Spring RTS Engine

smoth wrote:too much text not enough pictures.

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the forums lately.
Btw, I moved development here: http://code.google.com/p/maackey/
as bountysource was down for a while.

I am still struggling with faction/unit names, and overall style of the game. I feel I'm being pulled in all directions at once and will end up with nothing like I wanted, but we'll see how everything turns out.

I'm happy making content, so if anyone really needs anything just let me know. I've already made some trees, arrows, etc.. for car. Pictures of something similar is MUCH easier to make than if you just describe it. Limit one per person, additional terms and conditions apply

EDIT: Woot! top of the page

That wall thing is an ingenous design - drag-buildable lines of walls that look somewhat like they were meant to look that way in either direction.

wilbefast wrote:My thoughts exactly - so exactly that I have nothing to add (well, almost nothing)

It makes me very sad that I can't keep up with the other two projects: maackey has left me far behind from what I've seen so far, and Car's seems to be coming forward in leaps and bounds and has clearly overtaken me even though I started first.
Still, it would be cool to have everyone under a sort of "Spring Fantasy Project" banner, working (as Car said) in tandem towards a common goal, because at the end of the day we all want a Fantasy mod for Spring, we just have different ideas when it comes to how to achieve it.

William

I wouldn't say leaps and bounds. I have one factory, one builder unit and one attack unit (and some crazy features, that's what i'm spending 95% of my time on). I'd be glad to answer any modding questions you have in the lobby, it's hard to communicate back and forth here on the forum. Find us in #ca.

Pxtl wrote:That wall thing is an ingenous design - drag-buildable lines of walls that look somewhat like they were meant to look that way in either direction.

Yes it is, maackey's stuff rocks the socks. Spring has a whole new look now.

Or #meridian.

How are things going this end? I know Car's been helping maackey out with meridian, but are things also moving forward here?

Yep, it's progressing. Need models badly. Elves, three of them. Druid, Archer and Mage. Large walking trees that smash things. Midknight said he updated our elf but then he vanished into thin air from the server for the rest of the day before I could ask to see it.

i'll be uploading things soon...

where to upload? modelbase?

KaiserJ wrote:i'll be uploading things soon...

where to upload? modelbase?

Sounds good to me. I'm also gaining some knowledge on animation scripts so if you want you can upload your WIP Imps to modelbase.

I've managed to get hold of the TA:K soundtrack if anybody is interested: 60mb of .wav files, might be better in another format (suggestions?)

I'm thinking it could be used as place-holder until somebody makes/finds some free music that fits the setting - music is a lot more important than many modders seem to realise, and unfortunately not many of us (myself most of all) are music-literate.

Let me know how the mod is going - pictures are good

It probably defeats the point to add copyright infringing content to a game otherwise free of it.

Saktoth wrote:It probably defeats the point to add copyright infringing content to a game otherwise free of it.

I reckon things that have been abandoned like that should fall back into the public domain, I mean what right does Atari have to sit on an IP that's got pretty much nothing to do with them?

You're right though... I just like music I guess - still, if your mod is cool enough you can always find people somewhere who are willing to add their name to the credit list

It just surprises me how hard the TA:K soundtrack is to come by compared with the TA one...

That and I wanted an excuse to bump

wilbefast wrote: I mean what right does Atari have to sit on an IP that's got pretty much nothing to do with them?

They have every right. How would you feel if you bought the rights to something, only to have people just take it and use it in their own stuff without your permission just because you 'aren't doing anything with it'?

wilbefast wrote:Let me know how the mod is going - pictures are good

My work on this game is mostly on features. I'm not working on models or graphics, but gameplay mechanics.

But here you go: http://cakhorse.ytmnd.com/

I agree with you completely, copyright needs an abandonment clause, it needs to be cleaned up so that it doesnt end up in the hands of big companies rather than in the hands of the artists who made the work.

Worse when you get IP just foisted around between companies with mergers and takeovers and they collapse or change management and the IP just disappears down a deep dark hole.

However, its still illegal. I suggest you become a lawyer or politician and try and change it.

Saktoth wrote:I agree with you completely, copyright needs an abandonment clause, it needs to be cleaned up so that it doesnt end up in the hands of big companies rather than in the hands of the artists who made the work.

Worse when you get IP just foisted around between companies with mergers and takeovers and they collapse or change management and the IP just disappears down a deep dark hole.

However, its still illegal. I suggest you become a lawyer or politician and try and change it.

I'm not amoral enough to be a politician or a lawyer

It's a tricky one though - Open Source might be the way to go, but then how do you get paid? By commission? On the plus side the internet makes publishers less necessary, because anyone can distribute their work almost for nothing. When it comes to games though, indies tend to work 12 hour days for years and end up with almost no profit: it's a way of keeping yourself in bread a trousers, but so's a sweat shop, and I hear they get dental.

CarRepairer wrote:But here you go: http://cakhorse.ytmnd.com/

Wow! That horse is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G

For the record, I said it first

Probably more sensible to work on the code first, just less fun... at any rate looks like you're about to have a whole bunch of new models! GPL =

Pressure Line wrote:

wilbefast wrote: I mean what right does Atari have to sit on an IP that's got pretty much nothing to do with them?

They have every right. How would you feel if you bought the rights to something, only to have people just take it and use it in their own stuff without your permission just because you 'aren't doing anything with it'?

would you please show any evidence of this? so far it only has been rumours that atari bought TA franchise

Pressure Line wrote:

wilbefast wrote: I mean what right does Atari have to sit on an IP that's got pretty much nothing to do with them?

They have every right. How would you feel if you bought the rights to something, only to have people just take it and use it in their own stuff without your permission just because you 'aren't doing anything with it'?

whoa, how did I miss this post?

Question is, it right for petrol companies to buy up electric car prototypes and sit on them indefinitely? I'm saying "right" here, not legal. Of course it's legal, but that doesn't mean it's ethical.

It's the very concept of buying and selling "rights" that I find strange - "buying" an idea? "I'll give you 5 bucks if I thought of it first" - but you didn't, the other guy did, and no amount of money is going to change that.
I don't think the guy who invented the wheel asked for royalties from anyone who put wheels on their barrows: what's it cost him for them to use his idea? It's that goddam Adam Smith's legacy of "selfishness drives the market": nobody thinks about the greater good any-more, it's all profit margins. We don't sell something for what it's worth to us, but what the person buying it is prepared to pay, and how is that "right"? No wonder we're all depressed insomniacs in the West.

Okay, bit of a tangent there, but you know that whole "the workers control the means of production" thing? Well why is it that the people who actually make the games don't "own" what they make?

I like the cut of your jib.

All ideas that have been expressed to death around here, though you are right of course.

Brain Damage wrote:

Pressure Line wrote:

wilbefast wrote: I mean what right does Atari have to sit on an IP that's got pretty much nothing to do with them?

They have every right. How would you feel if you bought the rights to something, only to have people just take it and use it in their own stuff without your permission just because you 'aren't doing anything with it'?

would you please show any evidence of this? so far it only has been rumours that atari bought TA franchise

http://www.atari.com/games/total_annihilation
Google.

The odd thing is sometimes they deny ownership of the TA IP despite having it splashed all over their website, and reports of contracts in the past with phantagram to develop a TA 2