Spring RTS Engine

Hi all.

I've been a programmer for the last 23 years or so - mainly Assembly, C, Perl, Lisp and Python. Recently I've been learning Lua (and deciding I quite like it!).

I'd like to help out on some Spring mod to enhance my Lua skills (rather than just go through the project Euler exercises to practice the language), so I'm offering my services to any mod's out there that need some help. Lua code only - I'm pretty bad at any art stuff.

I can offer about 5 hours or so of my time every week.

Feel free to offer advice, PM me or post back here.

PM Fanger, he might need your help. Otherwise, prepare to be bombarded and eaten alive.

HAHAHAHAHAHA ... I doubt you will be short of work.

I might have something for you, but not very soon. I'm still working on the art content and getting the basic structure of my game ready.

I'd probably need a custom resource system, that would use upkeep and gold. I am still working out the finer details, but if you're interested just send me a pm, and I'll try to explain a little more thoroughly.

Btw, there are lots of talented coders here (unfortunately I am not) -- but if you'd need any help just ask around and you'll likely get lots of it.

CA has some high-complexity Lua that needs to be worked on, along with a number of smaller things that need maintenance. Maackey's project also needs some Lua, although we aren't quite decided on the specifics of it just yet. Thirdly, Evolution RTS could use a good Lua-er. Feel free to talk to me in the game lobby (I'm '[1uP]MidKnight' or 'MidDay'), best of luck!

CA has an open development model and an SVN blah blah feel free to jump right in at any point.

smoth wanted a lua coder for tower defense (dont flame me smoth im trying to help!).

I can't believe I didn't think of Tower Defense. Yes, please go help smoth. Everybody is dying to see it released but he feels the lua code is not quite up to snuff.

The CA and S44 teams are both very knowledgeable and helpful, and both would benefit your experience as well.

On the high complexity side of S44 'things to do at some point' we have:

• A GUI to replace Spring's default. Neddiedrow has been working on designs.
  Status: various designs, no start on implementation (one older effort, but essentially starting from scratch).
• A widget to increasingly cluster like units into a smaller numbers of models and scale those models up as you zoom out, while retaining the animation/ect of a representative unit in that group. For example, a group of 20 riflemen, 5 SMGs, and a few halftracks would condense into 10 riflemen, 3 SMG, and a few halftracks at medium zoom level, and further into 5 riflemen, 1 SMG, and 2 halftracks at higher zoom level, and finally just a representative 'infantry' model and 1 halftrack at the highest zoom level.
  Status: floated as an approach to solve 'icon wars', but our talented OpenGL guy is busy with university right now, so no progress yet. This and the GUI are moderately Spring-specific.
• A building garrison system that accounts for multiple firepoints on a building without allowing the units to simply fire through walls.
  Status: Not yet begun, Flozi and I have been talking through potential approaches to this problem, and we'll likely get going in the next few weeks. This is also likely to use a fair bit of COB, so it probably makes more sense for us to tackle it, but a helping hand on the Lua gadget side couldn't hurt (this would be the most Spring-specific project).
• Working with Tobi to make C.R.A.I.G. (our Lua-based AI) use more intelligent behaviors so it doesn't need to cheat as much.
  Status: Codebase on this one is excellent, and Tobi is highly active/skilled, so this is probably the easiest to 'jump into', as well as being a pure Lua programming exercise.

If any of those sound particularly neat, you can find us on our forums at http://spring1944.net/phpBB3/, or on the Spring lobby server at #s44 (our channel), or just PM me so I can put you in touch with the appropriate people.

Thanks for the replies guys (and girls?).

For those who said to contact in the Spring Lobby, that could be a problem since I'm based in China, so I tend to around at strange hours.

Other than that, I'll take look at the links given and see what whets my appetite. You won't see anything too flash for a while since I'm going to have a learn a bit about what Spring allows you to do with Lua, how to interact, and all those other fiddly details before I write an original script.

I've written some GUI's in the past, so at the moment that avenue might be my choice of work.

Dont worry, we have plenty of Australians, Malaysians, and other people from all over the world.

Just curious, if s44 needs a GUI, have they considered the chilli framework?

ChilliGUI is CA's gui project, its pretty well advanced at this point. Supports skins and all sorts of things, and CarRepairer is instituting it in The Cursed with its own skin there. Its not finished yet though, still needs quite some work.

I suppose that (sigh) there is some very good reason why s44 isnt using it? I'd hope not, working on implimenting it in s44 would certainly allow for a lot of shared efforts.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=51

Uncle Evolution RTS wants YOU! *Finger pointing and all that*

Saktoth wrote:Just curious, if s44 needs a GUI, have they considered the chilli framework?

It was plugged into dev builds of S44 for a couple of months already. It's just no one took time to find out what it's capable/incapable of.

My best advice to you is to start writing widgets. You don't have to join any project to do it and you can work at your own pace.

The S44 team has contributors and developers active roughly twenty hours a day, so we have you covered.

As for not using Chili, it was designed for an entirely different sort of end product, it does have a somewhat severe overhead from what I've tried to do with it, and I don't particularly like some elements of the design. However, this is the first time I've mentioned these points anywhere, so that is not what S44 does not use it. I believe S44 would use it given the developer time, though Tribulex argues that he will open a more robust framework to us after ANTS is released.

If development on our GUI begins before that point, I've already earmarked Chili for use. It has more of what we need than Red, Ice or Lol. However, it will take me at least a week to pull my designs out of the development freeze and integrate the needs which have come up since I took my part of the project on hiatus.

In your position I would probably start with some widgets, general widgets for general needs. Then help Smoth with Tower Defense, that should be fun and relatively informative. After that, both CA and 1944 are offering a few projects - they're both generally accepting, flexible teams with a wide variety of needs which are likely to see development through to more major releases in the future.