Spring RTS Engine

So I've played about 6 hours, which is like 2 games. This is a QA list. It is in no order. Someone else (I'm lazy) should compile this list, and a poll should decide what order to tackle bugs in, or people could just fix them. I know that some of these have been covered elsewhere. I am trying to be totally inclusive. Other people should add bugs to this post, but please discuss them elsewhere.

Of course, there is the random bugginess when starting games. It seems to work 1 in 5 times or so in the games I was in. Not sure if that was because people misconfigured their games or what, but that was a problem.

Then there is the labels on "team" and "ally team." These need to be changed, as they are confusing.

It should default to "TA Style" camera when starting a game.

When multiple people from behind a router are trying to play, they have 3 options right now. 1) They can play each other, 2) They can play play as non-hosts in someone's game (I haven't tried this yet, so it might not work), or 3) one can try to host and the other's computer will get confused trying to talk to the external ip address.

When telling a minelayer to cover the whole map with mines, Spring crashed big time

It is possible to beat the normal range on many ballistic weapons by firing them manually. This is only kind of a problem, since they are really FREAKING difficult to fire manually, but I can see where it would be an issue with a vulcan or a BB.

When driving units, it is impossible to separately target weapons.

When driving units, LOS is improbably and unintuitively short for almost all units. I think it would require almost remaking the gameplay to fix this. However, an easy fix would be to make the fog of war literal.

You can drill through the whole earth with a few mines (or crawling bombs) that took seconds to build, but it takes hours to put the earth back.

Teams (not ally team, see how it is confusing terminology?) have difficulty working together. There are several solutions I can think of which all work together. 1) Be in the same room. 2) Allow team chats (not sure if this is possible now, but I couldn't figure it out) 3) allow teammates to mark units (special color patches?) and give them some whiteboard space to scribble on.

When putting earth back, you drag out a circle, but put back a square.

Also when putting earth back, there are very rough transitions at the edge of squares.

When earth is moved, it is possible for a unit to end up underground.

When queing up things in mobile factory type units (scarabs in XTA, for example), repeat order does not repeat build. This is non-intuitive.

Fighters are totally impossible to fly. Better interface needed.

The minimap does not work as it did in OTA. This is a problem.

The fog of war is totally invisible. It makes it impossible to tell where I can see and where I can't. This is non-intuitive.

Radar coverage seems very spotty (is this a feature?). I like how radar blips wander a bit, and don't always correspond exactly to the location of the unit. This is a good feature.

SPRING IS THE GREATEST GAME TO GRACE GOD'S GREEN EARTH! GPLing it spells the end to big game houses. This is good, but it is a good thing you guys are in sweden. The day after the CEO of EA hears about this, he's going to call all his lawyers in his office and have a big meeting about figuring out all the things they can sue you out of existance for. My advice (I am not a lawyer, and this should not be taken as legal advice) is to assign the rights of each released version to the Free Software Foundation. Then they will defend it in court, without you having to give up the rights overall. Being in Sweden probably helps a great deal also. Yes, vulnerability to lawsuit is a bug. I'd rip out the OTA content, or get it remade immediately.

Feature request: Someone make an epic map? Like Planet Battle Zone, and Real Earth?

Feature request: Cadyr, AA will rock. Soon, please?

Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request: I couldn't give units to people, and there was no capability for capturing on my commander. Was this an XTA thing, or a Spring thing?

Also, how do you share resources?

Also, choosing your color would be nice. I like playing the ugly yellow core, and the long black arm of the law. The wussy purple core is also appropriate when I just got my ass handed to me last game.

When starting a game without the battle room, the second player does not have any command buttons. Or rather, they are there, but they have no text in them.

Remember, please only post bugs and feature request in this thread that have not already been posted in this thread. Please start new threads to discuss bugs.

The making lakes thing is unintuitive, especially since you can build ships there and then put the earth back, stranding them. A possible fix could be to not let the terrain deform down more than one unit above sea-level with explosions, and not let it deform up to more than a few units below sea level. Then you never get a ship being stranded. This might be unintuitive though.

It is possible to build things in a line in places you are not allowed to build them normally. For example, if one is building dragon's teeth, as long as the line starts and stops on ok (green) places, the unit will build the teeth in the red places.

As long as terrain deformation is possible, just let people build anywhere. Attempts to build on mountains should just level off a ledge. I've seen this in other games, and it works fine. It is unintuitive that I can fill in massive craters, but not carve a little niche into a mountain-side to put a LLT on.

well there should be principle that in most cases matter stays so if you made crater somewhere ... that erath mass will spread around increasing bit altitude of surrounding areas

Then there is the labels on "team" and "ally team." These need to be changed, as they are confusing.

Well do you have any better names to propose ?

It should default to "TA Style" camera when starting a game.

It does already ?

When multiple people from behind a router are trying to play, they have 3 options right now. 1) They can play each other, 2) They can play play as non-hosts in someone's game (I haven't tried this yet, so it might not work), or 3) one can try to host and the other's computer will get confused trying to talk to the external ip address.

You can theoretically change the start.txt after the game has started for the other computers on the local net in order to give them the local ip, if the other players are willing to wait around long enough.

When telling a minelayer to cover the whole map with mines, Spring crashed big time

Ok will fix that

It is possible to beat the normal range on many ballistic weapons by firing them manually. This is only kind of a problem, since they are really FREAKING difficult to fire manually, but I can see where it would be an issue with a vulcan or a BB.

Yes we are aware of this, still takes a lot of microtime to do, see it as the spring version of gnug shooting if you which

Teams (not ally team, see how it is confusing terminology?) have difficulty working together. There are several solutions I can think of which all work together. 1) Be in the same room. 2) Allow team chats (not sure if this is possible now, but I couldn't figure it out) 3) allow teammates to mark units (special color patches?) and give them some whiteboard space to scribble on.

