Spring RTS Engine

Ok.

Good news: I've gotten a version of mapconv running which places wreckage features on the map. Right now using the blue channel of the metalmap and a text file.

Bad news: Given that nobody ever put wreckages on a map before, SJ had to tweak a thing or two, so it won't work with .62b1

Just thought I would let you guys know.

FYI To do custom stuff you need to make a wreckage- Including the tdf file, and Im not sure what else.

Take a look in your spring/mods/<modname>.sd7/Features for the tdfs.

Very cool! Now I can make a map with zero metal and tons of wrecked kroggs :)

So technically we could make Urban maps now?!

Michilus_nimbus wrote:So technically we could make Urban maps now?!

If the models exist. However, I'm not sure if the buildings in TA were models...

Good job! Is your source code available somewhere (I suggest you put it in CVS)? I'd like to take a look at how you did it - when the first version of mapconv came out I wanted to do something similar, but gave up for lack of time.

No, you'll have to remake all the old TA buildings for the urban maps; not a hard task in itself, but it's going to be a pain making sure that it looks goood and yet is still low poly enough to be used several hundred times and not lag the engine. The TA things were 2D sprites more or less; that's why they looked so smooth.

I can do some basic modeling... Buildings, even high-quality, are really easy.

What I want to know is how long till you can add static meshes to maps? [rant]When can we do BRIDGES?! Floating island forts?? GIHUGANT BUILDINGS!!! TUNNELS!!!!

...

[/rant]

You can harvest models way too quickly in Spring for a wreckage map to work. Maybe if it took 3-4 times as long, but this would change the balance a lot. Another option would be to add a tag to wreckages that acts as a multiplier for the reclaim speed. The idea would be that TA units are mostly metal, so they can be easily reclaimed, but broken buildings would contain plastics and all this other stuff, so for the same metal it takes longer.

There has already been an attempt to create urban features, which I was involved in.

The biggest problem with creating urban features is not the ability to place them, because that was just a matter of time before they are included. The problem is that when you create a large structure, Spring has problems dealing with it because it uses spherical collision detection (or was it pathfinding?). So a large skyscraper (say, 10 times as high as a krogoth) also happens to be 10 times as wide, in all directions, because of the sphere detection.

Until either an approximated rectangular prism shape, or significantly more complicated, but more accurate polygonal detection is implemented, there are massive issues with creating urban tilesets.

However, it is great news for the average map maker; we can now see palms and skeletons in our deserts, rocks (and those strange tree plant thingies) on mars, and all sorts of great features to add to maps.

And big cystaly spires on purple maps, and lolli-pops on ice cream maps, and jolly green ginats on cans of peas... the possiblitys are endless....

aGorm