Spring RTS Engine

This game fits on a 5.25 inch floppy... you could print the hex representation of the binary data on a single sheet of paper for that matter (small font, single spaces, doublesided...)

he doesn't get it...

lol yeah i get it, its bloody impressive for what it is

Ok. So, weil we get procedural generated content in spring mods from now on? So we will only have to dl 1 mb for content worth of 1 gib? That would be teh sex.

the game engine and mods are already quite small to download, a barebones (plus Absolute Annihilation) installation shouldn't exceed 60mb. The real clincher is the maps, but the new map format should really help in that department.

Procedural texturing is by definition, algorithmc reprsentation of artistic content. Unless you can come up with some sort of scripting language to make procedural textures and models and animations and EVERYTHING, you're not going to be able to make this moddable AT ALL.


Spring is fine t he way it is, and 99% of commerical games dont use procedural stuff; Spore is the most recent high profile game to use procedural content recently, and it took a man like Will Wright, a god of the game developer world, to make it happen. It's not going to be in Spring any time soon, or ever, for that matter

Do I really have to post UT2007 screenies? The point is that this game procedually does things that take up alot of memory space for other games... It begs the question however, how much more preformace efficient is this game acctually? You can proceduarally generate textures with loops, but at some point the video card acctually needs to render them as an image, and the translation process must be quite taxing on the CPU.

Dragon45 wrote:, and it took a man like Will Wright, a god of the game developer world, to make it happen.

You mean he is right there with Chris Taylor, John Carmack, the creator of C&C and Chuck Norris ?

Seriously, back in the 90s there were games with proceduraly generated content, like "Comanche" und "Terra Nova"., which generated their landscapes. It was sensible to use that approach back then, because hardware was limted (no 3d gfx, limited memory) and the only thing decently available was the CPU, Pentiums just saw light.

So, well, its not an all new thing to use procedures for art. I bet they are onl y rarely used because nowadays game-devs have virtually unlimted ressources in terms of artitstc content, as DVDs are avvailable and broadband also.

Even Spore could get away with the conventional approach in textures and art-content, but its variety would be limted to what you can download agian. But its not like procedures offer unlimted combinations also.

Hence, if the textures of our maps are so big (some are 30mb) , it would be a blast to see them proceduraly generated. Of course, i know its an evil can of worms, thats why it wont happen.

But, think about it. Many use Terragen to make maps. Terragen is nothing other than a procedural generator. So, you implementen the terragen stuff in Spring, do some procedures for metal maps and heigtmaps, and then players would set parameters only, in the game-host-screen, and voila, every game can be played on another generic hills´n´valley map.

Will Wright is up there at least as a "founding father" and or "minor deity" of gaming... if you like "The Sims" then you would put him at "Game Designer God"

There are so many Gods around these days, i lost count, sry.

Will writes deserves to have the biggest name in gaming right now. For god's sake he's the man behind sim ant, sim city, and The Sims is the largest selling game in all existance. His lineup of titles shames Gabe Newel, Sid Meyer, and Chris Tailor alike. Will Write is up around Shigeru Miyamoto when you consider the fact that he acctually develops games, not just designs them.

Andreask wrote: But, think about it. Many use Terragen to make maps. Terragen is nothing other than a procedural generator. So, you implementen the terragen stuff in Spring, do some procedures for metal maps and heigtmaps, and then players would set parameters only, in the game-host-screen, and voila, every game can be played on another generic hills´n´valley map.

What the heck are you talking about mate? Terragen isn't real time and it takes AGES to create anything worthwhile... you cant just put "Terragen stuff" into a magic box and expect it to work with Spring...

Andreask wrote: You mean he is right there with Chris Taylor, John Carmack, the creator of C&C and Chuck Norris ?

Seriously, back in the 90s there were games with proceduraly generated content, like "Comanche" und "Terra Nova"., which generated their landscapes. It was sensible to use that approach back then, because hardware was limted (no 3d gfx, limited memory) and the only thing decently available was the CPU, Pentiums just saw light.

So what you're saying is that, after a 15 year absence from the mainstream, procedural content is back and better than ever, and challenging "current" methods- and it took no less than Will Wright to make it happen.

Andreask wrote: Even Spore could get away with the conventional approach in textures and art-content, but its variety would be limted to what you can download agian. But its not like procedures offer unlimted combinations also.

No, it couldnt- do you even know what Spore is capable of? What can happen in it? What level of insane customizability can happen in terms of character, building, weapon, world, and galaxy, creation? Conventional methods simply couldnt keep up- Procedural is the only way to go for that game.

One interesting consequence of the way that Wright implements procedural everything in Spore is that all sorts of crazy emergent shit happens that artists could never dream of. How much you want to bet that Spore will sponsor a "Come Up With The Wackiest and Most Awesome Civilization" contest? Imagine what sort of entries that would have.

No, there are not "unlimited" possibilities, jst something like 2^2^68432 combinations, sometihng which a million artists working for a million years could never begin to create.

Statistically, it will be impossible for users to create every single possibility that Spore can offer, and there's a good part of the insane awesomeness; the Spore world is for all intents and purposes, unlimited. Same as SimCity, etc.

Andreask wrote:
So, well, its not an all new thing to use procedures for art. I bet they are onl y rarely used because nowadays game-devs have virtually unlimted ressources in terms of artitstc content, as DVDs are avvailable and broadband also.

Noone ever said it was new; but it certinaly is revolutionary the way and the extent to which Wright is implementing it in Spore, and no one worth their balls will deny that.

You think current "artistic resources" are unlimited? They're not. See my above post on the statiscal thing of Spore to see what I mean. And the reason conventional methods have sufficed is that they have been adequate to the task at hand.

And what are you doing, confusing throughput and DVD and the POTENTIAL to create? O_O

Well...I am happy to see they made something playable out of the Produkt, I remember seeing their first demo and I was simply stunned!

Ah farbrausch, it all make sense now.

Intro reminds me of the early ASM PC demo scene :) It rocks :)

I just cant belive this demo is 96k...Its...just...not..possible.
God if this game got up to a few mb then it will just be freaking amazing, not like it isnt already.

I got to the bti where you get that gun that fires those exploding balls with the time delaya dn blew them all up and tried to goto the next room to find I couldnt get past the doro to it because of some invisible impassable barrier that blocked all my weapons

Yeah, you have to have at least +3 to your mod-making skill to get past that door.

Hold M and a number key to warp to any door.

Imagine if Supcom came like that. You open the case and its a sheet of paper with a link on to download the 50 Mb file which self installs everything onto a tasty 9 gb of space.