Spring RTS Engine

Does Spring already support different visual masks, like areas what are not scouted, areas what are scouted but are out of sight?

And how smoothly such areas can be drawn by the Spring?

games itself can have the radars and other possible fading features, right?

There is nothing that allows "unscouted" territory, otherwise everything else could be drawn with a Lua gadget or widget... theoretically a game could implement "unscouted" territory too... why do you ask?

have you tried pressing the L key ingame?

MidKnight wrote:have you tried pressing the L key ingame?

Does it work like the mockup? No.
Is it smooth when moving? No.
Is it colored ugly way? Yes.

Do you realize that it's not smooth when moving only because it's precise?

The los in Spring aren't just disks, they are affected by hills, and so calculating where a team can see is an expensive calculation. It can't be done every frame or else Spring would require computers from the future. Having a smooth los visual colored mask when moving would mean having a los indication that does not match the los. Is that what you want? Because I'm sure that if you had it you would complain that los does not match los.

If your into nitpicking, then how would you indicate previously scouted but no current los or radar coverage?

zwzsg wrote:Do you realize that it's not smooth when moving only because it's precise?

The los in Spring aren't just disks, they are affected by hills, and so calculating where a team can see is an expensive calculation. It can't be done every frame or else Spring would require computers from the future. Having a smooth los visual colored mask when moving would mean having a los indication that does not match the los. Is that what you want? Because I'm sure that if you had it you would complain that los does not match los.

Maybe you did not understand that that is mockup to give the idea. Not a 3D model of developed technology for 3D engine. I left away the realtime LOS like many 3D games has, where it depends the FOV because in Spring you do not have FOV in limited arch (like 90┬░) but on 360┬░. Just focus to the graphical idea how it should LOOK.

Then spring might needs computer from future. But original TA could do it easily with as 3D. Thats why there is smoothing on the mask in many RTS games what use 3D to allow rough calculations and then just rendering nicely the mask itself to reflect it.

It should not be magic for Spring devs.

Gah i so want this...
Current los indication is utter fail on so many maps..
Just darkening the non los area,as it is now, is a very bad solution.

I Personally don't want the black thing that completely covers the map but I can see how others might be interested in playing like this.

I must say that actually drawing los(when u press L)is actually pretty damn heavy and costs a lot of fps...

Beherith wrote:If your into nitpicking, then how would you indicate previously scouted but no current los or radar coverage?

The gray area. Is that not so obvious?

You have black mask for areas where you have never been and seen it visually. Just like many other RTS games has had it in history.

You have gray mask for areas where you have been and you have seen the area. Just like many other RTS games has had it in history.

And when you do have a radar coverage to area, you do have it there. If there is enemy and radar has LOS to that, it reflects the radarwaves back like now it does. Unknow units as dots, known units as icon.

If wanted to make a graphical radar area indicator, it could draw a grid of what it sees. More like on battlezone series. http://pcmedia.ign.com/media/reviews/im ... 4_640w.jpg You can see such on bottom left corner. It is 3D and realtime reflecting the map itself.

TA did not show enemy units what radar pinged in the game view, but on minimap. Just like Spring could allow drawing that kind radar grid over the minimap. Leave the undetected areas(blocked) as black. Or make a radar view mode like now we have a height map. Just draw a simple grid for area where the radar has range and LOS. It does not need to be so accurate, even actually better if not accurate but just giving a surrounding. (Even that millimeter radars is already old technology that they can detect a bird from 30km range, flying 105mm ballistics from same range).

Gota wrote: I Personally don't want the black thing that completely covers the map but I can see how others might be interested in playing like this.

There are many who do not like about the Fog of War (FOW) because it makes them so uncertaing about surrounding. That it's point

When you get to area what is unknown to you, you need to scout it step by step. Find the ways. And those who are not ready to scout the areas and find the weakpoints of enemy defence, they start loosing more often than those who scouts.

TA had this way and it is very pleasant to play because you are all the time in the edge of choosing strategies.

There should be four options for the gameplay.

1) You have FOW and LOS.
Terrain is black until you scout it. You can see areas of scouted areas but you need LOS to see if there is something moveming.

2) You have LOS.
Terrain is visible but you can not see any movement. You need to get LOS to see if there is something.

3) You have FOW.
Terrain is black until you scout it. After that you can always see those areas without LOS.

4) No LOS or FOW.
You can see all the happening in the map. Just like now the observer does in games using spring engine.

TA had some other features for that as well what compensated the LOS/FOV.

