Spring RTS Engine

Was just running some options in mind, and I geuss it is still the general consensus that spring has crap for support in melee and should remain a conventional to scifi era warfare engine?

I'm going to waist you, punk!

my understanding is that you can have short-range weapons that target the outside of a unit's hit-sphere instead of it's center, it would be about as good at melee as WC2 and other games of that general era... also, if you think about it you'd probably be able to come up with a number of fantasy excuses for ranged weapons... magic spells, archers and axe throwers, balistas, cannons and catapults, fire-breath, dwarfish grenadiers. I'd go for it if you feel the desire, might get us the the interest of a different chunk of the RTS market.

lets be honest, such a mod might be cool, but the question has to be asked, is it more fun to shoot your opponent with throwing axes and arrows till they keel over or is it more fun to take them apart with pew pew lazer beams?

Magic at least would be easy enough.

The only reason i can think why this can be a bad idea, is that Spring doesn't have normal support for organic animation (though there were unsettling rumors about somebody doing MD5).

Otherwise, Spring is moar power then TA:K, and TA:K was very much fantasy. So whatever it is, it is viable also.

Ooh, and has anybody thought of using ground-decals for GUTS BL:A:D AND GOAR OF CORPSEYZ MURDERD TO LETHAL DAETH?

No, I don't think it is a bad idea by any means, just more difficult. It would also be awesome however, all these ARM/CORE mods are getting old. (Yup, been playing with them for a long time. A looooooooooong time...) I know of a simple way to make melee, (Just an invisible weapon explosion that doesn't damage the firer, only the firee.) and i'm sure you do too, (And if you didn't well read previous tiny text.) And I forgot what I was going to end with so this is just a pointless rambling post now.

the simplest way to make a melee weapon (and it should actually work now): the major issue will be pathfinding, not dealing damage. you should test behavior of melee swarms as early as possible if you want them to be at the core of your gameplay.

Essentially if you make a melee-centric mod, the devs will be able to actually test the new Melee system (which I keep forgetting about) and be motivated to ensure it works correctly.

I very much would like a fantasy (or at least pre-modern like Age of Empires) game to play with this engine... if not just to see how it looks and feels.

please by all means tell me the melee weapon is fixed, I would love to resume research into it once again.

Yes, it's a bad idea.

It must be; I'm trying to make one >_>

Just one thing.... no skeletal animation! No mather if melee work or not.

I dont see how skeletal or morphing models has anything to do with fantasy, other than it looks less life like and more robot like.

I was referring more or less to the engines melee capabilities.

If it is just a well thought out wc2 dynamics game that is fun, what is wrong with that?

Guessyourname would you mind sharing your ideas or progress with us or in private? I think a collaboration even if not in content, but information helps a lot.

Spring doesn't have a built in select and cast magic system so you would need to lua that. TAK style magic might be doable with fire states though.

For reference, Kernel Panic had a real melee weapon since Division Zero, the worm's bite attack is melee. It's not that problematic range-wise because the worm's shape allows it to reach out quite far, the problem wih humanoid units tends to be that their arms are so small that they can barely reach adjacent positions.

Magic is fairly easy to Lua.

Ooh, yes, fantasy mod! Can I help with brainstorm? :D

I would love to help brainstorm and such too...

I think going for a loose WC2 style team to start with would be the best idea, once we've got something like that in place we'd attracts WC3 modders to the engine.

I think an accurate remake of WC2 would be interesting.

With accurate I especially mean the restrictions regarding the way units behave. Units move from square to square, and a square is either fully occupied or not. Units can only attack when they are standing still in the middle of a square. Units reach full speed instantly when accelerating. Units never turn when moving, but stop (at the next square), turn, then continue moving. Most attacks (with a few exceptions like catapults, dragon breath or ship cannons) are melee attacks. Blocking attacks by units, features or terrain isn't possible. I'd also like to see the WC2 resource and upgrade system implemented. WC2 was a very primitive game, for example, if I remember correctly, the range of archers is always x squares, whether horizontal/vertical or diagonally. Archers also use a simple melee attack, just with a delayed hit - the attack is basically decided at the beginning of the animation, if a unit moves out of range after the arrow is fired it still gets hit.

It would be interesting to see how a mod that kinda uses a dumbed down version of the Spring Engine turns out. Although it probably is a lot of work to recreate this artificial dumbness with spring.

HectorMeyer wrote:It would be interesting to see how a mod that kinda uses a dumbed down version of the Spring Engine turns out. Although it probably is a lot of work to recreate this artificial dumbness with spring.

uh, that much work to make a clunky game? go for it man.

does it work on large buildings that the unit cannot reach the center-point of? Doubtful.