some things I would like to know about spring

[martov]

hi guys, I am farly new to spring, and I find the FAQs and wikis a bit confusing. I would like to know some things.

1) the animations are done by coding?, all of them?, cant I animate at 3DMAX or similar? I read about a "servo" program for animation, but I cant find it.

2) how big can maps be?

3)why are units models so simple? no offence, but a mod for an FPS take higer poly count that what I see on PURE for example. is there a problem with high poli counts?, or is just that all games that are made for spring are made with the "show 9999999 units while building 4825 tanks and 120 nukes" TA idea, wich must limit poly count not to transform the game into a CPU 2 frames/s survival horror.

4)its possible to do complex animations and models, like tom clancy end war`s models? (high poly count, quality animations, smoke, dinamic shadows ect) or there is something stopping such visuals to be designed.

5) engine limitations? any?

6) effects such as explosions are 3d?, how can they be designed?, what about particle sistems.

7) is ground deformation cappable of drawing the footsteps of a unit for example, on the ground?.

thats all, answers would be apreciated.

sorry for my bad english, I understand that I might have broken all gramatical first grade elementary school rules in my first 2 sentences, but its not my first lenguage.

[Argh]

1) the animations are done by coding?, all of them?, cant I animate at 3DMAX or similar?

Yes, they're done with coding, currently. There are a number of efforts to bring more traditional animation formats to the engine, but none of them are done yet.

2) how big can maps be?

Depends on what you mean by "big". Scale is relative, to a certain extent. You can have scales of maps that are really, really huge, if you keep model scales low enough.

3)why are units models so simple? no offence, but a mod for an FPS take higer poly count that what I see on PURE for example. is there a problem with high poli counts?, or is just that all games that are made for spring are made with the "show 9999999 units while building 4825 tanks and 120 nukes" TA idea, wich must limit poly count not to transform the game into a CPU 2 frames/s survival horror.

A FPS has a totally different spec than P.U.R.E. does, and yes, that's largely because I want to show a lot of units on the screen at once. If you keep the number of characters down, you could easily have 3-5K triangles per model without any serious problems. And a 5K model is massive overkill for a RTS, especially if you use a shader.

4)its possible to do complex animations and models, like tom clancy end war`s models? (high poly count, quality animations, smoke, dinamic shadows ect) or there is something stopping such visuals to be designed.

Yes, except for the dynamic shadows bit, unless you want to write us a shader to do that. Again, see earlier remarks- basically, if you've been looking at P.U.R.E., you're looking at a game that was optimized for a very different load scenario than a typical FPS. I have hundreds and hundreds of Units in the gameworld at once. That imposed some fairly important limitations on how much stuff can be in the world without slowdown on the lower end of the computers that I am building the game for. You can always spec higher than P.U.R.E.- I built it with a pretty broad audience in mind, and kept polycounts, etc., within some pretty tight tolerances. The only place I got really sloppy is that some of the skins are huge 1024s, which is very sloppy but was just part of the production cycle.

5) engine limitations? any?

Lots, too many to get into. That said, it's the most flexible RTS engine that's probably been designed to date, due to heavy Lua tie-ins. It's imperfect, but that's life.

6) effects such as explosions are 3d?, how can they be designed?, what about particle sistems.

Explosions are particle systems that behave in 3D ways. They use a very simple procedural scripting system that we refer to as "CEG" (Custom Explosion Generator). See the Wiki for more details.

7) is ground deformation cappable of drawing the footsteps of a unit for example, on the ground?.

That is certainly possible.

[martov]

thanks for answering, I understand that spring engine is cappable of much more than the models and polis number shown in mods, I just was not sure up to what level.

I have hundreds and hundreds of Units in the gameworld at once. That imposed some fairly important limitations on how much stuff can be in the world without slowdown on the lower end of the computers that I am building the game for.

I perfectly understand that. and respect it, I was just curious about the engine capabilities. we are not talking about warcraft III unit limit here after all!!, we are talking about a LOT of units when it comes to games based on spring.

another question, what is "servo", named on the "Want to start a project? Here is where you need to start." post.
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6015

animation:
Servo
While it is a bit rough at first once it is understood it can easily handle more complicated animations in it.

there is a link in the post but is broken and google isnt helping me.