Spring has it as well and it is the ghost of the enemy buildings. That helps a lot for enemy to plan bomber routings etc. There is no need to scout just ahead the bombers to get the target lock. And there is even a great help for that, by allowing draw to map the points. Even that if there would be FOV/LOS options.

Some other games has done littlebit differently. Like Kingdom of Dragons. Where there was both FOW and LOS. But you had LOS for short period of time for areas where you were. The LOS got slowly lost to areas until you needed to scout it again.

It was like ships leaves trail to water when they move and after short time the trail has gone.

The problem for spring could be that it has all the hitboxes etc as boxes or then spheres. Not cylinders at all.
It would need to be a cylinder what is used for radars, LOS and many other functions (like AA). Now if you have the radar plane flying, you set it higer altitude to fly, it draws a big radar area to map. But it actually is much smaller because the bottom of sphere is only what is seeing the ground. So you need to make it bigger and it shows again wrong size of it.

I have understanded that there is still a way to twist the sphere so it comes more cylinder format, but not exactly same thing. More like a Egg shaped.
Many units fire like flak, are positioned to Air, not to ground. Same thing with AA missiles as well. Those has big range for vertical direction but very limited in horizontal direction, like local missile AA batter can shoot missiles 80km range up but only 20km range in vertical (This in real life). This seems to be impossible in Spring.

Even that we do have a 3D engine, many things are better to do in 2D styled.

zwzsg wrote:Do you realize that it's not smooth when moving only because it's precise?

The los in Spring aren't just disks, they are affected by hills, and so calculating where a team can see is an expensive calculation. It can't be done every frame or else Spring would require computers from the future. Having a smooth los visual colored mask when moving would mean having a los indication that does not match the los. Is that what you want? Because I'm sure that if you had it you would complain that los does not match los.

Er, maybe I misunderstand you but I haven't really found that to be true. In this screenshot for example:



The llt is really in the los of the fighter, but the visualization is trailing far behind.

luckywaldo7 wrote:Er, maybe I misunderstand you but I haven't really found that to be true. In this screenshot for example

Hrmyeah, now I recall that the actual los calculation regarding which units are in view is updated often, while the los visualisation much less often. But the point about how it's done to not eat too much CPU still stands!

Fri13 wrote:TA had this way and it is very pleasant to play because you are all the time in the edge of choosing strategies.

Almost every TA units had los shorter than range, and it was unpleasant to fight in the dark, to not know what your units were firing upon until you saw a wreck appearing in the dark.

Fri13 wrote:Terrain is black until you scout it.

TA had that in all the missions, but none of the multiplayer games (bar n00bs). Maybe there is a lesson to learn there, a lesson such as how terrain black until you scout is a bad annoyance that prevents you from queuing mexxes, or some other moral story.

Fri13 wrote:Terrain is black until you scout it. After that you can always see those areas without LOS.

That's a bit too old school. A throw back to the ages of Dune2. Plus, it gives you all the annoyance of having to clear a view before enqueuing buildings, without any of the fun of playing the information war with your enemies.

Fri13 wrote:You can see all the happening in the map.

That'd really change gameplay. You would know if your opponent goes for a rush the moment he drops the first nano particle of his weasel. Any air assault or long range artillery would immediatly be locked on the commander.

Fri13 wrote:TA had some other features for that as well what compensated the LOS/FOV.

And every single (non n00b) multiplayer game hosted was mapped, full los. Even deviation from the 1k/1k or comm end were more common that non mapped terrain.

Fri13 wrote:Like Kingdom of Dragons.

Is that a RTS? I have never heard of it. Neither google.

Fri13 wrote:Where there was both FOW and LOS. But you had LOS for short period of time for areas where you were. The LOS got slowly lost to areas until you needed to scout it again.

I've seen a RTS (a RTS hybrided with RPG actually) like that. And when you reloaded a savegame, all the map went black anew. :s

Fri13 wrote:The problem for spring could be that it has all the hitboxes etc as boxes or then spheres. Not cylinders at all.

Oh, Spring also has cylinders and flat rectangles. Not the same shape is used for every purpose. Pathfinding, inter-unit collision, projectiles-units collision, sight, radar: They don't all use the same shape!

Fri13 wrote:Now if you have the radar plane flying, you set it higer altitude to fly, it draws a big radar area to map. But it actually is much smaller because the bottom of sphere is only what is seeing the ground. So you need to make it bigger and it shows again wrong size of it.

I have understanded that there is still a way to twist the sphere so it comes more cylinder format, but not exactly same thing. More like a Egg shaped.

Admit it, you have no idea what you are talking about.

