Spring RTS comparsion over other RTS

[Karl]

So here is a list who no ones bother to make it

Both Good and it's Bad side of it

Advance's:
-Dynamic Sky
-Dynamic Water
-Terrain is manipulatable
-Lua support
-Simple to make mods/games for it
-Orders are limitless and can be queded
-robust and reliable UI
-Telling units befor it is done to do something


-Semi compatible with Total Annihilation content
(3do modell format)

-Cob/Bos support
-No complex 3d modelling knowledge needed
-Lobby with Backup server
-Hole punching and Relay network support
-Widget and Gadget support (Client/Game[server]-side)
-No strict camera limit
-Several file format supports
-Open Source
-Supports for Linux/Unix, Windows and Mac
-Able to Assist, Repair, Ressurect , Capture
-Landmines
-Land Naval Air support
-Shields and Reflectors
-Dgun
-Weapons/Projectiles can have many properties and settings for example Drunken Master Missile (also known as Dance) or Accuracy
-Easy to use Simple particle system: Explosion, Trails, Splash, Misc and more
-Depencie support
-Mod/Map option [lobby]
-Able to change game ends
-Support for Starting Boxes, Fixed, Random and Pre-defined start points
-Able to Draw and making important Points [in-game]
-Constant update
-Tools like Spring map Edit, Upspring, Mapconv makes modding in Spring easy to adjust and creating contents witout steep learning curve
-250~ Player support
-No unit limit (well atleast it's maximal value is changeable on mod/game)
-Able to controll a unit
-Physic support for Units
-Falling Tree's


Disadvances:
-lots of old mods that depends on Total Annihilation content
and most of them got alot of Unit Universe content (even the ugliest one) [mod issues but just for the sake of it]

-Old aged AI's
(most player dont use AI nowadays either they use C.R.A.I.G. or the Spawner [Aka Chicken variant)
-Old used Shader
-No real mac support
-Sometimes Unix/Linux user need to compile it for themselves
-Installer content doesn't add/on-demand mods/maps for the user to play straight on *

*(it had used to have one while Swedish Yankspankers where here [XTA; Mars and some green map].And another installer who automagically adds mods/maps from community has been vanisched to due drama)


might expand later.

It is still amazing that Spring is not really that popular but popular enough to be featured on some few prominent Website.

Spring RTS is awesome in many ways compared to other strictly limited RTS games out there...

[zwzsg]

Woot what? None of the point you listed are advances over other RTS.

I'd say that where Spring shines compared to other RTS is by how powerful is its interface. The as-long-as-you-wish order queues, the assisting cons, etc...

Only Spring can you order a squad of bomber to bomb an enemy structure as soon as you lose one of yours before even the factory that will produce those bomber is completed.

[KaiserJ]

wait, are we on about advantages or advances?

advantages
- a well-backed non-commercial engine suitable to many needs
- interface with the engine via external scripts to attain the desired gameplay
- various tools external to the engine to aid development (springmapedit, upspring, animation widget, etc etc)
- a well-stocked array of germans

advances
- since i've been here a LOT of work has gone into most games... (zk, gundam, s44, evo, all have had massive upgrades)
- "new" projects like cursed and CT; and swiw that we can look forwards to
- moveable sun, map effects, normalmaps, terraforming
- fully customizable GUIs (chilli, iceui, redui)
- reworked and fixed pathing
- shader upgrades, ground shadows python script
- endless engine fixes to deal with errors/glitches/exploits
- assimp (okay not quite yet but its soon)
- more and more germans join us every day

[Karl]

wait, are we on about advantages or advances?

ops i made some Typo i meant comprasion about benefits or penalty (how ever you name it) compared to other RTS games

-Updated list

[Wombat]

spring engine/games got no advantage over other rts.

gameplay and fun factor it provides is the matter of taste.

the end.

[luckywaldo7]

I think the major advantage is that spring is completely free (freedom and beer and all that), so you don't need to worry about your playerbase needing to own the game you are modding on, or the company to stop supporting the game, or licenses or whatever. And additionally that it is quite active in development with a relatively sizable playerbase compared to other free projects.

The disadvantages are all MTR stuff, awful los, needing to write animations by hand, and so forth. And naturally content produced by people in their free time can't completely match up against games with multi-million dollar budgets.

Or are we talking about Spring RTS as a game in this thread?

spring engine/games got no advantage over other rts.

gameplay and fun factor it provides is the matter of taste.

the end.

What.

If it doesn't have any advantages over any other RTS does that make it the worst RTS engine ever created?

