mwha, jouninkomiko is getting to grips with handling CEGUI, but you do realize that most of the GUI has been completed and sitting on a server being used for lots of opensource projects for a long time? The only work jouninkomiko has todo is figure out how to use the interface then bind it into spring, no fiddling with user inputs and creating thigns from scratch.
Let him get to grips with it then it'll snowball from there...
New front page for Spring!
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
Hm.
Well, i just think that developing all the important stuff (new gui, new terrainrenderer, ect) "offline" outside svn doesnt really make sense.
I mean, that way the whole bunch will be pushed in the sourcetree at the end, without any of the open source "open eyes" being able to spot design problems or obvious (for the 3rd person, but not the creator) bugs in the meantime...
Well, i just think that developing all the important stuff (new gui, new terrainrenderer, ect) "offline" outside svn doesnt really make sense.
I mean, that way the whole bunch will be pushed in the sourcetree at the end, without any of the open source "open eyes" being able to spot design problems or obvious (for the 3rd person, but not the creator) bugs in the meantime...
I wouldn't have suest flash If I couldn't do it you know.PauloMorfeo wrote:I like the idea but there has to be some flash wise person that comes forward and agrees on doing it.aGorm wrote:...
I know alot of people dont like flash, but you could actully use it in the top. ...
:::warning flash links, and no i never finshed anyof these but there the only things to hand:::
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/ - oldest... kinda funny turn your spekers max (actully dont, it frigtens the life out of me when i have them up and dont realise...)
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/main.html - done when i was in a funny mood.
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/leaftest.html cause i can...
Anyway, I can do flash stuff.
theres prob lots of other people here that can to i expect.aGorm
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Tim Blokdijk
- Posts: 1242
- Joined: 29 May 2005, 11:18
I hope this pages were meant as jokes, right?aGorm wrote:I wouldn't have suest flash If I couldn't do it you know.PauloMorfeo wrote:I like the idea but there has to be some flash wise person that comes forward and agrees on doing it.aGorm wrote:...
I know alot of people dont like flash, but you could actully use it in the top. ...
:::warning flash links, and no i never finshed anyof these but there the only things to hand:::
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/ - oldest... kinda funny turn your spekers max (actully dont, it frigtens the life out of me when i have them up and dont realise...)
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/main.html - done when i was in a funny mood.
http://www.onebob.co.uk/darren/leaftest.html cause i can...
Anyway, I can do flash stuff.
aGorm
Because they are the best argument ever NOT to use flash, or at least not by made by you.
They all are ugly, manage to redline the cpu of my laptop (1.4Ghz P-M), are nearly unusable and look plain "gimmicky".
In short, they look like something people would post on slashdot to show why flash is a crime against humanity.
Please, dont put anything like that anywhere near the spring homepage
IMSabbel: Duhh.. I never said put anything liek that on teh homepage, I was just proving I could use flash. (And yes, the leaves thing does Suck up CPU, but thats because theres 100 leaves all doing there own thing, in a program thats not ecatlly designed for it. You should see it with 300 leaves on my 3200+ [thats waht i call slow down])
Just to make a point thogh, all the stuff did waht it was meant to do. The first site was a crazy idiots website, and reflected that very well, the leaf test code was just that, test code, and it worked, and the dark depressing site was, whilke very unfinished, rather dark and depressing.
However, teh spring site would call for somthing matching, subtle, not so in your face to annoy but eyecatching enough to make a new visitor go "Ow, that looks cool". If you read were i first brought up the "we could use flash" ud see i didn't say anything about haveing loud noises, fast moving graphics and a bizzare sense of humor. In short: You point is null and void, because I never planed on even sujesting putting
Maelstrom: Can't belive you read it!! Its ages old! (And its all based on true'ish' events...). Im affraid I can't be arsed top draw the rest, but im working on a new one.
aGorm
Just to make a point thogh, all the stuff did waht it was meant to do. The first site was a crazy idiots website, and reflected that very well, the leaf test code was just that, test code, and it worked, and the dark depressing site was, whilke very unfinished, rather dark and depressing.