I suggest you learn modding, well, not real modding, just a little stat tweaking, barely enough to be able to make yourself a mutator with very high flying plane and check if it can still see the ground, barely enough to have stumbled on the weapon tag "CylinderTargetting". Then maybe you can realise how ill informed you are about what the Spring engine does and can do, and can come back more enlightened.

Black terrain as an option is fine and is useful in single player but in mutli player all you now must do is memorize the map..If you know the map than it's like zwzwg said,just an annoyance.

I AM,in favor of masks and especially the TA blakc and white for non los areas.

luckywaldo7 wrote:

zwzsg wrote:The llt is really in the los of the fighter, but the visualization is trailing far behind.

Yes the current LOS lags and does not even show the LOS because of that. So the LOS function is in such state that it is not usable.

And why it must be somekind colored areas to make the game look ugly? Thats why in the first place FOW and LOS have be set so they show the color and everything else is desaturated or black.

And because LOS and FOW are made with vectors what smootly gets drawed, they can be littlebit inaccurate, but they still would be more accurate than the current LOS function.

GPU's can calculate very complex geometrical stuff on these days and drawing a LOS would not be big problem at all. Only if wanted to make it somekind shader/pixel accuracy it takes lots of more calculations.

If we already have the function that show the unit when it is visible. Only what we need, is to have a smoothly moving LOS+FOW what is blurred and not sharp. It is not good looking when enemy unit just appears and disappears when leaving the LOS. When LOS is smooth the enemy unit just faints nicely back and away because the LOS effect.

edit: nevermind.

Fri13, are you suggesting these things for an existing game or are you looking for feature support so you can design your own game?

Also. another difficulty that we often run into with new users is that while a lot of stuff could be pushed off to the GPU, this stuff is ONLY stuff that is entirely graphical in nature, anything that affects gameplay falls into synched code and as such must be done on the CPU, this includes LOS and all that complicated stuff you were talking about with hit boxes etc...

If you are claiming that the display of LOS does not match the actual LOS that the simulation portion of the game has I believe you are mistaken... it's a common misconception...



in this image mr. yellow is moving and mrs. purple is stationary (colored circle are what each color can "see")

yellow is moving towards purple but cannot see her yet because his position is updated in the simulation more often then his LOS... oddly though, purple, being stationary can see the grid that yellow is in because she has LOS on the grid that he now occupies.

This is why the LOS seems to jump and units "pop" into sight within the boundaries of your LOS... that is actually what is happening in the simulation and the display is accurate... if you can find evidence that THIS is not the case and that the display of LOS is not in sync with the simulation that this WOULD be a bug.


If what you are talking about is purely visual in nature than there is no reason that these types of visual "tricks" (fading units and smooth los) couldn't be implemented using the LuaGL interface already in place.

The whole "Unscouted" area thing would be something that game designers for the Spring RTS Engine could implement, but none of them have bothered because, as has been mentioned... the maps are static so all it would do would annoy veterans and make life difficult on noobs.

Hrmyeah, now I recall that the actual los calculation regarding which units are in view is updated often, while the los visualisation much less often. But the point about how it's done to not eat too much CPU still stands!

Well maybe for you. But many others has done it well, even with 3D engines and then there was only a Pentium II computers used. So maybe it is better if someone would start thinking algorithms and graphic engines to be fixed.

Almost every TA units had los shorter than range, and it was unpleasant to fight in the dark, to not know what your units were firing upon until you saw a wreck appearing in the dark.

So you must then set big berthas and all long range units to have the LOS to same range as their max range?

That is the idea of SCOUTTING. Using radars and just shooting blindly is part of the weakness of player who can not scout and give orders for most dangerous units first. Those who can not understand the point of scouting and identifying enemies are terrified about idea not to se.

TA had that in all the missions, but none of the multiplayer games (bar n00bs). Maybe there is a lesson to learn there, a lesson such as how terrain black until you scout is a bad annoyance that prevents you from queuing mexxes, or some other moral story.

Those who did want easier gameplay without suprsises did disable that feature. They did not like that they had no strategies, they had no idea how to scout and now idea what the enemy was doing because they wanted only simple realtime action game.

That's a bit too old school. A throw back to the ages of Dune2. Plus, it gives you all the annoyance of having to clear a view before enqueuing buildings, without any of the fun of playing the information war with your enemies.

What information war when you have all the information right in front of you? You see the terrain, you can slap just right away all the buildings there and just play very simple game. No need to advance and actually FIND what enemy has doing. in the dark areas.

That'd really change gameplay. You would know if your opponent goes for a rush the moment he drops the first nano particle of his weasel. Any air assault or long range artillery would immediatly be locked on the commander.