[Argh]

Well, basically you can do what you want, so long as you don't need IK. That stuff is coming (several attempts to port the MD5 format are in various stages of completion).

As for Servo... my advice is, don't waste your time. If you want to try a visual editing environment, I'd suggest the Blender export plugin: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17026

I haven't used it. P.U.R.E. was done by hand. But it looks like it could be a really great tool. Just remember, you'll have to know how to do some of it by hand, no matter what you do. Spring is very much a programmer's engine.

[martov]

thanks again.

[MidKnight]

Get the answers, with MidKnight's new PicureBookPost!

hi guys, I am farly new to spring, and I find the FAQs and wikis a bit confusing. I would like to know some things.

1) the animations are done by coding?, all of them?, cant I animate at 3DMAX or similar? I read about a "servo" program for animation, but I cant find it.

(Get blender. Get thesleepless's animation exporter. Win.)

2) how big can maps be?

(There is no set limit, however, maps bigger than 20x20 tend to be laggy.)

3)why arehttp://springrts.com/phpbb/posting.php?mode=quote&f=14&p=347648 units models so simple? no offence, but a mod for an FPS take higer poly count that what I see on PURE for example. is there a problem with high poli counts?, or is just that all games that are made for spring are made with the "show 9999999 units while building 4825 tanks and 120 nukes" TA idea, wich must limit poly count not to transform the game into a CPU 2 frames/s survival horror.

(You go find us some amazing and amazingly dedicated modelers. Anything under 3000 polies isn't gonna lag very badly. However, Poly waste is BAD!)

4)its possible to do complex animations and models, like tom clancy end war`s models? (high poly count, quality animations, smoke, dinamic shadows ect) or there is something stopping such visuals to be designed.

(Go find us some amazing and amazingly dedicated Lua and GL coders. jK, baczek, trepan, and lurker can only do so much, so fast!)

5) engine limitations? any?

(A few.)

6) effects such as explosions are 3d?, how can they be designed?, what about particle sistems.

(CEGs + LUPS can do anything.)

7) is ground deformation cappable of drawing the footsteps of a unit for example, on the ground?.

(YES.)

[kburts]

those screenies are very nice!

[Pressure Line]

regarding point 3: comparing FPS models and RTS models is like comparing apples and oranges. Most Spring games have large [lets say 200] numbers of units on screen at once, this necessitates a tighter polygon count per unit [say 1000/unit for 200k for the scene] than a FPS game where there may only be 20 models onscreen. If each of the 20 player models is 10000 polygons, thats 200k for the scene. Same polycount in both scenes, but obviously they would look very different. FPS and RTS games have very different goals, and use different methods to achieve them, so comparing the polycount isn't really fair.

There is also the zoom level issue: in an FPS everything is in your face, low poly models with low-resolution textures look terrible, where the same model and texture in an RTS looks fine, because your POV is no-where near as close.

tl:dr - don't bother comparing Spring to an FPS, it's pointless, the goals are not the same.

[Forboding Angel]

^^ what PL said.

[Nemo]

Note from someone who has done a complete set of very complicated humanoid anims - the blender tool will not export usable code. You still need to do a LOT of work after that. Servo is a waste, but I personally like working with upspring (for the most part).

Good and believable animations for non-tank units are probably one of the biggest roadblocks to content creation at the moment, given how much time it takes to make decent ones (particularly of any complexity).

[chillaaa]

*waits for a reply about IW anims*

[Evil4Zerggin]

2) how big can maps be?

As was said before, you can make maps seem larger or smaller by resizing units. However, there *are* a few areas where map size does matter:

Map textures have finite resolution, so you can't zoom in forever and still have things be recognizable.

Likewise, the height and metal maps have finite resolution, as does the pathfinding. One important unit here is the footprint square, which is 16 spring units (often called "elmos") on a side. (The little squares you see when putting a building down are 8 elmos on a side.) The smallest possible footprint is 1x1; if we say that this is two meters on a side (a little taller than an average human), this gives us a scale of 8 elmos to the meter. One map size is 512 elmos across, so at this scale a 16x16 map (about average) would be about 1 km across. This is probably the highest possible compression for human-based games, though.