However, teh spring site would call for somthing matching, subtle, not so in your face to annoy but eyecatching enough to make a new visitor go "Ow, that looks cool". If you read were i first brought up the "we could use flash" ud see i didn't say anything about haveing loud noises, fast moving graphics and a bizzare sense of humor. In short: You point is null and void, because I never planed on even sujesting putting
Masse: yeh... the leaves i left up becase there a great stress relever at work.anything like that anywhere near the spring homepage
Maelstrom: Can't belive you read it!! Its ages old! (And its all based on true'ish' events...). Im affraid I can't be arsed top draw the rest, but im working on a new one.
aGorm
heh, im addicted to web comics. And yours, from what I have seen around the place, wasnt half bad.
I actually quite liked the first flash site. It wouldnt fit with Spring at all, but it was still good. Although the noises were a bit annoying. The leaves were interesting, but I coudlnt look at them for long, cause this computer is slow. The last one was alright, but all that flashing, shifting stuff got a bit annoying after a while. If it was more random, and alot more subtle, it looks really good. But the way it was done in that last one wasnt sublte at all, and got a bit annoying after a while.
I actually quite liked the first flash site. It wouldnt fit with Spring at all, but it was still good. Although the noises were a bit annoying. The leaves were interesting, but I coudlnt look at them for long, cause this computer is slow. The last one was alright, but all that flashing, shifting stuff got a bit annoying after a while. If it was more random, and alot more subtle, it looks really good. But the way it was done in that last one wasnt sublte at all, and got a bit annoying after a while.
Probablie why I never finshed it, or took it past the idea stage.
I love web comics too... but only have time to actully read 2: CAD and Domnic Deegan. Later is my fav of all time. Wee Gamers is quite fun to, plus the work of Shonen http://www.mf-spirit.fr.st/ i realy like.
Back on topic... what if maybe some of use just went away and did some mockup art works? And then just see if we get a response.
aGorm
I love web comics too... but only have time to actully read 2: CAD and Domnic Deegan. Later is my fav of all time. Wee Gamers is quite fun to, plus the work of Shonen http://www.mf-spirit.fr.st/ i realy like.
Back on topic... what if maybe some of use just went away and did some mockup art works? And then just see if we get a response.
aGorm
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
That's the idea. Show Spring's strongest point. But first we need to propose which ones are they.aGorm wrote:...
Springs biggest problem is it doesn't sell itself. Theres no "FREE" in big letters, theres no "CONTROL 1000's OF UNITS", no "PLAY VAST EPIC BATTELS OR SMALL SKIRMISHES!". Or "FULLY DEFORMABLE TERRAIN!".
...
I really don't know what "suest" is but!aGorm wrote:...
I wouldn't have suest flash If I couldn't do it you know.
...
:
http...
http...
http...
In my programing course i've learnt flash. I know how the stuff works and how to program in it. I can surely state that the work shown shows that it's maker is more than capable. So i guess we can count flash in.
By the way, the leaves one ran pretty fine on my Duron 1300.
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
What defines Spring?
1 - Basically it's TA...
Be it OTA, XTA, AA, UH or even Star Wars, it's still kind of TA. As stated by the SY's, an engine designed to run content from TA, anyway. These origins deserve beeing noted!?
2 - The size of battles!
Not only is the number of battling units very large but carnage until calm last longer than in almost any other game i know of and, most importantly, the area of where the battles take place is like nothing i've ever seen in any other game except TA. In some maps, at times, there can be constant battle in, like, 50% of the area of the map.
I've thought alot and ground control is the single most distinguishing feature to any other game. Look at a Comet Catcher which is kind of thin vertically. We usually end up with base all over the map and we can clearly see well defined frontiers. And then, artilery wars start to kick in. Long range cannons like Guardians, controling large areas of ground? I don't remember ever seeing anything like that in any other game.
Compare that with, say, Warcrap 3 or the great Dawn of War, where each is controling one or more little bases and run around the map with «little» armies, where map is little more than landscape. Or Rise of Nations where they have an artificial frontier system. In Spring/TA, frontiers are real!!!
I propose:
2.1 - Large number of units!
2.2 - Show the existance of the ground control and the frontiers! And the strugles for ground control?