That is the information war. If you know everything, it is damn easy to do. If you can not see enemy, you can not expect. If you can not see the terrain, you can not plan your strategies until you scout. And that what you suggest, would not be case on games where they limit (amount of) units. Many liked to play TA by that way you could see enemy all the time. It was just so damn easy then when compared to LOS gameplay or LOS+FOW gameplay what was much harder first.

Is that a RTS? I have never heard of it. Neither google./quote]

Sorry, Three Kingdoms - fate of the dragon

I've seen a RTS (a RTS hybrided with RPG actually) like that. And when you reloaded a savegame, all the map went black anew. :s

And I have seen RTS games where you saved, the FOW areas were stored as well because they were simple vectors what could with very simple infos to be stored. LOS still was valid totally as you would never left the game. Worked perfectly. It is about how you do it, not what it is about.

Oh, Spring also has cylinders and flat rectangles. Not the same shape is used for every purpose. Pathfinding, inter-unit collision, projectiles-units collision, sight, radar: They don't all use the same shape!

Well there you have lots of different shapes what to use. Cylinder allows easily to make 3D FOV/LOS. Just like other games, you just dont draw the part what is in front of your view. So you can zoom in and rotate and everything looks just correctly.

Admit it, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Why I should admit something what I already admitted? I say I think what is the problem because there ARE ways to make things work. Others have done it and only thing what is against that is your opinion or lack of ideas how to actually do it.

I suggest you learn modding, well, not real modding, just a little stat tweaking, barely enough to be able to make yourself a mutator with very high flying plane and check if it can still see the ground

That what I have done. As I said already, my knowledge is limited and I told I was quessing many things. Based to game itself and tweakings.

barely enough to have stumbled on the weapon tag "CylinderTargetting". Then maybe you can realise how ill informed you are about what the Spring engine does and can do, and can come back more enlightened.

Well I have done but the Spring documentes are totall rubbish. Lots of things are needed to do with try & error way. Spring wiki has lots of tags but most of them are undocumented. Tag say something like "BadtargetGroup" (etc) and it is the group what gets shooted. Only way in start to find out how tags work are just trying blindly.

So if you want, you can start making the spring documentation better because you know the stuff. I know that such function is needed to make actually 3D FOW/LOS work but it needs the engine itself to be able draw it correctly as well. If there are features already, then in the end all is almost done. They should be started to be used. In future someone could start thinking out of the box the problem and not just say right away negatively that it is impossible or would need a supercomputer etc.

http://ziggyware.blogspot.com/2007/09/fog-of-war.html
http://www.cokeandcode.com/node/1279
Those are just few idea examples.
And even the coming Starcraft II has FOW/LOS on it. They have added it to 3D RTS game.

zwzsg wrote:

Fri13 wrote:Terrain is black until you scout it.

TA had that in all the missions, but none of the multiplayer games (bar n00bs). Maybe there is a lesson to learn there, a lesson such as how terrain black until you scout is a bad annoyance that prevents you from queuing mexxes, or some other moral story.

In multiplayer this gives an advantage to players who memorized the map over those that haven't (or haven't even played it). Skewing an already imperfect balance in multiplayer games around here is very no-no. Not a popular suggestion. People prefer balanced games (as in both teams have an equal level of aggregate skill) and they have to settle for a "good enough" balance in spite of smurfing and other issues. There's no reason to make balance worse.

Fri the real problem with something like the standard fog of war is how do you render it for the multiple camera angles?

More than anything else that's your problem. If the system is just some 2d sprite placed at some height above the terrain, then certain cameras can get around that. You could have the black unrevealed area conform to the terrain but then that just defeats the purpose of having it at all since you can still make out terrain features. I suppose you could do some giant 3D fog bank but frankly that would be pretty damn ugly in my opinion.

The actual technical part of what you want -besides the changes to radar dots- is already in game its just not represented visually. So the real question is do you want this as something you can add to a game your making or do just want this for one of your favorite mods. If its the former well then your gonna have to figure out all the kinks to this idea and then get a dev to help you or DIY. If it's the latter then you should really talk to the mod devs as to whether they would even implement a old school fog of war system and the do the things i mention previously.


Also this really should be moved to somewhere more appropriate once Fri makes his intentions clear

Ok Fri, you managed to piss me off. Your ignorance coupled with your know-it-all attitude is massively off-putting.
You, in your infinite wisdom have even failed to tweak some stats, because the know-how wasn't spoon-fed into your mouth?

I shall refrain from further commenting in this thread. If you want to, take this to PM.