I am a game developer (used to Unreal, Unity, or also engine-less games in C++), and I've been trying to get started with SpringRTS for like 5 or 6 hours now and I am still not able to even start a game.

I wanted to start by reading simple example from the SpringABC project: https://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:SpringABC I downloaded the projects from github and copied the .sdd directories to C:/Users/me/Documents/My Games/Spring but SpringLobby does not find them (yes, it does find the engine though).
I would rather not use a lobby actually, since all I want to do is dev a local game. I explored the --help options of the spring.exe command to be able to specify which project to run in spring but I am starting to feel a bit discouraged.

Honestly, I feel my need is pretty simple and standard: I want to create a game, put the project wherever I want, say "D:/GameDev/HelloSpring" (no space left on C:), and do something like "C:/Program Files/SpringRTS/spring.exe -game D:/GameDev/HelloSpring" to just start the game.
This is driving me crazy! Also, I understand tutorials may not be up to date, but where can I find a dry specification of available things?