Spring RTS Engine

Hello everyone,

First of all sorry if this isn't the best place to post that. My name's Stan I'm a dev for 0 A.D. a game that is using the Pyrogenesis engine. I'm trying to get in touch with other people working on other engines to give talks at the dev room at the FOSDEM 2020 https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/track/ ... velopment/ and was wondering if some of you might be interested to come discuss or even give a presentation there.

If that's the case let me know :)

Are you wanting to hear from Engine developers or from gamedevs. The 2 groups are somewhat distinct, although there have been tons of times where the engine devs have directly spent a lot of time helping the individual projects. I don't think there is a lot of flow in the other direction unfortunately. Regardless, I think Abma or maybe it was Hokomoko have given presentations on the engine, it's architecture, and it's capabilities in the past.

Us gamedevs bitch a lot, but for RTS games, I don't think you would find an engine even remotely close to the capabilities of spring with regards to projects who have only 1 or 2 developers. With spring, if you have the assets already set up, you could have a very playable game within a week (assuming that you're not doing anything too complicated, etc).

Anyway, I'm straying offtopic...

From this paragraph:
"More importantly, we want to present games made with those tools. We want to hear the benefits, the insights, the hurdles, the challenges, the sleepless nights and everything. Real examples are always a great inspiration for other game developers, even (or maybe especially) when things don't go perfectly. Talking about changing tools is welcome too (either from proprietary to open source, or between FOSS solutions), as we can hear a perspective about the differences between them."

I'm assuming that your're talking more about gamedevs than enginedevs (although I think the engine side of things is fascinating and definitely deserves attention). There are others who are significantly more qualified to speak on the subject, but I'd be happy to lend any insight that I can wherever is needed.

I highly suggest speaking to Smoth, Beherith, Flozi, Licho (there are others ofc), but they would (in my view) have particularly interesting insights.

My project is evolution rts.

Hello Forboding Angel,

Thanks for replying. The answer is both according to this log:

I highly suggest speaking to Smoth, Beherith, Flozi, Licho (there are others ofc), but they would (in my view) have particularly interesting insights.

How can I get in touch with those people ?

Best regards

Stan

IRC, Bugtrackers (Kloot) and visits at home (Kloot), Visits at busy places where people are busking (Eshed), also as always Git. (This is what Linus intended when he named it)

The Spring crowd falls into three distinctive sub-crowds:

Avantgarde:
People more focusing on new things, very experimental stuff, often brittle.
Beherith, Anarchid, Gajop, Ivand etc.

Game Development teams:
Maintainerteams and Singledeveloper of actual playable Games.
Beherith (BAR), Licho, Googlefrog and many others (Zero-k), raar , King Raptor, ThinkIRC, FLOZi

Maintainers/Engine devs /Infrastructure devs:
Kloot, Abma, Eshed, Flozi, Lichothers.

I do not know exactly what you aim for in your talks.
Shiny new toys? Problems of developing and upkeeping infrastructure? Making games (pretty open source indypendent topic imo)?

StanleySweet wrote: ↑21 Nov 2019, 10:30 Hello Forboding Angel,

Thanks for replying. The answer is both according to this log:

Code: Select all

[09:09:00] <Akien> [...] sure, insights from the development of Evolution RTS would be awesome. As mentioned in the announce, we are interested both in talks about engines/tools and about games.

I highly suggest speaking to Smoth, Beherith, Flozi, Licho (there are others ofc), but they would (in my view) have particularly interesting insights.

How can I get in touch with those people ?

Best regards

Stan

Probably best way to contact is Discord. Spring, BA, Zero-K channels.
Spring Discord:
https://discordapp.com/invite/wThucpT

Thanks a lot people! I will log in onto discord and see if I can get in touch with them.

I realized I forgot a few links:

https://godotengine.org/article/cfp-gam ... osdem-2020
https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosd ... 02884.html

If any of you who already answered want to submit a talk you can do so using the penta link.

hello,
on discord u can have a look for BAR (Beyond All Reason), thats actual maybe one of the most active developed games on spring.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

I'm a core Zero-K developer, which as far as I can tell is the most active released game at this point in time. It sounds like an interesting event, but I am in Australia and don't see myself going to Brussels any time soon. What are your relevant dates? The Fosdem website says that we are quite close to the talk submission deadline.

