Spring RTS Engine

Or looks more mars like.

Real mars is a good example

Actually, just so you know the maths. A Spring map is exactly 107% the size of an OTA map. You're stretching by less than one pixel in 10. You can't actually notice the difference when looking at the original OTA bitmap, let alone on a 3 dimensional environment. The only thing you have to worry about is the height offset, and if that doesn't come across then what's to worry about? The blending done by OpenGL actually means that you get all the colours inbetween one pixel and the next so 256 colours does not mean a nasty looking map.

Here's my little piece. Most of the maps I've seen are too big to be playable maps. They may be beautiful pieces of art, but the idea is that the map is playable. A lot of good sea battle, big ones I'm seeing but very few 1v1 tournament games. The OTA maps were designed to give good gameplay. They do. They still do in Spring. Comet Catcher is a very bland looking map. Not a lot of features but it is the best playing map I've done since coming to Spring. It means expansion but also micromanagement.

Maps are for playing above all, not just for looking at.

PRO_Muffy,

Forboding is the single most experienced mapper here.. argueing with him is folly.

Also as far as big maps go... try mods other then AA. EE and gundam both have large ranges and larger maps are good for them. In fact 16X16 is a bit cramped for gundam

Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

The OTA maps were designed to give good gameplay. They do. They still do in Spring. Comet Catcher is a very bland looking map. Not a lot of features but it is the best playing map I've done since coming to Spring. It means expansion but also micromanagement.

So will placing a big yellow blob on the texture in the water affect gameplay then?

OpenGL smoothing wont get rid of stretched pixels, 256 colours looks bad because ti just isnt enough to look realistic.

Despite that look at the heightmap, there're laods obvious tilings where it's got corners on the side of the triangle, which look ugly....

Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

You may be an experienced OTA mapper, but this isnt OTA! Here you're dealing with a completely diferent engine, using OpenGL not directX, an entirely different map format, 3D view not 2.5D, it's just not comparable. It's like dissing a car engine expert because you know the ins and outs of making plasma tv's.

Now I've said that, I'm eagerly awaiting Red Triangle Redux (look at noizes 'redux' maps, they're not the map redone, the texture is changed so it looks good, as if he's remade the map from scratch and it looks sooo much better).

PRO_Muffy wrote:Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

Uhh, I'm going to have to say that forbodings right on this one, I personally looked at remaking an old 16x8 map of mine, and it is only half the heightmap size.

Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers.

Rly? what maps? I don't have any of yours and my map directory can alway be bigger :).

His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work...

You have not been around long enough to know but we have been through this many times. Always enduring someone who is is new and thinks they know what they are talking about. Look, it has been covered ad museum. Porting OTA maps has bad history and the heightmaps do not match up right.

Also you have obviously not done any BRYCE mapping for OTA. I have and guess what? the maps are rendered at an angle. NOT top down. Which means that the textures will not line up correctly. I am saying that at this point in time, when it comes to spring you do KNOW nothing.

The spring texturemap size is 2X the OTA texture map size. Something you would know if you were around longer so I am giving you this knowledge free. Also the heightmap must be one pixel larger then it is supposed to be which also causes conversion issues.

The waterline on ota maps doesn't line up either. Something you don't catch in ota but it is something that is abundantly clear in spring.


Pro_muffy, I don't want to hear any of this epenis crap. You are wrong, have a slice of humble pie and LURK MOAR!

PRO_Muffy wrote:Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

Oh really? That's nice.

This is spring. You might as well forget your ota mapping experience, but it will do you absolutely no good here.

If you try to argue with me about mapping, make sure you are 100% correct in what you are saying, otherwise, you will only pwn yourself. If the inverse is true, and I am incorrect, I will happily admit it.

Das Bruce wrote:

PRO_Muffy wrote:Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

Uhh, I'm going to have to say that forbodings right on this one, I personally looked at remaking an old 16x8 map of mine, and it is only half the heightmap size.

Das Bruce wrote:

PRO_Muffy wrote:Tbh his opinion is his opinion. He may be the most experienced Spring mapper but I am one of the most experienced OTA mappers. His word is not the map. Knowing how to map inside out is one thing but discrediting others' work... I've never seen anything like it on any other developers' forum and I've seen a good few.

Uhh, I'm going to have to say that forbodings right on this one, I personally looked at remaking an old 16x8 map of mine, and it is only half the heightmap size.

Gasplant Plain is a 10x8 map. The bitmap exported from that is 9x7 in Spring's engine without modification (without even scaling it up to be divisible by 512 - which I had problems in in another post). The heightmap - being another matter - does however need multiplying by two (making it 4 times larger than the original) and then another pixel adding. This can be fixed with some smoothing over either manually or with some software algorithms and adding the extra pixel isnt too difficult. I've done it in paint. In addition, there are also tools that have been around for a good long time that help with the modification of heightmaps which can enable you to edit very easily.

I do know something about OpenGL. In my second year at university I wrote a graphics library for OpenGL and in my third my entire final year project (worth 1/3rd) my degree was based on it.

Some tilesets do not port across to Spring at all well and using Photoshop is a much better alternative, however I don't have access to it and I'm not downloading and cracking it. There are some however that can be touched up. Don't forget, you guys are the most critical because you'er the ones designing the maps. The players are the ones that play them, and you should know by now what you guys think are the best modelled maps are not the ones that end up being played the most. Smoth, that's possibly why you don't have any of my maps. Look on fileuniverse for the maps other people have uploaded, not me. I thought they were all lost when our server went down, but it appears other people liked them enough to keep them in the community.

