Spring RTS Engine

Hello guys

I'm planning to develop a naval themed war game for my bachelor degree final project. But I need to implement some kind of Crowd Simulation in my game. What I'm asking about Is it possible to implement crowd simulation on Spring Engine? Is there any helpful reference for crowd simulation? I'm still learning about this engine hehe

Thank you, and sorry for my bad english

Better to go to #sy chat. What your asking is something I not sure that it can be done.

crowd simulation?

Broadly speaking, you can't currently have units that share the same instance of animation/rendering functions, so "proper" crowd simulation isn't supported. But Spring will handle thousands of individual units without trouble, that might be enough for you.

You won't find anything specific to crowd simulation within Springs forum/wiki.

Just to make sure.
Do you mean
Crowd simulation which is mainly to do with graphics
or
Swarm intelligence which is mainly to do with AI?

The first is not easily compatible with spring.
The second can be made in spring but you will have to code everything yourself as I don't know of anything similar that was done.

hokomoko wrote:Just to make sure.
Do you mean
Crowd simulation which is mainly to do with graphics
or
Swarm intelligence which is mainly to do with AI?

The first is not easily compatible with spring.
The second can be made in spring but you will have to code everything yourself as I don't know of anything similar that was done.

Actually I'm not sure about which one do i need. What I understand from my lecturer is that I need to define the movement of group of units so that they don't collide at each other, can avoid obstacles, and can move smoothly. Do you know which one do I need to implement that? thanks a lot for your help

School and life protip:

Fully understand the problem/requirements/situation before you jump into creating a solution.

If you have any confusion, figure out exactly what you don't know, draft a set of questions, and immediately send them to your professor.

Trust me, you're going to be saving yourself so much time and effort in the long run.

silverserpent9 wrote:What I understand from my lecturer is that I need to define the movement of group of units so that they don't collide at each other, can avoid obstacles, and can move smoothly.p

So something like that?

https://www.youtube.com/user/Kleaut

Yeah, I'd be interested to know how to replicate that in Spring, too.

luckywaldo7 wrote:School and life protip:

Fully understand the problem/requirements/situation before you jump into creating a solution.

If you have any confusion, figure out exactly what you don't know, draft a set of questions, and immediately send them to your professor.

Trust me, you're going to be saving yourself so much time and effort in the long run.

Thanks for the suggestion mate, appreciate it :D

zwzsg wrote: So something like that?

https://www.youtube.com/user/Kleaut

Yeah, I'd be interested to know how to replicate that in Spring, too.

Yeah exactly

I'd advise you not to use spring for that.
Pathfinding is heavily connected with other parts of the engine so implementing your own would be difficult.
Furthermore spring does so many things you don't need and will force you to learn loads of things you don't need.

I'd suggest making your own framework as you don't really need top notch graphics etc.

hokomoko wrote:I'd advise you not to use spring for that.
Pathfinding is heavily connected with other parts of the engine so implementing your own would be difficult.
Furthermore spring does so many things you don't need and will force you to learn loads of things you don't need.

I'd suggest making your own framework as you don't really need top notch graphics etc.

It's not like spring is known for it's fancy graphics.

As Hokomoko said, It's better to look at other engines such as unreal engine or unity, or if you want to keep it simple look at orge3D rendering Framework.

Super Mario wrote:It's not like spring is known for it's fancy graphics.

As Hokomoko said, It's better to look at other engines such as unreal engine or unity, or if you want to keep it simple look at orge3D rendering Framework.

No.

hokomoko wrote: No.

To what? My comment regarding the graphics bit or my suggestions regarding the framework bit? Be specific.

Ogre
If you want to keep it simple you stick to unity or the likes of unreal.
Spring makes making games simple.

Ogre is a rendering engine- as in it draws pretty pictures. How those pictures are created- is up to the developer.
So you need to glue physics, col-detection, AI and scripting engine together.
That list makes for bad advice.

Also spring can look fancy - its just a lot of work- look at the Cursed.

PicassoCT wrote:Ogre
If you want to keep it simple you stick to unity or the likes of unreal.
Spring makes making games simple.

Ogre is a rendering engine- as in it draws pretty pictures. How those pictures are created- is up to the developer.
So you need to glue physics, col-detection, AI and scripting engine together.
That list makes for bad advice.

Also spring can look fancy - its just a lot of work- look at the Cursed.

Simple does not equate to effortless.

No, simple does equate to a reasonable reward for a reasonable investment of time.

And if you are the one providing the reward, and your meta-reward is the engagement by the user, you better provide something that binds people with there first 10 Minutes effort to your approach, cause there are always alternatives.

Spring is definitely a good option for making a naval themed war game. However, if the game is part of an assessed project you should check your requirements. The work required for Spring will probably put you beyond the intended scope of the project. I assume you are doing some sort of programming/computer science/AI course because you have been told to implement crowd simulation (as opposed to a game development course where I imagine they would tell you to make a game). If this is the case then Spring will require you to do a lot of 'irrelevant' things such as find/creating 3D models, animation, effects, possibly map design etc... For a basic game you don't need to put too much work into these aspects but the sheer number of them will add up and give you a lot to learn.

Making a game with Spring will not give you experience implementing basic RTS functionality. Spring has pathfinding, terrain, resource management, unit selection, a command queue handling system, some physics, a weapons/aiming/damage system. Most things which are common to every RTS are in Spring (in some form). Game development definitely requires programming but it will mostly be for uncommon game mechanics, UI layout and animations.

You might want to check out Love: https://love2d.org/ . It is a 2D engine which only handles basics such as including graphics and sound. The art requirements are significantly smaller for 2D and you will have to implement basic RTS functionality such as unit selection and pathfinding. This might make your assessor happier.

PicassoCT wrote:No, simple does equate to a reasonable reward for a reasonable investment of time.

Wrong, that is called Investment.

And if you are the one providing the reward, and your meta-reward is the engagement by the user, you better provide something that binds people with there first 10 Minutes effort to your approach, cause there are always alternatives.

...What? Do you know what a suggestion is?

Super Mario wrote:

PicassoCT wrote:Ogre
If you want to keep it simple you stick to unity or the likes of unreal.
Spring makes making games simple.

Ogre is a rendering engine- as in it draws pretty pictures. How those pictures are created- is up to the developer.
So you need to glue physics, col-detection, AI and scripting engine together.
That list makes for bad advice.

Also spring can look fancy - its just a lot of work- look at the Cursed.

Simple does not equate to effortless.

Crippling open source with a attitude- we can do it.