Spring RTS Engine

I've been wanting to recreate a game called Moonbase Commander for years but so far I haven't managed to do very well. I was looking at possibly using the spring engine as it has lots of things I like about it however I don't know enough about the spring engine to know if this is possible or practical. Moonbase Commander is a top down, turn based game artillery where you expand by launching buildings across the map. Is this something that could be done with spring? Also I would prefer having wraparound maps, is this possible with spring as well?

donkyhotay wrote:I've been wanting to recreate a game called Moonbase Commander for years but so far I haven't managed to do very well. I was looking at possibly using the spring engine as it has lots of things I like about it however I don't know enough about the spring engine to know if this is possible or practical.

Moonbase Commander is a top down, turn based game artillery where you expand by launching buildings across the map. Is this something that could be done with spring?

Also I would prefer having wraparound maps, is this possible with spring as well?

You can do pretty much anything you are able to script it in Spring Lua. At some point your scripts may start being resource hogs if you try to do too much though.

That said while Turn Based is plausible I don't think Wrap around maps are going to happen without engine side changes.

donkyhotay wrote:I've been wanting to recreate a game called Moonbase Commander for years but so far I haven't managed to do very well. I was looking at possibly using the spring engine as it has lots of things I like about it however I don't know enough about the spring engine to know if this is possible or practical. Moonbase Commander is a top down, turn based game artillery where you expand by launching buildings across the map. Is this something that could be done with spring? Also I would prefer having wraparound maps, is this possible with spring as well?

Lua gadgets can change gameplay to a huge extent.

However, turn based and wraparound maps (while both having been done to an extent) are not something that can be done in a 'smooth', 'reliable', 'bulletproof' etc etc fashion, imo, especially the latter.

Why don't you take a turn based engine instead?

Thats kind of what I suspected. Moonbase Commander is pretty unique gameplay style that has aspects of an artillery game, a RTS, and a turn based strategy that isn't like any other game I've ever played (look it up on wikipedia to see what I'm talking about). This of course is why I would want a remake. It's also why none exist so far, while I've found many artillery engines, RTS engines, and turn-based engines I have yet to find one that really fits. I've even tried coding my own engine but I'm a pretty lousy programmer and it's a pretty bad engine which is why I'm looking for an already built engine that I can simply create a mod for. Despite that, spring is still probably one of the more promising engines around. I'll just have to keep doing more research on it and a few other engines I'm looking at.

Less planning more programming.. less designdocking.. more texturing.. less chatc.. more modelling. Got Game?

turn based

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... urn+based+
so-so.
Seems MBC has no mobile units? That would eliminate the biggest problem discussed in that thread.

launching buildings across the map

Throwing stuff around is one of springs greatest features!

wraparound maps

You can have units leave the map on one side and then enter again from other side. (like pacman and those dudes who chase him)
But "true" wraparound, no.

My knowledge of MBC is limited to watching parts of some yt video but did not see anything impossible.

tl;dr:

How much can scripts change gameplay?

donkyhotay wrote:Also I would prefer having wraparound maps, is this possible with spring as well?

Define please? As in you can shoot off left edge and land in right or you want to be like the belt of a treadmill?

Play pacman map: http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/pacman-map

It is a good example of a wrap-around Spring map.

I'm not sure if Spring brings anything to the table that you can use though. It offers a huge package of unit behaviors, weapon logic and command complexity but none of that would help you when making a TBS.

Some crazy idea sould be a widget with a button "Next Turn" and some command controlling for control each turn, but I don't see very practical a TBS in Spring

Btw there is a python/pygame project for a open source MoonCommander remake http://www.pygame.org/project-MoonPy-1283-.html maybe it's easier as the majority of work is almost done (I didn't tested myself)

It can go all the way, honey. Depends how much money (aka time) you have to spare..