Spring RTS Engine

The trees are neither collapsing nor bursting into flames at any point in the explosion. Although this would be technically possible, the fact is that a ground flash is larger than the actual explosion, so this problem will always be present even if it could be limited to the outer edge or something.

While I agree that we aren't going to get top of the line effects, I think that we could easily do some basic things. One thing I'm wondering about is Bump mapping. Right now I'm thinking of putting in a bit of work and adding in bump mapping. The one thing I need to know before hand is wether there are any open texture channels.

You'd want to talk to JC about that, he's already done some work in that direction I think.

OK. The one problem I'm having right now is in the shader file formats. Where are the specifications for the shaders? I can't find much more than the fact that shaders are assembly shaders run through open gl

I think the groundflash could theoretically be handled by spawning a VERY bright light in the location of the blast instead.

Unfortunately that would need dynamic lighting, which Spring does not have.

I don't think that'd be hard to add. You just need to spawn a lightsource on any explosion brighter than a certain value. The 8 lightsources limit might be a bit difficult but you could deal with that by having each unit use only the four or so closest light sources

An opaque expanding sphere inside the explosion would do just fine...

No, that'd look silly when your camera angle is flatter.

Just fake it dammit!

A simple vertex light-type script from a given light location that adjusts the colours on the trees would work. If I understand how tree are rendered that is...