is detected, and a re-sync of the random seed does not fix it the game would pause and use the rsync to adjust game state (current plan if for float3 data) to resync. After using rsync on it should be able to continue normally until the next sync error is detected.
    • Requires: C/C++, network programming
    • Time: ~3< months
    • Level of difficulty: Hard
  • Joining the game while it is running (probably need one of those 2 mentioned above: save/load or resync)
    • Requires: C/C++, network programming
    • Time: ~3< months
    • Level of difficulty: Hard

• Implement a general sensor system replacing the radars, as described in http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6105
  • Requires: C/C++, 3D/2D math (Lua knowledge not required, but prefered)
  • Time: ~2 months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Add a dynamic-lighting system: Allow units to have dynamic lights on them that affect lighting of other units and landscape, with sort of "approximating lights" for cases where a lot of units get close together. This is a big thing, but it would improve spring graphics a lot if done well. Or Deferred Lighting/Shading?
  • Requires: C/C++, 3D math(, GLSL) (Lua knowledge not required, but prefered)
  • Time: ~3 months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium-hard

• Get a stable OS X version working. Contact the developers on the forums for this, as there are people who build and run it successfully. Still need proper packaging and maintaining,
  • Requires: C/C++, CMake and MacOS
  • Time: < 1 month
  • Level of difficulty: Medium
  • More information at http://springrts.com/wiki/Spring_on_MacOSX

• Abstracting the resource system to allow more than two resources (metal/energy)
  • Requires: C/C++ (Lua knowledge not required, but prefered)
  • Time: ~1-3 months
  • Level of difficulty: Easy-Medium

• Expand Springs script abilities by extending the Lua interface (commandAIs,MoveTypes,LOS,Pathing,..).
  • Requires: C/C++, lua
  • Time: ~3< months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Exposing more Spring functions to the Lua world (command AIs, move types) or/and small frameworks
  • Requires: basic C/C++, Lua
  • Time: ~1-3< months (depends on the goal)
  • Level of difficulty: Easy-medium

• Implement MD5 as a model format or add other model formats.
  • Requires: C/C++, 3D math (Lua knowledge not required, but prefered)
  • Time: ~1-3 months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Fix SM3 or develop a new mapping format
  • Requires: C/C++, 3D math
  • Time: ~1-3 months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Add p2p/round-robin for hosting (so host exit does not stop the game)
  • Requires: C/C++, network programming
  • Time: ~3< months
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Proper GUI for spring.exe with extended singleplayer abilities, better map/mod browsing, adding Bots (AIs), selecting start positions, choosing color, selecting map/mod options.
  • Requires: C/C++, 3D math, GUI programming, OpenGL programming, Lua
  • Time: ~1-3 moths (depends on the amount of functions)
  • Level of difficulty: Medium

• Fix bugs

Even though this is not really about the Spring engine:

• SpringLobby is a cross-platform lobby client, implemented in C++ and wxWidgets. We encourage you to look into our TODO list on http://springlobby.info and see what you could do for it.

Lua:

• Create a Mission Development Kit: ie, do whatever it takes to make it easy to create campaign missions, eg create a GUI tool that makes it easy to place units on the map, create triggers, and so on.