Feature Questions

[Medusa]

Hello guys,

I am aiming for an Action-RTS-RPG gameplay mix with ingame cutscenes and stuff in a scifi scenario. I am not familiar with the Spring engine yet, so I wanted to ask a few technical things:

1. Does this engine support models with 1,000 up to 100,000 vertecies? Im creating HD models, so it would be helpful to know the details.
2. Which Shader Model does it use?
3. Does it support Vertex Weight?
4. Does it support collision meshes such as platforms or elavators or even decent object physics in general?

The engine seems to support huge battle fields and thats exactly what Im looking for. For example some of those maps would have platforms on the top of giant trees or a giant space ship floating above the ground. If it also support some physics for puzzles or debris, it would be a nice addition.
My HD models are using quite some bones. Wihtout Vertex Weight, I have to animate about 1200 bones for the extra limbs ect. The skin and path modifier of Max9 are reducing the work to a reasonable amount.

I think upgrades, unit and player powers as well as an inventory system should be possible with this engine, isnt it? Please let me know. After all those few things are RTS standard to my understanding.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

[NeonStorm]

I think upgrades, unit and player powers as well as an inventory system should be possible with this engine, isnt it?

The engine supports lua gadgets where you can code everything you want.

Some examples:
Tech Annihilation has a nice upgrading system.
Zero-K:
* uses energy from power plants to overdrive metal extractors
* link the charge between different shield units
* Has an amphibious unit with lower range as the water tank depletes
Evolution RTS requires nearby power plants to unlock units in factories
Some space mod (forgot the name) has perks (each player can choose 3 special skills)

I don't know about the other things you have asked.

[FLOZi]

Hello guys,

I am aiming for an Action-RTS-RPG gameplay mix with ingame cutscenes and stuff in a scifi scenario. I am not familiar with the Spring engine yet, so I wanted to ask a few technical things:

1. Does this engine support models with 1,000 up to 100,000 vertecies? Im creating HD models, so it would be helpful to know the details.

No hard limit, and depends on the number of entities in play.

3. Does it support Vertex Weight?

This is the biggy - no.

4. Does it support collision meshes such as platforms or elavators or even decent object physics in general?

The next biggy - no collision meshes for platforms/elevators etc. You can write your own unit physics using the MoveCtrl API.

The engine seems to support huge battle fields and thats exactly what Im looking for.

Yes.

For example some of those maps would have platforms on the top of giant trees or a giant space ship floating above the ground. If it also support some physics for puzzles or debris, it would be a nice addition.

No. (Caveat; at least not with 'under and over', at least not trivially (i.e. without rewriting your own physics with MoveCtrl))

My HD models are using quite some bones. Wihtout Vertex Weight, I have to animate about 1200 bones for the extra limbs ect. The skin and path modifier of Max9 are reducing the work to a reasonable amount.

1200 'bones' (separate pieces as far as spring is concerned as there is no vertex weight) will really punish Spring performance.

I think upgrades, unit and player powers as well as an inventory system should be possible with this engine, isnt it? Please let me know. After all those few things are RTS standard to my understanding.

As Neon said - this part is (trivially) easy with Spring.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

Thank you for your interest! Sadly, though it truly pains me to say it, I do not think Spring can - realistically - fulfil your requirements at this time.

P.S. There will likely be some old salts who come along and suggest I am being overly pessimistic - part of the fun and culture of Spring is wrestling with the beast in order to submit it to your will. I think your problems would be a bit too hard/too much of a hack-job to be worthwhile though.

[Google_Frog]

Spring is a high level RTS engine in that you can get a game out of some simple scripting, text entry unit and weapon statistics and art.

Spring should work for you except for these two major issues.

Large compromises regarding animations
How important are detailed animations? So what sort of zoom level will players commonly use? There have been some examples of good animation with Spring but it will take a lot of work and fiddling to make decent biological animations. Alternatively you could add the animation support you desire to the engine, this would take A LOT of work.

Spring is not a physics engine
Units move around on terrain, not arbitrary meshes. There is no 'colliding polygons' type object physics. The level of physics simulation is quite similar to Supreme Commander and would be very hard to extend. You could not create a seesaw puzzle.

Floating platforms and elevators are possible within limitations. I would not worry about them for now.


