Spring RTS Engine

Hey. I wanted to know, is there a way to port old TA units to spring? I've tried the TA2Spring program, but it hangs when converting at 75%.

Do you guys have any suggestions? I'd love to play with some old custom units I had...

Thanks in advance.

In the past, Spring automatically scanned your mod directory for .ufo files and included them for play. You couldn't sync with other online players without the units though.

Now, last couple of updates (I don't know) probably borked all this to hell, so if you want a quick custom match with custom units, look into dumping the contents of whatever base mod you want to use into a folder with the ending ".sdd", then extracting the ufo file and dumping its contents in there as well.

Wait, put the folder where, exactly in the spring directory?

I'm only playing skirmish against the AI, and I have a somewhat older version of spring right now...newer one doesn't work for me. I have a version marked "076b1".

Thanks in advance.

Well, first of all, just try putting the ufo files in your /spring/mods folder. If that doesn't work, then you need tools such as 7zip, HPIView or HPIStudio, and possibly a good text editor in order to basically build your own custom mod. Try #1 first.

Dang. I tried the mod folder route, and it doesn't work.

Alright...I hate to ask, but what does option #2 entail? I have all the listed items.

First off, in terms of directory structure, required files, etc., please look here.

In terms of extraction tools, etc.... if you already have them, then you basically need to dump the ufo files with HPIDump or whatever into a common directory, move everything that can be transferred into the appropriate directories. GAFs, for example, aren't portable, you'll need to extract the bitmaps, name them using Spring's very annoying naming convention, and put them into the appropriate directory (see otacontent.sdz for examples).

However... to be perfectly honest... and I really don't want to make this sound as bad as it probably will... if you don't already know UFOs backwards and forwards, and the various tools involved in 3DOs, GAFs, etc., you're going to pretty much hit a brick wall immediately.

I'm very sorry, I know that probably sounds either heartless or rude, but it's just the truth. There are a few guys here (Smoth, the S'44 team, Pxtl, Gnome) who may know more about these issues, and perhaps they have a magic bullet I'm unaware of... but I have a feeling that they're likely to say the same thing.

Maybe explaining exactly what you wanted to port might help us understand whether what you're contemplating is practical, for a newbie to both Spring and OTA?

Basically your going to have to manually reformat the TA bits into a spring package...

You have to unpack everything and then move it around a bit so that it fit the structure of a Spring game... namely http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Mod_Deve ... bdirectory ... but it might make more sense to you if you find an existing mod that you want to add your units to and open the SD* file with 7zip and poke around at the files.

Yeah- I mean, if you just want to move something from, say, TAUCP or whatever into BA, to screw around with... and it doesn't use custom GAFs... that's fairly easy.

If you want to move random stuff from TAU's UnitUniverse, and it used OTA textures... it's not a biggie. You only run into serious problems if it used custom GAFs or was really weird, scripting-wise. Unfortunately, most of the stuff people seem to want to port... is in that category, because it was actually interesting.

But... let's assume you want to port UU stuff. Here's a quick example of doing an export.

Here, I just "ported" M3G's classic, the Black Arrow. This just uses OTA textures... so... here are the files I needed to move, in their appropriate directories. All I did was run Multidump, and get rid of all of the stuff that Spring can't use.

I haven't edited the Unit files to meet Spring's standards, etc., but I exported the GAF with GafBuilder Pro, and put it into the right directory, so that it can have that BMP assigned as an icon, etc.

I hope that's helpful. Moving stuff like this isn't too bad, and if it's as well-made as M3G's models generally were, then it should look all right in Spring.

I'm sorry I'm not too detailed in my explanations of what I want to do, so I'll clarify as best I can.

I was really looking to port a few units for my own personal use in skirmish - say for example, The Caine.
http://www.unituniverse.com/?p=u&v=2567

If I understand you correctly, I could - could, that is - take say, balanced annihilation and add this unit to it, for my own use - but it would be somewhat like unwrapping an apple to put a new seed in it.

Although, I'm not sure how complex is too complex. Although I'd rather like to learn. Thanks for the links, I'll look them over.

I was really looking to port a few units for my own personal use in skirmish - say for example, The Caine.

Well, you'd pretty much just follow the procedure I outlined- use MultiDump to get the files out of the .UFO, then stick them into BA... then alter /Gamedata/sidedata.tdf, to allow a given unit to build the ship.

IOW, it should be pretty easy. I thought you were wanting to port some giant total conversion mod or something at first, which is not.

Oh, no. Nothing like that. Just a few units I used to love to give ARM's AI-controlled skid-plate a good kicking.

Thank you very much, I'll try that. If it works, I'll try to avoid going too crazy with units.

Remember,
You will need the customized textures of Caine also.

What customized textures? For the most part, it looks alright.
For the most part, but I'm willing to let it go, as long as it functions.

Right now I'm trying to get boats to work - they keep spawning underwater, and won't move unless I direct control them - amusingly, if I drive them onto land, they work by themselves as land units...

Part of me is resisting the urge making them amphibious.

Sounds like movement class problems. Look into infolog for any movement-related errors.

The customized textures that not exist in OTA includes.But, if all appears to be correct, can be included in the mod you put the Caine.
Also, Yurich is right, the moveinfo is customized, and need to be modified.
[CLASS15]
{
Name=Abel;
FootprintX=2;
FootprintZ=5;
MinWaterDepth=18;
}
[CLASS16]
{
Name=Caine;
FootprintX=2;
FootprintZ=6;
MinWaterDepth=26;
}

Dang it.
I don't know what's the problem. All my ships can't move, and any amphibious units won't enter the water. And yeah, I added the moveinfo lines before and it didn't make a difference.

I'll keep poking it. This is weird.

What mod you are playing with this(these) unit(s) added?

It's balanced annihilation 6.61

The amphibious unit problem is recent - never happened before. Still toying with it.

compare the fbis and move infos to units you know work.