Spring RTS Engine

Well, now that Spring is looking and playing really well, I think we need to show it off some more. So I suggest a Preview or Demo Video of some of springs best features. Like they have for commercial games. Then, if we show this to different people on random gaming forums everywhere, they will go "Sweet! I must play this!" and we will get lots more people coming. Plus it would be very cool .

Anyway, here is how I suggest the video flows:

[INTRO]
Start off with a peacfull scene, trees, grass, nice look scenery.
Have a peewee/ak/other small KBot walk in from the side
When it gets halfway, have a plasma shot come out of no where and blow the crap out of the bot, surrounding trees and leaving a decent sized crater.
The camera swings around, and shows a tank (Bulldog?) that shot the poor KBot, gun barrels still smoking..
Drop the spring logo down into frame, with the cliche explosion to make it dramatic

Then, after the intro, add anyone of the following scenes/good points/uber graphics scenes:
"Massive battles surpassing every know RTS to date":
Quickly fly over head of a huge battle involving EVERY type of unit. Krogoths, Golliaths, Ravens (lots of these), Merls/Diplomats(also lots of these), plenty of lvl1 cannon fodder, and other random stuff.

"Make an army, from the smallest unit up to the massive uber units"
Start in close to a unit(lvl1 kbot or tank) that is 1v1 fighting another unit. Slowly zoom out to show more units fighting each other(still lvl1). Then, still zooming out, get onto the bigger lvl2 tanks and kbots, blasting the crap out of each other. Keep zooming out, getting faster and faster to show the whole map basicly covered with some massive battles.

"Dynamic Plane battles with real fighting AI"
Bit like the plane fighting video i the Downloads section, just suped up and made even better. Also in the tracking FPS mode camera, traking the plane that wins the fight. Have a small land battle going on underneath to keep it interesting.

"Naval warfare like you have never seen it before"
Camera panning round an army or two of milleniums, rangers, flak ships, destroyers, warlords etc locked into combat.

[ENDING]
Message :"Are you up to the challenge of commadig the ultimate army?". Zooming away from a commander standing on a hill, surrounded by a large army, D-Gunning stuff, and eventually exploding. Fade to black.

Probably needs some work, but it will do for now. I am happy to help, but I dont know if my computer is up to video recording/editing. What this would also need is the ability to somehow script the camera, to get nice smooth zooms and pans. This will all be done with in game graphics, to show off how cool it is. This will also mean dusting off the EvoTA models to play with, just so they look good enough to be on film.

I know some people might not like these ideas, so feel free to leave critisism. But I quite like the idea (hence why I posted), so im just wondering if anyone wants to help at all.

Again, feel free to leave comments/suggestions/imporvments, but please dont flame each other over petty disputes, as it will kinda ruin the whole thing if you do that...

sounds like a good video for a lot of hype

But if XTA gets a video, so should the rest of the major mods

Well I was thinking just Spring in general. Mabey we can add the fact that we mave many different mods to the video?

Have it flash past various scenes like:
XTA/OTA/UH/Other TA based mods on a distinclty TA style map
SWTA on a Starwars map
WD on a realistic battlefeild map
ect.

Cause that would be a major selling point to some people, how easy it is to mod.

So now that you have put out the idea it only requires about 100h of work to make it reality, are you willing to put that in ?

maybe u can get NORUAS to work on it ? was hes name noruas who made the funny Spring videos ?

it was noruas just checked

SJ wrote:So now that you have put out the idea it only requires about 100h of work to make it reality, are you willing to put that in ?

well, now that we have replay support we could probably grab all the takes nessicary in maby 2-3 hours of playing with cheats on and lots of specs... then it would only be an issue of motion capturing the stuff from the replays and patching it all together with some vid editing software.

It wouldn't look like prerendered battles with smooth dynamic camera angles... but it could be a pretty good hype video. Real gamers care more about in game anyways.

swift get ur ass in the lobby! :D

dude, I'm going to bed. I have work tommorrow and it's almost 4 am.

GG earlier though.. damn mine layers.

I will be willing to put work in to it, but I dunno if my computer is good enough to handle good video editing. Plus I dont have a video editor. Which kinda sucks.

Replays are handy, I will see if I cant set up some nice battles using cheats and whatnot.

You don't necessarily need to make a video. Screenshots showing off new and cool features will suffice IMHO. Plus that screenies are a hell of a lot less work than making a video, and you can integrate them on the 'Features' page of this website.

Everything sounds good and the game is making exellent progress but dont u think its still a bit early to put spring in public.

what we should do is keep that Ai updated and put some work towords it now its realised, like fix all the bugs improve the AI stuff like that.

We should also start on making some Single player or maybe turtorial missions for the new commers so for those who havnt played TA will have some idea on what the games about and what they have to so.

anyways its just a thourght... it might attract some programers and modders which should be good

ihmo, the game should look a bit more professional before making advice.
(Especially the GUI, the game look like an unfinnished game)

I'm for a nice and fun video, but not one who said false or very subjective thing like that :
"Massive battles surpassing every know RTS to date" or thing like "The best ..." , "...you never seen before"
I'm for making a video with real battle, and not one wich look good, but never happen. (I remember of some ridiculous AoE screenshot)

I do agree, it is a bit early.

an AI and nice flashy GUI would most definitly help...

someone with a very powerful computer and top settings should make it. Cyclerboy9? Plus he lives by me and i know he has more time on his hands than most people here.

Torrasque wrote:I'm for a nice and fun video, but not one who said false or very subjective thing like that :
"Massive battles surpassing every know RTS to date" or thing like "The best ..." , "...you never seen before"
I'm for making a video with real battle, and not one wich look good, but never happen. (I remember of some ridiculous AoE screenshot)

You wouldn't be a good marketer. Games are all about hype nowadays. Make a very fine game, thinking it's so good it will sell by itself, and you'll lose everything. Make a p.o.s. and spend the money saved on developpment into adversting, and you'll be millionaire.

You don't to blantanly lie, but a Spring promotional video would have to show only the best of what can happen in Spring, would have to be edited and probably made with cheat code so as to create battles that never actually happens, would have to be shot from the camera angles that gives the best looking images even if no one actually play in that view, etc...

Yes, I'm not a good marketer...but if people try Spring and said "WTF it not like it the video !" , They will leave Spring, and you will not have your cash like in comercial game.

They are so many people that are already disapointed with spring

Hum, it's a bit out of subject, but I think we should leave TASpring for Spring.
I think it would be better to said "it's in the spirit of TA" than "it's like TA" ... but I'm not a good marketer , I just like when every body is happy and not disappointed.

No, because if we got them to download, and even go as far as actually try Spring once, then we already won a new member!

Torrasque: the thing is everyone expects you to only show the best of the best in your adds. I've seen games that don't do that and I always wonder what's wrong with them that they can't even look interesting in the adds. Good gameplay will keep people in the game, but you can't win people who never even try the game over.

It's true that the idea you have of the game from ads or previews can influence your enjoyment a lot.

Personally I think that the only parts that really needs urgent improvement is the GUI, and the documentation/online help (and colored player names/owner names in unit descriptions! please.). The AI is nice but not essential, actually now people are forced to go online and it's a good thing: I never played online with the original TA, playing against the AI made me too lazy to face the pressure of online gaming. If the AI is too good we might end up with fewer online players.

for cheating with cameras, I would basically use brawlers in FPS as your camera as they would give you the most fluid motion for your shots.. also replays are a great Idea but you wouldn't be able to use this method of flying in it... for most of the shots replays would be great... I'd recommend cutting the video at 800x600 instead of full rez...