Spring RTS Engine

I think all the crash bugs are out. Mynn are fairly complete, Xect are...a work in progress.

It is at:
http://fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1882

and check the to-do list to see if you can contribute:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewt ... 1873#41873

I have been working on the cursors for the last hour.

For future releases, it's a idea to use a standard zip format.
7-Zip support under Linux is UGLY.

Screenshots! People want screenshots!

Nice work, although there is still very much to do. A lot of models have black groundplates, animations are messed up, but you probably saw this already :)

I like the xect, but the mynn don't have very nice models imho. Would it be an idea to use the TLL race instead of mynn? If the Xect provides proper replacement textures for the copyrighted TA textures that TLL uses, we can replace those...
TLL looks really good, so I think it's also very suitable for a legal (linux) package if the copyrighted textures are removed.
Anyway just an idea...

i think TLL uses some TA textures though..

I was actually hoping to replace the Xect with TLL or Rhyoss. The Xect have no navy, and a lot of their models and weapons have problems. But I haven't been able to get a response from their creators.

Jakalth seems to be the creator of the Rhyoss, and M3G of TLL. If anyone knows these guys and can persuade them to release their original content under the GPL, replacing the Cavedog textures and sounds should be relatively easy.

easy but probally time consuming...

I could add a texture replace feature to my 3DO utility, that saves a lot of time I guess.

Foe OfTheBee wrote:... The Xect have no navy, ...

And, if i remember well, no AA capabilities in the "bots"/"vehicles" factories. As well as a very limited set of buildings when compared to Arm/Core/Tll.

They would be nice, though, to use as a 3rd party race for campaigns (fight the nasty bugs) or for random placement in maps and stuff.
So, your porting effort is not useless even if the race doesn't get to be used as the others, me thinks.

It's not going to be a high profile mod soon I think.
But it could make a nice base for Spring engine development.
You can experiment with a low profile mod without having all the players scream at you.

Maybe later on it can become a popular mod, but I don't know if I like to keep a large player base happy.
But that's a personal thing.

Less units is not necessarily a bad thing for players I think, other RTSes don't have as much units either and they get played a lot...
But like you say we can use it for spring dev... experiment on it with a new unit system and other things...
I think it would be good to have a development branch in general, right now it's hard to really change things in the engine when so many people depend on it...

This mod is not AI friendly. I could nto get JCAI NTAI or ZCAIN to run with this.

I got NTAI to runw without crashign finalyl aftre much work, btu at the price fo NTAI not beign able to do anythign at all. I had to cut out all unit calls.

But should I get NTAI working with this mod I'll report back.

Eitherway the next version fo NTAI has a basic mynn and xect build tree.

Odd that the same thign happens when I tried WD, but NTAI ran flawlessly under TLL XTA and AA, and my Rhyoss +XTA hack.

I'll let you know If I get any insight on the AI issues. I am a modding newb, just porting Xenoclone's work, but I think I am starting to get the hang of this. Xect maybe replaced with Rumad if the MadTA folks are ok with it. This is looking tentatively possible. I haven't been able to get in touch with the creators of the Rhyoss or TLL.

I also want to clear up whether the Mynn are GPL or not. I had thought they were but it doesn't seem that clear from Xenoclone's site.

I have a working version of Rhyoss here, Noize will be the one your looking for for TLL. And I'd rpefer ti if Rumad or TLL where added to this, and that they did not replace Xect at all. I think xect are unusual, and show promise, and if they're that abd nobody will play them and somebody will start a poll or take up the challenge of improovement.

Eitherway this is looking promising. All I can say si that you try NTAI with mynn and Xect. If ti doesnt crash and they just do nothing then your all set and you've fixed the problem. Otherwise NTAI should crash as soon as it starts up cins metal class. Thought cains metal class isnt to blame for that......

And rhyoss was portd to spring earlir on, but that was before the modswitcher was implemented. I've sent my version to mase along with a version of NTAI with basic rhyoss support, I might have to think about changing ti thoughas it uses XTAto fill up arm and core and i might just ask Noize tor elease it or somebody else as I dont ahve the time to maitnain and fix all the problems that crop up.

If your looking for a MAD TA person for Rumad, that would be the
Rampage on TA Universe.

Im not sure if i should post this here or not but here goes. I loaded up the Mynn vs. Xect (great mod by the way) and played a game till it crashed. now when i load up any Ta Spring game it crashes on loading and says that it is missing a Open GL file for shadowmaps.. i dont even want to play shadowmaps, is there a way to turn this off. or where do i go to get the Open GL file i need and where does it go. Anyway im happy to see people begining to use the 3rd party races that have been around for awhile. Thanks guys.

what caused the crash? any messages?

I'm pretty sure that the Mynn and Xect are unique in their total evasion of using TAs textures - the other mods make use of them. Either way, technically you only really need 1 faction to release Spring as a stand-alone game - it would be less fun for players if they didn't get to choose, but it would still work.

The Mynn are primitive looking, but they're full-featured so it would get the job done. You could just release a simple "Mynn Spring" - that could be bundled in every distro and game-pack on the planet.

The crash is probably spring related or hardware related, not mod related.

Downloading now...
I'll have to add OTAI support for this, I bet.

The message said Problem with Open GL for shadowmaps. when i went to play the mynn i was playing metal heck and i noticed the map was very dark and the units were not. after the crash i assumed that that is what shadowmapping was. i didnt see a selection to turn it off or on. help me guys i dont wnat ot play in the dark i just want to WAR!!! thanks much!!