Spring RTS Engine

Is it possible to make different chapters instead or colours for players? :p

Shouldn't this mod wait* for the new unit format?
I don't know what is needed but it would be fun to have :

*Some modulable part (marine with fusor, with bolter ,with laser...etc.)
*warhammer insigne instead of core and arm
*better team color management
*Have better infantry model and better mouvements.

But, hum, I'm not a modder, si perhaps I said shit^^.

* of course, you can start to model some things.

I am waiting for the new format. Thats why they're not textured yet

The tanks are about 250 polies each. The infantry are about a hundred each

Ah you're right, these were imperial guard units, not space marines unit, sorry.

How far away is the new unit format from appearing?

As for textures, what would be really cool, but unbelieveably expensive is to have full sets of team cammo and colours for units. So imp tanks have a complete different paint job for different teams. That's something to consider making possible under the new unit format.

Anyway, here's my Baneblade scripted for OTA (haven't attempted putting it into Spring yet) built from the arm vehicle plant at a reduced cost and on a reduced groundplate. It has three separate weapon systems calculating fire arcs and reload times for all its seven turrets.

The main cannon is full 360o, but the other front cannon is only +/-10o degrees so if you fire at anything outside that arc then the reload time doubles.
The lascannons have overlapping fire arcs front and back, but doubling the reload time if only one turret can shoot at the target.
The bolters (emg!) don't have overlapping fire arcs, but simply select which gun to shoot depending on where the target is, though there is a rear +/-22.5o where it can't shoot.

You know that TA gives 0 360° heading while Spring gives -180° +180° heading, right?

I'm gonna steal that Baneblade and plug it into WHTA. Btw, can Space Marines have Baneblade or is it an imperial unit?

Its Imperial Guard. And why steal it for WHTA? This is supposed to be an addon for it (I think)

Just to check if it works well, and come back with screenshots. Sure I'll give it back to imperials once imperials are done.

zwzsg wrote:You know that TA gives 0 360° heading while Spring gives -180° +180° heading, right?

Thanks, thats useful to know. I guess there's two ways of handling this, write two scripts or write compatible scripts by adding an if(heading<0){heading=heading+65536;}

I'm planning on doing a quick mod of the Baneblade into a Shadow Sword, maybe also doing a Storm Hammer as they were always my favourite super heavy, even if they were dropped from the later rulesets.

Right, I've modelled and scripted the Shadowsword:



You can download the UFO from here. Note that this includes the baneblade as well (I modified/debugged the script a bit). If you downloaded the baneblade before, you should delete the old baneblade.ufo and replace it with the superheavy.ufo. Once again the shadowsword is buildable from the Arm Vehicle Plant. I should really do some proper buildpics...

This tank's main cannon only has a +/-10o fire arc, so you pretty much have to aim it yourself (mmm, micromanagement). Don't forget to feed it with energy

Nice! One question though, how did you get all the guns to work as three weapon systems?

I'm asking because I've got a similar problem with the Imperial Guard tanks as a lot have side guns (heavy bolters usually), as well as the main cannon and a front mounted lascannon.

Those tanks are hands down the coolest I've ever seen in TA. Great job!!

There are basically three types of script:

1) One gun with a specific fire-arc (e.g. Shadowsword Volcano cannon). In the aim function, check if the heading is outside the required fire-arc and return 0 if so, otherwise proceed with aiming as normal.
2) Multiple guns covering specific non-overlapping fire-arcs (e.g. front/side bolters). In the aim function, check if the heading is outside all fire-arcs and return 0, otherwise select which gun you are going to fire from based on the heading and aim it as normal.
3) Multiple guns covering overlapping fire-arcs, for which you would want to add a delay that would make it seem like each gun has a constant fire-rate (e.g. left/right lascannons, Baneblade main/secondary cannon). I would explain this one more, but I've just thought of a better way of doing it which I'd like to try first...

Note that all headings are measured in 0-65535 (which maps to 0-359.995 degrees).

The BOS scripts are within the superheavy.ufo so you can take a look at their inner workings.

Are you sure returning 0 in the aiming really prevents a gun from firing in Spring? It works in TA, but in Spring, ....
I says that because I had odd things when fixing the fire arc of the Space Marine Predator. Had to move the queried piece inside the model to really stop the fire. But maybe that was just because it was a burst weapon.

Also I think it's time we got limited firing arc properly implemented in the engine.

Blocking fire with the script isn't a very good solution, it's all we could come up with in TA, but in Spring, we should change the engine so it handle them properly. For instance finding a new target is the target is out of the arc. And turning the body if no target in the main gun arc.

Heh, well I haven't actually tried putting any new units into Spring myself, I've purely been testing within OTA. I should probably spend some time learning to do so...

The alternative to returning 0 is to just enter a sleepy while loop and wait for the aim script to be terminated by signals.

If support for fire-arcs is to be built in then I would also expect support for larger number of weapons per model. The Baneblade has 7 guns, there should be no reason why the bolter on the left hand side can't be firing at a different target to the one on the right.

I got a little bored doing Guardsmen:

Is that the Hammerhead?? it needs to be a little more curved on the front really. i mean all the tau stuff is about the curves (Bar the battlesuits) sorry to nitpick but i play WH40K and while it is recognisable it just dosn't really look right lol. oh by the way i LOVE the imperical guard tanks and objects! i think i have about 1/4 of those tanks. Beautiful with all the different varients.

Its not a Hammerhead. Its a Tau Super Heavy unit that I had to make up myself because the Tau don't have any offical Super Heavies.

Ahh i see. hrm i've never really considered the Tau having any super heavies it jsut seems really weird for them lol. maybe higher overall unti costs but from that start better units overall. Although saying that i would like to see some goold old fashioned superheavies dealing it out to Orks and whatnot.

the Tau do need a super hevy. I like the look of the one you made, and i think it should be called the "Behomith"