Spring RTS Engine

A thing that always make me laugh is how "free software" want to be known all around the world, when they still have stuff that make newbs flee in fear.

I know This project devs are of the specie who see end users as some ticks, but let's look at this before :


- Lobbies full of bugs (SpringLobby at 96 to 150 % on an amd quad 955 with 2 Mo ?! Come on !).

- Very few options for managing battlerooms when hosting.

- Downloaders works when they want.

- Do players really need an Nvidia for play or ATI can hope play some day ?

- Unchangeable key binding with "work if it want" (and not easy to apply) hacks, making impossible for lot of us to use, for example drawing or formations (And without formations against somebody who have it, it's some challenge...).

- "find yourself" policy for what are the tags/variables and what they can do if you want to mod/make game, and that's without speaking of "under the bottom of the sea level" tutorials (you call that tutorials ? No, really ?) and utilities on "account suspended" sites.

- So many things are hardcoded... Why continue to call Spring an engine if you can't even change things like how bombers behave after being "killed" (you all understand what i mean, i suppose), just for speaking of the most known.

I know the "free software" go more and more each year in the "we think for you then don't dare to search another possibility" policy, and a lot of linux-users look positively at Windows 7 (after the kde4 cataclysm and now Pulseaudio, that's not surprizing"), but there is too many things hardcoded for a lot of us to even start modding (and that's even without saying we often don't even know how).







For now, even after so many years, i don't see myself asking a friend to install Spring on his computer. I have really few friends, so i value them.

And yes, i know nobody is the cause of the problem, because it's always somebody else who have to do the engine/lobbies/repository and so one. Don't care.

vampi3 wrote:For now, even after so many years, i don't see myself asking a friend to install Spring on his computer. I have really few friends, so i value them.

vampi3 wrote: - Do players really need an Nvidia for play or ATI can hope play some day ?

I've been using my 4800 for a fair time with no problems.


I've tried to get about 10 of my buddies to play Spring over all the time I've been here. Not a single one of them managed to get it working without any help, a few of them geeks too

tl;dr: rubbish mixed with MTR

An usefull post looks different.

someone else in need of *loooove*!!

Read this then go here for bugs in Spring or here for bugs in SpringLobby or here for issues with SpringDownloader.

- "find yourself" policy for what are the tags/variables and what they can do if you want to mod/make game, and that's without speaking of "under the bottom of the sea level" tutorials (you call that tutorials ? No, really ?) and utilities on "account suspended" sites.

Though I can't agree with your very negative assesment, I do also see that documentation for game makers is patchy and not coherent (as in spread out such that you need to know where to look).
Now, I for one intend to work, even if just a little, on that issue - and help is certainly welcome. So vampi3, are you interested in helping there, to adress one of the issues you've raised ?

I think 90% of ALL complaints about spring come down to two major issues and one minor issue.

1) Content Specific Issues (GUI etc, things that are the responsibility of Content Designers (Map and Game Designers etc))
2) Lack of Quality Documentation (both for content makers and players, this is also the major cause of Number 1)
3(minor) Hard Coded or Lagacy Behaviour Bugs

as an example, using the TA based hard-coded "Bomber" Tags instead of implementing your own class of units that has the desired behavior in Lua is a Game Designer problem, not necessarily an engine "Hard Coded or Lagacy Behaviour" problem...(theoretically at least, it SHOULD be possible)

ideally, and as time goes on this has been happening, all "Hard Coded or Lagacy Behaviour" issues will have a Lua based solution available... these aren't "hacks" these are "Making a game with the Spring engine that isn't a TA clone" issue, which would be readily apparent if 2 wasn't such a big problem.

I feel I have been unclear here, basic issue:

As time goes on, everything that the engine is capable of will be exposed to Lua... so any complaints about TAisms or misinterpretations thereof will be eliminated.

We need better documentation, we need more mods using raw Lua for designers to use (instead of patching Lua functionality onto lagacy unit-types)... I envision "libraries" that will implement common unit behaviours.

I'm too lazy to do anything other then post on the forums, so we need some masochistic people to make the kind of documentation that is needed to resolve these glitches.



Also... yeah, it would be nice if the lobbies were less buggy... but to be honest they are no more buggy then Spring itself or semi-mature products like InkScape or the Gimp... heck the official torchlight editor has more bugs then Spring.

The problem is that Spring is really becoming Spring 2. The first Spring was stable and good - it was basically a TA-like engine, with an HTTP-based downloader built into a Windows-based lobby program.

Now all those nice, stable features are thrown out in exchange for torrent-based downloading, cross-platform lobby, and a flexible engine. And, shocker, that kind of changeover means that documentation sucks and bugs abound.

Pxtl wrote:The problem is that Spring is really becoming Spring 2. The first Spring was stable and good - it was basically a TA-like engine, with an HTTP-based downloader built into a Windows-based lobby program.

Now all those nice, stable features are thrown out in exchange for torrent-based downloading, cross-platform lobby, and a flexible engine. And, shocker, that kind of changeover means that documentation sucks and bugs abound.

What?

The difficulty for mod makers doesn't matter for players, what players need is a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons.

KDR_11k wrote:The difficulty for mod makers doesn't matter for players, what players need is a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons.

If it is difficult for a Game Designer to make their game have a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons. then it becomes a problem for players.

