Spring RTS Engine

Im messing around making a mod and found terrain deformation to be a lot of fun, and perhaps have a little potential as a major game mechanic in a mod. Closing off or opening paths, making walls, creating hills to put artillery on, even creating rivers and lakes to put ships in etc.

A few questions though:

1. Does it desync, cause lag issues, etc?

2. Is there any way to make a weapon raise the terrain, rather than lower it (And no, i dont mean the 'restore' builder function.)

3. What are the variables that effect terrain deformation?

Thanks, any help appreciated.

It definitely causes performance problems, but I dont know about desyncs or lag though.




You can set a negative hardness on a map, that makes explosions form hills. But I dont know how you can do it on the mod-side.

Those new crater affecting multipliers implemented two versions ago, setting them negative might do it. Dont ask what exactly they are, but I think AA uses them extensively.

Afraid ive tried that one already, Maelstrom. It seems to just make it have no effect whatsoever on the ground. I havent figured out the difference between craterMult and craterBoost though so maybe there is hope....

Ive seen the deformation cause a performance hit on my machine, but usually only when you do a whole lot of it at once. It doesnt seem so bad most of the time.

Terrain deformation causes CPU usage that is directly proportional to the amount of deformation. Essentially, it makes the pathfinder a lot less efficient. I can't really recommend it for a game design that features a lot of units running around, but if you keep the unit-count low, then it should be just fine.

Deformation was one of the main attractions of the engine to me, originally.

XTA. Minelayers. Many 500metal mines... :) :) :)

electricteaparty.net/index.php/v/Neuffy/Spring/Mines01.jpg.html?q=gallery&g2_imageViewsIndex=1
electricteaparty.net/index.php/v/Neuffy/Spring/Deformation01.jpg.html?q=gallery&g2_imageViewsIndex=1
electricteaparty.net/index.php/v/Neuffy/Spring/Deformation10.jpg.html?q=gallery&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

Although...It's pretty hard to actually push down and destroy land. You generally just (or at least mainly) push it to the sides of the crater.

Spring is a closed system; land is never cerated or destroyed, just rearranged.

... lolz... somebody needs to be taught the .give command.

One of the first things I did when I first got Spring (.062 IIRC), was go onto SmallDivide - .cheat - .give 25 ARMCOM - .give 25 CORCOM - .give 25 ARMCOM - .give 25 CORCOM - .give 25 ARMCOM - ctrl+d.

Lost my PC for a while, but I DID get to see a crater with minus several hundred height in the center and plus several hundred (or was it thousand?) on the edge Also, the debris billowing down to Earth was UNBELIEVABLE.

Actually, I did for the fusions....

I just wanted to see if megamining was at all feasible in an actual game. I'm thinking not so much, unless I'm on Supreme Battlefield and I think the other guy'll be sending a Krogoth alone soon.