Spring RTS Engine

Epic 40K is a version of Warhammer 40K that deals with big army's. I mean REALLY big. I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY big.

Everything is huge and over the top. See an ork army suddenly becomes an ork HORD and humains suddenly have platoons of soldiers, battalian's of tanks and massive Titans that make Krogoths look miniscule by comparison!

The mod would have a sligtly different style then TAS, becuase insted of just makeing ONE unit you would make squads of units. So when your ordreing 10 space marine's, your actualy ordering 10 space marien squads, with 5 men each. So thats 50 space marines! Imagin how quickly a battle like this can escalate...

Titans and Tanks would both come in smaller pakages, with maby 3 or 1 unit per squad, but they would come with ton's of guns, each firing at different units. I mean a Leman Russ battle tank has a Battlecannon, two lasguns and 2 hevy machine guns! We can already make a tank like that in Spring, and it would totaly rock!

A Great Gangerant (kindof a massive Orkish war machine) would have a huge cannon, a bigger cannon, a Lifta-Droppa (picks something up and drops it, really hard!) and about 10 machine guns. The battlefilds would have to be a little bigger, even if you use miniscule size's for the uinits. With appropreat scale, the infantry would be smaller then a Pewee in mini-spring, while the titans would be twice as tall as a Krogoth in regular Spring.

As an added benifit, infantry squads can lose men as they get damaged, just like how some user made vehicals have bits blown off them! Once they... lets say 10 damage, then a unit die's. 20 and another unit die's. 30 and another unit has been killed. At 40 there is only one guy left. At 50 the entire squad is creamed.

Would it be possible for each individual man to have a corpse, so that the battlifeild can be littered with the body's of the slain? If not, then i suppose i can live with the men not dying until the entire squad is dead, and then they all drop dead.

that'd be cool however if you've ever played (the demo i played :D) DoW you'll see that spring definately cannot compete with neither graphics nor balance. However if the SYs put hand to hand combat in then this WOULD be a lot more fun...i got bored of DoW very easily, even in the demo you could build all but 3 of the space marines units. If resource collecting etc was in TA:WH then i'd love to see it

I've played a LOT of DoW and though it is a great game it doesnt nearly take on the scale we're talking here, and the very high quality of sound, animations, and models, actually makes it quite hard to mod well.


I am VERY interested in seeing if Spring can do the "squads" thing.

I like DoW but I think only Spring could make such epic, fearsome and fun to watch battle.

About epic 40k, I never played in table top, but it could be a better idea because it has more variety than warhammer 40k (from big titan to small troop)

While I don't agree that this is a good idea, simply cause we already have someone tryin WH:TA so it would be better to spend your time helping them first.....

The squads thing is intreuging......

Blackliger: very true, if we got WH:TA ported over that'd be a heap of models and gameplay already done. Then extra units could be added.

The squad concept really does "make" Dawn Of War.

WHAT!???!?!?!?!? DOW??? I was talking about a COMPLEATLY other game!

as in this!


Final Liberation is an Epic 40K Game, where you fight hords or orks. Its freeware now, cause the company went out of buisness. It is a greatly balenced turnbased game with massive armys that bash eachother to pice's over equaly large maps. You handle everything from a 5 man squad to a 25 story tall Titan (think giant robot). If turned to a Spring mod it would be basicaly the same, moveing infantry squads around and building tanks/titans to crush the enemy.

Squads would have to be cleverly scripted, but remeber we arent bound by the rule's in TA any more So we can try to do what ever the heck we want.

Also DOW was a fast paced action RTS, while FL was a slow Turnbased War game with massive armys! Totaly different!

To get FL for free, go here http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?n ... Liberation

WARNING! The following idea is purely theoretcal!!!

There could be a rather odd roundabout way to create squads. We have here what's called Group AIs, right? What if the unit, on being built initially, automatically received such an AI? In this AI, it would be scripted so that unless the total number of units in that group is equal to... errr... let's say 10, then the first unit in the group (which should be a group leader unit, slightly different from others) gets the ability to call in more soldiers. All the soldiers created this way are guided by the same group AI, that also governs automatic selection of all units when one is selected, enforcing units to stay together when moving, etc. When the leader is killed, there will be no one left to call in reinforcements, and the group will eventually be wiped out.

WARNING! The described idea is purely theoretical!!!

And purely implementable too. *Thinks of taskforce AI groups at darkstars with a nifty UI extension*

I really dislike squads acting as one unit. I prefer epic game where each unit exist on its own. Just convert the texture of WarHammerTA to Spring and keep the shift key down every time you build units. That way you can have an epic game, with Warhammer 40K themed armies, and units numbering in thousands. Just drop the squad idea. A powerful interface like in Spring is a much better solution to control thousand of units.

Well i want titans, and when a shell drops into a bunch of infantry, i want them to fly everywhere and splat!

SPLAT I SAY!!!

Also if i was interested in makeing the mod (whitch i am) can some one give me some pointers like....

)1 Tools
)2 How to use aformention tools
)3 Balencing????

