Spring RTS Engine

I don't think you should take him quite so literally on that peet. We would be talking about a game designed to run on said hardware, which theoretically could be done, no matter how lackluster.

Peet wrote: This paragraph is pretty revealing as to exactly how much you know specifically about Spring. No offense, but I think you really are underqualified to be making these suggestions and expecting serious and respectful responses.

Maybe you need to get out of the PC box a little.

If Spring works on a Linux based PC, it should be able to be ported to both, the iPhone and Android based phone. I never said it was easy or even practical, but I know a little bit about porting between platforms and supporting multiple platforms, including hand held.

If Spring cannot currently be ported to those platforms because of core engineering problems, then maybe it's time for a SpringMobile project that can be. To me, this is simply an engineering and architecture problem that can be solved by someone motivated to solve it. More importantly, it probably has the most realistic possibility of payoff for individual projects.

- nXain

The GPL nature of Spring would make an XBox Live Arcade version impossible due to licensing conflicts. A version for the iPhone and Android does actually sound quite cool, though. You would need to redesign the games to have much smaller UIs and be simpler, though. For example, there's only the equivalent of a left mouse button on the iPhone. It's not a simple problem to overcome as I can see a dozen UI issues of the input system just off the top of my head.

Plus no keyboard shortcuts.

It could be done, but our games would have to be simplified quite a bit to make it work, but it could be done.

Forboding Angel wrote:Plus no keyboard shortcuts.

It could be done, but our games would have to be simplified quite a bit to make it work, but it could be done.

The best approach would be to design a game for the target platform based on how you think a user will use the app (even if it's 50% the same as an existing project). To me, this would mean simplification and also looking at game sessions that were designed for 20 minutes.

- nXain

I have a 2 ghz machine running a Radeon 9600 that Spring positively crawls on when I play anything other than a small, tactical game with no Lua.

I have a hard time believing that a handheld platform can do better without a lot of work.

Pxtl wrote:I have a 2 ghz machine running a Radeon 9600 that Spring positively crawls on when I play anything other than a small, tactical game with no Lua.

I have a hard time believing that a handheld platform can do better without a lot of work.

It would be a lot of work, but this is where you have to forget what you know about games you've been playing using Spring and start with with "what can I make starting with Spring that works on a mobile platform?" You will never be able to get the same experience you currently have on a PC, but that wouldn't be worth the effort anyway and really bad design.

Likely, Spring would be branched and then that branch reworked and optimized for mobile platforms and lower end CPUs like the "atom". Ideally, Google would be the sugar daddy and this could be part of the summer of code thing, but who knows how realistic that is. Still, the end result could be very, very valuable and enable devs to sell their work with minimal fuss.

- nXain

I think you're getting WAY ahead of yourself.

1. Xbox - Totally out of the question. Not only is it not even close to a point where there's enough finished content, but there'd be licensing issues, and you'd have to get through MS first. Fat chance.

2. Selling downloadable content. This will NEVER happen. You mentioned Blender. Yes, it has a great system the works very well, but you conveniently overlooked the fact that Blender is still completely free and they're only selling learning material. To sell Spring content would not only totally go against the Spring/open source ideal, but nobody would buy it. I'm just being honest here. Who would really buy it?

3. You mention investors. Spring will never get investors - It's Open Source, and it's chock full of legal nightmares, and it's not sellable. It's Open Source.

4. You talked about a 'Spring Foundation', and how great it would be, and I agree, it would be awesome. But where would it get money? We already know that nobody will pay for some downloadable content. And there's no special learning DVD's or books like Blender has.

5. Spring won't be published. It's Open Source. People don't BUY Open Source stuff. Open Source developers don't SELL their software. That totally defeats the purpose. We aren't starting a company, and we aren't getting a lawyer.

6. Ads - Bollocks. First of all, Spring is not in the state that anyone would WANT do advertise in it. Second, have you ever played a game with ads? It's the most fucking annoying thing you can imagine. I will never take part in a game that fills itself up with ads.

7. Spring isn't going to be distributed as an OEM. It's FREE FFS. It's OPEN SOURCE! What part of 'OPEN SOURCE' do you not get? WE ARE NOT SELLING SPRING.





You clearly don't understand Open Source at all.

All your ideas would be great - For a game that wasn't Open Source. It simply doesn't work like that.

Hobo Joe wrote:I think you're getting WAY ahead of yourself.
.

Go back and read my post again.

I think you'll find that I said that it was unlikely that you could make money with Spring selling games but I wanted to address that first because the Part B will be stuff largely unfamiliar to the Spring community. In fact, you came close to saying the same thing I said in the post a couple of times.

