Spring RTS Engine

It bothers me a lot that Spring has no visible display for fog of war. It makes it really hard to get a feeling of map control when you don't know which areas you control.

Why doesn't Spring have a fog of war display? Every RTS game ever since Dune II had it. Spring should have it too.



As far as code is concerned, I hadn't looked at the Spring source code so I don't know how it's laid out, but wouldn't it be possible to have a matrix of black circular alpha figures with edge fade that disable appearance when they reach a unit's line of sight, and reappear when they're out of the line of sight? I never designed an RTS game before, only shooters and arcade games, but I don't see any problem with implementing a display for fog of war when units already have a field of vision property.

press L ingame

Oh wow, I didn't realize that. That's cool

Is there a manual where all the hotkeys are explained?
I only briefly gone over the txt files that came with Spring and it didn't look like one is an organized manual.

Brain Damage wrote:press L ingame

disables shadows.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Orders
There's also a picture of a keyboard with all the default keys on them but idk where it is.

To make your own:
http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Selectkeys.txt
http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_custom_keys
http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/CustomKeys

on the old site, i knew how to get to that page:
http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Orders
Now.. i tried, but i could not find it.
Tt is easier now to get to the Dev wiki pages though.. but i think the one for users is more important.

the keyboard layout mentioned by Google_Frog is in the attachment.

Hey, what about if I make a widget that will show that the first time you play spring? I'd teach people about the widget menu right away!

smoth wrote:

Brain Damage wrote:press L ingame

disables shadows.

assuming you're in windows: open the registry editor, go to:

hkey current user -> software -> sj -> spring -> HighResLos

set to 1

Hoi wrote:Hey, what about if I make a widget that will show that the first time you play spring? I'd teach people about the widget menu right away!

do you mean a widget that explains just the L key, or that explains the whole default keyboard layout for spring?
the later would be good i think

Brain Damage wrote:

smoth wrote:

Brain Damage wrote:press L ingame

disables shadows.

assuming you're in windows: open the registry editor, go to:

hkey current user -> software -> sj -> spring -> HighResLos

set to 1

is there a way to change the colors to the old ones ? i can't understand the current ones :D

I don't want to create another topic so quickly so I'll ask it here: Is it possible to make hotkeys bound to the structure they were assigned to?

Right now, if I hotkey a factory to say "2" and click 2 it will not only select the factory but also all the units that it produced. I was it to only select the factory which I originally hotkeyed. Is there a setting I should change to get the desired effect?

you could create a select-key shortcut to de-select the mobile units but then you would have to press 2 things to select your building only...

In CA you can have a bar on the screen with shortcuts to all your factories, tough I personally find this bar anoying and keep it disabled, selecting factories on the good old way.

By the way... DAM ME! I forgot about the "factories produce units of same group" thing. So many times I manually selected the groups of bombers/fighters I wanted to use after they had landed everwhere except the target location (anybody else noticed aircraft NEVER land in the exact location you told then to?) then I could just have set the factor to a group... sigh.

Brain Damage wrote:

smoth wrote:

Brain Damage wrote:press L ingame

disables shadows.

assuming you're in windows: open the registry editor, go to:

hkey current user -> software -> sj -> spring -> HighResLos

set to 1

I have that set to 1 and it still disables shadows. (also tried 0 since it was already 1 when I checked, still disables). Also, whenever I enable LOS view, it not only disables shadows, it makes any units (including my own, which have their own LOS) not on-screen when it was enabled really dark.

Satirik wrote:is there a way to change the colors to the old ones ? i can't understand the current ones :D

This one I do know! Hit ; after hitting L, it changes to just LOS and radar in different shades of grey that way.

Set it to 1, still have no shadows, and it still has the same excruciatingly slow updates as before (when trying to do anything with mobile jamming). If it's higher res it doesn't really look it...

Satirik wrote:is there a way to change the colors to the old ones ? i can't understand the current ones :D

Me too. I know the colours of the new one but I don't like the out of radar dark blue.

This one I do know! Hit ; after hitting L, it changes to just LOS and radar in different shades of grey that way.

This doesn't show radar though.

here's another user wanting real fog of war
"L" is off by default, and my mod wants it on by default
changing the registry doesn't change a thing (still no shadows), plus pressing L turns everything into a horrible purple color, plus the slow updates make it even more weird
so I wouldn't really call pressing 'L' a solution. people just want a standard feature that's present is pretty much all old and new RTS's, real fog of war

and to request even more I'd ask for unit fog + visited shroud ala dark reign
notice fullbright LOS, different from 50% darkened "have-seen-before" terrain, different from 100% darkened "have-never-seen" terrain

You might be able to do that with lua (or maybe not), but I really suggest you'll make it a mod option.

Real fog of war isn't an option, but there is a key (; I think) that allows you to disable radar colours etc. Spring's fog of war display updates pretty slow though, so you'll see scouts outrunning their field of view and it generally just ends up looking stupid.

I really want a good fog of war display too
Shroud isn't that important to me, sure would be nice to have though.

It should be easy.

Create a list of positions on the map in lua. These should cover the whole map in a grid like formation. Then whenever one of these positions comes into LOS, remove it from the list. Then every frame iterate through this list and draw a black texture at that location.

Of course there are more efficient mechanisms for doing this but it shouldnt be hard to do.