Spring RTS Engine

I understand the OTA units and new Sprint units can be used in Spring:

My questions are the following

1. Can Stand Alone units be used in Spring (In the same plug and play form as with OTA) or would the be required to be part of a mod format.
I enjoyed being able to insert and use any number of my units in OTA.

2. If a form does or does not exist. i would really be interested in having a front end for units in the game. where you can ad/remove activate/deactivate units. compare them side by side and even edit options oerhaps.

It's custom maps and units that really made me enjoy OTA and i would love to see this contenue into Spring, i hate to think that Spring is just a holding zone for RTSers waiting on SupCom.

-Caleb
3D/2D artist

We have the ability to deactivate units from mods in lobby, at the moment. I believe that could be extended. Also, mutators allow us to add 3rd party units in, no problem.

adding units can be done but it takes some forethought. First off it only works AFAIK with XTA. Secondly u and ur opponent must have the EXACT same units in ur spring directory (the main one, no sub directory). Everything has to be the same about them or u will desync. If someone lacks the files of the host then they will desync. Afterall that it should hopefully work.

So to sum it up. It works, but its hackish at best. Im gonna assume this is Monthly Topic Rotation (MTR) as well.

Plus, a lot of scripts will likely be broken, many weapons will probably work incorrectly due to laziness where OTA was more forgiving, custom textures will not work (and even if decompressed there is a limit), ...

It's best to stick with the mods that have been properly converted over because OTA-->Spring is not simply drag and drop.

I have noticed that to be an issue when i was connecting to play, i remember QUAKE would often allow you do download all elements of a mod from the servers to play, however i do relize that servers are a players local computer not a stationary server like in quake.

The ability for someone to make a superunit that would auto load into games can open up a huge world of problems. since alot of kids play, and alot of kids love to cheat.

I can see how mod based setups would be perferred over stand alone unit use. is there a cap to number of units in Sring? and whats XTA? is same as saing spring but without the hardship of spelling it out? heh

Thanks for the quick replies. i am very interested in participating in this project.