Spring RTS Engine

The title pretty much says everything.Since maps and mods use the same filetype, is it possible to make dynamic maps?
That would be simple things like rain or fog, but also growing trees, earthquakes, and asteroid impacts on moon/asteroid maps.
(they of course sould do some damage )
this would be a real innovation AFAIK, no other rts has that yet.
The long and the short of it,would that be possible?

1. Rain/Snow and fog
Already a few maps use it, you can easily add it to your map, for an example, check ooowee_v3 and Xenolithic_v4

2. Growing trees
There is some resemblance of leftover unfinished code in the engine IIRC, but its non functional. Can be done with lua though.

3. Asteroid impacts
I recall seeing some nota map with them, or maybe it was just a spacebugs mod option.
I honestly dont support the idea of random shit damaging or destroying unit, since noone wants to be on the sucky side of that feature. Also suck randomness makes competitive play not possible as well as causes lots of unwanted grief. Theres a good reason no other RTS has done it.

4. Earthquakes
If you just mean visuals, then take a look at the map Mercury. Has earthquake and volcano and all that.

Dynamic maps are possible, but require much more work than normal ones.

TA had meteor showers and earthquakes on some maps.

Damage-dealing earthquakes could be a good feature if they came in a predictable fashion on some clearly defined area.

Indeed, Smoth, indeed.

Pressure Line wrote:TA had meteor showers and earthquakes on some maps.

i remembered that too and when i suggested that ota comet catcher had meteor showers people thought i was dumb and crazy.

that being said, meteor showers are shitty for gameplay when they just randomly kill shit. now maybe if there are meteor showers that only happen in a certain area with a lot of metal...

Beherith wrote:2. Growing trees
There is some resemblance of leftover unfinished code in the engine IIRC, but its non functional. Can be done with lua though.

I have growing trees implemented in my game (using some s44 trees scaled to various sizes). They need to be planted by the elf druid, but I might make them also grow spontaneously in the future.

one of the command and conquer games had ion storms at random on some maps... I think it was Tiberium Sun.

CarRepairer wrote:

Beherith wrote:2. Growing trees
There is some resemblance of leftover unfinished code in the engine IIRC, but its non functional. Can be done with lua though.

I have growing trees implemented in my game (using some s44 trees scaled to various sizes). They need to be planted by the elf druid, but I might make them also grow spontaneously in the future.

great.

hunterw wrote:

Pressure Line wrote:TA had meteor showers and earthquakes on some maps.

i remembered that too and when i suggested that ota comet catcher had meteor showers people thought i was dumb and crazy.

that being said, meteor showers are shitty for gameplay when they just randomly kill shit. now maybe if there are meteor showers that only happen in a certain area with a lot of metal...

would be nice if they would be foreseeable,right, so you could coordinate them with attacks.
this could be boring tho, everytime there is a meteor shower on 1vs1 there would be an attack too.

the idea of leaving m is just great.
or did you mean the area they come down is full of m.
that would be nice too.

I think meteor showers are more fun when you are the one summoning them upon your enemy's base

It is super-trivial to have meteors that only fall in pre-determined zones, for gameplay purposes. That sounds like it could be fun for a P.U.R.E. "space map".

Actually, random meteors could be done well in, say E&E. It would require some structure to detect and predict their point of impact and ETA, and the meteor itself to be vulnerable to anti-air fire, though, of course meteors would be difficult to destroy entirely before impact. Perhaps it would deal damage based on how much health it still had on contact... the mass remaining? A gadget would sketch the area of effect with a lua hemisphere upon the map when the structure was done "calculating" the meteor path.

CarRepairer wrote:I think meteor showers are more fun when you are the one summoning them upon your enemy's base

What he said. CA logos superweapon == meteor shower fun.

cool feature would be real lava (danger) that leaves behind metall when cooling down (reward) making the eruption zone of volcanos a temptation

Two Words:

Sand Worms

SinbadEV wrote:Two Words:

Sand Worms

Two Words:

Ask zwzsg

EDIT: Also, now's a good time to reiterate that mesh deformation/skeletal animation support would be awesome.

Hast thou summoned me?

We shall then proceed to the yearly posting of the ancient animated gif:

With the ancient ritual complete we can now assume said noob has been educated and the thread is complete.





























At least until the next cycle where the ritual must begin anew.

http://cremuss.free.fr/3d/2008/0001_0360.avi