Now im seious about needing some help. I have great IDEA'S on what units look, move and act like. I can imagin the look of how a Basalisk Earthshaker artillery cannon will look in the game. I just dont know HOW to make it so.

Really could use some help, or a link to some help

So you seriously want to make a mod, eh? From my mighty FAQ on TAU, here's the part about how to make third party TA units. It's for TA, so the part about maps, ai and .gaf are irrelevant in Spring, but otherwise it's the same.


Editing and Modding :


Don't be afraid, seeing the number of third party mods, TA can't be that difficult to mod. First thing is to get hpiview and hpipacker. with the HPI viewer you can now have a look of what's in the .hpi, .ccx, .gp3, .ufo, etc... You'll see that a lot of information is written in plain-text files easily modifiable with Notepad. After modifying, instead of repacking, you can just put the modified file in an appropriate subfolder of your TotalA folder.


To create Maps or AIs, please read the Maps or AIs sections.


As for unit making, first here a few places to look for help and tutorials:
- Storm's Ultimate Help Topic
- TAU Unit Discusion Forums
- TA Designers has some tutorials, and most utilities.
- Furtive Fox left long ago Well, so I assume, but his site is still up with good tutorials, but in French.
- Maestro has nice tutorials hidden on his site, such as this Texture Guide.
- Nexus was planning to do some workshop & modding classes, maybe one day it'll happen.
- FileUniverse has nearly all known utilities and tutorials, but it can be overwhelming if you don't know what you're looking for.
- M.A.D. TA also host a few utilities and tutorials.


To make a complete new unit you'll need the following:
- A 3D modeling software. Rhino3D and 3ds Max are the most popular amongst TA unit makers. But lightwave, wings3d, hamapatch are also used.
- 3do builder, an utility to convert 3D models (import them as .lwo) to the the TA format (.3do), and textures them: 3DO Builder 2.02, 3DO Builder .exe 2.1 update (Warning, not only the v 2.1 update don't work under WinXP/Win2k, but trying it also prevents later use of v 2.02)
- GAF Builder. .Gaf contains all the 2D graphism, such as builpics, explosions, buttons, ....
- Scriptor : to write .bos script, compile them into .cob, uncompile .cob etc... It's THE scripting program.


For your debut, or for reference, also get those help files:
- TA Design Guide : the most complete and awesome reference guide I ever saw. Explain all script functions, all weapons .tdf tags, all units .fbi tags, and much more. A must have.
- Mastreo's Weapons Reference
- Wizzball's Rhino3D modelling Tutorial
- How to script a basic tank tutorial


Lastely, if there's something you need guidance on, the most effective way is to look at the original cavedog units. For instance, if you wonder how to script a transport, run HPIViewer, open Totala1.hpi, CCdata.cxx or rev31.gp3, browse inside /unitspics/ until your find the unit you want to know more about, write its codename down (for instance, Armtship), then go into /scripts/, extract the .cob, (.bos inside totala1.hpi are rumoured to be a tad wrong, a left over from early beta maybe), have a quick glance at the /units/ .fbi to spot specific tags, then run Scriptor and use it to uncompile the .cob into a .bos and read it.

There are a lot more modding tutorials and utilities out there. Some are useless due to better ones being available. Others I just haven't tried. I tried to list thoses I really used when making my first unit.

Forums Rules,TA2,Installing,Multiplayer,Mods,Maps,Recorder,AIs,Editing,Problems,Mac,TAK,Links,Acronyms,Contacts

thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!

That will be a big help

zwzsg wrote:So you seriously want to make a mod, eh? From my mighty FAQ on TAU, here's the part about how to make third party TA units. It's for TA, so the part about maps, ai and .gaf are irrelevant in Spring, but otherwise it's the same.
...........

Now on the Wiki, but needs serious editing... I got to go to work myself - anybody?

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Create_units

Munch

unfortunantly most of the help topic things i clicked on led to site's that no longer exsist. ulp!

But i did get 3do viewer, Rhino and the rest of the unit creater things. HIP Packer and Viewer. Its going slow though.

Zoombie wrote:unfortunantly most of the help topic things i clicked on led to site's that no longer exsist. ulp!

Odd, all links seem to work for me. Care to point me out which do not work for you?

Well by the page's not bneing there anymore, i mean the website say's

"The file or page you are trying to reach no longer exsistes, please go back and try another page" or some thing on the same lines.

amd by all of them, i mean all the things on Storm's guid leads to nothing. But thanks for all the tools, tutorials and other neat things. Now how to put it all together...

So you mean it is the only on the part

Storm's Ultimate Help Topic

that there are some page that does not exist right?



And do links like hpiview still works for you? Because I tried a thing with custom 404 to find back files, but I need to know if it works well for everybody.

okay, i have the evaluation version of Rhino, and i dont know how to script, texture or animate a unit, but hey, this is a pretty good start for someone who just fiddled with buttons for three hours.

[img]FLTrooperBasic.bmp[/img]

darn, that didnt work.... how do you put a image on your computer into a fourum? Or onto a web site, then onto the fourum?