Spring RTS Engine

Hi everyone,

prepare your mind to see something awful. Not the game I'm going to present of course, but my english. (I'm french)

A friend of mine is working on this game for years. But he's too shy to give a sign of life on the forum. So I'm doing it for him. In fact, he doesn't really know I'm doing it, but I don't need his agreement. Don't worry, I'm sure it would make him happy to see people talk about his game, and maybe play it ?

The game is currently called "Arachnomania", but we think about changing it. Arachnomania got a lot of different graphical version through the years. Some ugly, some not. And he just started to work on a new one, from scratch as always, with a new method to make models. Don't ask me, I know nothing (like Jon Snow) about graphic designer, I'm a programmer.

Here is some screens to show you the graphical evolution :

The oldest screen I got :


4 other versions with the same unit on the picture :






The game have currently 2 factions (the third will come after these 2 are balance) : The Swarm, and The Extended (the third is the Omega..).


Here is some screens of the current version :

The Swarm :







The Extended :







The Swarm just got a little rework on their models few weeks ago. I believe the Extended will follow soon.


In game screen in chicken defense (the queen is stuck in the river yolo) :




And here is the download link (the game and the chicken defense) :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/llex505d7k5y4 ... ia_100.sdz
https://www.dropbox.com/s/32k2rqn5epx84 ... efense.sdz

The "doc" you can look through to make you an idea of the game :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2o45odhdrj9kl ... _units.pdf
You can find quite all the info you need in it.


Be cool about his work, he's just a student, and absolutely not in this domain of work. And if you wanna know, he actually screwed-up his studies. So, he's not really student, he's trying to be one . So this is his hobby.

So now, I need feedback. Tell me what do you think about it. If you tried it, if you liked it or not. If you have some advise for him.
And some encouragement would be gladly appreciated.

It's looking pretty awesome I'll definitely give it a play soon

This has actually been discussed a few times on the board before
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=27431, is one such occasion

I wondered what happened to this project. Looks like it has come along well.

Not bad at all! Looks great. If you (your friend) wants people playing it maybe releasing a chicken defense version would be a good idea.

Yeah i would give it a test run for sure!

Some great screenshots you have there.

Very impressive.
No need to be shy. Also to any other shy devs, you can come out now - evil Pica wont bite. I promise.

Absolutely amazing artwork, with excellent concepts and texturing work. Im jealous, congrats!

The juggernauts walk-script has a slight bug.. if move order are issued repeated it will not use its legs..
Looks absolutly stunning.
Very unique style and excellent use of tools

Looks really good!

This is pretty amazingly cool! And especially how you (the people responsible for this) managed to do it without ever asking for help, only briefly appearing on our radars

Do you intend to ever put it on spring's "rapid" content distribution system?

Springlobby crashes when trying to change player's faction in singleplayer tab. Maybe something is wrong with sidepics (faction icons)? One of them has a space in file name.

Hi, Mmax71/Maxor here,

I have to say that I was surprised when Agraav told me he had a surprise, and even more when he showed me this. I have been working mostly alone on "Arachnomania" for years, and like Agraav said, each major version were started from scratch, and this one started around March, this year.

After reading you comment, all I have to say so far is : Thank you, for your comments and the feedback.

Now, about the problems some of you encountered so far :

PicassoCT wrote:The juggernauts walk-script has a slight bug.. if move order are issued repeated it will not use its legs..

If you mean that the walk animation get stuck when the unit is aiming, or the turret not restoring it's position, then i don't really know how to fix it. After making some tests with a 0.96+ version of the engine, it seem this bug is solved.

Anarchid wrote:Do you intend to ever put it on spring's "rapid" content distribution system?

Yes, and i'm trying to prepare the game files for it.

yuritch wrote:Springlobby crashes when trying to change player's faction in singleplayer tab. Maybe something is wrong with sidepics (faction icons)? One of them has a space in file name.

We (Agraav and I) never experienced this bug before with Springlobby. For the next version (which will be here in an hour or two), The Swarm get renamed Swarm (like that no space in the name for the faction pic). Then it should fix your problem.

Also, here an updated (but still wip) version of the "doc" : https://www.dropbox.com/s/2o45odhdrj9kl ... _units.pdf

An update for Arachnomania and the Chicken defense mod will also be updated soon.

Nice job, you lot should come and join #moddev

Maxor wrote: If you mean that the walk animation get stuck when the unit is aiming, or the turret not restoring it's position, then i don't really know how to fix it. After making some tests with a 0.96+ version of the engine, it seem this bug is solved.

I've actually experienced the exact same issue before and noticed the same thing.

yuritch wrote:Springlobby crashes when trying to change player's faction in singleplayer tab. Maybe something is wrong with sidepics (faction icons)? One of them has a space in file name.

Are you playing on linux? I think windows does handle spaces in file names while Linux does not ( or least doesn't handle them well ).

Looks nice, ima try it with chicken defence.

Glad to see the old models snatched from UnitUniverse or ancient TotalA mods are replaced with freshly made modern models.

So, I finished the last Swarm units today.

Old models :



The new ones :


Also, I started to work on the third faction (Omega) :



The left unit is the general builder (Manas/Disciple couterpart), and the unit at the right an unamed T2 attack unit (which could do direct or indirect fire, and melee as well).

New versions links :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrybx8ef5iszr ... ia_100.sdz
https://www.dropbox.com/s/32k2rqn5epx84 ... efense.sdz

Omg. Wtf is that pooh camo ? So ugly..
Guys, tell him that camo makes want to throw up.. He doesn't believe me
Though, the Centurion is really nice
Here is a better screen :

Designwise nice, but camo doesent work in rts.. if you use it, you need widgets to help finding units..


PS: Unless you smoth

The camo seems to have a significantly increased noise level compared to the other parts of the model, and clashes with overall style.

Imo, it could work if it was more contrasty and less noisy (i.e, had larger areas of different color, with sharp transitions).