Can I use this engine for a First-Person Shooter?

[TheOfficialStinger]

Hello, World!
I am a new game designer, and i was wondering, if for my game, 'Mission Survival', it would be possible to use this engine for a First-Person-Shooter style camera and raycasting?

[SpliFF]

The obvious question: Why?

Do you clean your teeth with a toilet brush? Do you deliver concrete slabs in your compact?

There are any number of FPS engines our there and you want to an RTS engine instead? There's obviously something missing from your question: A rationale.

To answer your question though: Yes, you could use the engine for a FPS, Puzzler, Racer, Flight-sim, Side-scroller or whatever but not in a way that most would consider efficient or desirable.

Square Peg does not fit Round Hole.

[Google_Frog]

You will have to be more descriptive.

This engine is designed for RTS type games in which you have many units so it is not optimized for latency. This latency is commonly in the range of 200ms to 1000ms. There are no latency hiding measures in place.

A traditional FPS game in which players shoot each other does not sound feasible. People have made some games which are about as FPS as World of Tanks and I am unsure how well they work.

If all you want is an FPS style camera then the engine can definitely do it. You can completely rewrite the UI to work with some sort of FPS viewpoint. You will have to go into a little more detail regarding what you want to do.

[smoth]

The engine is very specialized towards rts. Find a different engine.

[knorke]

it would be possible to use this engine for a First-Person-Shooter style camera and raycasting?

yes.
With Lua you can read input and scribble on the screen, so of course it is possible to make a game with that. But for that it does not need Spring, can just use <insert favorite graphic lib thing>

Square Peg does not fit Round Hole.

close enough

[SinbadEV]

If you are making an FPS where it's OK that aiming snaps to targets and you want lots and lots of units and players in the same map and you don't want walls or ceilings or the ability to walk on bridges or building and want some DOTA or TD elements... then I could see Spring being a viable option.

[Anarchid]

aiming snaps to targets

Maybe this could be hacked away. Either at engine level, or by lua.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Hi TheOfficialStinger

the answer is no - this engine is horribly unsuited to anything but RTS games. there are a number of FPS mods for spring, and all of them are terrible by the standards of FPS

[PicassoCT]

And yet, if you are here to collect the troll-toll, and you want to here some really huge syghs... goo ahead!

[Neddie]

You could use this engine for a great many things, but no, it is unsuited to use in an FPS game.

[SwiftSpear]

There's a major rift in games regarding how they handle lag. First person shooters in almost all cases account for the difference in time between you performing an action and the other player learning about that action with a series of calculations that predict the relative positions of the players and give the illusion of your behavior being performed in real time.

In RTS games, once again in almost all cases, a different ideology has been used. Rather than forcing the illusion of real time reaction to events, generally RTS games just make the calculations simple by not updating the positions of units and what not until the server knows what they are up to. This is why, in first person games when lag gets really bad opponents begin to warp around and weird phenomena occur, where as in RTS games when lag gets really bad what you feel is much more like; you issue a command and the unit waits one second before it begins to obey your order.

This fundamental split in ideology is the main reason why most RTS engine will never work well for first person games, and likewise, most first person engines will have some serious problems if attempted to make fit an RTS.

So yeah, you can use spring for a first person game... but it will either be really bad, or you'll have to rewrite a LOT of the engine.

[SanadaUjiosan]

Interesting little break down of the difference. Makes sense, didn't know that most FPS predict player movement... but totally accounts for "rubber-banding"