Spring RTS Engine

OK. I just figured out what makes spring so 'ugly' to me. Spring doesn't have nice bloom effects! So I was wondering from some people who have done some searching in the source code, how hard it would be to have a post frame effect added, such as bloom or motion blur.

It's usually ugly because your computer sucks.

Two things: Bloom is really really hard to add into a game. And its slow. And I don't really think its as important as fifty thousand other things comming up in the next version.

Second thing: Ugly? See this pic.

http://cs.selu.edu/~ssmith/BB/download.php?id=219


I don't really think that falls under ugly. I can't say for other mods, but EE looks great. Well...I can say for other mods. Just look in the art forum, and you'll find new modles for AA that look very very good. A bit crazy on the polygons, but who the hell cares?

And third thing...I don't really think bloom would fit in this game. But thats just me.

umm... that screenshot is ugly :D no shadows + its 3do so the textures could be 99% prettier with s3o

Yeah, honestly, Spring is nice and all, very functional, very elegant, very impressive, and the graphics do a lot of things really well... but it's not really "beautiful" or anything... well... aside from the water effects, but my computer can't handle that.

Spring is really nice, but not in close range ... and something is lacking.. .but I don't know what .. it's prehaps lightning, or perhaps it's because it's only robots ?

Look at this dawn of war pick ... : http://img.clubic.com/photo/00351277.jpg
there is really something in that pic, even without shadow ..

But surely, what make Spring awesome is gamplay ....

Spring = Great Complex Mass Battles - there are beautifull Units - and they are the Big Bad Guys in every Mod. And it least they are not just all the same Basic typ recoloured and with diffrent Props.

I don`t think you can compare it -fairly - to Dawn of War, even not Graphically.
What is - a little - missing in Spring is the Feeling for the Powers you unleash. The Deformable Terrain is Great here, but i dlike to see fleeing Birds (Seagulls on a fighted over coast) - fleeding Dears - and burning Grass of Lasers. It think it is one of the Graphical most Important things to give the Players the Feedback -> You are important, you have influence - one Mousemove and this World burns - even if they are not winning, the leave some marks behind...

Blur is pretty easy to do AFAIK but it ranks pretty high on my list of "ugly things done for marketing". It strains the eyes and it's just annoying.

Unless said blur is in Max Payne.

But more importantly, what! That screen shot is the shizz! I mean look at that friggen spidery thing! That thing is scary!

The thing that makes springs graphics different is that in commercial games, textures and modelling are done by professional people, and in spring, just normal guys, mostly. Right?

Imo the things that define spring's graphical quality are the quality of maps and unit models&textures, not special effects.

What Z said.

Z
+1

Although I think Spring is already very, very attractive visually, I would strongly agree that we could use one or two high-end effects. For instance...



I can understand why the terrain is clipping here, and I can't complain about that. But those trees just look hideous. Whatever's necessary to make them get lost in the extremely bright explosion's light.... just needs to be done at some point.

Actually I have nothing against special effects, althou my post could indicate that. For instance, the reflective water is very nice.
I'm just saying, that Spring probably wouldn't look much prettier with bloom effects and such, unless the basic stuff like models and maps, looked good.

Any demoscene people here? It's the same thing when nowadays you see like depth-of-field effects in the most crappiest demos also, when a while ago only the most techically advanced demos had it.

Caydr: More blast radius and damage perhaps?

Those tree's should burst into flames.

Is it possible to make the trees collapse in the same way that when an unit walks over them? During the explosion?

I think they are collapsing, if you look close. They should just be on fire too. If they were also on fire, then it would be really much better.

Yeah... in particular the trees and grass always ruin it for me I think... deffinitely raidant lighting would be great... like those trees should be lit up all around, and the shadows of the ones on the perifery should be thrown away from the boom... and yeah, trees catching fire and tumbling away from 'slotions would be cool...

Z nailed this one. I think we could do a lot better with the engine we have, but let's face it, we have a few members who are pretty good, but real games have teams of professional artists and modellers. We're just not going to get the same kind of content quality out of one or two competent people and a bunch of noobs per project.

The flip side of this is... who cares? Games are so much about looks these days- I'd rather have things that look damn nice while still falling a little short of professional, but can be created by one person in a year or two instead of by a 18 person content team. That way, you get more flexibile development schedules that result in greater design innovation. End result: more and better games of a wider variety.

Besides, there is still a lot of customization to sqeeze out of the engine in terms of gameplay mechanics, before we even get into purely graphical effect.