Spring RTS Engine

Is it possible to make TASpring cycle through night and day time? Because when i play long drawn out games with ground only warfare against my bro, i have long drawn out sieges b/c all he makes are defenses and with all that artillary and missles flying and crap. I just thought it would be interesting to make it where we could fight at night and have it so that the explosions light up an area when it hits just like a real explosion at night. And maybe make it so that the units all have their own little head lights coming from either their main turret or if they are a kbot have it come from the head part of it. Besides, someone is bound to just go start forest fires for the heck of it. Hmmm... maybe i'll just go make a poll outta it to see if anyone would like this feature.

it would also be nice to be able to specify just day or just night battles... possibly a map option... and moving suns to be the source of this moving light...

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I want both options, nightbattles would be so cool! If I had a good graphics card I'm sure it'd look really good.

I still have yet to see untis or weapons that light up their surroundings. Such a thign would be the essential thign needd for proper night maps to exist.

So far only a pale twilight is possible without gameplay going blind

Is it possible to have dynamic images for the skybox? How much code rewrite would be needed to make it a reality, you think?

Until Day/night cycles are added i'll just play nightscape. Now THAT is a cool map!

Night time just isn't possible or fun until spring has dynamic lighting. What's the point of night maps without headlights on the units or streetlight style structure illumination? BTW, this topic is going to the montly topic rotation wiki page!

I'd like it, but for atmosphere rather than gameplay.

The new s3o format has a self-illumination layer on texture. Not yet headlights, but already a step toward units with lights. But the biggest issue is to find someone willing to retexture all units to give them lights.

I wouldn't do night time so much as cloud cover - some clouds pass overhead and lay part of the map in shadow. As the battle gets heavy, the dust and smoke from combat rises high into the sky forming a thick sky cover of soot, blocking out the sun. Make the clouds invisble from above, but visible from below, so at ground level you can see a giant pool of darkness forming over the Vulcan.

I am totally for having lights on units and ofcourse nighttime, I would add real life style lights to the units (if you wanted me to), Russia Style search lights on tank turrets would be kinda neat.

I also suggest that cycling between night and day should take a long time, maybe 15~30 minutes?

And make sure clouds turn into rain, and the rain forms tricklet that join into torrent that erode the map into valley and make lakes into hollow places, and that lakes evaporate into cloud again when the sun shines enough, especially in woody area.

For best result I suggest each drop of water to be handled individually.

ha ha zszwg. It really shouldn't be thathard, although it's probably not a cakewalk either. Day/night cycles should be defined by map makers though, not by engine or mod...

I would like a map with a four minut day...five hour night!

I'll call it "Darkside"

FizWizz wrote:ha ha zszwg. It really shouldn't be thathard, although it's probably not a cakewalk either. Day/night cycles should be defined by map makers though, not by engine or mod...

Theoretically with the zaphod/oldfield new scripting engine it would be possible to script something like a change from day to night... That might not be the most elegent solution though.

The thing about nighttime, is that it might not be possible on older videocards. I mean think, for nighttime you need lights. To be fair, all lights need to be the same. To be cool, they all need to be semi-realistic, which isn't possible on older cards.

Hmmm, the ppl at spring could probly add in an option to turn the night time stuff off in the match settings for those with weaker vid cards. Me, i'll just upgrade.

Actually night settings are a map setting thign you shouldnt change. It's the lights that can be turned on and off and if you turn them off it means you're blind.

How old computers are we talking? Voodoo 2?

I think we should go with the latest technology when possible