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

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?

[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.

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.

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