Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hobbyist 'Spring' RTS Engine Takes Shape

Posted by simoniker on from the totally-annihilated dept.

Dragon45 writes "Some interesting developments have just occurred on the hobbyist RTS game engine scene. The Swedish Yankspankers, long known within the Total Annihilation community for their professional-caliber modifications and add-ons, have released the first screenshots and videos of Spring, a 3D RTS engine under development (and under wraps) for quite some time. It works. Apparently, real-time terrain deformation (Before|After) and network play are already working. Spring HQ has more information, and needless to say, this one is definitely worth a look." The official FAQ explains: "We aim to get an early test release out quite soon (within a month or so)", and the 'About' page explains that, as an initial starting point: "TA Spring reads the [Total Annihilation data] formats directly without conversions needed."

7 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmm by eddy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just hope it isn't your standard RTS that has been defined by warcraft....

    RTS is "defined" by Total Annihilation, not *craft or Red Alert or any other game/series.

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  2. Hobbyist? by dmayle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And hobbyist means what, exactly? Free? Open? If it hits big it'll be turned into a commercial project? The last is the one I suspect. I hate to be a zealot, but I'd be more impressed if it were open-source. I've switched to Linux for 90% of the work that I do (I work on cross-platform software development, so I occasionally have to work on windows and OS X.) As such, I only get really excited when I see exciting new developments or Linux gaming.

    To counter-balance my curmudgeonly opinions, this is probably a very good thing in the eyes of fledgeling game developers, as it shows there are paths into gaming other than the standard, so I say bravo ti the team, and (hint, hint) when are we gonna see a Linux port? (Even if it's not open source?)

    1. Re:Hobbyist? by cyxxon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Another point is that I do not entirey see a motivation (I do not, they obviously do) to recreate TA, even make it load TAs resources, and then not release it as open source. I mean, there already is a closed source application that can do that, namely TA itself, and if this new one stays closed source, it will not be any better in terms of "runs on new and different OSs" and all that, because it will do so only at their goodwill, just like the original TA.

      All the other open source game engines (freecraft, scummvm, ...) had the goal to make it possible for users of new or different operating systems to play some old games, what is their goal? Just learning to code an engine is fine too, sure thing. Is that it though? Am I missing something here?

    2. Re:Hobbyist? by hal2814 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wait just a minute here. You're criticising the Yankspankers for not GPLing his project, but then you're talking about what works as opensource and you mention a company that only GPLs older products? Why aren't Quake III and Doom 3 opensource yet? I thought that game engines "just fit perfectly" into the opensource model. It seems to me that OLDER game engines fit into this model (at least that's iD's take on it). Your argument is very valid, but your heavy mentioning of iD shows a bit of a bias on your part that's really not fair to the Yankspankers. For all we know they might GPL this engine after it gets to be the age of the Quake III engine.

  3. Battlefield Annihilation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Hey! Isn't the first three screenshots using the El Alamein height map and texture map from BF1942? That's the German base looking north east, is it not?

    Actually I've used these texture/heightmaps for testing purposes as well. At first I thought perhaps they'd just done a photoshop job using BF1942 engine; but it looks like it's for real. Excellent! I loved TA; especially when we had a four player game lasting several hours; it started with a one hour base building/no attack period (no Krogoth at the time, fortunately).

  4. Re:Agreed by KDan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe a game like WC3 needs a different category than RTS. It was more RTT (real-time-tactics) than RTS, because most of the action was tactical. You could lose a solid strategic position very easily through bad tactics, which was a lot harder in a game like TA where overcoming a strong strategic position took time and sustained effort.

    All this shouldn't imply that WC3 is a bad game. It's a great game for what it offers, just not really a strategy game except in the loosest sense.

    Daniel

    --
    Carpe Diem
  5. Re:This was bound to happen... by Sigma+7 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    All it needs is a graphics update and it would be the best RTS on the market.


    Don't count on it. If a person writes his own RTS from scratch with beautiful 3D graphics, a highly polished interface, and great game balance, it would overcome TA. While the game may have had those three elements at the time it was released, the other RTSs have managed to overcome TA in one aspect (and therefore poked holes.)

    For its time, 3D graphics were impressive. TAK surpassed that but required a powerful computer to run.

    The interface was polished - you could easily configure how you want your units to engage. However, it does have problems where your units realise that their designated target gets destroyed and stop instantly in their tracks where they stand (resulting in your units not advancing towards the battle like they should.) TA units also don't try to keep formations. In addition, it's impossible to transport all of your 100 units across a river without having to micromanage your transports.

    As for game balance - it is passable but not perfect. TA 1.0 had air units that could dominate all the time. It was fixed in TA 3.0 with the addition of flak cannons - however, the other problem of 40 Advanced Construction Planes allowing "instant-build" is still present.

    I still don't see why everyone thinks WC is some kind of RTS benchmark. Don't get me wrong. It is fun, but limited. Warlords Battlecry is a superior fantasy RTS.


    Warcraft III is a game that is designed to focus around smaller groups of units - most other games are either a strict "victory by numbers" or a variation thereof. Not only that, but managing the small groups of units was possible by an interface that was well refined (but not perfect - it took until TFT before the most major interface problems were removed, such as inability to chain research and units in the same building queue.)

    In my opinion, WBC3 still has game balance issues - for example, the high elves have a building that can cast map-wide healing for 400 crystals (and also have units that generate one crystal per second.) In this case, it's quite easy to have a single tough unit wipe out an enemy base when it is supported by the instant healing.

    Also, WBC3 appears to have buildings a bit too resistant to siege weapons - the Manticore/Scorpion shoots multiple ballistas at a building, which only takes 1 or 2 damage. While I expect this to be fixed, the first impressions of the game are generally a bit more significant for game balance.