Spring RTS Engine

Well, I managed to get SWTA working in Spring. Hoo-boy is it good fun. You can really see the effort that the SWTA chaps put into modelling and texturing pays off. If not for the somewhat boxy infantry, this is as good looking, and infinitely better playing, than any lucasarts built Star Wars RTS. Kudos to both the Spring chaps and the SWTA chaps. You're both brilliant!

Here's some pictures of my fun (apologies for the imageshack pics, and the low graphics settings):


Oh yes, that's me dogfighting in a TIE/Interceptor. Interestingly, aircombat works really well in SWTA, much better than in OTASpring. I'd say this is because of the high reload of your lasers, so that you can just belt away at the enemy aircraft, unlike OTA, where you've got one missile, and its gotta hit.


Shot of a gunboat in the midst of some pretty heated action.


Nice shot of some ground and air action.


Dogfighting action. Fantastic stuff, I'd expect something like this in the latest games... If only I had the computer to do it justice
Saturday I will! :)

If anyone is having trouble with getting SWTA working, ask and I'll explain it.
Note that not all the units work. Some units crash Spring (anything which has complicated script, transporters, speederbikes, etc), but for the most part its fine. Also, the commanders cannot move. This is an issue on some maps, as the only way to continue is to build a barracks right next to your commander.

OMGWITFLOL SPRING JESUS ON A STICK!!11

You'll get a mirror and a newspost in an hour.

It is much easier to explain how to get it working then to upload it, as I am on 56k. It would take me a few hours just to upload all the necessery files (such as the SWTA files themselves).

As long as you have the SWTA files (found at http://www.planetannihilation.com/swta ), all you need to get is the GAFDUMP program from here: http://www.planetannihilation.com/bsr/tools.html

Rename all the .swx files to .hpi, and move them to the Spring directory.

To get all textures working, open rev40.gp4 with hpiview, and extract all the texture files.
Then convert the texture files in GAF form to BMP for using GAFDUMP (read the readme as to how to use gafdump. You need to use Command Line. locate the program in command line, then type: GAFDUMP.exe -b)

Move all the extracted BMP's to unittextures\tatex\ in your TASPRING directory.
It should work.

Note that this is a very patchwork way of fixing it, and I've just sleuthed how to do it together from a number of sources found around these forums. If anyone knows of a better way (or indeed, a way to get some of the scripts and cooler animations [such as the droideka, which doesn't roll] working, please do.

If anyone had trouble following those instructions, speak up, and I'll explain it better. I know I find such things hard to understand.


EDIT: Oh, and strangely enough, this doesn't work with the "SWTA test" script in Spring, so I must be doing something wrong. But it works well enough to have some fun with!

Nice, I'll try that an upload it.
Uploading to FU.......
Uploading Done!


Note that:
- It is made of the latest version of SWTA released at SWTA website, that is, version 5 and its fix[/url]. So no Jedi, AT-AT or other uber-units that are still under work.
- I also added the Imperial Authority units. The buildpic style is so different you won't have any trouble to spot them. No unit has been rebalanced, but obviously you'll find imbalance and units appearing twice in different forms.
- This pack is unfit for use in old Total Annihilation for two reason: Totala.exe doesn't read .swu and the pack has weapons and menu conflicts Spring can take care of, but not TA.
- For some reason the movedata.tdf of SWTA was making half of unit unable to move, so I used the movedata.tdf of tahenter.ccx instead.
- I removed all AI units, because the Spring engine made them available for human players.
- There's probably a ton of buggy script that can crash the engine, an a ton of other bugs. Yeah, it's rough quick straight port, lots of time must be spend debuggin now.
- I've splitted the pack in two files, one with everything you need to play SWTA, but that has no sound, and the other with only the sounds. The sound file is heavy filesize-wise and optional.
- I don't know why the air bases build menu are so empty. Can't be because some Imperial Authorities units have the same names since I took great care verifying none as the same unitname.


You can download those two files from FU, but beware the bugs! It's more a beta showing what it can be than a playable thing.

- Complaints saying "it's bug ridden" not welcome. We know.
- List of units that do not work, with description of symptoms (at least if they they make Spring crash or just don't work) welcome.

dunno the new one looks god and can be played in space (with two levels one for starships one for fighters {thye CAN still fire at each other though}) but this looks VERY cool

Take out imperial authority, It will unbalance the whole thing.

Warlord Zsinj, how do you do to keep the custom projectile models?

zwzsg the custom projectile models will nto work with spring as it is now due tho engine code, however sean mirrsen has posted code changes for reompiling spring that get rid fo default model and fixes springs ability to load custom weapon models.

