Spring RTS Engine

There are some things I need to get straight before I can really use this program.

First:
Is this an Engine or a mod builder?

Second:
What's with the license? Does it only refer to the engine itself, when it says things like, "...rights to distribute can not be denied..."? Or does that mean any project of mine is also a creative commons/open source project.

Third:
How to get started. I opened Spring, yet it requires a project to open... that I haven't made?


Might be commonly asked questions, but maybe that means they need to be addressed more/better. Thanks in advance for any help!

(BTW, my goal is to make a commercial game in the end, and I'm hoping spring will work well for that.)

Spring is an engine, and it's asking for a game when you open it. Games are made with other, more generic tools. Text editors to open scripts, modeling programs to make models, and your digital painting program of choice. There is no single, coherent program used to make a game. It's a combination of programs.

A commercial game has been made for Spring, but it's generally regarded as being a flop for reasons I don't really know. At any rate, the guy who made it is no longer working on it or working with Spring. But the usual answer is that it's very possible.

Here's a good starting point for figuring out what you need to do to make a game.

Many thanks! I will try to get comfortable over the next week. :)

1. Engine

2. The official position is here: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17847
In summary, all lua API code and animation scripts should be GPL, all models, textures, music etc can be licensed however you wish.

3. All a game requires to run is a valid Modinfo.lua (if it depends on base content cursors.sdz) but that doesn't tell you anything. You could have a peak inside some other games to see what's going on inside but...



Really, you'd be best off outlying what you want to do and you'll get a cavalcade of people telling you if its possible / hackable with the lua API in some fashion / totally impossible.