Spring RTS Engine

The only problem is that AATA is suffering right now from the tiny models. Spring's collision detection gets funky when they're that small, since footprint size, limited to 1x1, doesn't do well when models are much smaller than the footprint.

Also, laser/tracer style weapons have a hard time with models that tiny.

see... personally I would suggest your smalles unit be a 1x1 footprint and scale up from there, like SWTA... just make the big things bigger... sure maps need to be made to accomodate... but that's gonna happen with the next map format so it won't be bad forever...

yeah, because working with a 3.7 gig image is not enough.

It is not that simple. The texture maps are already huge and I would HATE to imagine 4X that in my machine. you may as well forget about any good maps because working with a texture that large... oh wait.. image formats have a limit.

if we could get the SY dudes to make 1 square on a heightmap equate to 3 footprint then I would consider it. However, with that change would come MASSIVE loss of detail.

Or we could ask for footprints less than 1x1. Say, .5x.5, or something along those lines.

I have no idea how hard that would be to implement, but it makes sense to me.

What I freaking never understood, especially way back in the MiniSpring days, is why we can't just have a mod specific positive integral scallar assigned to maps... basically the engine would read every pixle of the map as 4 9 16 or whatever and the maps would be bigger... you could even have it be a lobby setting too, just would default to the mod's setting if you didn't specify... I don't know if you would scale up features, but that can't be too hard, but it wouldn't be neccessary for most maps anyways...

Nemo wrote:Or we could ask for footprints less than 1x1. Say, .5x.5, or something along those lines.

I have no idea how hard that would be to implement, but it makes sense to me.

true enough, because the game has ~10 elmos for each footprint.

SinbadEV wrote:What I freaking never understood, especially way back in the MiniSpring days, is why we can't just have a mod specific positive integral scallar assigned to maps... basically the engine would read every pixle of the map as 4 9 16 or whatever and the maps would be bigger... you could even have it be a lobby setting too, just would default to the mod's setting if you didn't specify... I don't know if you would scale up features, but that can't be too hard, but it wouldn't be neccessary for most maps anyways...

It is not a matter of pixels, this is just an presumption on my part but if I were to guess the pathing is handled by a matrix. If this is true what you said would seem simple enough. However, the footprints directly equate 1:1 for heightmap values. Also, as I said above I have no idea how many elmo units it takes to make a footprint, however, if I were to venture a guess increasing the ammount of elmos would aslo be needed to increase the pathing matrix as elmos are used by weapons etc I think also it is that we only have ~10 elmos to a foot print that smaller units are getting missed.

someone was complaining somewhere (may have been IRC) that if you scale things too small they can't be shot/targetted properly, so allowing smaller units isn't going to fix that...

ok, in smaller steps.

units have a base collision...

1X1 footprint
which equates to
1X1 heightmap info

which equates to a bit over 10 elmo units

The game has a base measurement system for coordinates I call the elmos. if we have more elmos we have more precision. It is that simple.

The possible problem is at a small level with THE CURRENT system the amount of elmo units is not likely enough to make sure that the collisions would be able to be tracked correctly.

to remedy this I suggest 32 elmos to every one footprint. This would easily allow the game to be precise enough to support .5 footprints :).

your right, more elmos per gridline=smaller units still having good collition detection... cool...

smoth wrote:yeah, because working with a 3.7 gig image is not enough.

It is not that simple. The texture maps are already huge and I would HATE to imagine 4X that in my machine. you may as well forget about any good maps because working with a texture that large... oh wait.. image formats have a limit.

if we could get the SY dudes to make 1 square on a heightmap equate to 3 footprint then I would consider it. However, with that change would come MASSIVE loss of detail.

The map format Zaphod is working on does not use huge texture maps. Using it, it is quite possible to make maps larger then any we have now using a small number of files of just a few megs or less each.

Nemo wrote:Here's the scales that current human-based mods used (with a peewee for reference)

LOL I didn't realise AATA infantry were that dinky!

WD uses a slightly different scale compared to TA though, i'd say I scaled most units to be bigger I.E. tanks.

it is cool ground zero, the features I am doing will be available for your usage. I have no quams with you using them in a map and resizing them so they fit the scale of your mod.

GrOuNd_ZeRo wrote:

Nemo wrote:Here's the scales that current human-based mods used (with a peewee for reference)

LOL I didn't realise AATA infantry were that dinky!

WD uses a slightly different scale compared to TA though, i'd say I scaled most units to be bigger I.E. tanks.

They use to be double that size.

In my Eyes it is a conflict between Gameplay versus Realism. If we would have realistic Scaled Buildings and Units, the Units get so small that they would get lost. Another Problem is that Big Citys not only Block Planes, but also Block your view. The Players should battle with there Opponent, and not with there Camera and the Zoom to find there Units. Realism is a servant, not a Master.

Thats a load of crap about people "fighting with the camera".

I would love to see proportional scaling!

i would love to know what a 'elmo' is in relation to computers, is there a big red puppet in my processor?

Elmo is the name we gave to a 1 metric unit in spring.

Das Bruce wrote:Elmo is the name we gave to a 1 metric unit in spring.

What is the determined size of an elmo, and why do we use it as opposed to something else?

Are unit speeds calculated in elmos per second?