Everything since that particular post has been simply brainstorming along the lines of Part A.

You're right though, I'm not an open source expert, I do however follow the big open source projects and various business models (most of which do have one).

- nXain

@ Hobo Joe

The Spring engine is open source, but there are routes for developers to commercialise content produced on an open source engine.

No one would want Spring itself as an OEM, but they might be interested in something along the lines of PURE. Likewise for mobile games, if someone decided to use Spring as a base to develop a smartphone RTS, Spring would still be open source but that specific application would be a commercial venture.

Crayfish wrote:@ Hobo Joe

The Spring engine is open source, but there are routes for developers to commercialise content produced on an open source engine.

No one would want Spring itself as an OEM, but they might be interested in something along the lines of PURE. Likewise for mobile games, if someone decided to use Spring as a base to develop a smartphone RTS, Spring would still be open source but that specific application would be a commercial venture.

I know that it's technically possible but it's an unrealistic goal, to say the least. First of all, there needs to be a LOT more development not only to Spring but to PURE as well. Then it has to be marketed, which goes back to the problem of getting money. Where would it come from? Who would invest in a project by a bunch of unheard of developers working on an indie game? If there were to be a 'foundation', where would it get its money?

There's a lot of problems that need to be worked out long before anything related to Spring can sell.



Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Spring developers make money like the developers for things like Blender (and Linux?), but I'm also against selling the games. It saddens me to see a good Open Source project go retail. That'd be like Blender starting to charge and limiting licenses. It just breaks the whole open source ideal.

As of right now I really don't think there's a realistic answer. I'd love to see something like the Blender foundation for Spring, but as mentioned there's nothing for it to sell except downloadable content which goes against what I just said. It's a vicious circle.

I am fine with people doing commercial work. Afaik some scripts and must be gpl compatible for license reasons. Content, like models, sounds and textures, however can be licensed as people wish.

I do not think there would be much we could do against it, if people started doing commercial stuff based on spring. As long as those people share their lua scripts with good enough documentation/readability and such, i think it would probably be a good thing. Eventually some of those makers of the game will want some features and such, and may even contribute downstream.

I guess this should all be old news, the GPL and such are designed to work with these things, and other GPL-ed software has also had contributions from commercial upstream projects.

People who want to do mods with free software and those who do not can coexist. If you do not want your art used commercially, use something like the Creative Commons license with a non-commercial clause. People can always ask you for another license, if they want to, all creators need to agree on that, though.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtop ... 14&t=15661

HoboJoe, STFU and read this before spouting any more bullshit.


Open source is SOLD as COMMERCIAL, Even LINUX OPEN SOURCE OS's ARE SOLD. LOLREDHAT?

For the love of christ. http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ OMG GASPED, Commercial open source CRM?? OH NOES!!!!

/extreme irritation.

Hobo Joe wrote:

Crayfish wrote:@ Hobo Joe
As of right now I really don't think there's a realistic answer. I'd love to see something like the Blender foundation for Spring, but as mentioned there's nothing for it to sell except downloadable content which goes against what I just said. It's a vicious circle.

Linux has never been realistic and yet it works. The same goes for all the major open source apps. A Spring Foundation doesn't need to sell product, it needs to chase money and invest it into the engine and worthy projects (and tools and branches) and work towards a common agenda. This is why Ubuntu is starting to pass out money to outside of Ubuntu - because it makes Ubuntu more viable when other pieces of the package work better. Google is passing out a ton of money to projects it doesn't own in order to mature various web technologies. You think Google would like to have a nice game platform to through up against the iPhone? I do.

I don't have time yet to really write Part B yet, but as a quick memo, who would want to see Spring be a successful platform? CPU makers, GPU makers, PC manufacturers, Linux distros, NASA (Nasa has a mandate to find new ways to teach STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), NSF, the Kauffman Foundation, etc. etc. There are a lot of people out there who'd like to see Spring get better but have no direct interest in any particular game (research, value added content, prototypes, etc.)

How do you get off the ground with marketing for a specific project? Make a good game and let PC Gamer put it on their magazine disk. Maximum PC? Linux Games? etc. etc. I'm not an expert in this area, but I certainly receive lots of value added freebies that Spring is more worthy than. I don't think it would be hard to get the ball rolling once there is a game ready and a Spring Foundation to answer the phones.

- nXain

Linux has never been realistic and yet it works. The same goes for all the major open source apps. A Spring Foundation doesn't need to sell product, it needs to chase money and invest it into the engine and worthy projects (and tools and branches) and work towards a common agenda. This is why Ubuntu is starting to pass out money to outside of Ubuntu - because it makes Ubuntu more viable when other pieces of the package work better. Google is passing out a ton of money to projects it doesn't own in order to mature various web technologies. You think Google would like to have a nice game platform to through up against the iPhone? I do.