3 - The huge array of weaponry to choose from!
We have fast sturdy tanks, mobyle robots, fast planes, strong ships, hovercrafts, then we have big bad ass tanks, robots, ships, etc. We have laser robots, rocket robots, canon robots, anti-aircraft robots, rocket trucks. Then, after the big bad ass ones, we get even bigger and meaner assed ones, like Krogoths and some friends.
Then we have the towers. We have loads of laser towers, AA towers, torpedo «towers», pop-up cannons, hugely impressive Doomsday Machines and Annihilators, and then the tie-breaking towers, the most impressive Big Berthas, Vulcans, etc.
Then we have missiles. Medium range missiles pounding the enemy, like in XTA, and big nukes.
The number of non artificial options to breaking your enemy are absolutely awesome.
4 - Easynes of managment!
Like in no other RTS in existance! Assign long and complex queues of orders to units. Rearange it by removing orders from the que. Watch it on the map by holding shift.
Build rows of buildings at a time, build squares of them, build them spaced or close, surround other buildings with buildings.
Que up lots of units to build in a factory easily.
Use "repeat orders" for great effect. Continuous build in factories, valkiries in continuous load/unload transport orders.
5 - Resource system
1st, they're never ending. If you want to win, you will most probably need to try and hold resource extraction from a greater area than the one your enemy is holding. Also, the strugle will not diminuish over time as time goes by, it will just get meaner and uglier as more resource income starts to increase.
2nd, they're based on on per-second income end expenditure. You won't be obliged to wait until you have x resources to start building something. You won't waste your income on queued stuff in the factories, forcing you to build one unit at a time if you don't want to have the resources stalled, like in Starcrap.
This also includes carcasses! Reclaiming the enemy's remains, hahaha, as well as trees, rocks, etc.
6 - Huge bases!
Maybe related to 2.
Build big bad ass bases. When it's big enough, build bigger and meaner. Take up extraction points on a great area of the map. Then make them even more powerfull (mohos). Build fields of solar collectors, loads of fusions, loads of metal makers.
Build impenetrable bases with rows and rows of missile towers, flakkers, guardians, Llts, Hlts, surround your base with dragon teeths, create deadly bottlenecks for your enemies.
7 - Comunication!
The ability to add markers, drawing drawings on the ground.
Great stuff for team play.
8 - Ability to play sharing the same army!
Great stuff for team play.
9 - Recording and playback!
Built in video recording and built in recording of games. Also, a great feature of game recording playback to others.
Great stuff for team play.
10 - Real fisics!
This is really worth mentioning, like BB shells hiting hills while in they're arc. Carcasses of units beeing left for the taking as well as taking up space. Ground deformability showing off great battle that took place.
11 - First person control!
Almost forgot. Controling units! Great fun stuff even though almost useless in game.
12 - Modding!
There are alot of diferent mods and maps for Spring.
What's more, there's lots of documentation of the editing as well as some programs (hopefully also a mod editor and a much waited map editor soon, too) and, very important, most stuff is low technology. Map are composed of simple images beeing the map compiler the only hogher tech thing, mods are just sets of files in a directory which, after decompressed (even the compression is just zips or 7zips), can be edited with just notepad with exception to some files, etc.
1 - Basically it's TA...
Be it OTA, XTA, AA, UH or even Star Wars, it's still kind of TA. As stated by the SY's, an engine designed to run content from TA, anyway. These origins deserve beeing noted!?
2 - The size of battles!
Not only is the number of battling units very large but carnage until calm last longer than in almost any other game i know of and, most importantly, the area of where the battles take place is like nothing i've ever seen in any other game except TA. In some maps, at times, there can be constant battle in, like, 50% of the area of the map.
I've thought alot and ground control is the single most distinguishing feature to any other game. Look at a Comet Catcher which is kind of thin vertically. We usually end up with base all over the map and we can clearly see well defined frontiers. And then, artilery wars start to kick in. Long range cannons like Guardians, controling large areas of ground? I don't remember ever seeing anything like that in any other game.
