Spring RTS Engine

ok so spring is pretty 3D at the moment... so would the 3d models and all...

1 thing is missing.. the planet is not yet completely 3D... at this point u may be asking wtf... i would be too

what i mean is .. is it feasable to add to the cod for when a unit goes off 1 side it reapears at the other side... giving the illusion of a 3D planet.

i know this is a 2 minuete job in 2D gaming world.. but i dont use C++ for that and wouldnt know

ok so it would be more complex as there would need to be something in the map designers control that told the game wheather to activate the code... i.e. the mapper decides weather the map is 2d or 3d

but wouldnt it add a whole new level to gameplay.. in that attacks can come from 4 firections (north south E and W) as opposed to just 1 front line to withstand all bombardment many would be needed...

anyway.,.. critisize freely

It has been sugested. I won't write long posts since then someone will beat me to the big prize of being the first to answer a thread. Go read the wiki.

why only give the illusion of a 3d planet? Why not make a real 3d planet map like in populus 3d. There all maps were completely round and so if you walked long enough you come to the point where you started.
Disadvantage of this: The maps must be VERY huge.. at least 50x50 i think, else it would look odd.

in other words...preventing a rusher would be near impossible, you cant expect people to protect 4 fronts at the same time

The terrain is fully 3d... you can move in X Y and Z directions...

I think what he's getting at is hte idea of a map representing a sphere, rather than the "flat earth" type of maps that we are used to. Would completely change the game, but would be interesting IMO.

I REALLY don't think a global scale is feasiable....

LathanStanley wrote:I REALLY don't think a global scale is feasiable....

You're computer would stab you in places you really don't want to be stabbed if you tried it.

Optimization!

*all paid game developers in the area run away quickly at the sound of that dirty word*

Less pretty graphics gimmicks!

*all game development company managers and marketers in the area run away quickly at the sound of those dirty words*

Better pathfinding and collision code!

*[insert something heretical of your own choice about the Spring developers here!]* (not really, everyone loves the Spring devs, all hail the Spring devs!)

ok, lets bring this into perspective...

the earth's circumference is approx 24,902 miles...

thats 131,482,560 feet...

if the commander is approx 38 feet tall, and the commander is about say, 1/2 inch tall on your screen.

lay him down, use him as a means of measurement.... each commander height of 38 feet in game is 1/2 inch of monitor screen... (allready zoomed out pretty good...)

well..... you would then need: 1,730,033.68 inches of display....

thats the equivilant of a 27.304 MILE wide screen.. or map...
Or for you SI junkies.... its 43.942 kilometers


(zoomed out...) zoomed in its like 200 miles... ... thats... umm... way too big.

I don't think anyone said that it had to be the Earth, or that it had to be to scale.

Granted, I think the idea of a 30x30 map wrapping around is just plain silly. However, saying that the current code couldn't possibly support "a global scale" is both an obvious generality and an incomplete statement. If the current code won't support a global scale and a global scale is wanted, well, change the current code! After all, Spring's like open source and stuff.

That said, I still think that this is an unnecessary and wasteful suggestion. I think that any map bigger than 16x16 is too big except in really special cases (5v5, mostly)... and a 16x16 map wrapping would be plain ridiculous.

dumb idea, already discussed it... moving on.

Larger maps may be required for things like the WD and SWTA and AATA where the foot soldiers need to be the size of peewees for the colision detection to work right... otherwise yeah... the current limit's probably fine...

Well, in Spring and TA, maps are usually small sections of a planet.

However, scaling things would be much easier on a global scale map, I.E. have jets that fly at the real speeds, however, you'd have to heavilly rely on air transport to transport troops, much like real life...it would also take hours like real life...

Theoretically it's possible but you would need a terrain rendering engine not desimilar to Dungeon Siege.

<sarcasm>... Hey... I remember hearing about the guys who made Dungeon Siege making some "Global Scale" RTS... Sublime Cuspadore or something</sarcasm>

I dont see why this idea is so bad?

Of course we dont make all maps as globe, only new maps which is made for playing only in a globe mode.

Only thing what we need to do to make this possible, is to "teleport" the units from each side into another side, and show the minimap as it is now.
No need to change the map file format or anything.
Also the textures should be repeated in that way, so it wouldnt show any edges of the map.

We'll just make an illusion.

Now, seing as you are all doing your best to absolutely kill the idea Im going to try and do the opposite.

In TA we have two factions fighting eachother for thousands of years all over the galaxy.

That said, they would see all sorts of planets and moons.

What in that storyline is preventing you from fighting your enemy on a wery small moon or perhaps even an asteroid?

I imagine having an irregularly shaped asteriod hurling through space with robots fighting eachother in the low gravity enviroment.

That said, I bet there are limitations in the current game engine that prevents this from being done. If that is the case, please say so, but for the love of god, dont blame the storyline and that it would generally be a bad idea for gameplay.

I am quite convinced that gameplay on a small irregular asteriod would be wery interesting, having a base that is vulnerable from several directions will certainly add a new level of interest, not to mention it would force players to try and build their base using natural defences.

In my humble opinion there is plenty of room for duking it out on a small asteroid, both with regards to gameplay and with regards to realism or "scale".

I think the key to making it work and to make it look good would be to model smaller objects in space, and to make sure you did not do them completely spherical. That way you would be able to play on a small map that is still a correct representation of a realistic object in space.

It's overly complicated to impliment, would introduce a slew of new bugs into the engine, and wouldn't benifit us enough through implimentation to warrent doing it. If maps could acctually be sphericalized then perhaps the argument would be null, but the implimentation we're looking at here is a double cylinder, which is just rediculous and doesn't represent a realistic environment in any way shape or form. Corners and walls in maps are a widely used stratigic device as well, I can't see there being a large advantage to removing that, expecially if it's being replaced with somethiing that is essentailly teleportation.

I hope that was not in response to my post?
Bear in mind Im not in favour of trying to implement a teleportation system between oppsite ends of the map.

I do realise the technical difficoulties in this and I can really see that this may not be the best thing to go for at the moment.

But if you go all the way and get a fully featured asteroid or comet in space that you can fight on then Id get so excited I wouldnt know what to do.

a map thats fully 3d mesh, editable and playable to that extent... gravity, etc, is gonna be NUTS HARD to figure out... will be VERY cool...

a standard map with teleportation, is not easy because of weapon fire teleporting?, targeting across the map on the other side? movement/pathfinding? area commands? I mean, c'mon.. there's just TOO much "teleporting" going on...

It works on games like Civilization with tiles because EVERYTHING is on tiles... and its easy to just have the adjoining tiles on map grid ZZZ-347 adjoin to AAA-347 and the like... whatever the naming conventions may be.... but spring, isn't tiles, or even remotely close to tiles... its bounding boxes over an irregular terrain thats generated by a terrain generating script... a map that will, in essence, "Tile" isn't even 100% possible....

Now a 3d mesh map... thats not generated by Graphics and scripts.. hince a FULL 3d map... is probably possible to some extent... but the implementation is VERY intense.... the camera panning etc, will have to be completely re-worked, and no longer will the map be a simple texture, stretched over a 3d mesh thats determined by squares and numbers, but an actual MODEL, thats LOADED with facets, textures, and irrerular geometry... Think about weapon trajectories, gravity, walking speeds, radar?... umm... minimap? rotateable? the list just goes on and on

it will be something I doubt EVER getting past the idea board... I don't ever see it even hitting a drawing board.... at least not for the spring engine....

Try not to get your hopes up, though the idea might be cool....
Just accept the fact, and let it die here...