Hey I need that! Can anyone send me a recompiled .exe so I can pimp up TA:WD with custom projectiles? i'd greatly appriciate it.

I prefer Maestro's models from Imperial Authority however, I prefer the ballance (unit weapon damage) of SWTA, Maestro is truly an amazing modeler, he can model anything out there.

Ok:

- I more or less found out why many SWTA units were missing. SWTA buildmenus are shared between /gamedata/sidedata.tdf and /guis/.gui. No /download/*.tdf. The SWTA team used some trick to give the access to many units to the AI only, by writing a buildmenu in sidedata and overwriting it for the player with the guis things. Spring at first was reading all and rearranging the menu, giving me access to AI-only units. So I removed AI units and AI entries in the sidedata.tdf, and then Spring wasn't happy and refused to use the guis entries as well as a vengeance. I've somewhat fixed it by now. Airplant buildmenus are much more filled now. If there's any unit that is present in SWTA 5 for Total Annihilation and not present in that dirty and uber-buggy mod for Spring, please tell me.

- Spring uses custom weapons projectile for SWTA units and not any other. This is unfair!

- Fixed all the crashes on build of Imperial Authority units, by removing the spaces in the units filenames.

- I have an idea about rolling droids, I know Influenza said that he found StartMoving() and StopMoving() unreliable and MoveRate1() and MoveRate2() much more reliable to find out if the droid is moving or not. Probably Spring doesn't call MoveRate1() and MoveRate2() which aren't supposed to be used on ground units.

Still a gazillion bugs & crashes to fix. Feel free to list them, giving me the name of unit (something precise, as, for instance tie-fighters are quite numerous), the action that triggers the bug (upon building, firing, dying, etc...), and what the bug is (sometimes errors pop-up are helpful!).

I repeat, not ready for play, still crashes much too often.

Download the crash-prone SWTA & Imperial Authority for Spring v5.03 from FileUniverse.

I'm against packing Imperial Authority and SWTA in the same pack. They were balanced seperately, and represent two individual works. They should be packed seperately too.

---------------

Anyway, interestingly enough, some units work for me, and not for others using SWTA in spring, and vice versa.

For example, the speeder bike crashes my version of SWTASpring, but it works fine for Gnome. However, in Gnome's version, the Cloud Car crashes on building, while it builds fine for me [strangely, you can't fly it in FPS mode, although it bounces... XD ]

The hellfire tank (with the big circly wheels) crashes my SWTA too. Other than that, its not so widespread, and I wouldn't label it "unplayable" as if it is radioactive or something. I'm sure if players avoided the crash-prone units (all 3 or so for me), the game would play out fine.

I did not have any issues with AI units, zwzsg. The only unit that seems missing is the transporting version of the LAAT.
A couple of other minor issues: Because the LAAT (combat version) is able to fly and fire in any direction, it basically dominates any airborne encounter. Its massively unbalanced, so I wouldn't abuse it.
Also, the heavy repeater trooper (the one that has to unpack its gun to fire) won't unpack its gun. However, in FPS mode you can use its (very powerful) weapon quite easily.
Gnome says that attempting to pilot the ATPT will crash the game, although using it in RTS mode has no issues.

I am tempted to redo the infantry models to give them less blocky heads (and if I knew how, better walking animations), but that would take a bit of time methinks, when I'm trying to sort out the final pack of SWTA (with jedi, ATAT's, orbital bombardment, etc - I need help if anyone has time to spare).

I wish to use Imperial Authority models but rebalanced to go with SWTA. So far I imported every raw units, but I'm sure that if the stats are a bit adapated, and if duplicates are removed, it'll fit in nice and will save lots of work. Would be a shame to discard those beautiful models. Just look at them!

Well, I removed a few bugs between 5.01 and 5.03, but still, having many units crashes spring.exe straight when built sounded to me like a big issue, and one that prevent it from being truely enjoyable. Maybe I can soften the warning if that really annoys you. Only three units that crashes??? I thought they were more. But I haven't extensively tested so.... But if it's only three units, maybe we could quickly have a stable version.

Warlord Zsinj, would you happen to have the source .bos of the STWA units (mainly the Droideka, Repeater Blaster, and those who crashes) ? It's much easier to modify the original .bos, with named variables and comments, than a .bos uncompiled from from .cob.

Well, I think you should ask permission from each of the individual designers before packing them together. Its just a courtesy I think you need to extend.

As for the original cobs and bos files, I pretty much have whatever can be taken from the downloadable SWTA files using hpi view. Is that what you want? Otherwise I don't have anything else, perhaps ask Influenza if he is around.

I'll do some tests later and build every unit to see what isn't working (for me anyway).