Wee Spring - Page 5

Wee Spring

Various things about Spring that do not fit in any of the other forums listed below, including forum rules.

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Warlord Zsinj
Imperial Winter Developer
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

Er, have you played it yet, Zoombie?
You can't really comment on it untill you have played it.

And you can delete double posts by editing them.

EDIT: Oh, and Gnome, the unit in the SWTASpring image isn't actually an ATPT, its an ESPO walker, which is smaller than an ATPT walker.
Kixxe
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Joined: 14 May 2005, 10:02

Post by Kixxe »

Meh, i tryed it, and i cannot se what the big fuzz is about. the units are smaller and? dosent look better much, dosent look worst etiher. Happy whit both, whatever it may be-.-
Durandal
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Joined: 05 May 2005, 16:27

Post by Durandal »

The business isn't that it looks better or worse. The business is that, by shrinking everything but the maps, the maps become larger.

As someone said before: "how do you make something seem gigantic ? By shrinking everything else."
Warlord Zsinj
Imperial Winter Developer
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

For example, a number of map makers attempted to create large maps, but could not, simply because Spring couldn't handle it. Now we've made all maps twice as big.

But more importantly; maps aren't just wider, they are higher. Before, the majority of map makers couldn't make real terrain; simply minor undulations. Now, mountains are effectively twice as high, and valley's twice as deep.

This is not just important for aesthetic reasons, but also for gameplay reasons. Now high grounds is twice as important, creating defensive ranges and important strategic areas.
Also, trees are now twice as tall, meaning that much of the combat actually occurs beneath its canopy, and around trees, rather than around the outside of forests, which are marked out as "obstructions" in the larger sized spring.
Durandal
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Post by Durandal »

(and besides, that custom-black solid GUI rocks ass)
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munch
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Joined: 26 May 2005, 20:00

Post by munch »

Zoombie wrote:I have been thinking that Mini-Spring would be cool, but for some nagging reason I don├óÔé¼Ôäót fully support it. Maybe it├óÔé¼Ôäós the fact that I like the big units! They look cool, and when a unit is smaller they you├óÔé¼Ôäóre zoomed out camera would make them tiny pinpricks
I think WZ has already addressed this in his reply to my message:
Warlord Z wrote: You are just thinking in the wrong frame of mind. You are thinking "we are playing the same sized game, only with little units", when what you need to be thinking is: "I am playing a game that is now two times bigger, and the units are the same size."
The zoom controls are so wide ranging that I don' think you'd have a problem not being able to zoom in enough. As for effectively zooming out further, nobody's forcing you to zoom out!

Going back to WZ's point about maps though, my worry is that you're reducing the choice - right now there's a good mix of small and medium maps. Changing the scale would make for a good mix of medium and large maps, but then you've lost those crazy skirmishes where you start out practically on top of each other. I'm just looking for a way to have both. I guess if you supported the whole thing with a switcher so that you could choose big or little units, that would do it. The problem is that every single mod that comes along then has to provide two sets of units. If it is included in the engine you get rid of that burden.

Surely it's just a case of adding a scale factor constant in a few key places during the game initialisation (OK easier said than done probably)?

...or would it even be possible to preprocess the unit definition files to reduce their size? If so, that could be done in a switcher, meaning the SYs don't have to do it....

Cheers

Munch
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Delta
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Joined: 09 May 2005, 15:33

Post by Delta »

Why not just make a map that is half the size the maps are now, then you would have those tight skirmishes.
Instead of playing a 8x8 map with big units, play a 4x4 map with small units.
Also, then mapmakers wouldnt need to consider multiple unitsizes, since a map made for small units might not work well or at all with big units (narrow passes and so on).

The only thing that should be scaleable imo are features like trees and grass, and then only by the mapmaker.
Torrasque
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004, 23:55

Post by Torrasque »

Cheery wrote:
Torrasque wrote:Instead of decreasing unit size, can't we juste increasing the map size with a less detailled texturemap/heighmap?
A make that the map maker can choose the scale of the feathure/tree.
Like that you can make little and beautiful map or epic map, but a bit less detailled.

It's just a raw idea.
Actually this setting makes out the difference between big polygoned buildings and terrain really well. Making it to look good. It's no use to increase map size. It is faster and better way to lower unit sizes. I actually like that. (looking out for a mod dl link...)
Sorry I didn't speak very well english.
The bad thing with miniSpring is that you have 2 different version of spring and, for exemple, the metal patch are not at the right size.
Their are some tweaking that bring some weird bug too. (try to build raw mt)

Why would be imposible to modify spring to be able to load 2x less detailled data, to create 2 less detailled pathfinding etc...?
Or even more, load 4x less detailled to have a "mini-mini Spring"?
Let the map creator choose the scale of the features.

