Spring RTS Engine

Hey guys,

Almost a year after I released the Magnetonics(thread) Spring game, the only guy, that I know, who made a video review of my game was interested in creating a simple RTS for the 2017 Global Game Jam(GGJ). Something in the vain of "Castle Blood Automatic" mod for Age of Empires 2. Though he wants it to have a 2.5D isometric game.

I was unsure if that was possible timewise. As GGJ is only 48 hours. Considering that pathfinding is the biggest hurdle of RTS game development. Other than AI. Though he wants to get around that factor by having at least a 1vs1 human versus human in the prototype first.

Unless we still use a 3D RTS engine like Spring, which is RTS game engine that also has multiplayer built in. What do you think?

Is it possible to create 2D sprite animations by replacing strategic icons with Lua? Make a prototype in under 48 hours ~non-stop?

[Edit] One year later... Just in case, here is the game on the GGJ site - https://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/tr ... ng-surfers

I think your chances of persuading Springs pathing to restrict itself to a cubic lattice within 48h are pretty much zero.

The bit about using lua to replace units with sprites would work, but I can't imagine it would be easy to get the correct interaction between two overlapping sprites. Using a lua based camera that forced a particular viewing angle, plus using 3d models built of cubes on Springs native unit placement grid, would be a better approach. But of course, then you're in 3d and things that are far away will be smaller...

I'm having a hard time understanding what's written in this thread so far...
Creating 2D sprite animations with Lua is not hard. Even if the built-in icon system isn't flexible enough, you can override it and draw them manually, it should be easy to create an unoptimized interface for that.
PS: We have created games in Spring for Ludum Dare jams previously, so that's entirely possible: https://github.com/SpringCabal/Skeleton ... us-entries

Alright then. Thanks for the replies. We will try to do it with Spring Engine then.

Would it be possible to make Spring's unit icons rotate with the unit's heading?

To my understanding 2.5D functionality is built into the engine.
In BA, if you zoom out - somewhere between rendering units as icons and 3D models - the units are rendered as 2D spirites at various angles.

Only problem - the spirites are not animated, as demonstrated by this super-HD image.
http://i.imgur.com/Tphr9G3.png

So no kbots 4 u.

RageQuitV wrote:To my understanding 2.5D functionality is built into the engine.
In BA, if you zoom out - somewhere between rendering units as icons and 3D models - the units are rendered as 2D spirites at various angles.

Only problem - the spirites are not animated, as demonstrated by this super-HD image.
http://i.imgur.com/Tphr9G3.png

So no kbots 4 u.

2.5 d typically means sidescroller using a 3d engine, like smash brothers

Pendrokar wrote: Is it possible to create 2D sprite animations by replacing strategic icons with Lua? Make a prototype in under 48 hours ~non-stop?

why not use quads with transparency and a texture on the quads like some flash animations

Hey Pendrokar, how did it go? Did you end up making something?