Also, where have you seen a huge yellow blob in the centre of your map? :\

Wow, congrats for completely missing the point.

I cannot compete with this level of incompetance, someone let me know when he comes around, cause I can talk till I'm blue in the face and he is not going to understand.

How sad.

Gasplant Plain is a 10x8 map. The bitmap exported from that is 9x7 in Spring's engine without modification (without even scaling it up to be divisible by 512 - which I had problems in in another post).

Gasplant plain was never remade for spring, and currently there's no way of extracting the spring map texture save screenshotting it ingame. In which case the ingame co-ordinate pixels are not a direct reference to texture map image size.

Quanto042 wrote: Oh, and IMHO a well made port is always going to be better than any remake.

And a lot more work and tedium goes into porting a map than simply creating one from L3DT or bryce.

But this ISN'T a good part!

- the start positions are bad (compared to the OTA map)
- Metal output is too high (compared to the OTA map)
- The texture is misalligned!
- Feature placement is bad (compared to the OTA map)
- The texture looks bad because the detail tex isn't transparant enough!

Simply creating a new map in L3DT, Bryce, Terragen, takes a lot of effort because it would need a new height map. Then cool settings of the renderer then touch ups in photoshop and add in metal patches! It's way harder to make a proper remake then a proper port!

What are some of the names so I can get them? File universe has buttloads of maps.

AF wrote:

Gasplant Plain is a 10x8 map. The bitmap exported from that is 9x7 in Spring's engine without modification (without even scaling it up to be divisible by 512 - which I had problems in in another post).

Gasplant plain was never remade for spring, and currently there's no way of extracting the spring map texture save screenshotting it ingame. In which case the ingame co-ordinate pixels are not a direct reference to texture map image size.

Or you could take the Annihilator map editor for OTA maps, open up Gasplant Plain.ufo and simply choose "export map as bitmap"? It's a 2 second job really. GPP is also a very flat map with only a few features, as are a good few other good OTA maps.

smoth wrote: What are some of the names so I can get them? File universe has buttloads of maps.

Theres a section on http://www.fileuniverse.com in Total Annihilation -> Maps called "PRO". If you look under campaigns, I also created the Core Awakening mission pack. A recent post on the TAZone forums... http://tazone.proboards41.com/index.cgi ... 858&page=2 Take a look at Iggij's post about halfway down page 2. Painted Desert 2003 also mine.

Forboding Angel wrote: Wow, congrats for completely missing the point.

The point is I'm attempting to port across maps and I will not simply stop trying because someone tells me to but it's like theres this stigma... OTA maps are fantastically playable, even more so for the BOTA mod than AA and EE. I don't want to hear how crap a map is before I've made it. Perhaps afterwards, when it's done, but there hasn't been a lot of direct constructive criticism about this map, RT. Someone mentioned that the sky and water colours weren't quite right and I agree. It also needed a lot more rocks, but that can be improved. The map itself actually plays a lot like the original. A fair map which might need a few improvements, until someone comes along and makes a better version of it, but that's true of any map.

Forboding Angel wrote: I cannot compete with this level of incompetance

This was never a personal thing, so lets not make it that.

I have a few of your maps dude, and they play well but I also have some direct ports from the original tilesets and they play fine as well. If you'd like a game any day, I'm up for one.

Muffy, you are still completely missing the point...

THat point is that you cannot jsut use the texture exported from annihilator, it looks like total crap, it always has and always will, so please, spend a few hours learning something like l3dt or something. I will even happily make the climates, textures and bumpmaps for you.

As for a game... Sure, could be good fun. You tried EE yet? It's a great game. But just because I rarely play aa anymore doesn't mean I've forgotten how ;p

1v1 grudge match!

psst muffy, FA said you're ugly!!


FA, i heard muffy spreading roumours about you and smoth "getting close".

surely neither of you are gonna stand for this slander?

Only one way to settle it...

heh, hardly a grudge match, dunno why the offer for a game but sure. Why not?

FA, stop being a jackass. Assuming muffy's wrong you can still be nice about it.

smoth this goes for you too >_>


Jesus, you guys are an asinine bunch I wonder why we butt heads so often!

The point is I'm attempting to port across maps and I will not simply stop trying because someone tells me to but it's like theres this stigma... OTA maps are fantastically playable, even more so for the BOTA mod than AA and EE. I don't want to hear how crap a map is before I've made it. Perhaps afterwards, when it's done, but there hasn't been a lot of direct constructive criticism about this map, RT. Someone mentioned that the sky and water colours weren't quite right and I agree. It also needed a lot more rocks, but that can be improved. The map itself actually plays a lot like the original. A fair map which might need a few improvements, until someone comes along and makes a better version of it, but that's true of any map.

The whole point is that we're not dissing the use of OTA maps in spring, we're dissing the direct port method sued to make them.

OTA maps are at an angle, thus when you port them into spring hills look distored and dotn match up, and their northern side is completely garbled because of the way the texture was angle.

Water texture and water plane have to match up perfectly in spring or it looks very ugly, which i unimportant in OTA.

And few people play BOTA compared to the hordes of players who use AA + EE + XTA.

Dragon45 wrote:FA, stop being a jackass. Assuming muffy's wrong you can still be nice about it.

smoth this goes for you too >_>


Jesus, you guys are an asinine bunch I wonder why we butt heads so often!

Read AF's post.