(Yes, I tried min-Spring and I liked it. It is just sad that it can't be incorporated invisibly in spring.)
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aGorm
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Post by aGorm »

I would not have any prob with Mini Spring if it became how the game always it. But at the moment, having both... it just seems like the games gonna be pulled apart. For one thing, grass is to big in mini spring. And 2x2 units are 1x1, which means if you wanted a 1x1 it would be 1/2 x 1/2. Thats an annoyance. I think what shgould actully happen is that the whole game should just be scalled down slightly. Just keeping trees to the same size. Then you basicly have 2x's the size maps, bigger trees, but oither than that it will be normal spring.

If we have two versions the comunity will get split. That would sux.

There must be a way to rescale the units without having to edit the ufo's aswell as the engin, becasue the engin must have some sort of global idea of distances (which are the things that youve had to edit in ufo's to make it work)

I think you should get the SY's to talk about shrinking the whole of spring down.

Plus having one version means its easyer to make maps, and also if you made a unit now youd hjave to do a mini spring version to, just to change wepon ranges and stuff.

Does anyone get what im trying to say??

aGorm
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BlackLiger
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Post by BlackLiger »

Hmm.

1 minour bug in wee spring....

It crashes why I try to build dragons teeth on Core Prime industrial. I dunno if thats the map, the mod or what........
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Dragon45
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Post by Dragon45 »

I always thought grass became shrubbery or tall weeds in Minispring

If you want to justfiy it, i mean.
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Zoombie
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Post by Zoombie »

I am flip-flopping! After thinking about it for four hours, smashing my head against the monitor for a bit and having some diet Root Beer I finally decided that it is a COOL idea.

See I took warlord's advice. Instead of thinking that the units a getting SMALLER I instead thought that the map was getting BIGGER and suddenly it clicked an now I├óÔé¼Ôäóm all for it...

I have a wired brain.
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Buggi
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Joined: 29 Apr 2005, 07:46

Post by Buggi »

Imma make a custom dir for this change of spring, so I can compile and run both 8)

-Buggi
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[K.B.] Napalm Cobra
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Post by [K.B.] Napalm Cobra »

Perhaps a switcher is in order until the new multiplayer client is released? :lol:
MrAstrup
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Joined: 10 Sep 2004, 16:52

I would like to hear the Swedish guys comment on this topic!

Post by MrAstrup »

I would like to hear the Swedish guys comment on this topic!

Whats your view on TA Spring mini - will you make it standard?

I think we need an answer or decision for now, since it affects the 3rd party development a lot. For instance the map making has almost stopped after we started this discussion....
Gnomre
Imperial Winter Developer
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Post by Gnomre »

On the metal extractor thing--The mapmaker defines the extractor radius in the .smd file for the map. This value is not modified at all for minispring (currently, anyway), so that aspect of gameplay is still the same. The "problem" would only be graphical, since the metal extractor would no longer cover the visible metal spots (on maps that have them).

I don't really mind if it's made official or not. It should be easy to make the scale factor dynamic before the game loads for someone with more C++ skill than me. But after thinking about it, I agree with those who say we need a standard size. It's just too much for mappers to handle to try to make a map that works well with both scales, but having two different types of maps would only lead to confusion as well.

Whichever scale is decided on, at least the relevent code changes are mapped out now for future modders--since the engine is GPL'ed, there should be no problem if a group like SWTA or AA or whatever released their mod with their own custom version of the Spring engine which is best suited for the mod.

Oh, and to the guy who had problems building DT on CPIA: I just loaded up and tried without a hitch. Shift dragging DTs didn't seem to work right though, while it did for every other unit... I found that odd...
Warlord Zsinj
Imperial Winter Developer
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

I rather like seeing my units travelling through knee-high grass.
Seriously, you can't expect far off planets to have well-tended lawns ;)

Consider the pictures I posted on page 3. Half of the atmosphere from that picture comes from the grass not the trees.
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[K.B.] Napalm Cobra
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Post by [K.B.] Napalm Cobra »

After looking at the screen shots warlord suggested I noticed two things,

A) Grass does at alot to the atmosphere, but without the trees it would not be nearly as good.

B) Trees are all of uniform height, although different in model. This tends to make it look like an artificial forest rather than a natural one. Perhaps we could have random tree scalings, within a certain smd defined value, for the next release?
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Buggi
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Post by Buggi »

[K.B.] Napalm Cobra wrote: B) Trees are all of uniform height, although different in model. This tends to make it look like an artificial forest rather than a natural one. Perhaps we could have random tree scalings, within a certain smd defined value, for the next release?
Actually trees ARE randomly sized... :-/

Maybe not randomly enough?

I could add another slider in my app... "Tree size randomness"
:D

-Buggi
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[K.B.] Napalm Cobra
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Post by [K.B.] Napalm Cobra »

75-200% should be varied enough to make it look nicer.
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