Slashdot Mirror
Hobbyist 'Spring' RTS Engine Takes Shape
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."
Sounds cool, and the screenshots look awsome, I just hope it isn't your standard RTS that has been defined by warcraft.... I'm gonna keep an eye on this one though, looks promising..... Oh, and it says that they haven't decided wether or not to go opensource, so maybe a little poliet encouragement from /.'ers would help? ;) It would be nice to have it OSS tho', I don't think there are any other opensource RTS's, and there is a large untapped market for MMORTS games like Mankind (the company would just have to run it better than Mankind was)
I agree with you. They say on their site they haven't decided if it will be opensource or not, which i basically see as "If we hit it big, then screw open source and the GPL, but if this turns out not so great, then you can have the code". There are some things that just shouldn't be opensource, but then somethings just fit perfectly (OSes and game engines) and you can still sell a game that has opensource code, because of the maps, models etc that it contains, and still be within the legal limits of the GPL (indeed, games like quake (1,2 and soon 3), doom (1 and 2, eventually 3) and Marathon are all opensource, but you still can't play the game without the CD for the maps and stuff. (I guess you could steal it, but thats not cool, if a company supports opensource then you should support them ;)
WC3 was not particularly innovative IMHO, even in the graphics department. Ground Control was waaay prettier and had better controls etc.
Even after playing WC3 I still return to Total Annihilation and Red Alert 2, surely two of the very best RTS games. I wish developers would realise that it is the gameplay and character of a RTS game that is crucial, not the pandering to D&D nerds with 'super' characters or allowing/forcing you to view the action from about 2 feet off the ground.
If I could change one thing about current RTS games, it would be to let me see the action from the same altitude as Total Annihilation running at 1280x1024... I want command and control, dammit, not a nice view of my soldiers faces as they get slaughtered because I am not zoomed out enough to see attacks coming. C&C Generals and WC3 were both particularly guilty of this - in Generals you can barely fit 3 buildings in one screen. In TA I could fit dozens of buildings in a screen and still know wtf was going on.
Read Pynchon.
Current features:
* High resolution maps, viewable from all angles and ranges
* Dynamic map with craters from weapon and unit explosions
* Work with unit files from Total annihilation
* Realistic 3D trajectories for weapons
* Fully 3D aircombat
* Several camera modes to suit different tastes
Knees buckle... oooooohhhh yeeeeeaaaahhhh!
Read Pynchon.
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. Check out the latest release here. Believe me, if you give it a try you won't go back to WC.
I just hope this team can "pull it off".
Ok im one of the developpers of TASpring and our main reasons for keeping the source closed at least for the moment is
1)Observing every other 3DTA clone they seem to all degenerate to a lot of discussion about background story and website design with very little actual coding going on. Better keep a small focused team.
2)If we went open source we could be pretty certain that the project would get forked and since it will probably have few players anyway none of the forks might hit a critical mass.
3)The cheating aspect, sure security through obscurity is never going to work but why make it easier.
Oh and about getting a publishing contract for it. We would probably release the current version with source and then work on a better version to sell.