Looking for a game engine

[VISION305]

hello,
I am a c++ programmer who finally has some time to focus and make the game of my dreams.

I am looking for the right game engine to get started. I will just get straight to the point and hopefully I don't sound rude (not my tone)

1- Is it possible to make a game on this engine and then sell it like any other game out there for PC?

2- I notice that most of the games on this engine are 1 world or map.
The game I intend to make has 2 worlds simultaneously running at the same time where one could switch from one screen to another and. For example: A survival RTS where players fight for control underground and above the ground looking for survival things.

3- What limitations would I run into in trying to make such a game in this engine?

sorry if I broke any rules. I am completely new to this community and I appreciate any help. (hopefully someone steals that idea cause I would be willing to pay for a game like that.)

[Anarchid]

1- Is it possible to make a game on this engine and then sell it like any other game out there for PC?

Yes, in fact there was at least one commercial game made and finished with Spring.

A survival RTS where players fight for control underground and above the ground looking for survival things.

Spring's terrain is two-dimensional plus heightmap, so you cannot have real 3d caves, nor cannot have two layers of map simulated at once in one instance of Spring. If you just need to switch between them with some data-interchange on the switch event, that's doable, but not if you actually want both running at the same real time (d'oh, didn't think of "two maps on same plane" pathway).

3- What limitations would I run into in trying to make such a game in this engine?

See above on no-real-3d-terrain. Also what springs to my mind is the engine's disregard for skeletal animations out-of-the-box (though, i'm told, you can achieve similar results using shaders), so you'd have to resort to trickery to get your zombies pretty.

(though, some people do already have zombies in spring games, see that JourneyWar thing, and Spring 1944 has zombie nazis)

----

Also, what do you mean by 'survival rts'? Something akin to Warzone 2100?

[AF]

Its all doable but the underground overground wombling free the wombles of wimbledon common are we feature will require C++ modifications, and will not work out of the box.

You will need to talk to the engine devs to determine exactly what needs doing on that front. But I imagine it will require being able to load and run two maps in parallel, for which certain restructures are needed. Suffice to say this isn't the first time this has been discussed.

[Google_Frog]

I think you could do 2 maps that you switch between is possible. It would require a camera widget (these already exist) with some modifications, a map border widget (these exist too) that hides the other side of the map and minimap masking.

[Anarchid]

And an AI that can understand the way the map is split. Though i figure for such a project, it would pretty much have to be game-specific anyway.

[Beherith]

#2 can be done with a single map, and a bit of Lua support (Lua is the internal scripting languange of the engine, which provides a lot of low and high level options for controlling the game)

[hoijui]

the engine is written in C++, but if you want to make a game running on spring, all the coding is done in Lua (Scripting language).
if you have to do C++ modifications on the engine to get what you want, cuase htere is no way it is possible otherwise, it is probably healthy to conclude that spring is the wrong engine for you.
as was said, it is probably possible to somehow put stuff together the way you like it, even though it will be considered hacky by some, and casue problem with certain, alreayd available Lua code that many games use C++, thne you should use a more low level engine, and i strongly recommend you to visit a shrink.

[Pxtl]

#2 can be done with a single map, and a bit of Lua support (Lua is the internal scripting languange of the engine, which provides a lot of low and high level options for controlling the game)

Do we have the kind of granular control over the pathfinder to define teleporters and their related path-cost? Because otherwise the inter-map stuff would be brutal.

[Google_Frog]

Well I still think it is possible with lua.

[gajop]

#2 can be done with a single map, and a bit of Lua support (Lua is the internal scripting languange of the engine, which provides a lot of low and high level options for controlling the game)

Do we have the kind of granular control over the pathfinder to define teleporters and their related path-cost? Because otherwise the inter-map stuff would be brutal.

You can probably live without it, but require users to manually move units to the teleportation zones, by clicking on some sort of teleportation gates/tunnels.

[VISION305]

Excellent comments by everyone. I begin to like this community already. Well, it sounds like it would be complicated but still possible. hmm.. Then ofcourse I would need to have a couple thousands of units running at a time for the zombies.

The only thing that worries me is the skeletons issue. I am a very bad artist and ofcourse it would be even more difficult for me to animate realistic people and things like that. I will keep looking around other engines but Spring seems like a good one.

I was looking at game maker because I hear its very easy to start something but it doesnt seem to have good 3D and its all 2d or illusion 3d.

I appreciate everyone's help and pointers. Thanks

[smoth]

cool, good luck to you.

[Phoenixlee]

Thanks for that, it's much appreciated！