Spring RTS Engine

5/11/06 UPDATE: PROJECT RAGNAROK is to RESUME IMMEDIATELY

I have decided to resume Project Ragnarok, albeit without my original team. This means I will be needing new members to team Ragnarok, so if you are interested, please let me know. I've never developed for spring before so anyone who knows anything about it and is willing to offer advice/assistance would be greaty appreciated!

I am currently doing all modelling and texturing, and but I need to learn more about scripting and whatnot. Project Ragnarok is eventually going to be ported to Supreme Commander once that game is released, but for the time being will find it's home in Spring.

So send me an e-mail at mesafina@gmail.com and let us know what you have to offer if you are interested. Look forward to hearing from you!

----
The idea behind Project Ragnarok to create a mod which uses no copyrighted material so it can be distributed for free and will not require you to own a copy of TA to play. This game will not just be a free rebuild of TA. Some of the features will be:

- 2 unique factions with completely unique gameplay styles (2 more will be added after the first version of the mod is released.) The two starting factions will be The United Tribes and The Machinations of Fenris.

- High poly models. This mod is designed to look beautiful and take advantage of the often under-utilized power of the spring engine. 2000+polys per unit on average, with an emphases on smaller, more tactical battles.

- New tree models and maps will be utilized for this mod. The model scale will be increased from the TA Spring standard: models, trees, and features will be up to 50% larger.

MODEL PREVIEW:

This is an image of the Monolith model. This thing is gargantuan and comes in at over 2200 polygons... but don't worry, you won't be seeing very many of these on screen at a time!

FACTIONS:

The United Tribes:

In the distant future of our planet, after wars have torn the world to pieces time after time, man had begun to digress to the social patterns of a simpler time, when mighty nations had no place on this world. The Tribes of Earth were formed by the Asatru Caste, the spiritual leaders of humanity, so that they could rule without fear of another world conflict destroying humanity forever. The loosely knit group of tribes cooexisted for hundreds of years before conflicts started once more, but this time from somewhere completely unexpected.

The Machinations of Fenris:

While the machines which came from the sky have no name for themselves, the Asatru have all but confirmed that they can only be the servants of Fenris himself, come to bring about Ragnarok and end all things. Indeed, the machines seem set on dismantling the world itself, harvesting all that lies before them for some unknown end. Their towering warmachines seem to touch the sky, and when they begin to sing, everything turns to ash.

SAMPLE UNITS:

Hel Caste Warrior:

The Hel Caste is the elite fighting force of the United Tribes. The Asatru have geneticly and cyberneticly engineered the ideal warrior, creating men who stand over ten feet tall and have the strength of many. When enclosed in their powered body armor, they are a force of vast destruction, capable of jump-jetting for miles and raining death upon any they cross. Their legendary rapid-fire rockets can pepper an area with their deadly wrath.

The Monolith:

This towering machination moves very slowely across the face of the world, singlehandedly laying waste to entire regions. Armed with an ungodly array of energy weapons, they can destroy most anything they can hit. They appear to have some sort of personnal shield generator which can stop projectiles dead in their tracks. They have even been known to reproduce themselves on the battlefield. Given their extraordinary strength, can some weakness be found in time to end their dread march before all is gone?

FURTHER PREVIEWS:

This is a Drop Shield for the United Tribes.

United Tribes Helcast Warrior. Comes in at around 1200 polys.

Another look at the mighty Monolith.

United Tribes Helcast Warrior from rear.

sounds just the thing i have allways wanted !... i dont like UBER big battles i like more of small battles where i can micro more to gaing the overhand

That's really good news :)
A high performance mod that can even be distributed on linux!
Before you start however, do you know how the GPL handles binary data? Because I have no idea
Maybe it would be better to have a license specially made for art...

Also before you accept art from others, it would be good to make all contributors agree to giving the copyright to you or Rukk. That way you can decide to change license later in the development without having to contact every contributor (people might be unreachable, in which case you can't even change the license)

Zaphod wrote:That's really good news :)
A high performance mod that can even be distributed on linux!
Before you start however, do you know how the GPL handles binary data? Because I have no idea
Maybe it would be better to have a license specially made for art...

Also before you accept art from others, it would be good to make all contributors agree to giving the copyright to you or Rukk. That way you can decide to change license later in the development without having to contact every contributor (people might be unreachable, in which case you can't even change the license)

The GPL handles pretty much everything the same way. You have to release the "source code" of a work. The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. So, if I make my images with The Gimp, I'll need to release .xcf files, .ps files for photoshop, .blend files for blender models, etc etc.

looks like a very interesting project!
Someone gotta show us what the spring engine can do

Kudos, nice to see there's one less person jumping on the "low detail is teh good" bandwagon.

