Spring RTS Engine

I remember a while back some devs talking about the new map format, and how their test map was 4000x4000 and how it would change spring maps.... How's that coming along? We gonna see any new map formats soon?

BTW, is any progress being made on multi-leveled maps? (BSP or Pathable Features)

Turns out that was heightmap units, so it will only support around 30 x 30 playable area anyway.

Is there any way we can keep pushing the edges? I would like to create a really good Earth model, possibly twice as big as Altored Earth.

neddiedrow wrote:Is there any way we can keep pushing the edges? I would like to create a really good Earth model, possibly twice as big as Altored Earth.

Your PC will implode, resistance is futile.

An entirely new type of design for mapconv would be needed, along with huge optimisations to the spring engine to prevent you suffocating from fumes from burning computers.

The largest map for spring is Epic, which is 40x40

I personally think this is a thing that needs to get implemented in the (near) future). I like to play on huge maps, think 128x128+ maps, where you can have amazing big and progressive battles, and esspecially nice for campaing missions!!

The (new) zoom features of Spring will prove their power best with these large maps!!

does anybody has some insight info on the possibilites of a newer/advanced map-format that can handle sizes up to 128/256/512?

Zaphods new map can go upto an unlimited size theoretically., the mapsizes allowed double each time, but past 30x30 spring tends to go clunk apaprently, but ti would be possible to compile a 2kx2k map with zaphods new format, just totally unplayable for the moment thats all

Define "go clunk".
I play Epic just fine, tab zoomed and everything.

That said, many people dont, but still.

Comp1337 wrote:Define "go clunk".
I play Epic just fine, tab zoomed and everything.

That said, many people dont, but still.

Some variable become big, and it come hard to check every variable to see if they don't overflow.
So it can go well, but it increase a lot the posssibility to have bug.

Epic is under the current format, i was referring to Zaphods new format that uses texture splattering.

The current format has a high upper limit but it cant be reached as anything past 40x40 is just unfeasable for most people, and takes far too much to compile.

how about makeing the files smaller.

I can't wait for a huge map. a 10x10 player map, a dedicated 1gbit server = :9
If that fails, 9 bots who love to attack would do. Think LOTR scale battles. With 100ft robots. And nukes.

we are limited in map size because ATI cards cannot handle anything larger.

I started a thread no too long ago in the dev forum. Look it up.

smoth wrote:we are limited in map size because ATI cards cannot handle anything larger.

I started a thread no too long ago in the dev forum. Look it up.

Yes smoth indeed, sorry i forgot. But maybe this can be by-passed in some sort, that spring generates smaller images from a total heightmap, with somekind of LOD system...

Well ATI sux anyways, so maybe not fix it at all

it would be nice if the game broke it up in a sort of tile matrix ala paging landscape.

That issue is just a shadow renderer problem.

They'll work on ATI cards, its just the shadows wont show as ATI cards dont support shadow maps greater than a certain size

No, not quite, it's the max texture-size for ati's vids, that makes it inpossible to go to higher heightmaps than for example: 2048x2048 or 4096x4096, respectivically a 32x32 TA map or 64x64.

My idea was to split the heightmap aswell into smaller 'tiles', with some sort of LOD system.

I thought people had ran Epic the 40x40 map on an ATI card and reported that shadows dissapear on it

well, all i know is that shadows become inverted above some size of maps, but apart from this, theoretically you can go up to 64x64 if your vid can handle the heightmap of 4k x 4k.

Couldn't there just be a flag for "half-texture-resolution" for large maps? Cut the shadowmap size in half as well as the detail texture, etc?