@Regret

There was a while when spring was stable, well-understood, and functional. When the lobby had an integrated downloader that worked consistently. The problem was that, at that time, Spring was only good for TA-like games, the downloader was just a front-end to Unknown-Files, and the lobby was TASClient, a Delphi app.

Think about it - for most games, that would mean "iron out the last few bugs and release the sucker". That would be 1.0. Instead, Spring expanded the featureset and became more versatile. That's what I mean by Spring 2.

Pxtl wrote:@Regret

There was a while when spring was stable, well-understood, and functional. When the lobby had an integrated downloader that worked consistently. The problem was that, at that time, Spring was only good for TA-like games, the downloader was just a front-end to Unknown-Files, and the lobby was TASClient, a Delphi app.

Think about it - for most games, that would mean "iron out the last few bugs and release the sucker". That would be 1.0. Instead, Spring expanded the featureset and became more versatile. That's what I mean by Spring 2.

I agree except, ideologically, Spring was always meant to eventually move beyond "TA Clone" and become "The Best RTS Ever"... along the way, somewhere, it became the Spring Engine... so in my mind, the "Spring" project was abandoned and the "Spring Engine" fork was started.

Oh, BTW My List of "Things to do BEFORE advertise.":

- Determine "Stable" System Requirements for Engine and a Lobby, if none exist, resolve issues until Spring and Lobby can run stable on a Intel 2Ghz CPU with 512RAM running XPSP3 having an 128MB or better Nvidia card (or similar target specs that match majority of people who might want to play Spring). This will be set as THE "Stable" version, like many OSS projects.

- The server should allow users to have either the current Dev build or the current Stable build and play games... ideally there would be a way for both versions to be installed simultaneously... really ideally the lobby would be able to update both as separate entities... ideally they would share Content folders to a certain extent.

- Have one or more mostly mature games available for free without questionable license issues.

By "Mostly Mature" I mean:
- Full Playing Manual
- GUI that isn't scary (matter of opinion)
- Semi-Stable balancing or some method by which updates can be made automated
- Full installer with single-player (skirmish AI style or mission scripts)
- Save and Load functionality

Then, we would advertise Spring in conjunction with said game(s)... GameX for the Spring Engine, GameY for the Spring Engine... kinda like the devs of individual games do anyway.

The Spring RTS Engine isn't really something we need to advertise to, any more then the Source engine needs to be advertised... the only exception here is that we have this lobby that let's you play any games that are built for the Spring engine.

Pxtl wrote:There was a while when spring was stable, well-understood, and functional. When the lobby had an integrated downloader that worked consistently. The problem was that, at that time, Spring was only good for TA-like games, the downloader was just a front-end to Unknown-Files, and the lobby was TASClient, a Delphi app.

Spring is quite stable, well understood and functional from my point of view. You on the other are purely a forumer afaik so you most likely lost touch.

Of course it is not newbie friendly as that is the role of game developers using said engine, not the role of the engine itself.

Pxtl wrote:Think about it - for most games, that would mean "iron out the last few bugs and release the sucker". That would be 1.0. Instead, Spring expanded the featureset and became more versatile. That's what I mean by Spring 2.

Spring was never a game, it was always an engine. Invalid comparison.

vampi3 wrote:Very few options for managing battlerooms when hosting

Uh? I would have said too many options instead.

vampi3 wrote:Do players really need an Nvidia for play or ATI can hope play some day ?

I have an ATI. I can play. (Just not CA . )

vampi3 wrote:Unchangeable key binding

uikeys.txt

vampi3 wrote:"find yourself" policy for what are the tags/variables and what they can do if you want to mod/make game

Irrelevant for players. And between the wiki, the source, and all the mods around, it's easy to find the tags you need.

vampi3 wrote:So many things are hardcoded..

Wut? There's less and less harcoded things and more and more Lua. I'd like to see you make "Air Raid" or "Fibre" in any other RTS.

vampi3 wrote:but there is too many things hardcoded for a lot of us to even start modding

Both wrong and irrelevant for players.

SinbadEV wrote:If it is difficult for a Game Designer to make their game have a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons. then it becomes a problem for players.

It's not difficult, but no one cares about that beside me and Argh. All the other Game Designers just use confusing and ugly autodownloader, or a plain zip file, and don't even bother to make a simple "quick here to play" to run the thing. Plus all other Spring games are geared toward multiplayer only, spring literate people only.

vampi3 wrote:SpringLobby at 96 to 150 % on an amd quad 955 with 2 Mo ?! Come on !)

feel free to fix openal ( the audio lib that both SpringLobby & Spring uses ) bugs for us, and force everyone to update to it

I think the only thing Kernel Panic is primarily missing is a good website that gives a better first impression than a random wiki page but I think Zwzsg already has enough to do with the game itself.

SinbadEV wrote:

KDR_11k wrote:The difficulty for mod makers doesn't matter for players, what players need is a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons.

If it is difficult for a Game Designer to make their game have a simple installer that gives them a complete installation that they only need to doubleclick on and play. When they play it they want to know WTF they're doing, not search obscure documentation for secret buttons. then it becomes a problem for players.

That difficulty is not related to the engine (except maybe the abundance of commands Spring has accumulated over the years that you wouldn't want to strip out because they're actually really useful), more the unwillingness of authors to go the full mile and polish everything up. There are some projects that go for a user friendly installer but the vast majority is only aimed at existing Spring players.

Auswaschbar wrote:rubbish mixed with MTR

Thar be truth.