Newcomer

[Skreeg]

I've been looking through this subforum for awhile and I'm pretty interested in spring. I just bought a reasonably nice computer and
working on a narsty graphical thing would give me an excuse to have bought it. And I've always wanted to make an AoE-ish RTS game, so I've been exploring options and I came across spring.

It appears that this particular engine might not be the best for this given the lack of a decent melee system. Does anyone know of any engines that would be better suited to this?

Regardless of this shortcoming, I think I might like to mess around with stuff here. I'm a competent programmer (although I generally work on kernels or backends, not on games) and not particularly interested in the modelling/art side of things. Maybe I could work on a better melee system or something. Anyone have suggestions of a place to get started and learn the basics?

[Nemo]

This doesn't answer your question, but as encouragement:
you would be a minor legend among the designers around here if you put something together that allowed for reasonably complex/interesting melee - right now the best we can do is play an animation and have the unit fire a weapon that always hits and always damages (or terribly hackish things with short ranged beamlasers firing from a fixed point and moving them around).

So. In short - I'm hugely hopeful it comes together, decent melee would open up all kinds of design possibilities. Good luck.

[hoijui]

hmm.. for a start, just get latest spring sources (preferably from the GIT repo, not the tarball) and set up your system to compile spring. then start looking at the code and ask for questions in this forum or in the #sy channel on the lobby. there is not really something that explains the code structure of the game well. nearest thing to that is the directories.txt file at the root of the spring sources.

http://springrts.com/wiki/Engine_Development

hope to see you soon

[Neddie]

As far as I am aware, there are no engines with melee which do not merely depend upon hitscan weapons and a triggered animation. The other OS alternatives to Spring tend to be C&C/WCIII clones and their melee would function as per the above.

[AF]

A working TA:Kingdoms would make numerous people very happy

[Gnomre]

there's already a working TA Kingdoms

we call it TA Kingdoms

[Skreeg]

Hmm...upon looking at the code, making a decent basic melee weapon doesn't seem like it would be _that_hard...seems like I could just kind of imitate a short range stripped down beam laser type thing. Dunno how I'd trigger an animation yet.

[imbaczek]

there's weapontype=Melee - and it should work in the next version, finally. you can also use a invisible beamlaser with disabled damage falloff (minintensity=1 iirc).

[Skreeg]

Tehheh, enjoy your minor legend status then

How long until the next version is expected?

And lastly, if I make changes to the source, how am I supposed to test it? Running the spring executable brings up a message saying that gamedata/parse_tdf.lua can be found; I have that file, but it's in installer/builddata/springcontent/gamedata. Where is it expected? I'm running Ubuntu 9.04.

[Auswaschbar]

We just released one, so you have plenty of time.
You need at least 1 spring data directory to run.Simpliest way is to "make install" spring into <path>, then add SpringData="<path>" to ~/.springrc

[Warlord Zsinj]

An interesting melee system for use with Jedi would be brilliant...

[imbaczek]

melee is a hard problem mostly due to pathing issues, commercial games have problems with it, too, see DOW2 e.g. (which is still heaps better than spring at hth combat.)

[Kloot]

For melee, an approach I've been considering is to tie CMeeleeWeapon into the per-piece collision detection routines, so that any melee weapons slaved to an attacker's "weapon" model pieces (axes, lightsabers, ...) could automatically provide some degree of actual hack 'n slash interaction with the target's pieces (arms, legs, ...). That way, almost all of the targetBorder legacy stuff could be nicely cleaned up too.

[imbaczek]

targetBorder serves a purpose wider than melee; it allows weapons to target units with large collision volumes when the midpoint is out of range (e.g. earlier Gundam huge coms), and it also helps short-range-but-not-quite-melee weapons like s44 grenades a bit.

BUT I'm all for making spring melee-friendly and will support any initiative that helps the matter.

[polaris_silvertree]

So are we looking for someone to begin by providing a framework for Melee? I can certainly provide my thoughts on that -- as I have spent some time thinking about this over the years.

That said, H2H combat probably needs to be clearly defined versus general Melee -- because one could even argue, esp with Spring that H2H is going to be more an exception if its just bludgeoning-type weapons in close combat versus tech weapons from mid/short range. In Spring -- I would think for the OTA/NOTA mods -- general Melee should extend to short/medium range guns/lasers/rockets and the ability to avoid/dodge (absorb is already addressed with the HP). "Defense" (i.e. hit avoidance) attributes could be applicable to all ranges -- but it greatly confuses the lines of strategy (and at the same time develops some new niche strategies too) -- and then there is an issue with regards to impact to gameplay. Is this where the general community wants to go?

[zwzsg]

The issues with melee are more around how melee units must be able to attack only when they touch, but always when they touch even if they touch a large structure. Something to do with ranges, aiming and attacking center, etc...

Your dodge/parry custom defense point concepts are irrelevant.

OTA/NOTA mods

Even if CA has a somewhat meleeing can, melee is obviously for non-TA mods.

[polaris_silvertree]

I'm not following your explanation.

I recognize that the melee was most likely for the non-TA mods (i.e. Gundam or Star Wars). But, I guess I am trying to understand (and you'll have to be patient with my apparent ignorance) -- but why would you NOT try to implement a melee system in TA-esque mods? Why would hit avoidance/parry be irrelevant (which incidentally could include countermeasures)? Are you saying that melee is reserved for non-TA mods and that the community doesn't want traditional TA-mods to have a melee system? As I tried to suggest in my earlier post -- I would understand. Gameplay could be hindered.

And I didn't follow your line of thought in your explanation with regards to touch (contact)? Is the issue surrounding melee for Spring more of being able to use collision detection for adjacent units to execute (based on position, speed, range) map out order of attack on adjacent objects that have been flagged due to "shadow" collisions and their respective collisions (I don't know what you were implying when you said "etc")?

I apologize for my lack of understanding....

[yuritch]

The idea is that in order to attack something, Spring weapons must be in range of its center. With very large object (buildings) and very short-ranged weapons (melee weapons) it's very well possible that a unit touches the target, but cannot attack it (since it's still too far from its center).

[imbaczek]

yuritch: targetBorder solves this specific problem (it doesn't understand collision volumes, only spheres, though.)