Spring RTS Engine

Could their be a space level, for example your ground forces slug it out on the planet while you mine astiroids and fight for orbital controll at the SAME TIME! Then if you get into a better position then you can start orbital bombardment, and eventualy glass the planet (whitch means burning it down to the bedrock with high enery weapons) That would be cool eh? Space would of course play in slow motion, so you can juggle both front at the same time. Also imagin if you blast apart an enemy ship and the wregage flotes into the atmosher then starts to burn up. then whats left will smash into the battalfeild , and if it gets to close to your base, just hope you AA guns can blast it apart befor it smashes your base into billions of pises. In this kind of game, youd have to be as quick as a whip to keep up, but the results might be realy awsom!

Although I have often fanaticized about space combat in the TA universe, IMHO it is way beyond the scope of this project.

I pose one problem in the way of doing that. Multiple maps through spherical globe worlds. Or you could just simulate ti yourself with a starry sky and really high features but that would depend on wether they're still using unit radius's and not boxes for collision detection

For a good multipla part map compleat with space and ground, you would need a HUGE globe so that your fleets are still dwarfed by it. Maby if you should get a Planet killer. Ohh that would be fun if one player is the defender and he has two stages of defence, a Orbital Defence and a Ground AA defence. Then the other player would have a huge bunch of transports and large ships, with a centerpice of a Plannetkiller, then a massive space battle would hapen, with one side trying to stop the enemy's planet killer, then if that fails, trying to stop their ground invasion. But then the attack would have orbital supiriority, and the defenders job will be much much harder

I can just imagine a version of TAFF for spring on a map where the grounds so far down you cant see it and the sky's a huge planet surrounded by stars, though I aint sure how metal patches would work without huge rising columns of black starry space

If you want to get more indepth with space (to the point of heart attach inducing) You could have moons and astiroids where you could set up bases, and orbital defence platforms! Also you can have conflicts encomasing a entire solar system, with 50 players, 5 per planet and a few in space, battleing with armadas and jostling to get into the right position to diliver a perfect strike, or setting up a perfect defence. After a few weeks (maby a month) the solor system will be devastated, with floating wreaks cloging the atmosher of planets (and probebly would be burnt down to the bedrock with planetkillers). Then both sides, crippled beyond repair, would fight to the death in the ruins of planets and crippled spacestations.

I can easily live without space so long as I can set aircraft to fly at certain altitudes (and not dogfight like fighters). Low-orbit cruisers were just fine for me in OTA.

Let me be honest here, I'm just as much of a sci-fi buff as the rest of you guys, and I would love to see a space-to-ground-to-sea on the scale of TA.

However, that games is not Total Annihilation, nor is it Spring. Spring is a planet-based game, simple as that.

That's not to say that in the far future, a bored uni student with a lot of free time couldnt ask the SY's nicely for Spring's code, then rewrite it so that it had all these gimmicky features.

That times is just not now.

Sorry, guys

-Dragon45

Meeee!

2 years and i start uni, 6 and im done on my COMPUTER GAMES PROGRAMMING course :) I need a project for it, so therefore.......... Why not? lol

spring is not a planet based engine, spring is an rts engine, as pointed out that non-planetary maps can be made that arent space maps or ground maps.

Why I bother arguing with you reall,y i don't know.

You don't seem to get it.

The engine is based around LAND.

Any "space" or Homeworld style map would require major engine rewrites, or faking the space bit.

Well, it would be realy realy cool if you had seemless space to earth map, so maby if you finished Spring you can add a space exspansion pack. If i get better at programeing then id love to help

If you made a space texture for the "water" then and made the ground destructability really low...

Acutaly i was thinking about TAFF style space, where it is a semi-flat plain in whitch spaceships more around. Also, the airplain fighters fly in 3d, so why cant you do something similer for space.

no no no you dont get what I mean.

SPACE MAPS:

Make the ground black, make the sky stars, and make it so that the ground is an absurdly low height in comparison to the units, so a unti would be 30000 above the ground so far that it cant be seen ro si so small in the distance it barely takes up a handfull of pixels. Then everything is just aircraft, all you would need is a way of resourcing without bringing the gorund up by huge amounts to place mexes and a 3d positioning tool like homeworld had since 2d point and click mouse wouldnt work very well

TA is first and foremost a ground combat game, and I don't see the value in trying to turn it into a deep-space game instead; that's something completely different, one might as well just use a different program altogether (I'd love a "Homeworld Spring", for example :). But adding space as a secondary field of battle that's significant in terms of that ground combat could be fun. I particularly like the old classic of "orbital death rays" stabbing down from the sky.

How about using aircraft with really high altitude ceilings as "spacecraft"? "Space platforms" would just be vehicles that move really slowly, carrying the anti-ground artillery and anti-spacecraft defensive weapons. Ground-based weapons would have to have really long ranges to shoot them down, or specialized anti-space missiles or interceptors could be used. I'm no expert on modding but from what I recall most of this could probably be done without tweaking the game engine at all. A way of jumping the camera up to "space" altitude would be nice, and perhaps some sort of altitude discrimination in the radar, but those are pretty minor things.

You forgot to add stars, clouds, and possibly nebulae if the planets inside such a phenomena aswell as the curvature of the planet and any moons

What about space platforms (like Starcraft) whitch are connected to your bases by nutral space elvators, so yuo can fight over the acceses to the space platforms, and if you win over one of the platforms, you get the astiroids they mine, and the capablility to rain death from orbital guns and massive nuclear silos. Also you can set up laser platformes to shoot down enemy airplaines and nukes

Oh and we are talking about space, why not also add underground bases\ floting bases\ movable bases\ clokable bases ect

Space platforms can eb implemented in spring but with one problem. Spring sues radius based collision detection and not box based so platforms cannot be built on nor can units be placed on them save aircraft flying over.