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."

Comments

Hmm

[FLAGGR]

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)

Re:Hmm

[eddy]

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.

Hobbyist?

[dmayle]

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?)

Re:Hobbyist?

[FLAGGR]

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 ;)

Re:Hobbyist?

[cyxxon]

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?

Re:Hobbyist?

[hal2814]

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.

Re:Hobbyist?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hobbyist?

[FictionPimp]

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.

Just because a project is open source, you dont have to expand a team. Just a download of the source would be all it takes to make it open source. Also, if you are honest and good at what you do, I wouldn't worry about forks.

It all comes down to doing what is best in your minds. My only hope would be that if you ever decide to abandon the project you would release the source code.

Erm

[TupperTrenine]

Is it just me, or are they using the BF1942 map El Alamein for the three battle screenshots?

Agreed

[caitsith01]

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.

Re:Agreed

[KDan]

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

Re:They should keep the TA engine

[caitsith01]

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!

The OTHER 4/5 of the TA Community

[prezkennedy.org]

Unfortunately when you get the dedicated fanboys in there doing the news for you, you miss some of the bigger picture. The TA community is much larger, and much more alive than the PlanetAnnihilation site would leave you to believe. (Why the last 3-5 topics there have all been about how that site is practically dead... and the webmaster there can't decide if he's coming or going.)

Just in case you didn't know about the "active" community, these are better places to visit:

http://tadesigners.com/
http://tauniverse.com/

And then there is always IRC for a potential game (newbies will be utterly whipped) on www.tauniverse.com:6667

This was bound to happen...

[way2slo]

A 3-D graphics TA port was bound to happen. The original game is THAT good. All it needs is a graphics update and it would be the best RTS on the market. Everyone should take a look at the two videos, here, before you start comparing it to WarCraft. Even StarCraft, which came out years after TA and is WarCraft's superior, was still not as good as TA.

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".

Re:This was bound to happen...

[Sigma 7]

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.