A Current and Future Theory Concerning Spring's Development

[Dragon45]

While embarking on any non-trivial endeavor, it becomes easy to be bogged down in day-to-day activities and short-term goals and milestones, and lose sight of the larger vision. Every large project is at danger of losing focus in such a manner, but this is a problem especially prevalent in the development of large games. Every day, a contributor should remember that game development concerns one thing: fun for the gamer.

Artists, programmers, marketing folk, and everyone in between are constantly in danger of forgetting that the the end-user is what ultimately matters. There is no harm in making something for personal elucidation. It is admirable if a programmer wishes to test a newly-discovered algorithm, or if an artist decides to experiment with a new freehand style. But as soon as the end-user is forgotten, then it is no longer for a game. What happens, then, when the end-user, the consumer, the gamer, is never in the developer's mind at all? I feel that such is the case with Spring. I contend that the success of Spring is coincidental, and that this wider success was not a primary goal of the project at all. I contend that the primary goals of the Spring project were to improve the Yankspankers' programming abilities, and boost their resumes.

Spring, in its early stages, was a learning experiment for the Yankspankers. They have mentioned several times that Spring was created, in part, to advance their own knowledge of game engine development and design. Let us bear in mind that Spring began its life as a run-of-the-mill WWII era RTS simulator. Yet, the Yankspankers weren't happy. They wanted something bigger and better; something that would boost their abilities even further, and show future employers what they were truly capable. What is this "fun" you speak of?

And so, in the dark depths of their Swedish hell-cavern, the Spankers of Yanks built Spring as we now know it. They based it upon Total Annihilation because that was the RTS with which the bulk of them had the most experience, and because it was more robustly deconstructed than Starcraft at that particular point in time.

Yet, after development continued for some time, the Swedes realized that they could not effectively show a totally bug-ridden engine to future employers. Indeed, the engine would need content, and being already stretched thin, the Swedes could not effectively complete their engine, raid Norway, and make content for the very same engine. They turned to the last possible option, one neglected until now: build a community.

It was at this point the Swedes unleashed this game upon the remnants of the Total Annihilation community. It was at this point that the denizens and those lovers of pedarsty, of tauniverse.com, of planetannihilation, and of tadesigners.com, who had been awaiting the siren call of TA 2.0, eagerly gobbled up the news of Spring like a hungry babe suckles at his mother's sweet, sweet teat.

Recall the previous discussion concerning the nature of a game. Recall, as it were, the nature of Spring. And realize, that Spring did not begin as a game. It was made a game partway through its lifecycle by throngs of well-wishers craving something that did not exist, does not exist, and will not ever exist.

Suddenly, mods begin to crop up. Suddenly maps were made, fansites began to form, and the crumbling of the TA community experienced an acceleration, as more and more flocked to what was now called TA-Spring. Even the most prized fans of all - the software developers - joined. Suddenly, T&A-Spring reached a critical mass, and the community came into its own, hoodwinked, and unaware of the deception wrought by the Yankspankers. Their empire secure, anuses reamed, and resumes thoroughly padded the Yankspankers found the first set of jobs they could imagine, and left us.

Let me leave you, the assiduous reader, with the conclusion to this essay: Spring is not a game. It is merely a vehicle by which the Yankspankers could improve their skills and boost their resumes. Modmakers, mapmakers, modelers, players, idiots all: You are playing a lie.

Farewell.

-Dragon45

[tombom]

whenever we ask "should i do something" we look at how it was made and not the results

and the most important thing when we look at how it was made is clearly "were they making it for slightly less than altruistic purposes"

thank you dragon45 for enlightening us all

[Noruas]

You act like you just figured this out, congratulations for climbing up one stair of intelligence.

[Hoi]

kthxbai

[Sheekel]

This game rules. Your post isn't going to shake up as much dispute as you're hoping for.

They have mentioned several times that Spring was created, in part, to advance their own knowledge of game engine development and design.

You are playing a lie.

Clearly if they have already mentioned what your post describes, then it isn't a lie?

Dragon45, you're a troll and a spammer and a nuisance, I hope the moderators deal with you swiftly.

[Hoi]

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... 2=dragon45
Fail.

[pharoph]

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... rd2=google

ultra fail.

ps: dragon would never atempt anything this smart.

[Noruas]

even more fail...
It seems to be inaccurate, can't be trusted...

...


http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... rd2=Russia

[Kaine]

Perhaps its a lie. Still fun though.

[Machiosabre]

witty retort implying I read all that.

[Jazcash]

Hmm, I'll go for 8.7/10 on the Phail Scale and 0.303827 /10 on the Gota Scale me thinks.

[Hoi]

tldr: dragon is leaving, so he makes up a story to make us all feel sorry for him

[TradeMark]

oh? finally

can some mod please remove all his stupid cat/dog image-posts hes been posting lately:
search.php?author_id=17&sr=posts

[AF]

This is basically what i can surmise based on forum posts and webpages written by the SYs themselves:

• Spring started off as a nehe GL tutorial
• Spring was then flagged as a 3D TA simulator with a plane flying in big loop the loops in a 3D terrain
• Spring became a primitive WW1/napoleonic era war game
• At some point the SJs project became too large for him and Fnordia and a handful of other SYs joined in.
• The SYs aren't content experts. To save time and effort they decided to program primitive support for TA content, simply because it was there and they knew the format they'd need to load. Nothing to do with quality or intent to build a 3D TA engine
• They quickly catched onto the 3D TA engine idea after the above possibly during, or before, not sure

It was the desire for 3D TA that started this community, and that desire is fullfilled. There is only so far the community can grow around 3D TA, and we long ago reached a maxima in influx. We are growing but not at a sustainable rate, and the rate is slowly decreasing.

There is a large chunk of unused potential within the current setup that could be unlocked via new website etc, and theres a huge well of potential thats several orders of magnitude larger in each and every content project thats being capped by spring itself.But Ive written blog posts about that and everything already

You can find several incarnations of pre-TA spring in the downloads page as old spring, old old spring, and old old old spring. You can even see traces of it in source code, such as the nonfunctional 'supply' resource.

[Gota]

Haha.
It was a fun read.

[iamacup]

pring is not a game. It is merely a vehicle by which the Yankspankers could improve their skills and boost their resumes.

i actually agree with OP/AF for once. This was the original UF also. Considering i had next to no experience coding anything i thought why not.

my thing just came crashing down (earlier?)

[AF]

The same is true of half the nonTA mods here, and several of my own projects

[El Capitano]

Honestly, if Spring has helped further any of the devs' careers, I say good on them! They've given me countless hours of fun for free and I for one am grateful for it, whether or not they did it for themselves or for some grand scheme. It's not like the source is closed or anything, if they sod off, somebody else can take over.

[AF]

SJ left for paramount iirc I think he went somewhere else too not sure

Does anybody know of any other spring induced employment?

[Forboding Angel]

Forboding Angel
220,000 results

This is moderately disturbing.