Spring RTS Engine

I hope I'm not duping this, but IIRC the thread on it died when the forum got brokened a few months back.

Anyway, can someone just go over the proportions of the tex/height/metal bitmaps and what colour depths they have to be (is it 8:4:1, 24bit, 16bit, 8bit respectively?).

Also, in the 'great divide-ish' map in video 15; what the is size of the texture map being used (i.e. how big a graphic file do you need for the various sizes of ingame maps?)

I was having a fiddle about in the GIMP yesterdya nad mad some with texture maps of 1024 px square, would this correspond to a tiny map? or something playable by (say) 2 players?

-Gurkha

To my knowledge, there are five Spring maps thus far:
One painted desert
One painted desert (at sunset)
One two continents
One great divide
One mars (which I have not seen in a screenshot in a long time)

I would love to see SY add the other tile sets, crystal, water, urban, slate, lunar, lava, acid, jungle, and especially metal!

I'm currently working on porting the maps from TA to spring. Hope to post the first maps soon. There isn't really anyone who does maps. But i'm still figuring out all the things I need for a spring map.



Who can tell me where this image is taken?

meh...


SJ posted info on proportions for maps and the respective pictures a while back and there's a chance it's buried in this forum right now, and is post-phpBB.

Ok Red: A) Thats GOW
B) Im also working on heightmaps. Was working on the pass a while back.........

BlackLiger wrote:Ok Red: A) Thats GOW
B) Im also working on heightmaps. Was working on the pass a while back.........

Well done :)

So maybe we could make a list of the maps ppl would like to see ported first?

We're in a ful 3 engine with 3d camera, can we not attempt to exploit height?

I'm thinking a map with water out of which numerou pillars of rock with flat surfaces tower into the sky, or an attempt at indoor spaces even.


Core Prime maps?

Metal Texure would be needed. As i PMed Red before, I have the Pass, The pass II and Gun Valley done in heightmap, just need some assistance turning it into the full map........

I'll post the specs, since I know them now.

heightmap : 16-bit PC non-multi RAW file. Size is 128*TA screen size plus 1,for both height and width. For example, a 1025x1025 heightmap is equivalent to a 8x8 TA map.

texturemap: 24-bit BMP. Size is 1024*TA screen size for width and height. For a 8x8 map, it's 8192x8192.

metal map: 24-bit BMP. Size is unlimited, scaled to the heightmap size, but it's advised to have it the same size as the heightmap. Red channel is used to define metal areas. Single dots of absolute green color (0,255,0) make thermal vents.

geovent image: 24-bit BMP. Size unlimited. Is used to display the geovent location on the main map (the 'crack' that the steam comes out from).

recommendations: try to use both extreme white and extreme black colors when making the heightmap, it makes defining height profiles easier. For example, if you make a plateau that is the highest point of the map, use full bright white for it, or adjust it to make it close to full bright. The conversion process does not allow to change water level and map scale after it's been compiled.

Sean would you care to explain exactly how to make these texture and metal maps? Thanks.

Surely to make a rudimentary metal map (as in core prime metal, not metal extractor metal), one can just tile the OTA metal texture?

Maybe adjust the brightness/colours in a later version to mimic the OTA effect where high ground was lighter.

At any rate, when I download TA Spring, im going to try reverse enginering the maps a bit perhaps, I think photoshop can open RAW files, 16 bit heightmaps are a tad tricky to understand though, multiple colour ranges and all, Im guessing there is a utility to convert 8 bit ones to 16 bit ones as you mentioned that the high ground has to be white?

Making 8 bit greyscale hightmaps is comparitively easy, just use photoshop.

Or rip them from ota maps

Not entirely sure that that will work, the OTA ones may be too small.

I finished gow. Links are:

hosted by Storm

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?page=showitem&ID=682

and another mirror by Ekke

http://www.b.kth.se/b00_fas/Gods%20of%2 ... 20map).rar

Next maps on my list are:

Comet Catcher
Painted Desert
Gasplain Plain, although we'll miss the gasplants, so that'll have to wait a bit
Sail away(have to make the palm trees)
King of the Hill
Blazters Beach

any more suggestions welcome

I'll post a full tut soon.

Core industrial Area and Krogorh Encounter.
Red river is also nice.
Painted Desert is one of the best to.

Metal Isles.
Two Continents.
That one 20x20 Cavedog Sherwood-like map that has all the big hills clustered in the middle.

just one thing;
can we have it compressed with a standard compression format? not everyone can open .rar (I don't know if I can, but I'm downloading it anyway update: download finished, I can't). zip is always good because WinXP opens it by default, and winzip is easily avaialble for those without XP.

-Gurkha

U can get winrar at http://www.rarlab.com

it's free.

Besides Spring doesn't run on anything else than windows (yet) so .zip isn't really useful now. But i'll see how much different the different types make.

And why does everyone ask for metal maps

Dwnload the GoW map, it's so good. We just had a two hour match and remembered the old days :D

Do I need any special tools to make maps? If so, where do I get them?

Also, WinRAR is not free, its shareware that expects you to pay after 40 days.

tar.bz2 would be a more appropriate format I think.