Hello Google_Frog

Well yeah the talk submission deadline is on the 1st of December. However, there might be some extra spots depending on how many people sign up. (Not a lot before I started asking around here). We might get Ton Roosendaal as a speaker though, which for me is like meeting Santa. Anyway the FOSDEM is on the 1st & 2nd February. I understand it's a long flight and it's totally alright if you can't show up. But it would be nice if people showed up. I'm sure there are a lot of interesting things that might emerge from such a meeting.

Best Regards,

Stan.

I can be contacted here. But there's no way I can attend such things.

Too bad FLOZi... thanks for answering. :)

FLOZi wrote: ↑22 Nov 2019, 18:59 I can be contacted here. But there's no way I can attend such things.

Reported for cowardice before a crowd - also know as crowardice - to the brithish teachers union

I'm 2hr away from Bruxelles, but doubtful I'm relevant enough to talk.

Is it about open source games, or open source tools? And Spring as a game engine sits inbetween.
One can make open source game with closed tools, and proprietary games with open source tools.

whether it can be a viable business model

At least here it was never about the money. Except maybe the Argh's P.U.R.E. venture in 2009?

Hey, it was never for lack of trying to whore ourselves out there... I pitched Journeywar to several companys- i still have one of the CEOs i took for a ride in a box in my cellar somewhere..

It's about both. For instance Blender might come. As long as its open source. Feel free to submit applications on penta :)

EDIT: Would be nice to have at least someone to talk about Spring :)

I'm in the US and don't even have a passport (although it's processing for a completely different reason :-D), so there is no way I would be able to come. Spring is one of those things where the more you know about it, the more you find that you don't know, and you get so wrapped up in dealing with your own project that you fall behind others who watch spring core commits somewhat religiously and have their finger closer to the pulse of where the engine is going.

On the evo discord in the general channel, about 3 years ago I did a little digital archaeology into the beginnings of evo, back in... 2007 I think? If you search for Evolution RTS Chapter 1 you should find it with pictures and such.

By offering insights I sort of meant offering my perspective to whoever was talking about spring. I misread or misunderstood the intent of the OP and didn't really understand what FOSDEM was until later on. I'm sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend having Zwzsg come if he can make it. Z may deny it but he is a wizard with spring. He had done a ton of things that were far beyond their time. It's no joke to say that evo as it exists currently would not be capable without a lot of work that Z has done. He has either directly or indirectly helped a bunch of other projects as well.

Forboding Angel wrote: ↑24 Nov 2019, 21:35 By offering insights I sort of meant offering my perspective to whoever was talking about spring. I misread or misunderstood the intent of the OP and didn't really understand what FOSDEM was until later on. I'm sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

It's alright, I think I could have polished my first post a bit to make that more clear. I just posted everywhere so I kinda lost track as well. Thanks for your time and answers.

Forboding Angel wrote: ↑24 Nov 2019, 21:35 I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend having Zwzsg come if he can make it. Z may deny it but he is a wizard with spring. He had done a ton of things that were far beyond their time. It's no joke to say that evo as it exists currently would not be capable without a lot of work that Z has done. He has either directly or indirectly helped a bunch of other projects as well.

He doesn't seem to have a Discord account, or I couldn't find it, any way I can get in touch with him?

I'm seriously considering doing either of two talks:
1) Why would anyone do that? - For some arcane reason contributors spend their precious time on open source game projects. Why do they do this? And more importantly: What can you do to make them do it on your project?

2) Spring & Steam, an Odyssey - Let's talk about the release of Evo&Zero-K on Steam, the good parts, the hairy parts and the effect it had on the entire Spring ecosystem.

RFC

I ran them both through the godot guys and they liked it. So you can register both and they'll pick one. I like both though maybe the second one a bit more cause 0 A.D. might have to go that route one day and that'll be a mess license wise.

We didn't have license issues really, it was more UX/UI and organisational issues.

I think I'm a bit more fond of the first one, although the audience is not necessarily people who are already in successful projects