Spring RTS Engine

smoth wrote:Some minor work and then bam you can make them work together.

Sounds too hard for me. Work is boring, I should have a full set of units ready to go, so I can spend all my time doing fun stuff like playing with balance stats and denigrate the efforts of people who are actually making new content. [/sarcasm]

whoa, shit, musta been channeling Gota for a second!

Srsly, anyone who says "There isn't enough free content out there for me to use." is a lazy bullshit peddler. Theres at least a metric craptonne out there, but some of it may need work *gasp* to get it to fit stylistically with what you want. And if re-colouring some textures sounds like it's gonna be too much work, then Spring (or any game for that matter) modding probably isn't something you should bother pursuing.

I'm a bit short of time to reply, so I'm just stating what I want to announce: I assume me, SwiftSpear and Hoi (Peet as well, if he's around, though I've not been in contact with him) will be meeting up again this evening (around 20:00 UTC) (possibly for the last time in chat for a while?), and so I want to reiterate that anybody that is interested in joining the effort is highly welcome to come.
I would like to try to wind up some things, so while of course others can come by, there might not be much time for Q+A tonight. Bringing that up, I do want to thank all those that were around and were asking us some tough questions, I think this was very beneficial for us to get a clearer picture of what we want!

Regards, and see you all sooner or later
Sean Heron

Edit again, wiki changed: P.S.: The wiki is now somewhat fleshed out on the items I'd like to see talked about this evening. So people wanting to get involved, please make sure you've had a look at that first, or it will be difficult to follow what we're talking about (or points will need to be reiterated, etc.).

Imho the only think any of these multiplayer-ready Spring games (KP, Evo, etc.) need is a single-player tutorial/campaign and a decent installer that installs spring-as-game-X and they'd be ready for prime time as free games go.

I would love to do that pxtl, but I have no idea how to. I know argh does, but I've never used ncis, and from looking at the tuts, it seems a bit more complicated than I feel like dealing with. Everyone says svn svn, well I dunno where the stuff is in svn and I would prefer not to have to find it myself and as odd as this might sound, I don't want to ahve to set up a spring repo just to make it happen on my end.

Hope I get to replying to others soonish, just wanted to make what is likely to be the last announcement for a bit: From my point of view we've now hashed out our internal working structures and principles fairly enought to get started, and we also have a priliminary game background to work with.

Work is now starting in earnest on Gameplay design, for which SwiftSpear is the designated responsible person. Discussions will continue to be in chat (#libre in the lobby) and on wiki (see link below), but I don't think we'll be having fixed meet up times too regulary anymore (in the near future anyway). Newcomers are still welcome of course, we are an explicitly open team :). (Edit: Our working principles are viewable on the wiki (see link above)).

Thank you once more to all that have shown interest, or given feedback/input to us !

Everything you've described, especially what Swift is talking about, is why CA was founded.

A game with a gameplay style similiar enough to other RTS's and OTA to be familiar but different enough to be a distinct game. A base of content that is OTA IP free but is robust and broad enough that people will want to use it to make their own mods from it. A way to divorce Spring from OTA, a flagship mod with which to advertise spring.

We're really not there yet, mostly because we need heaps more models than we have. But its what the project is about.

I think there is a valid argument in saying that rather than working from OTA and changing it into this new thing, starting from scratch will get there faster. But, if you really want these two different approaches working from two different directions towards the same goals id suggest we cooperate on art assets, at the least, because this is the bottleneck for our projects.

Info on our Wiki can be found about Concept Art, Models, Graphical Design, etc.

Some of Mr.D's models are similiar to OTA designs, but several are not even based on OTA units at all. There should be enough to use, though Core logos will need to be scrubbed (We will be doing this eventually).


For the Arm/Nova (Tenative new name) stuff, we've gone for a sort of smooth white high-tech look, as in my Spherebots (These have several different texture attempts over their history).
(There are 3 variants on this unit).
The Chickens are also free to use, both models (KDR + me) and scripts (me).


We've also a bunch of other misc models, such as the destroyer, fighter, solar panels, metal extractors, wind gens, etc etc.

Sakoth what do you mean with that post? if it's ca recruiting nothx. No offence intended.

He's saying "pick a different niche, this one is filled".

Enough room for more.

I more understand it a "Hey let's share models, since they're the hardest part of a mod to produce. Here, take ours first as a token of good will."

But of course SeanHeron will decline, because, in his grand vision, the aliens were spotted, not striped.

That's very kind of him, we might use them as placeholders till I replace them with my models.

there are only a few models in CA that are IP free anyway. MRD's remakes tbh suffer from the same issues as theoriginal models, even tho those issues are lessened...

Forboding Angel wrote:there are only a few models in CA that are IP free anyway. MRD's remakes tbh suffer from the same issues as theoriginal models, even tho those issues are lessened...

There's a complete set of Arm resource buildings, plus the Spherebot family, the chickens, and all the units that Mr. D. did that were remakes of 3rd-party units rather than OTA ones (eg. garpike).

That's not a complete set, but it's a good start.

and one morty

morty was a cavedog downloadable unit

Morty was a Cavedog CC unit.

quick aside, Smoth's referring to a (IMO quite nice) remodel he did.

Saktoth, that's an interesting suggestion! I think you've seen correctly that our approaches are different, but our goals quite similiar. I don't want to jump to any decision (as I see a lot of open questions), and in any case it won't be me alone deciding, but I personally think sharing our Artwork is something well worse considering/exploring.

Zwzsg is right to the extent that as the current designated "background story man" I have a dream that I'd like to see happen, but at the same time both me and Swift are of the opinion that "least effort to greatest effect" is one of the way we want to move forwards. And our "charter" also mentions "sacrificing personal preferences for the good of the project as a whole" (and that's not meant as just bla bla).

So I personally would definitely like to talk about this, but I'd like to discuss it with the other "Libre" guys first.

Sorry for still not having gotten back to a lot of postings made :/.

Regards Sean

Edit (for clarity): I think the way we want to go forwards in any case is make use of the rich base of free/open source unit's that are already available for Spring (at the very least as placeholders). But I see working together on a common set (Saktoth's proposal) as a seperate suggestion from that.

Pressure Line wrote:Morty was a Cavedog CC unit.

I did a model that was a homage to the ota morty I kept similar for for functionality but the model is fairly unpopular because I didn't go as close as mr d, my ak was even further from the original.

http://smoth.net/foram/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1427

I think the reason had more to do with its clean, slightly anime-esque styling that was completely opposite from the grungy nastiness of Core units.

Still an absolutely gorgeous model. Incredisexy. If I were making a libre mod that had such a role, I'd tear off the texture from the front of the Stump and replace it with a glowy doodad for nanolathe-emitting and make it into my Comm.

Of course id encourage you to come work on CA, especially on art. All the stuff Swift talks about: Thats what CA was made for. Our goals intersect and we already have a lot of work done and heaps of developers.

But we have over 300 units and a lot of OTA content to purge. Its going to be ages until we are geniunely libre. Ive often thought it'd be easier to start from scratch and i think there is more than enough of a 'niche' to be filled by a mod wanting to tackle the same problem from the other direction.

So sure, there IS another mod doing this, but since its Libre that means first and foremost 'take our stuff'. If you want to do more stuff in the same style that we can nick back, great. If you want to cooperate more closely on art, even better. My post is primarily to make you aware of what currently exists for your use, though.