That said, as far as I know Spring is your best option. Your requirements are so high that I don't know of any RTS engine which would be appropriate (please tell us if you find one). A general purpose engine would require you to implement many RTS features which already exist in Spring, this sounds like a lot more effort than extending Spring's animation system to suite your needs. There are people here that might even help you. But either way you are looking at a lot of work.

[zwzsg]

3 & 4 would be your biggest blocking point.

Spring use models made of solid pieces, which is good for robots but not so for organic models.

The unit can only walk on the map's heightmap. They can't walk over meshes.

You can however sorta fake flying plateforms, as long as you don't need both under & over to be passable.

IMO writing your own physic model with MoveCtrl is maybe theorically possible, but insane, cause you'll end up having to unwind and rewrite half the engine.

[FLOZi]

IMO writing your own physic model with MoveCtrl is maybe theorically possible, but insane, cause you'll end up having to unwind and rewrite half the engine.

I fully agree with this assessment.

[smoth]

Large compromises regarding animations
How important are detailed animations? So what sort of zoom level will players commonly use? There have been some examples of good animation with Spring but it will take a lot of work and fiddling to make decent biological animations. Alternatively you could add the animation support you desire to the engine, this would take A LOT of work.

garbage in, garbage out. Zpock did it fine. So did some random guy on deviant art kman or some thing I don't' remember his name.

the animation system is currently bugged with respect to the start and stop moving triggers and changing of heading. There was a patch that only further solified the issue and no further work was done. Even with a different animation system where he could directly import his animations(garbage in garbage out, unless he is good at which point the system is not the issue) he would still have to deal with this.

HAVE AT YOU!

[zwzsg]

So did some random guy on deviant art kman or some thing I don't' remember his name.

KenCumpian : http://kencumpian.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=18

[knorke]

Medusa's question was if Spring's meshdeformation animations support vertex weight.
But Spring does not have meshdeformation at all, except for techdemos that not yet made it into something playable.
KenCumpian's animations are just the normal spring way, no meshdeformation.

[zwzsg]

Yes, Spring has no mesh deformation.

But Smoth's point is that you can still have nice animations nevertheless.

[smoth]

But Smoth's point is that you can still have nice animations nevertheless.

^ this.

I am sick and tired of people blaming spring for their lack of talent and skill.

Zpock and ken did it. we just suck.

[FLOZi]

Entirely not the issue here - Medusa could well be a an extremely skilful and talented artist - with the modern and expected tool of mesh deformation. That Spring does not provide this is no comment on his skill.

[smoth]

Entirely not the issue here - Medusa could well be a an extremely skilful and talented artist - with the modern and expected tool of mesh deformation. That Spring does not provide this is no comment on his skill.

C'mon floz, you know I am aware the we do not have deformation. I am addressing googles point. If we had mesh deformation support the piece system could be applied to bones. I didn't say anything on his skill, I said that our, us, as in the spring content devs suck at animation to begin with. Rigging and deformation being unavailable has nothing to do with the fact that we lack the skill to generate really good animation.

[Medusa]

First of all, thanks for all the info. I also took a look into the engine. Sadly, it doesnt fit into my plans, so I decided to go back to the old one I worked with before.

[PicassoCT]

Can you elaborate a little further?
We just want a list of things you needed the most - which was not there. As FLOZI and google allready said, most of the tools can be crafted via lua.

[FLOZi]

Can you elaborate a little further?
We just want a list of things you needed the most - which was not there. As FLOZI and google allready said, most of the tools can be crafted via lua.

That is not what I said.

Sad to see you go Medusa, but expected. Good luck with your project.

Out of interest, what engine are you returning to?

[Medusa]

Sad to see you go Medusa, but expected. Good luck with your project.

Out of interest, what engine are you returning to?

Thanks, I wish you guys also good luck on your projects. :)

As for your question: SAGE (Command & Conquer 3), my projects name is "Timeless War".

[FLOZi]

So Spring lags behind commercial engines from even 2007 (in some respects!).

[smoth]

yeah well, what are you going to do? I have been lobbying for what must be around a month now to have the start/stop moving stuff fixed so THAT animation trigger issue can be resolved and am about to the point where I am going to have to STOP EVERYTHING and fix it my own damn self fully knowing that if I do, a bunch of people are going to come out of nowhere only bitch about me breaking some obscure script implementation they used the bug for.