Compare that with, say, Warcrap 3 or the great Dawn of War, where each is controling one or more little bases and run around the map with «little» armies, where map is little more than landscape. Or Rise of Nations where they have an artificial frontier system. In Spring/TA, frontiers are real!!!
I propose:
2.1 - Large number of units!
2.2 - Show the existance of the ground control and the frontiers! And the strugles for ground control?
3 - The huge array of weaponry to choose from!
We have fast sturdy tanks, mobyle robots, fast planes, strong ships, hovercrafts, then we have big bad ass tanks, robots, ships, etc. We have laser robots, rocket robots, canon robots, anti-aircraft robots, rocket trucks. Then, after the big bad ass ones, we get even bigger and meaner assed ones, like Krogoths and some friends.
Then we have the towers. We have loads of laser towers, AA towers, torpedo «towers», pop-up cannons, hugely impressive Doomsday Machines and Annihilators, and then the tie-breaking towers, the most impressive Big Berthas, Vulcans, etc.
Then we have missiles. Medium range missiles pounding the enemy, like in XTA, and big nukes.
The number of non artificial options to breaking your enemy are absolutely awesome.
4 - Easynes of managment!
Like in no other RTS in existance! Assign long and complex queues of orders to units. Rearange it by removing orders from the que. Watch it on the map by holding shift.
Build rows of buildings at a time, build squares of them, build them spaced or close, surround other buildings with buildings.
Que up lots of units to build in a factory easily.
Use "repeat orders" for great effect. Continuous build in factories, valkiries in continuous load/unload transport orders.
5 - Resource system
1st, they're never ending. If you want to win, you will most probably need to try and hold resource extraction from a greater area than the one your enemy is holding. Also, the strugle will not diminuish over time as time goes by, it will just get meaner and uglier as more resource income starts to increase.
2nd, they're based on on per-second income end expenditure. You won't be obliged to wait until you have x resources to start building something. You won't waste your income on queued stuff in the factories, forcing you to build one unit at a time if you don't want to have the resources stalled, like in Starcrap.
This also includes carcasses! Reclaiming the enemy's remains, hahaha, as well as trees, rocks, etc.
6 - Huge bases!
Maybe related to 2.
Build big bad ass bases. When it's big enough, build bigger and meaner. Take up extraction points on a great area of the map. Then make them even more powerfull (mohos). Build fields of solar collectors, loads of fusions, loads of metal makers.
Build impenetrable bases with rows and rows of missile towers, flakkers, guardians, Llts, Hlts, surround your base with dragon teeths, create deadly bottlenecks for your enemies.
7 - Comunication!
The ability to add markers, drawing drawings on the ground.
Great stuff for team play.
8 - Ability to play sharing the same army!
Great stuff for team play.
9 - Recording and playback!
Built in video recording and built in recording of games. Also, a great feature of game recording playback to others.
Great stuff for team play.
10 - Real fisics!
This is really worth mentioning, like BB shells hiting hills while in they're arc. Carcasses of units beeing left for the taking as well as taking up space. Ground deformability showing off great battle that took place.
11 - First person control!
Almost forgot. Controling units! Great fun stuff even though almost useless in game.
12 - Modding!
There are alot of diferent mods and maps for Spring.
What's more, there's lots of documentation of the editing as well as some programs (hopefully also a mod editor and a much waited map editor soon, too) and, very important, most stuff is low technology. Map are composed of simple images beeing the map compiler the only hogher tech thing, mods are just sets of files in a directory which, after decompressed (even the compression is just zips or 7zips), can be edited with just notepad with exception to some files, etc.
Last edited by PauloMorfeo on 12 Feb 2006, 02:44, edited 2 times in total.
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
It's here for discussion.PauloMorfeo wrote:What defines Spring?
1 - Basically it's TA...
...
2 - The size of battles!
...
2.1 - Large number of units!
2.2 - Show the existance of the ground control and the frontiers! And the strugles for ground control?
3 - The huge array of weaponry to choose from!
...
4 - Easynes of managment!
...
5 - Resource system
...
6 - Huge bases!
...
7 - Comunication!
...
8 - Ability to play sharing the same army!
...
9 - Recording and playback!
...
10 - Real fisics!
...
