Spring RTS Engine

To Allies, Enemies, and fellow Spring Players.

I have begun to build a new lobby client with the following features.

Built in screenCapture
the screen capture functionality is dated. a new format is needed that allows you to specify the size of your recording area,convert it to flash, and autoupload it to a shared server. this would allow users to embed short battle sequences in forums and profiles. This would be amazingly helpful for users to teach other players tactics.

allow alliances with any user-
Most spring users do exist in the a clan, and many exist in several clans. Many of us have friends in multiple clans, and are sick of renaming. an xml file will be managed on a server containing the names of your allies. when a user renames, it will update that rename in the other xml files. with this in place many users will not need to rename any more to be balanced.

autoadvertise battle.
look if people are going to do this anyways, make it easier on them. put a spam limit on it of once a minute and make it automatic like many IRC services.

Rank based rooms
This is a must have. we need to split our newbs from our experienced players. i truely believe that the reason we arnt expanding that fast is that most newbs come on and get owned so badly its embarrassing. We need to seperate anyone below the rank of 4 for the good of both newbs and experienced players.

heatmap-
Many of you saw this in place at springplayersclub.com. I want to modify the technology a bit. well restrict the zoom for privacy reasons, but a realtime heatmap is just neat. I like the technology and want to use it to improve our reputation as a unique international playerbase.

player ranking
Although not entirely neccassary, i really think you should be able to rank someone, and then have those ranks add up. This would be a rank based on what others thought of your performance. I could take or leave this option.

Map maker
This is the most extensive part of the project. i have alot of experience with 3d graph modelling, which is somewhat similar to what we need to do. I plan on integrating a fairly simple mapmaking tool that will allow users to create a custom map. this will still use the classic mapping tools but will be opened by the application to compile. we will be strictly dealing with the heightmap, the item map(rocks etc) and the metal map, as well as the texture map. i plan on including several texture types built in. This will be a basic simcity style terrain editor.

Graphical Interface.
The majority of interaction with this application will need to be much more animated than current tasclients. we also needs sounds and video integration. ie little clips and maybe some music. it needs to feel more like a game and less like an IRC channel. this means we will need many of the commands (!help etc) mappable to animated buttons etc etc.


In Conclusion


This software is being written in C# but may be ported to VB, with DirectX for the map management.(.NET 2.0) I would like to recruit individuals for this project who have experience with the following subjects:

Web Services.
DirectX.
SendKeys API calls.
Application Flow and Design.
Animation
Random Software Testers

If you are interested in this project feel free to post here. I dont expect much of a response but i would appreciate some cooperation from someone with similar .NEt experience. I will be leasing a new server for this project starting the beginning of October. I would like to everything lined up for that start period. if anyone has any other suggestions feel free to add them.


Sefidel

I don't understand why you want to put a map making feature in a lobby client. IMHO a lobby client should aim to the playing part of the game and not creating content.

A map making tool should be ok as a standalone application or as a part of a content framework development application.

You'll never get it done, mostly because your goals are far, far too massive.

considering that he failed to modify springie to be malicious.....

:P

good luck

Wow, sounds like you are trying to prevent it from being cross-platform like your life depends on it.

Hate you.

Id like to see evidence of actual progress if only for something to observe. I think tis great that there could well be a 4th active lobby project but Id like to see that progress is actually being made rather than claimed.

I wish you success. If you ever need someone to test, you know where to find me

If you get banned will you replace the download link with "this file is not available until sefidel is unbanned"? I hear that's a pretty good trick.

Sounds great, fuck the trolls.

Holler if you need a tester.

sefi wrote: autoadvertise battle.
look if people are going to do this anyways, make it easier on them. put a spam limit on it of once a minute and make it automatic like many IRC services.

This would result in a ban. It's against lobby policy.

Direct X is a bad idea cause we, linux users, are not made of shit. You have to use a portable technologie.

but why do people need to create new stuff ? Just join actual springlobby developpement to improve it

Anyway, good luck :)

Well as much as i would love to talk some shit with you guys, you are all fairly arrogant to consider yourselves more qualified than the next man. dont let your pride in your minor programming skills inflate your egos to much. Love the trolling though . A+ and a gold star for you.