[Jazcash]

I don't know many other RTS games where you can have a max unit limit of 30000 and 16 player matches. Not to mention CustomFormations, FPS mode, hundreds of widgets and settings for really fine tuned user customisation.

[hoijui]

in theory you can already have 250 player matches. the double-DSD BA matches, usually 8v8v8v8, that BD organized, were running ok till so-so for most players during most of the game.
there are still some parts limited to 16 players, but right now i can only think of map-supplied start positions.

[Karl]

in theory you can already have 250 player matches. .

Some lobby limits it to 100.

[PicassoCT]

there is no censorship, and if you are productive, you even get a little freedom on the dramaleash..


im banned on 12 boards for offending by creation

[marciolino]

advantages
- a well-stocked array of germans

advances
- more and more germans join us every day

It makes me really scared.

[scifi]

What makes spring great, is how fun its games are, and how easy it is to make content for it.

[PicassoCT]

advantages
- a well-stocked array of germans

advances
- more and more germans join us every day

It makes me really scared.

You prefer RealLife Strategy- also called War?

[Wombat]

I don't know many other RTS games where you can have a max unit limit of 30000 and 16 player matches.

but there are some, right ?

Not to mention CustomFormations

bunch of other rts got far more complicated fomation options

hundreds of widgets

other games just dont have to use them

FPS mode

machines, wired for war (still far better and actually usefull btw, also check release date)

inb4 drama. but nah, seriously, spring is 'decent' at vast majority of things but it got no real advantage over any other rts. well, other games dont have sefidel and knob, so thats advantage right !
and ye, ok its free.

[Godde]

Not to mention CustomFormations

bunch of other rts got far more complicated fomation options

But are they as useful and easy to use? Custom formations would be gamechanging and possibly balance braking if they were implented in RTSs such as Starcraft and SupCom.
Please name some games with better or more complex formations options that is easy to use in competetive battles and that also have physics such as acceleration and turn rate. I'd like to play them(well propably not if they are in space because there usually isn't much map features defining the use of formations).
Custom formations is only a widget. Still people think it is defining Spring RTS and I think so too.

hundreds of widgets

other games just dont have to use them

You are also forced to use what the game gives you. Here you can develop your own set of widgets and expand the way to control your units or read the status of the battlefield.
Some games I'm longing for are games where you can control target priorities and behaviour of your units. Where everything in the right state will have an optimized behaivour with minimal need of micromanagement. Some of this you can do with spring but dynamic target priority is still on my wishlist. Hopefully it will be on my todo list not too far from now.

Okey... Most of theese opinions come from my preferred taste of RTS.
Flavours of simulated projectiles, movement and terrain deformation and massive armies.

Advantages of Spring engine: Hold position and Fight command is unique as far as I know. Have you seen any other RTS where units will only stop to shoot if they have free Line of Fire on the enemy as the terrain, features or friendly units can block their Line of Fire? That was so awesome when it was implemented.
Slope tolerance/different climbing abilities. A legacy of TA and a interesting one aswell. A tough one for mapmakers and modders but it allows for further balancing, more strategies and tactics. The ability to render the map from that perspective makes it easy to use. Any other game that can show where units can and can't go?

Disadvantages of spring engine:
Pathing. Pathing had some pretty decent ways of getting units from hill to hill and tanks driving with full speed even when they turned. Pathfinding problems could usually be resolved with a few clicks and the units would go on again. Then 1(or was it 2?) years ago, after some patch, pathing were broken as steep terrain and small bumps would cause fast units to get stuck and such. Some minor issues were resolved but even after the bugfixes I find the pathing to be in worse state than I remember it to be than before the patch. After 1 bugfix the units would ignore very steep terrain and path through the ridge only to find out that the couldn't go there. They would go back and forth not getting where they should. You had to give them several orders close to each other to get them to find the right way and not go back to the steep ridge. Now in 0.82.7.1, after the next bugfix, units might sometimes not all find the way even though there is a way. Then you have to do the pathfinding for the units giving them several commands close to them. It's also worse in the hills. Sometimes units go down from a ridge just to walk slowly upwards again even though it obviously would have been better to just stay on the ridge.
This again forces you to path, micromanage, for your units.
Tanks are now forced to decelerate when they turn and you still can't get an acceptable performance from them if you set the turnInPlaceSpeedLimit too high.
Offcourse this is not a problem for OTA units and mods such as BA, since they have always deccelerated when they turn.
It's open source. People didn't test it enough which reminds me that I haven't tested the latest release since my gaming computers network card got fried in a lighting burst.
But atleast I have more time for study now. Then maybe I'll be able to code a pathfinding that isn't cardinal .