11 - First person control!
...
12 - Modding!
...
Later, when i feel like putting some more time into this, i'll work on idealizing a structure on front page and how to show all this.
First off, I was reading PCZone and saw they had a halfpage-ish section on StarWars:Spring, and they linked to spring.clan-sy.com.
The problem here si that any PCZone reader then ahs no direct way fo figuring out how to get a hold of the mod unless a new release has bene amde and posted in community news.
I suggest we change the mods page so that each mod has a small picture with a logo in it, either linking to a wiki page a website or a download link, then that be linked into the main menu, and the most popular mod have its image on the front page.
As for a flash animation, how about a top down view, showing a vulcan firing, then you go upwards seeing its projectile go across the map, but getting a birdseye view of the map. The whole thing would be a static image and not an animation save the vulcan and the projectile which would have to be animated, and maybe a basic nano spray animation and a weapons fire animation for when you're high up, but it'd be a huge base.
For the nanospray and weapons fire I'm thinking nothing longer than 2-5 frames at the most, and them being very small.
The problem here si that any PCZone reader then ahs no direct way fo figuring out how to get a hold of the mod unless a new release has bene amde and posted in community news.
I suggest we change the mods page so that each mod has a small picture with a logo in it, either linking to a wiki page a website or a download link, then that be linked into the main menu, and the most popular mod have its image on the front page.
As for a flash animation, how about a top down view, showing a vulcan firing, then you go upwards seeing its projectile go across the map, but getting a birdseye view of the map. The whole thing would be a static image and not an animation save the vulcan and the projectile which would have to be animated, and maybe a basic nano spray animation and a weapons fire animation for when you're high up, but it'd be a huge base.
For the nanospray and weapons fire I'm thinking nothing longer than 2-5 frames at the most, and them being very small.
There is a mission statement at the top of the spring. On the banner itself: TA Spring is a project aiming to create a new RTS. The current goal is to make it run content from the game Total Annihiation.Caydr wrote:At the top of the screen, just under the main logo and NEWS | WIKI | FEATURES | etc, there should be a kind of mission statement. Something to the effect of, to create a great, open-source, flexible game engine that is easy to create content for.
I think Neuralize box art render capture wells the spirit of Spring, so should be used somewhere on the frontpage.
I dont think that it looks nearly as good as some of the renders made for OTA, which just happens to show the same units.
Neuralizes work , some fo whcih i think is good, some fo whcih i think si terrible, si nto the sort of thign i'd want to see on the frontpage. The only images I've seen so far that I'd be good on the frotnpage, are screenshots, the logo in the current banner, and aGorms replacement XTA logo currently being used by Noize
Neuralizes work , some fo whcih i think is good, some fo whcih i think si terrible, si nto the sort of thign i'd want to see on the frontpage. The only images I've seen so far that I'd be good on the frotnpage, are screenshots, the logo in the current banner, and aGorms replacement XTA logo currently being used by Noize
Personally I think there should be a smallish box on the main page with a link to the top 6 mods. Then people would be able to find a specific one easily without having to search.
EDIT: Btw, I like the current design of the site, simple and to the point. Anyone who is the kind of person that plays RTS games who hapens to find the spring website is the same kind of person who would immediately look at the screenshots and decide to download spring based on that, not the website. I know thats exactly what I did.
EDIT: Btw, I like the current design of the site, simple and to the point. Anyone who is the kind of person that plays RTS games who hapens to find the spring website is the same kind of person who would immediately look at the screenshots and decide to download spring based on that, not the website. I know thats exactly what I did.
Last edited by hrmph on 15 Feb 2006, 00:18, edited 1 time in total.
I think the current webpage is great. It could do with a little more simplifying - less text essentially. But I don't like bloated, image heavy, flash heavy designs. They put me off.
If the site needs anything it's a front page with slightly less text. And there should be a prominent image at the top saying "Download the latest version of TA:Spring" or something similar. And a nice pretty screenshot to accompany it.
If the site needs anything it's a front page with slightly less text. And there should be a prominent image at the top saying "Download the latest version of TA:Spring" or something similar. And a nice pretty screenshot to accompany it.