Spring RTS Engine

Too many polys for RTS.

Let the debate ensue.

Stunning models, man! Welcome to spring!
Edit: up to 2k-5k polies is not too much for current rts's.
Based on my testing, spring was able to push 1 million poly scenes with 30+fps on my old ass 8800GT card.

You're doing it right by introducing yourself with content.
You'll find that, as long as you're willing to back up your ideas with models and/or code, many of the very experienced people on this forum will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have!

You should start by playing some Spring games to see what's already available and out there. I would recommend Zero-K (naturally), Kernel Panic (which is simple but showcases many capabilities of the engine), and maybe Spring Tanks (as an example of what you can make in only a few weeks or months). You may also want to try BA, XTA, and NOTA, if you want an idea of the history of game dev on the engine.

You need a wide set of mostly-disparate skills to make a full game in any context, and you could either go about developing the ones you don't already have on your own, join a dev team for a while and learn from them, or try and gather people to help you out.

Have fun! :)

Also, a DISCLAIMER: My Spring knowledge is a little outdated at this point -- some of the things I said may no longer apply. I'll have to leave it to the other wonderful forumers to point out any inadequacies in this post.

the models are 958 poly :D

MoltenM wrote:the models are 958 poly :D

Which one?

Also note we are talking about triangles, so make sure you convert.

Stunning models, man! Welcome to spring!
Edit: up to 2k-5k polies is not too much for current rts's.

The later S44 Shermans are ~5k tris and I agree that that's fine, but there's no way the first image - nice as it is! - is anywhere near that (the tracks alone are probably more?)

both models are the same polies :)


But i have a problem running spring itself so i must fix that first..game locks up when the starting positions have been chosen and game is about to start.

Only speedmetal works with this, tried a lot of stuff already

Other than that, I still need to learn how it all works here :D

You posted 4 images... which are 'both'?

last 2, the hovertank


the huge tank is a bit too much poly i know :D

Gunship is around 1100

Cool, is that 958 triangles or polygons?

One thing to note is that Spring will smooth shade any cylinder with 6 or more sides so you need maybe 8 to 12 at most depending on the size of the unit, note also that there's no (engine provided) model LODing system so the same model is being rendered even if its zoomed quite far out.

FLOZi wrote:Cool, is that 958 triangles or polygons?

One thing to note is that Spring will smooth shade any cylinder with 6 or more sides so you need maybe 8 to 12 at most depending on the size of the unit, note also that there's no (engine provided) model LODing system so the same model is being rendered even if its zoomed quite far out.

Both are false.
Spring will use the normals encoded in the s3o or other model format. Using auto-smooth is heresy.

There is an engine-provided billboarding/impostor system in place for large zoom distances.

I felt that mentioning the imposter system wasn't worth the complication (also with unit-as-radar-icon), and it doesn't negate the fact that there is no model-LODing. (Plus there's a whole argument to be had around user settings and the imposter LODing distance, how it compares visually with actual model rendering, how many times it has been broken etc)

Fair enough about the supposed auto-smooth (serves me right for parroting Argh ) but the advice remains valid.

Thank you for this valuable information!

maybe offtopic, but my Spring engine locks up waaay to long when the countdown for battle has started after starting locations, only small maps take a few seconds, is there anything i can do? Using T9550 dual core processor but Nvidia GPU's in a SLI.

If you use RAI bot, it may be causing this. Does it take long to start in multiplayer without bots?

Tried and tried, couldn't seem to get your normals to import :[

site was down yesterday so I just went ahead with it

edit: btw it was a cool model, GJ

Those look awesome kaiser

Omg that comm is epic kaiser!

Nice though I have started thinking of the over the top arm commander style horns as "Gaga eyebrows on steroids" and it's weird

I love 'em. Awesome work

but... I do think the com-head is poor design, mainly because its an icon that screams ota and cavedog. A calling card... but not of BAR.

Strange to me, because a big chunk of my motivation to work on BAR is because I thought it is trying moving away from the original art-wise.

I've seen that you're more than skilled and original enough to come up with something that can be (part of) the face of this project. So I'd implore you to consider that opportunity.

Also, in-between modelling, I managed to texture this

FireStorm_ wrote: but... I do think the com-head is poor design, mainly because its an icon that screams ota and cavedog. A calling card... but not of BAR.

Strange to me, because a big chunk of my motivation to work on BAR is because I thought it is trying moving away from the original art-wise.

I've seen that you're more than skilled and original enough to come up with something that can be (part of) the face of this project. So I'd implore you to consider that opportunity.]

this a thousand times over; not only is it ota, it's also ugly

KK true, thanks guys!

didn't want to mess with the PW and the commander too much because beyond being some of my favourite units, as firestorm says, their appearance is certainly iconic to their faction (edit: and yes i'm ready to get avante garde up in this piece)

the gaga brows can be removed in a jiffy though. (How about a mohawk? did lady gaga ever have one of those)

torpedo looks pretty good mate!