Spring RTS Engine

Alright,

Wired MAgazine went live online, Free.


Check it out.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/f ... ewall=true

Edit: You sandbagging SOB. I've been after him all weekend to post it and he finally does it like 20 seconds before I do.

Still, my link is better cause it covers every step: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/f ... ewall=true

el_matarife wrote:Edit: You sandbagging SOB. I've been after him all weekend to post it and he finally does it like 20 seconds before I do.

Still, my link is better cause it covers every step: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/f ... ewall=true

Dude,
Sandbagged again,
Check the timestamp on my prev. post. 3 minutes before you i had the right link. (Cause you pasted it to me in a chat window) :)

Wonderful article! Congratulations :D

'SPRING
Real-time strategy game'

x)

yeah, congrats!

So can we now finally say we're legit on Wikipedia because we now meet their minimum of two media sources for references to Spring?

That is awesome.
Secondly,
I have plans to have "printed" toy models of some of the TA units (BA mod). I think my boy would enjoy having a box of units to pretend around with. Of couse, i don't know the cost yet, but i think i may run a few.

That is one great article.

...something caught my eye, though. I'm not sure how I missed this before, but you made your own CNC machineÔÇ¢ That is freakin' awesome!

Friction and balsawood! There is no spring, never was, never will be. Move on, ignore the table which says otherwise.


Great work. And even greater because you geekglued your own cncmill.

Now that you famous, can i borrow some fame? I will hand it back some day, without stalkers and fanbois - i promise- ey, man, put that mouse away from the i-gnore button. Just because you are on wired, you think you can leave all the old teabeggars and down-to-turf-modders-mappers behind and have tea time with the upper-crust.

Man, for now you can, but remember, every tabletop-teaparty is over one day. The sugarcrane just one crater away.

Also do - not - i repeat, do not get the idea that your cnc-mill is a mex, and start to drill holes in your table. :D

This is FRIGGIN AWESOME !!!

Thanks Beherith for mailing me @ iXstudios! (probably did some googling to find me). Not often, but sometimes i get an e-mail from this great TASpring community and it brings back very good feelings!
So again, many thanks for that, again!

And also the fact that this map has made it's way into a WIRED.com
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/f ... materials/ article is simple amazing! Sometimes i still wonder why i had to leave this community, and did start with 'a real job' and running 'my own company'... with all the stress and sometimes boring tasks...

hunterw wrote:



Someone should probably notify the author of MoonQ20x about this!

nice to see you are still alive out there ice.

I (and I assume KB) would be happy to mentor anyone else interested in building their own CNC rig. I think you can pull it off in the 4x4 or 4x8 size for between $1500-2000 depending on parts.

CarRepairer wrote:So can we now finally say we're legit on Wikipedia because we now meet their minimum of two media sources for references to Spring?

Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia of the future", requires two DEAD TREE print references for a game to be notable? Hilarious.

el_matarife wrote:I (and I assume KB) would be happy to mentor anyone else interested in building their own CNC rig. I think you can pull it off in the 4x4 or 4x8 size for between $1500-2000 depending on parts.

Of couse, If your going to spend that kind of money, You better make something with it worth showing for it (El_Mat...) :)

post stats / parts list / pics of your CNC machine!

i've considered making one; not even so much for hobby stuff but for work

quantum is making one; having a bit of a tricky time of it if his last comments on the matter are anything to go by (few weeks ago)

4x4? 8x8? Is it possible/useful/easier/cheaper to make something smaller?

My main use for a CNC would probably be figurines and things like headphone earcups. nothing bigger than 2 feet across.

kaiser: I think you meant me, not quantum, mine is much smaller ( with higher resolution than his judging from the maps output )
pic of the partially assembled machine (costed me ~200Ôé¼, xy axis have ~650 nm resolution, z axis ~1.2um, xy ranges are 17cm, z range is 4 cm ):

whoops defenitely was you BD

nice clean design on your mill

My resolution is better than .001".

But when you carving soemthing thats 2x3, you don't need (nor want" to have ti taked 4 days to carve that much detail. Even i carve by 4x by 4x maps, the reolution used will be even lower, so it won't take forever.

And,
Concerning machine size. Smaller means more detail, typically cheaper, and typically slower (but you don't need fast for small parts).

There is some threshold. Meaning, You need like $500 to build a decent machine up to say 3x3 (roughtly), with som limitations, wont be terribly fast, and might not be the most accurate ting ever), but then there is this jump, when you replace a few component from component that can handle the other electronics for a machine up to 3x3, the next component can handle the toher electronics needed for up to a 12 x 12. When you make the jump into that range, the price changes very little, between a 4x4 and a 12 x 12.

So, depending on what your wanting to do.

kb18951452 wrote:Of couse, If your going to spend that kind of money, You better make something with it worth showing for it (El_Mat...) :)

Haha yeah we've been lazy bastards. Don't worry, we bought Aspire on Thursday, now I'm putting together a big ass order Precise Bits and Attitude Carbide. I just need to find some good thick pieces of MDF and I'll carve my own map table to show off. (And I'm going to do The Last Supper in mahogany or something else really nice.)

KaiserJ wrote:post stats / parts list / pics of your CNC machine!

i've considered making one; not even so much for hobby stuff but for work

We can't post part lists because the guy who designed and sold us the blueprints is worried that someone will just reverse engineer his design. We both built variants of Joes 4x4 Hybrid (So named because it uses wood and plastics). There's a lot of videos of them in action on eBay and there's some good details on his site joescnc.com. You can see a lot of pictures and details of the assembly of my rig on lascolinascnc.com which might give you a pretty good idea of the tools and skills you need.

kb18951452 wrote:My resolution is better than .001".

Accuracy is kind of a hard thing to gauge because there's so many factors that feed into it. If you're got a 1 turn per inch leadscrew, with a 200 step per rotation motor, with a driver capable of 10 microsteps, you've technically got a 0.0005 inch or 12.7 micrometer resolution. However, there's all kinds of other factors that then play into that. If you're using leadscrews, you might have way more than that in "slip" per foot as the gears move. You might have backlash issues where the tool slightly "bounces" as it contacts the cutting surface. Vibration and calibration both play a part too. There's something called "runout" which measures the length a tool vibrates at the tip while spinning too. And even the design software can play a part, I believe that the Vectric packages have an output resolution of .005 by default. Past a certain point, X Y precision isn't really all that important, but Z depth definitely can be.