Spring RTS Engine

I'm a film/game music composer. I've always loved this game, and would love a chance to rework the soundtrack. How could I get involved and write a totally custom soundtrack for the new game? For a couple quick samples of my work you can check out ms-studios.com/michaelshumway/audio/. Anyways, I don't know who to approach on this, so anyone that has a clue, let me know.

Which game? There are a number of different games on the engine. I presume you mean Balanced Annihilation or XTA as they are considered the descendants of Total Annihilation.

Right now, the engine has limited audio playback capabilities, but if you wrote a soundtrack and asked for the functionality, you should get it.

I would recommend waiting for input from the engine developers and then asking the maintainers of which game you wish to write a soundtrack for.

Well, I'm on an intel mac, so I haven't had a chance to actually see the current game build or any version of it for that matter. I just loved the original game and would love to get involved with it. Will the engine developers read this eventually or do i need to post elsewhere? Which game would people want a brand new soundtrack written for?

Funta is a worthy candidate...


http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ForbodingAngel

Forb is the developer of FunTA, so he would be in a position to know!

FunTA looks awesome! Very nice work. Just a question, what is the build that most people are using? Is it FunTA? I take it this project has a million different versions of the game...? Is there any way to develop a soundtrack for the core game that gets used in all of the builds? I'm not a game developer so I don't know how this project is working...

Oh boy... uhm. Let me try to explain...

The Spring engine is a platform for a varied number of radically different games, from Gundam RTS to Kernel Panic. There is no core game, per say... The core inspiration and basis for the most popular game - Balanced Annihilation (55-70% of all play on the engine) is Total Annihilation. If you want to reach a wide audience, that is the game to go for. FunTA is also a Total Annihilation derivative.

Gotcha! Thanks for the quick summary. How do I get in touch with the guys doing Balanced Annihilation? Forboding Angel, I'd also like to talk to you more about your build as well.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=11861

I would prod them in that thread, though they do have another forum they conduct affairs on. That is the most recent BA release thread.

michaelshumway wrote:Gotcha! Thanks for the quick summary. How do I get in touch with the guys doing Balanced Annihilation? Forboding Angel, I'd also like to talk to you more about your build as well.

NOiZE is in #sy @quakenet. you should contact him, or any member of [WarC] in tasclient if you want to get into contact with the guys doing ba

#sy, irc.quakenet.org

This is also the place where the devs mostly hang out. Dev leader would be Tobi (goes by the nick of tvo). You'll need an IRC client (xchat.org is supposed to work on OSX) unless you have one.

tobi = tvo? WHOLLY CRAP!!

I, too, did not know that

WHO DARES TO SUMMON THE POWER OF WARC!

The problem with a soundtrack, most mods would use them in a second if they had the chance, and spring has several moderately decent sound artists, however we simply lack the functionality in spring.

Now, rumor has it that a lua function could be written reasonably easily to manage mod specific sound tracks, and we already have a sketchy little AI made by AF that can run music in spring mods, but no one has put the two together yet.

[edit] if some brilliant luasmyth would be so kind as to take on said project, I will pay you in hugs and kisses! :3

well, let's get the two together! I'll write the music... one of the devs creates the functionality, it gets bundled, walla...

Lua cannot solve it in the method you describe swiftspear.

Lua would have to load the entire file into ram in wav format, which could be 60-300MB.

Instead a C++ implementation using streaming to play an mp3 file properly would be needed and then exposed to lua. However nobodies done this,

My AI tried tog et around the issues by using the windows MCI API, so my AI doesnt actually play the music, the windows sound system plays it. I did try and get some crossplatform libraries to play it but they refused to work for some reason.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QXZ6MZ_hy6w

haha lol watching that fun ta video makes me feel like i'm at a disco or something

Your best bet would be to talk to tvo (aka Tobi) or trepan, they both idle in #sy on irc.quakenet.org.

Could we hear some samples of your work first though? :)

AF wrote:Lua cannot solve it in the method you describe swiftspear.

Lua would have to load the entire file into ram in wav format, which could be 60-300MB.

Instead a C++ implementation using streaming to play an mp3 file properly would be needed and then exposed to lua. However nobodies done this,

My AI tried tog et around the issues by using the windows MCI API, so my AI doesnt actually play the music, the windows sound system plays it. I did try and get some crossplatform libraries to play it but they refused to work for some reason.

Spring has lua binds to play sound files embedded within a mod. Lua ITSELF can't play sound, I already know, but it should be able to make spring play sound.