Spring: 1944 v0.01 Alpha

maestro · Post by **maestro** » 26 Oct 2006, 06:28

I dont think spring half the texture...
teh s3o format do....

And about infantry single piece.... player will harshly criticize that...
except if you make it sooo small squad based troops (likes in Steel Panther game)

SpikedHelmet · Post by **SpikedHelmet** » 26 Oct 2006, 06:31

I really don't like the idea of a "squad" unit consisting of a bunch of infantry as one unit. It.. bugs me.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 26 Oct 2006, 07:00

Doesn't bug me, I've been brainstorming ways to do it in Spring for a while.

Everyone says it can't be done, which is as good of an indicator as any that it can be done with enough creative thinking.

1v0ry_k1ng · Post by **1v0ry_k1ng** » 26 Oct 2006, 13:37

I dont like squads. it dumbs down gameplay. look at COH, you only ever have about 6-7 units at any given time because they are bundled into groups. just reduce the build times somewhat. again, the SWTA buildtime for infantry ftw.

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 27 Oct 2006, 02:41

I think the German helmet deserves a couple of additional polies to show the surrounding peak.

j5mello · Post by **j5mello** » 27 Oct 2006, 21:58

Felix its not that squads (as in one selectabe unit that looks like multiple soldiers) can't be done, its that some aspects of unit handling in Spring make them look fugly. Trees are a big one. Either the units crush them to avoid pathing issues, which looks odd, or they go around them, which is a pathing pain and still looks weird.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 27 Oct 2006, 22:24

j5mello wrote:Felix its not that squads (as in one selectabe unit that looks like multiple soldiers) can't be done, its that some aspects of unit handling in Spring make them look fugly. Trees are a big one. Either the units crush them to avoid pathing issues, which looks odd, or they go around them, which is a pathing pain and still looks weird.

Crushing trees looks odd no matter who is doing the crushing... send an AA Commander through a forest and you'll see what I mean... looks like the comm is crushing the trees with his mind 'cause they dissapear about ten feet in front of him!

Anyways, perhaps 1944 does need to be made a little bit smaller. What if we doubled the scale of everything? We'd have less units on screen, less units trying to path, less problems with collision detection and tiny hitspheres, and tbh it would look better too. It would be a lot easier to tell between different types of infantry, too.

I'm not saying that 1944 should become a DoW-ish "squad" RTS where you push around 10 units, but that we should aim for having, say, 100 or 150 infantry in play at a time, rather than 200 or 500 or whatever.

Lemm1w1nkz · Post by **Lemm1w1nkz** » 27 Oct 2006, 22:33

thats no fun, I played the demo with my friend, I had to end a stailmate so I built up a 600 men army complimented with tanks and jeeps and stuff. Spear Headed the line with about 150 men loaded into half tracks forced my way through with tanks and then with my main infantry and took him out. Got about 30-40 fps the whole time, but I have a nvidia 7900 so my computer can take it.

1v0ry_k1ng · Post by **1v0ry_k1ng** » 27 Oct 2006, 22:51

demo? where is this demo?

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 27 Oct 2006, 22:55

Lemm1w1nkz wrote:thats no fun, I played the demo with my friend, I had to end a stailmate so I built up a 600 men army complimented with tanks and jeeps and stuff. Spear Headed the line with about 150 men loaded into half tracks forced my way through with tanks and then with my main infantry and took him out. Got about 30-40 fps the whole time, but I have a nvidia 7900 so my computer can take it.

Unfortunately, Spring doesn't really support this scale. It's stretching the program past its reasonable limits.

Another problem that "scaling up" would solve is that of map size. Currently, there's two competing factors driving what size map you play on.
1) Infantry are hella-slow, meaning that either you MUST use transport for your entire army (not a realistic thing to force upon the player, most infantry were on foot during battle), or it takes forever to go anywhere. Forces a small map.
2) Ranges on everything are hella-high, ESPECIALLY artillery, which means that a gun can shoot across the entire map on small maps. Forces a large map.

If we "scale up" some things (size, speed, and number of infantry) but "scale down" other things (weapon ranges), the mod will work much better with Spring. Unfortunately that would drop our efforts at realistic scale, but you have to work with the tools you have, and the tools we have aren't designed so that we can have large scale battles at realistic scale.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 28 Oct 2006, 01:36

Lemm1w1nkz wrote:thats no fun, I played the demo with my friend, I had to end a stailmate so I built up a 600 men army complimented with tanks and jeeps and stuff. Spear Headed the line with about 150 men loaded into half tracks forced my way through with tanks and then with my main infantry and took him out. Got about 30-40 fps the whole time, but I have a nvidia 7900 so my computer can take it.

Sadly the demo is using old models and scripts which are far less GPU and CPU - intensive.

Having said that, I am opposed to changing anything, certainly atleast until we release what we currently have.

Lemm1w1nkz · Post by **Lemm1w1nkz** » 28 Oct 2006, 03:15

I always thought that this game was limited purley by your computer not the game engine itself.

MadRat · Post by **MadRat** » 28 Oct 2006, 05:48

Instead of squads, how about teams and crews?

Your machine-gun nest team, with its 3-man crew might have to stand up and fight like normal infantry after losing one of the team. You could script one of the three to keel over once life of the unit gets below a threshold (50% would be sweet). And then instead of the team manning a heavy machine-gun there is a rifle in the hands of the surviving two infantry models. Each person would alternate the shot fired. With the 16 weapons limit this should be a piece of cake.

It would resemble a team but in fact be a single unit.

Felix the Cat · Post by **Felix the Cat** » 28 Oct 2006, 09:39

Lemm1w1nkz wrote:I always thought that this game was limited purley by your computer not the game engine itself.

Myself, Spiked, and one other played a game with a lot of infantry the other day using our latest internal alpha, and all three of us were down to unplayable framerates.

Theoretically, if you had like 2 5GHz dual-core processors, it wouldn't be a problem.

1v0ry_k1ng · Post by **1v0ry_k1ng** » 28 Oct 2006, 13:06

big scale stuff dosnt work well with spring anyway, the pathfinding and unit occlusion means the combat feels a bit crappy. having more than 100 units in an attack group begins to make things feel a little unmanagebale

SpikedHelmet · Post by **SpikedHelmet** » 30 Oct 2006, 02:03

You're simply crazy.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 30 Oct 2006, 06:43

I would like this to remain the "Epic WWII game" we have all wanted to play... just, as an observer.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 30 Oct 2006, 12:20

I am convinced it is a script issue.

maestro · Post by **maestro** » 30 Oct 2006, 12:52

Hello, if complex movement (infantry) causing slowdown, wouldnt this means rotation also causing slowdown ?
so if I made all tank wheels, 8 propeller of Tu-95 etc rotating they will slowdown the game once mass produced ?

1v0ry_k1ng · Post by **1v0ry_k1ng** » 30 Oct 2006, 13:54

yeah but it'd look horrible if the wheels and propellers didnt move

Spring RTS Engine

Spring: 1944 v0.01 Alpha