Kloots way of letting units push around each other also looked promising. I hope he gets it done.

[BaNa]

Biggest 2 advantages: unlimit zoom out and custom formations. The two reasons I cannot play other rts games anymore because I have grown to NEED them. Especially zoom out.

[AF]

Supcom has formations with a near identical UI implementation, though its not as flexible.

Our advantages are widgets and being opensource and active. Our flexibility development wise is the key. It lets us be the perfect copycats.

That's about it, besides this entires discussion is barking up the wrong tree. Are you trying to figure out Unique selling points for the engine?

[scifi]

Old games like Dark Reign have custom formations, even group handling, and patrol options to assigned groups.

Homeworld has strike group formations, and group behaviour.

Men of war assault squad has group behaviour and somewhat custom formations and a semi-fps mode.

You can have 16v16 games and endless units in company of heroes with mods, or even supreme commander..

Botom line no it has no advantages to other Rtss in term of features, but in terms of being fun and having a unique interface that no other Rts uses, except supreme commander forged alliance, (ui blends with background).

[smoth]

rts games are varied in what they have many rts/rtt have features spring has in its GAMES.

the engine of spring is really powerful in that it's LUA allows us to do pretty much anything we want outside of better dictate unit behaviors. Which I suspect will be coming(targeting comes to mind)

You are going to have a bunch of retarded replies either championing or denouncing spring based on spring's BA whateverthefuckbais..

If I were to do a point by point comparison of other rts games it would be a very very long and pointless post.

Then again this entire thread is fucking retarded...

it's like you make a thread and said "compare my sandwich to every sandwich ever made and discuss strengths and weaknesses" that's nice so it is a thread that will never really go anywhere and to actually discuss all of the points is more worthless than trying to win an abortion debate.

[Godde]

Supcom has formations with a near identical UI implementation, though its not as flexible.

I played Supcom 1 and the formations were a chore. Setting up the formations would cause the game to lag (I dunno why. because it had to draw 40 transparent units?!!), they would move at a crawl and if you had selected 1 unit that were far away all the units had to assemble and wait for that unit. Also if you gave a simple move order when you had 15-20 units they would start to move 6 and 6 at a time so they would be spread out and move on kinda line. So you had to overrun the enemy and get very good at that rather than skirmishing on a line because you would have to select them one at a time to keep them in line. I almost jizzed my pants when I saw this for supcom 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA2epda-RkM&feature=fvst. But then I realised that theese units had like instant acceleration and that they made the scope smaller so I have skipped playing Supcom 2 altogether.

I really miss non-cardinal pathing though. It would be so nice to see units move across all the map evenly spread out with just 1 line draw.

Old games like Dark Reign have custom formations, even group handling, and patrol options to assigned groups.

But not that much physics.

Homeworld has strike group formations, and group behaviour.

I've only played Homeworld 2 in multiplayer a few times but so I don't know how much use they are there but in the singleplayer it were mostly about keeping the damage spread out on your frigates and capital ships and returning you frigates and corvettes to dock so that they could replenish. That way you barely lost any units. The frigates and fighters could propably just have been single units aswell.
Or like in Empire:Total war which I bought because it looked cool. Then I find out that units got all different kinds of strange rules and AI behavoir. Like that soldiers shoot straight into the others soldiers backs if the units(formations) overlap. And that dragoons can shoot through dragoons in their own unit but not in other units(and they would automatically shoot their guns when they charged so if you attack with 2 dragoon units simultaneosly you might end up with half of them dead before they even get to the enemy because they shoot eachother).
Oh... and units don't do terrain check at all. So if you misplace your units sligthly or don't zoom in on the terrain to check it, your units will happily waste their shoots in the ground if there is a little bump in the way.

Men of war assault squad has group behaviour and somewhat custom formations and a semi-fps mode.

But the scale is small and the obstacles are so many that even advancing with ten infantry becomes a hassle. Games usually evolve about getting some forward positions and then semi-fps control 1 tank at a time so that you can shoot through buildings and kill the enemy tank. Like all youtube videos look like that. And you still don't see people using hull down positions even though they are controlling 1 tank because its hard to see height from that perspective!!!

rts games are varied in what they have many rts/rtt have features spring has in its GAMES.
...

it's like you make a thread and said "compare my sandwich to every sandwich ever made and discuss strengths and weaknesses" that's nice so it is a thread that will never really go anywhere and to actually discuss all of the points is more worthless than trying to win an abortion debate.

Well... atleast you know what kind of sandwich I like. It's not the single ingredients that makes the sandwhich good, its all of the ingredients together.