Woot for progress. I'm excited to see where this goes.

/me is excited

High poly's rule :D

Looks freaking great dude!

I could perhaps be usefull to have a programmer in your team, so you can implement some stuff you need for the mod, and in the same time, increase Spring's greatfullness

Torrasque, nobody is stopping you from doing spring programming outside the scope of a single mod

But if that makes you enjoy it more then by all means go ahead

Very nice!

Zaphod wrote:Torrasque, nobody is stopping you from doing spring programming outside the scope of a single mod

But if that makes you enjoy it more then by all means go ahead

Yep, you're right ... but I have a lot of difficulty to motivate myself to begin something(Even if I have 2-3 free hours every days) So, perhaps it could help me. But I don't want to promise anythings, as I know myself, i'll do nothing.

Sorry, back to the topic :

I hope we will have more info soon :)
Have you got already some background, art, list of units?

Torrasque wrote:

Zaphod wrote:Torrasque, nobody is stopping you from doing spring programming outside the scope of a single mod

But if that makes you enjoy it more then by all means go ahead

Yep, you're right ... but I have a lot of difficulty to motivate myself to begin something(Even if I have 2-3 free hours every days) So, perhaps it could help me. But I don't want to promise anythings, as I know myself, i'll do nothing.

Sorry, back to the topic :

I hope we will have more info soon :)
Have you got already some background, art, list of units?

well thats true about everyone.
Everyone needs motivation to develop everything and somethings are a bit hard to find motivation...

In response to Torrasques request for more detailed information, I am now making this the official information thread for Project Ragnarok. I will update this thread on a regular basis with new, pertinent information and pics/screens as they become available.

Are you taking the OTA style conventional rout with factories and the usual myriad of units (hmm this factory shall build a unti with a laser, oen that fires guided missiles, one that builds thigns(all buildings),one that fires plasma, and 50/50 chance ti builds a scout type unit, I was right?! yaya!!!!).

Or are you going to make a unique and fresh mod that isnt repetitive, and take a leaf out of Arghs book? (doesnt necessarily mean untis building units all the way, just a drastic avoision of the ARM/CORE format that so many mods have copied, such as TLL, Argon Joined tribes, ahk AA is soemtimes more different than OTA than a 3rd party race))

That, and thankyou, oh thank god, somebody is making custom trees =D (hmm that sounded like sarcasm but I assure you it isnt)

I can assure you that we will be utilizing fresh and original construction trees and playstyles. For example, the Machinations main combat unit is called the Monolith, and it builds more of itself. The United Tribes will start the game with a Mobile Command Center, which is a massive flying complex which constructs units and structures (all United Tribes structures are mobile and can be moved by flying transport units).

This mod will not have the hundreds of units you find in a mod like AA, but will instead focus on a smaller number of carefully balanced units. Every units function will be evaluated and it will only be included if it's function is unique and valuable to the faction in question.

As for custom trees, we will be making a wide assortment of properly scaled foliage, including massive redwood style pines.

P.S. I love AA, this wasn't meant to imply that it is inbalanced in any way =)

So will the united tribes generally have more cheaper units than the Machinations?

And how come the tribes mine metal as efficiently as the bad guys, and then accuse them of mining the world? HYPOCRITS!

If i may request something, make sure that the player's colours get shown in a wide enough part of the model so the unit's owner gets destinguished easily.

I'm asking this because, sometimes, the units don't have much areas in them that show who they belong to and end up beeing hard to figure out. I think this is defined by the unit's model, no!?

And, great news. Good luck on it.

Indeed, the player color texture areas are determined during a units design. We will certainly take ease of distinction into account when applying texture areas to the models.

We should have pics of models up within the week.

Thanks for all the awesome feedback guys. Keep suggestions and ideas flowing our way, every one is appreciated!

Also, i ask that the balance of the mod takes this into account:

In most mods, the builders (mobile units) build almost (just as fast?) as the factories, build alot of stuff and are mobile, which compensates for they're less armor, while costing alot less. So, whenever you're needing more unit production, you never build another factory but, instead, build another worker to aid the factory.
I consider this a fundamental flaw in the mods. Of course it is arguable if it is indeed a bad thing and not a good thing.

If, for example, all units's buildtimes were 5~10 times as much and the workertime of all factories faster in just the same amount, all that would change. The aid of builders would be less relevant and we would start building more factories to flush out the resources. Super fast rushes wouldn't be so viable in small maps since the commander's help in a factory wouldn't make, no longer, a huge diference in units output. Etc.

I never yet tested that, though, but i think it would create a better gameplay.