Linux is realistic, and so is Spring. They're all perfectly 'realistic'. Just because you come from an environment of getting paid for your coding doesn't mean that there aren't coders out there who do it for fun, in their FREE time.


And Spring is far to graphically advanced for any mobile device that is out right now. Sure, some optimizations could make it better, but that doesn't change the fact that it's very graphically intensive.

Here's another way to think about it... a Spring Foundation would be the VC for Spring based projects. It would find funds by trying to find common agendas with sources of funds that could be used to better the engine with no strings attached. Probably the most important thing it could do is help to clarify the IP and legal issues in support of the better projects to enable them to be distributed or sold or given away or whatever. The second most important thing it could do is manage the core code and long term development roadmap.

- nXain

Hobo Joe wrote: Linux is realistic, and so is Spring. They're all perfectly 'realistic'. Just because you come from an environment of getting paid for your coding doesn't mean that there aren't coders out there who do it for fun, in their FREE time.

And Spring is far to graphically advanced for any mobile device that is out right now. Sure, some optimizations could make it better, but that doesn't change the fact that it's very graphically intensive.

I don't see any impact on coders that do it for fun other than better tools are likely to come out of it. Why does the pure hobbyist even care about this conversation?

Graphically intensive? Yes. So was every game and engine at some point. Technology is moving so fast that it doesn't matter unless you're in a position where you need to make back the development costs (and Spring doesn't have that problem). By the time the branch was ready, something with a next gen atom running Android would be able to play it. In fact, the next wave of Netbooks would make a good target platform. You have to think 12-18 months out from now.

The mobile question is just a diversion though and doesn't really matter. The bigger question is about where Spring goes in the long run and how it gets there (via projects, via a Foundation, via new blood, via new uses for the platform, via new players and devs and etc.)

- nXain

I'm not convinced console ports are a good use of developer time. Game Shark has this to say:

"Real-time strategy games are undergoing an identity crisis. Following a slew of inventive titles, the genre has been subject to stagnation. Efforts to kick start strategy games have ranged from retooling the basic mechanics of the genre to porting titles to consoles. Last year's lauded World in Conflict proves the former to be more effective, especially given poor sales and critical panning of console ports"

I can't find any sales figures to back their claims but they are a respected game website so I'll assume they have some idea.

The thing is I suspect from my short time here that about 50% of the Spring Devs are Linux users. It's going to be hard to get them excited about console ports (which will almost certainly require platform-specific code). Yes a games company could pay but I strongly suspect the serious RTS genre is a guaranteed bomb on mouse-less, action-oriented platforms (Spring on Wii might be fun though).

SpliFF wrote: Yes a games company could pay but I strongly suspect the serious RTS genre is a guaranteed bomb on mouse-less, action-oriented platforms (Spring on Wii might be fun though).

I agree. Making or porting over any project that behaves like a conventional PC RTS to either the console or portable arena would result in a bomb. That doesn't mean the engine couldn't be used, only that if a group wanted to do that kind of project, it should be possible, but they would have to work at a design that was suitable for the platform and target audience.

As a comparison, the Gamebryo engine has been used in about a million different ways. I have used this engine in the past. How many people would say that Oblivion and Civ4 are very much alike?

http://www.emergent.net/en/Products/Clients--Titles/

Although games and engines are tied together, with good architecture, the engine doesn't need to dictate what the game is.

- nXain

I disagree. An engine that doesn't define a genre is essentially a programming language, or at best a graphics and input library. At some point compromises have to be made and it's at that moment that you really need an overall goal. Turning Spring into a Racing game or FPS engine is almost certainly going to require the removal of hard-coded optimisations which will give us a lackluster game engine rather than one of the best free RTS engines available.

On another note; Just to be perfectly clear, Spring has no unresolved legal issues. It's only (known) problem is the distribution of TA content, and the resolution is that most people couldn't really care less. Those who do care are gradually replacing the units or starting from scratch. Anyone who wants to develop under the GPL with propriety artwork and sound is already able to do so. There is nothing the foundation could do except burn money.

I really don't want to see Spring development revolve around a single mod. This could lead to "hardcoded" engine behaviour that gives performance and features to the "PR mod" at the expense of a more flexible platform for emerging ideas. This is the other extreme of my earlier argument. Spring should be an RTS engine, not a <insert mod name> engine.

The ONLY benefit of a foundation that we don't have already would be the cash to bribe new talent into joining the project. However the unresolved issue of whose cash, and what they would expect in return makes me hostile to this proposal on general principles.