Spring RTS Engine

Ok, at first of all, this is a cool idea, and is possible. so, weather this can be done, doesn't depend of being possible, but how hard would it be to implant it, and weather you have to rewrite anything major.

second, in real life, you can infact have major changes in the water level, in just a hundred square feet, due to the properties of the soil, and existence of rocks and/or clay/dense earth.

so, don't flame me on those parts.


Now, this idea, looks easy to understand at first glance, and you might think you understand it rightaway, but its more complex then that.

The idea, is, to have a watermap, in which you have difference in water level. thats easy to understand. this allows mappers to have two lakes at different elevations.

But, just like you can have a deformable landscape, as the game plays on, you can have changs to the water level.

if you have a lake, and someone destroys a part of its barrier, it may look as if some glass wall, with windex(lol) applied to it is there.

i've seen and heard of many solutions to this, in other programs where this type of idea is applied.

though spring won't have this for some time(maby after intell releases that 1-2terraplop 80 core beast, and spring supports multicore?), there is the option of haveing simulated water, instead of just... what we have now. meaning, water is simulated with realistic effect, so that when a ship fires some plasma ball, and it splashes, the splash is simulated, the drops are simulated, and so is the wave, can affect stuff, such as a other projectile just happening to pass through that area, or perhaps, if it has enough force, could do a bit of erosion on the land. Haveing simulated water, will simply solve any problems with differing water levels on its own. if some land is taken away, then the water will simply flow out, and fill the surounding areas.
But, there is no way in hell this would happen to spring in any time soon. the average computer doesn't support this kind of performance requirement yet.

a other option, would be, to have, right at the breach, some animations, and a partial piece of simulated water, with the water flowing into the next level, and slowly increasing its level. with springs current dynamic wave system, you could maby make some waves, showing water is flowing in that direction as well. but, that tiny bit of simulated water, could still tax alot of resources, even if its just simulating the volume, and ignoring stuff which pass through it, and the such.

the next option, is to manipulate the water level, so that, when there is a breach, the one level lowers, and the others raise. the change, should be gradual, and as the change happens, there should be some kind of disguise at the points where there is a breach. the most common, and simple solution, would be to put some heavy fog there, with an optional 3d lo-res animated mesh. this is alot less taxing on the system, and should be possible.

some features/options though, that could be applied to a map...

one option, could be, to have where a breach is made, terrian spawn, but, make the terrain spawn right where the water currently is, not where there was terrain. it should also be deformed a bit. but at the spot of where the terrain was spawned, the waterlevel under the terrain should be dropped.
the idea of this idea, well, is, if you have some ice or lava based map, you can have water instantly become ice when it breaches, or lava instantly cool to form rock.

also, a idea for some other problems that may occur,
make, that if ships happen to be in a dropping body of water, that when the water become too shallow for them, they simply start to lean, unable to move any further, until the water level has been restored. that could either happen, when the terrain is restored, and the water is pumped back or water levels can be restored by builders, like they can with restoring terrain, or, when a other body of water flows in, to increase the water level, the ships can move again.

now, i can't bear to write more, but believe me, theres more.
i just don't want to waste any more effort in something that i may end up doing myself, or never getting done for a long time.

This would require some form of water retention which means hefty changes to the engine AIs and some other bits, aswell as the map format.

Um, you could simulate this with LUA, but it'd be a royal pain, be very map-specific, and require a lot of changes to existing game designs.

do this all with lua?
my knowledge of lua, and map making is currently very limited,
so, i would say it'd be impossible for me to know how to do anything like this!

But, if i were research, i'd guess, i'd start with, how to make a map, with only water, no land, and half the maps water is higher then the other half's.

From there, i could then find out, how to make it, so that if there is nothing to hold the water at that level, then it should drop that sections water level, and raise the water level of the section it should flood into.

And then from there, i could just have some heavy mist, where the water is supposed to leak out at.

So, the question is, how would i be going, and doing the first step, which is to make a map, with each of its two halves with different water heights?

You cannot make a map with two different water levels. Water levels are a hardcoded engine feature. What you could do, with enough LUA, is build fake water levels, and have Units that behaved like ships, and could only move on those areas. It doesn't take much LUA to make a fake water area. It'd take quite a lot to get all of the Unit types and behaviors set up, though, you'd have to basically override their movement types, or do other tricks to make it believable.

It's not that this is impossible. It's just that it's a lot of work, for something that's mainly just a graphical gee-whiz kind of thing, and it'd only be applicable for maps that used your features- on regular maps, your "ships" would probably not be able to work.

At any rate, read over the LUA references here and in the Wiki, and go from there.