A map making tool should be ok as a standalone application or as a part of a content framework development application.

in all likelyhood it would be seperate application, but id release it with the lobby client.



You'll never get it done, mostly because your goals are far, far too massive.


thats what they said about landing on the moon crybabies.


considering that he failed to modify springie to be malicious.....

i did modify springie, to use a proxy to avoid bans. i actually enjoy playing spring unlike half the people who responded, who havnt done anything but troll since 2005.



Wow, sounds like you are trying to prevent it from being cross-platform like your life depends on it.

90% of users use windows. there are plenty of linux options. go download ubuntu and vmware if its that big of a challenge for you.



Autoadvertise battles:
This would result in a ban. It's against lobby policy.

this isnt neccassary, so if its against the system i wont do this part.

Direct X is a bad idea cause we, linux users, are not made of shit. You have to use a portable technologie.

Cross platform work can be done by others. I am a .Net programmer,
so...no real surprise there.



Anyways if anyone else is not here to just run their mouth let me know your thoughts.

The thing your missing is that all of the other lobbies are years in the making, and many have been abandoned since then... and all of them had less ambitious goals than you do.

A lot of people come in to Spring shooting for the moon and then vanishing with nothing done. Everybody gets a little sick of grandiose empty promises.

Start small - a nice mapping tool with a GUI would be wonderful, and you seem to have some ideas for that.

Plus, existing lobbies are quite good, and some are open-sourced. Why re-invent the wheel instead of adding your featureset to them?

and .NET is cross platform, as long as you code with platform-agnosticism in mind. Haven't you heard of Mono? Of course if you bring in things like Direct X, then it's all over.

Licho wrote:

sefi wrote: autoadvertise battle.
look if people are going to do this anyways, make it easier on them. put a spam limit on it of once a minute and make it automatic like many IRC services.

This would result in a ban. It's against lobby policy.

ha

i am familiar with mono, but have no actually used it. I could go either wayand do some opengl but id prefer directx.

guys alot of this stuff is not that complicated.

the mapping tool is my priority the tasclient interaction in all likelyhood will be springlobby code. i havnt decided. the rest is just visual shit that needs to be alot prettier.


anyways , i have already progressed to get most of the commands in the spring protocol mapped out to functions, although this is very beta and inefficient. needs to degrade more gracefully and use a persistent connection for all functions.

Dim Loginstring = "LOGIN "+User+" "+PassHash+" 1596 67.183.97.62 NewClient 1.0 0"

Dim Furc As New System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient
Try
Furc.Connect(Val(OhSnap.MyIP.Text), Val(OhSnap.MyPort.Text))
Console.WriteLine("Connected")
Catch
Console.WriteLine("Unable to connect.")
End
End Try

' Start reading data
Dim Stream As System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream = Furc.GetStream()
Dim ABI As New AsyncBufferInfo : ABI.Stream = Stream : ABI.Socket = Furc
Stream.BeginRead(ABI.Buffer, 0, BUFFER_SIZE, AddressOf AsyncReadCall, ABI)

' Get commands from the user while still connected
Dim LoginHolder = ""
Dim xCounter As Integer = 0
While Furc.Connected
If LoginHolder = "" Then
Dim Command As String = Loginstring
Call Send(Furc, Command)
Console.WriteLine(Command)
LoginHolder = "Nope"

Call Send(Furc, "JOIN " + ChannelName.Text)
Else

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100)
Dim Command As String = "SAY " + ChannelName.Text + " " + ChannelMessage.Text

Call Send(Furc, Command)
Console.WriteLine(Command)

End If

End While



Anyways you can all keep running your mouths as usual or you can be somewhat supportive. You will get nowhere in life if every time anyone brings anything up you shut down the idea.

Well, if you're wanting to do mapping stuff... go talk to RogerN, he's made one heck of a heightmap editor... it'd save a lot of reinvention of the wheel.

All it really needs is a full-featured preview of the color bitmap on the heightmap, a lighting editor that uses the same rendering conditions as Spring, and maybe in an ideal world, some integration with World Builder scripts and content, to finally dump Features from maps and start doing things in a way that looks professional...

I'm Spawn and i support this lobby!