Spring RTS Engine

night and day worked very well in earth 2150 and it can work here as well. i think this project may be sticking a little bit too close to TA1, iam sure if chris taylor had more to work with he wouldnt have used such log poly models for example

He would however have taken notice of the new high poly models beign made.

As for night and day I dont see why A simple timer based cycle of light change wouldnt be impossible to implement for those who wish to turn that option on

exactly. so we all agree it will be an option for when setting up a game, good

no no no no

I am just a voice in an angry mob fighting over wether arms better than cor or not. If you wanted concensus you should have started a poll

well u seem to represent the rest of the people here.

lol no I am the centre of a great divide between the pro-Alantai and the we dont like alantai camp. Read back through the forum to see all about it.

IMO one of the best parts of 2150 was the environmental eyecandy. I loved fighting a war at night with a howling blizzard, the buildings and units visible through the murk only because of their headlights shining on the ground in front of them. Turning the headlights off to launch a sneak attack didn't accomplish much tactically, and it would probably mean even less in TA what with radar and such (though launching an attack at night in a blizzard with jammers would be neat :), but it just looked so nice. Sandstorms, lightning, etc. would make for fun environmental hazards that look cool too, and prevent certain types of unit from functioning effectively (planes, mostly).

But that's all extras and eyecandy, so IMO it should be left for later when there's nothing more important to do. I can certainly live without.

Yhe.... Alantai hardly counts as everyones oppinion you know. However id be all for night and day as an option. Or even just being able to start a game in Night mode so that its all dark (but with out cyclying to day and back again, like in GTA 2 where you could play at night...)

aGorm

making it cycle shouldnt be too much of a hassle OGL speaking.

I certainly hope it's possible, but there may be one problem: day night cycles mean you must have dynamic lighting. So far as I know, there is no dynamic lighting in Spring. Notice that when rockets fly or units explode, there is no lighting--none of the terrain or other units light up with the explosion, and there are no new shadows created by the flashpoint. Zeus and Pyro units do not light up whoever they are frying.

I would LOVE to see dynamic lighting implemented, though, especially if the terrain can change color as well as it did in Black and White, which is an old game. There would be nothing more beautiful than watching the lights turn on in my base as the TA sun suns and darkness creeps over the forest.

u dont need dynamic lighting. missles would use point light anyway. ambient lighting is VERY easy to set, or at least in dx it is, iam sure its the same in ogl

I think day/night is a good idea, but it should be so that you can choose the time the game starts, and the amount of seconds in a day should be up to the map maker. So a small planet like earth might have a half hour day/night cycle, while a bigger planet could take like two hours.

We don't need dynamic lighting for this, just dynamic shadows, which I believe have already been implemented.

Yes, day night cycles where one of the things that made E2150 worth playing, and the pretty little light cones. It was just a series of states rather than a smooth transition but if it ran on my clunky old _K6_ I'm sure it won't be that resource hogging in spring.

I would prefer an intermediary medium between the two.

While I like the idea of a day/night cycle, there are several issues with night cycles that aren't so great, as well as a number of realistic problems (a planet spinning at a rotation of a couple of minutes? Huh?)

However, it would be nice for a mapper to set their own ambient lighting and sky for different maps, so that moons can have dark starry skies with night ambient effects (And perhaps a big planet visible in the distance?).
Core Prime would have a dark, smoggy overhead sky, and definite night-time ambient lighting (affecting LOS accordingly).

A map maker could make a day and night version of the same map.

I think that this solution would be much easier to implement, as only one lighting scheme (and sky scheme) is needed throughout a map.

i voted yes because i think it's good feature and i will like it

in two ways ... map/server option

- static time (that mean map is either night, day, dusk, sunrise, foggy etc) and day time not change

- dynamic time (that mean when map starts at sunrise , it does have some ratio for day times and change time slowly (again server option how fast/slow) good idea you can get if You ever played Joint Operations from NOVALOGIC as supports exactly this) ...

this way ... all users (these who like and these who dislike it) gets pleased ...

Meh. Joint ops the day night cycle is too slow for my liking.

BlackLiger wrote:Meh. Joint ops the day night cycle is too slow for my liking.

EASY answer ... time scale/speed option definable server side :)) lol

thats what NL said would be in JO, but meh.

Anyways, i agree it should be in spring. NB try Dark Reign 2, the terrain is cool, and the water effects are way better than the current spring screenshots.

I'd still prefer to have have a day OR night setting for maps, which is chosen before battle, or set by the map maker.

So far, I haven't seen day/night transitions be implemented in any sort of realistic way. It kinda feels strange to have a day/night cycle of a couple of minutes (Such as in Earth2150), but night battles are cool.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:I'd still prefer to have have a day OR night setting for maps, which is chosen before battle, or set by the map maker.

So far, I haven't seen day/night transitions be implemented in any sort of realistic way. It kinda feels strange to have a day/night cycle of a couple of minutes (Such as in Earth2150), but night battles are cool.

only game sporting real time (1:1) day/night cycles was Operation Flashpoint and Operation FlashPoint Resistance ...

even sky is in OFP/OFPR real (you can navigate by looking at star) and it change it's position over night like real night sky ...