Most games have rather small weapon ranges compared to the model size. For example, Spring: 1944 does use a model scale of about 8 elmos to the meter for models and movement, but weapon ranges are compressed about 8 times as much, to 1 elmo per meter (though this is not an absolute rule). This would make a 16x16 map about 8 km across in weapon scale.

[Neddie]

With reasonable scaling, if I recall, functional map size can surpass that seen in Supreme Commander.

I must mention that there is nothing barring the generation and implementation of new map and model formats except for the lack of (wo)manpower.

[Warlord Zsinj]

[inserts typical bawwing IW post about wanting skeletal animations]

[zwzsg]

3)why are units models so simple?

Spring models are either stolen from TA or made by hobbyist. Making a model as complex as those in recent FPS takes lots of time and skills!

For FPS mods, people may just reskin one or two models, for a Spring mods, you'd have to make not only the texture but also the model and animation, and for the hundreds of different unit a RTS mod might count. That would take gigantic amount of worktime.

[martov]

Spring models are either stolen from TA or made by hobbyist. Making a model as complex as those in recent FPS takes lots of time and skills!

For FPS mods, people may just reskin one or two models, for a Spring mods, you'd have to make not only the texture but also the model and animation, and for the hundreds of different unit a RTS mod might count. That would take gigantic amount of worktime.

my question was pointed at limitations from engine. I understand that a really big amount of manpower is needed, and one year or two

regarding point 3: comparing FPS models and RTS models is like comparing apples and oranges. Most Spring games have large [lets say 200] numbers of units on screen at once, this necessitates a tighter polygon count per unit [say 1000/unit for 200k for the scene] than a FPS game where there may only be 20 models onscreen. If each of the 20 player models is 10000 polygons, thats 200k for the scene. Same polycount in both scenes, but obviously they would look very different. FPS and RTS games have very different goals, and use different methods to achieve them, so comparing the polycount isn't really fair.

see also point 3 again, so that you can see that I allready thought about that, and asqued if it was because of that reason, again, my question was pointed to if its "possible"


I mean, what I was asquing was
"I can do a age of empires(or insert name here) in spring limiting the population limit and making units with 3-4k poly count if I have the system and raw power to run it?"

answer up to now: YES

(Go find us some amazing and amazingly dedicated Lua and GL coders. jK, baczek, trepan, and lurker can only do so much, so fast!)

I know that the mods in a engine can look and act as good as the developers making it, but the engine is , by any means, as good as a mod/game for it.
just imagine that i am a developer intrested in making a game for spring engine.

thank you for answering
sorry for my bad english

[SwiftSpear]

3)why are units models so simple? no offence, but a mod for an FPS take higer poly count that what I see on PURE for example. is there a problem with high poli counts?, or is just that all games that are made for spring are made with the "show 9999999 units while building 4825 tanks and 120 nukes" TA idea, wich must limit poly count not to transform the game into a CPU 2 frames/s survival horror.

The more onscreen units the more onscreen polies. FPS very rarely show more than 5-6 guys on screen at a time. Even if you take L4D, you're still probably looking maximum of 20 in most cases.

You've got alot more units on screen at any given time in your average RTS that allows global zooming. Spring also isn't quite as good for mip mapping and culling off screen stuff as the professional engines are out there. Finally, we're an amateur development community, modelers here don't have the time to create the level of content used in most FPS games. In an FPS game I might have to make 20-30 different models, in an average spring mod it's about 200.

[CarRepairer]

I'm surprised no one mentioned that really great texturing is what gives better results over (unnecessarily) high polycount, in an RTS. A high polycount model with ugly texture is ugly. A medium polycount model with great texturing is beautiful, until you zoom right up to it (which is not part of RTS gameplay) close enough to see edges and blockiness.

[smokingwreckage]

You don't need high polycount so much as units that "read" well at average zoom. So the overall aesthetic, and the distinctiveness and "character" of the model are more important than outright pollies.

From what I read there's no engine problem with very high polygon models if that's what you want to do.