A: for ally chat. Key to the left of 1 for whiteboard (only tested on swedish and dutch keyboards might not work in other places)

When putting earth back, you drag out a circle, but put back a square.

Will fix it sometime

When queing up things in mobile factory type units (scarabs in XTA, for example), repeat order does not repeat build. This is non-intuitive.

Maybe, you might want to move it in a pattern without infinite que. You can just ctrl+shift click to get an nearly infinite que anyway

Fighters are totally impossible to fly. Better interface needed.

I find them very easy to contro. What is so hard ? Just point where you want to go or use the arrow keys if you want to do some special maneuver.

The minimap does not work as it did in OTA. This is a problem.

There is a new gui on the way

The fog of war is totally invisible. It makes it impossible to tell where I can see and where I can't. This is non-intuitive.

L. Read readme.

Radar coverage seems very spotty (is this a feature?). I like how radar blips wander a bit, and don't always correspond exactly to the location of the unit. This is a good feature.

WAD: Los based radar

It is possible to beat the normal range on many ballistic weapons by firing them manually. This is only kind of a problem, since they are really FREAKING difficult to fire manually, but I can see where it would be an issue with a vulcan or a BB.

It was also possible in old TA, by manually force firing at the feet of a unit. In OTA, vulcan and BB gained a few screen of range with that, but getting proper aiming was really hard, and it took much micro and time. Since it never really caused any abuse or unbalance in OTA, I don't see why it would spring. Also, I noticed that in Spring, projectile fired high in the air in FPS view often vanish when going too far. Therefore keep it. Even if it gives a little advantage, it's not bad as it would give an utility to FPS mode (which otherwise would never be used more than once).

Teams (not ally team, see how it is confusing terminology?) have difficulty working together. There are several solutions I can think of which all work together. 1) Be in the same room. 2) Allow team chats (not sure if this is possible now, but I couldn't figure it out) 3) allow teammates to mark units (special color patches?) and give them some whiteboard space to scribble on.

I'm not sure about team chat (but it's either already here or planned), but I know whiteboard already exist. I haven't yet found back the key on my french keyboard, but I've seen sreenshots with people using the whiteboard, which allow: hand free drawing, markers, named markers. Please refer to the \docs\readme.hmtl in your Spring folder.

Fighters are totally impossible to fly. Better interface needed.

At my first try I was also much confused, but once I realised that:
- Speed is fixed.
- Pitch/Altitude isn't fully controleable.
- Mouse define your wanted direction, but fighter takes time to turn.
- The down right icon with arrows over it is here to play
It became much easier to flight. It's the same for FPS mode in other units. You're not playing a flight simulator with full control, units are still limited by the way they move in TA. It takes some adaption, but you'll see, after a while you get used to it.

However, I would like that pressing C again gives you a FPS view with the unit still drawn. Something like sticking a camera right behind the unit, so we can better see the unit orientation and the turret orientation. The green and blue arrow are nice and can do the job, but not as easily and intuitively as seeing the unit itself would. It would also help me realise the unit I controlled just died.

The fog of war is totally invisible. It makes it impossible to tell where I can see and where I can't. This is non-intuitive.

Press L to toggle the Fog Of War filter.

Also, how do you share resources?

Tried pressing H?

I'm a bit low, now my reply comes too late.

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Then there is the labels on "team" and "ally team." These need to be changed, as they are confusing.


Well do you have any better names to propose ?

I would suggest "Commander" and "Alliance". Alliance will make it clear that you share a victory, but not command and control structures. "Commander", combined with the number from the menu, will make it clear that you are sharing commander 1 or commander 5, or whatever.

Maybe "Command and Control Structure", but that seems long like a long and unweildy way to say the same thing.

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It should default to "TA Style" camera when starting a game.


It does already ?

For me, it seems to default to FPS. It certainly is not up high looking mostly straight down.

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When queing up things in mobile factory type units (scarabs in XTA, for example), repeat order does not repeat build. This is non-intuitive.


Maybe, you might want to move it in a pattern without infinite que. You can just ctrl+shift click to get an nearly infinite que anyway

It's not a big thing, certainly, but if I wanted to move it in pattern, I would use patrol. Repeat only seems to make sense for builders, given that all other units can pretty much use patrol to do the same thing. I guess if you really wanted them to move in a pattern and NOT stop and engage the enemy, then you could use repeat, but that seems highly unlikely.

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When multiple people from behind a router are trying to play, they have 3 options right now. 1) They can play each other, 2) They can play play as non-hosts in someone's game (I haven't tried this yet, so it might not work), or 3) one can try to host and the other's computer will get confused trying to talk to the external ip address.


You can theoretically change the start.txt after the game has started for the other computers on the local net in order to give them the local ip, if the other players are willing to wait around long enough.

Ok. I'll do that in the mean-time. However, it could be fixed by adding a field to the config. Instead of the current one where you have a spot to enter your external address, you could make one where you put your external address, and one where you put your internal one (or maybe this could be autodetected?). Anyone joining this game would first check their local net on that ip and port to see if the game is there. If it is not, they could check the external address to see if it was there instead. This would break in the rare instance that there were people hosting a different game of TASpring on the local network on an address that happened to be the same as the one where the real host was on their real network. Perhaps this could be fixed by adding a check to see if a traceroute to the battleroom server goes through the same subnet as the external address. In any case, it seems like a pretty common thing that a bunch of people on a high speed line behind a router want to go online and kick several peoples' ass online, and they should be able to host without mucking about with text config.