Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sean Mirrsen]

I have it somewhere, but the "somewhere" is on the laptop, which is currently more or less dead. Well, it's been repaired, but I need to reassemble it. And my desktop can't handle Spring. But if I were playing, I could very well be worse than you - I tend to play defence and am very slow to expand, usually.

[PenguinOverlord]

I have it somewhere, but the "somewhere" is on the laptop, which is currently more or less dead. Well, it's been repaired, but I need to reassemble it. And my desktop can't handle Spring. But if I were playing, I could very well be worse than you - I tend to play defence and am very slow to expand, usually.

I daresay that used to be my strategy, until watching semi-good players rubbed off on me.

[ductape]

tried Spring: 1944

thought it was crap.

UI was horrible.

maps were flat and drab.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, the UI was never a strong point of Spring. The design of it, at least. The functionality is very good. I never played 1944, but I suppose that unless you dig WWII battles, such mods aren't going to appeal to you. Try Balanced Annihilation, SW:IW, maybe even Gundam. Personally, last time I played SW:IW (was called SWTA back then) I found it rather well-made.

[Neruz]

After poking Spring for several hours before finally getting it to work, i've concluded that i prefer original TA and SupCom to this. I can't really say if the gameplay is any better than TA, because the UI is so horrible i couldn't stand it for more than fifteen minutes.

Hell, i prefer TA:K to Spring.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Could you elaborate on something? In what way is Spring's UI "horrible"? On a forum of a game infamous for its unorthodox UI, this is rather strange. In terms of pure visual design, it doesn't stand up to even TA itself, true. But functionally, the controls and UI of Spring are very well done, exceeding those of even Supreme Commander. I had a (tiny) part in its development, so I know it works.

[Neruz]

You're suggesting that Spring's UI is better than Supreme Commander's?

Are we playing the same game? Did you install a UI pack or something?


DF's UI suffers from being overcomplicated and occasionally counterintuitive, Spring's UI suffers from (amongst other things) being completely incapable of registering interaction with it, unreasonable intrusion into the game screen and looking like shite.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I said functionally. Functionally, it's as good or superior. And it's not like there aren't UI packs.

I never found the visible part of it all that difficult to handle. It's about the same as in Total Annihilation, sans the screen borders. It sure isn't quite as intuitive (with the normal orders packed up on the first page along with build orders) or pretty, but you can, among other things, set it on "automatic infinite pattern repeat build", make area commands, build rows or blocks of buildings with variable spacing by simple click-drag, even one-click surround any building with any other building. And you can change building facing, something I was responsible for (and something I don't think Supreme Commander has. At least, I don't recall it having the feature). And there are 4 camera modes.

[Neruz]

The fact that approximately 1 in 4 times when i click on something in the UI it doesn't register the click isn't a functionality issue?

A UI's entire purpose is to be a graphical interface. If it looks bad, it has failed at being a UI. DF's UI is, functionally, actually not that bad, it's main failing is being overcomplicated, and it looks no worse than the rest of the game. Spring's UI is just plain poorly designed.

set it on "automatic infinite pattern repeat build", make area commands, build rows or blocks of buildings with variable spacing by simple click-drag, even one-click surround any building with any other building. And you can change building facing, something I was responsible for (and something I don't think Supreme Commander has. At least, I don't recall it having the feature). And there are 4 camera modes.

The only one of those that SupCom lacks is building facing, and that can be added in with a 5 minute mod if you really want it (SupCom buildings are surrounded by 'dead space' that units can walk through but buildings cannot be built on, so you don't need it.)

Furthermore, SupCom's UI can be broken down into little windows that can be stuck whereever you like, or removed entirely, they are unintrusive and user friendly.

Spring's UI is neither unintrusive nor user friendly. At least DF's UI is unintrusive and TA's UI has the excuse that it's an old game. What's Spring's excuse?


I'm somewhat unimpressed by the quality of the SFX as well, on the one hand it's a free game, on the other hand i've done plenty of particle emitter work myself, and it's just not that hard to get sensible looking particles like smoke or fire.

While i very much loved TA (still do) and i think seeing it in 3D is excellent, the transition i'm seeing from a visual perspective is less than impressive. I can't really comment on the gameplay transition, since i can't get Spring to run for more than 20 consecutive minutes before it crashes my video card.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I thought the New UI project was completed? I remember testing it, it allowed dragging UI components around.

Anyway, I'll try to put my laptop together and test the latest version out tonight. Maybe they did do something awful since I last played.

Also, the actual quality of things depends on the game you play. The P.U.R.E. project seems to have gone to great lengths to improve the visuals, while most others are content with the old-school puffy smoke and fires. And you can hardly blame the engine if your GPU can't handle it. There're a lot of settings available, tweak them down or something. Or update drivers.

[Neruz]

I can absolutely blame the engine, i have a quad-core monstrosity with a pair of Radeon HD4850's in it and a raging foot-long erection. Spring (at least Balanced Annihilation) causes them to crash entirely no matter what i tweak with the graphics. I've done all the usual things (driver upgrade, downgrade, sidegrade, tried removing one card since sometimes 2 cards causes poorly made programs to shit themselves etc) and it consistantly causes a loss of video feed approximately 20 minutes after the game begins. It doesn't matter what i set the graphics too, all high, all low, all over the place, it's quite consistant. I can only assume there's a conflict somewhere, but as i've never found a program that actually crashes my cards before, i have no idea how to fix it.

The graphics comment was more a personal gripe than anything else; i have seen and produced better particle effects in Warcraft III for christs sake, it's just not that hard. But i have hard expectations for 3D games, 2D games like DF can be pants in the graphics department all they want, but if you want to take things into the third dimension you better damn well do it properly.


Spring isn't a disaster, far from it, for a free engine and free mods they're all excellent, but ever since i started this games design course i've found myself looking at games incredibly critically, and very few manage to live up to expectation, especially when you're trying to create a 'sequel' of sorts to one of the greatest games ever concieved.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, they never really intended it to be a sequel. Their goal, from the get-go, was to make a freeform RTS engine. They just happened to like TA enough to make them start from supporting the game's content.

And you should really file a bug report about that loss of video feed. I dislike everything ATI and AMD (though not due to bad experience), so I wouldn't know what happens in there. Search the forums for a bit, someone else might have had the same problems.

edit: a 5-second search unearthed a fairly recent case with a rapid crash on a Radeon card. The advice was: "disable fps manager widget if enabled and make sure you use only basic, dynamic or bump-mapped water without shorewaves"

[Neruz]

They may not have intended to make a sequel, but Spring was marketed in the early days as TA in 3D, that's what it was hyped on, and that's what it failed to live up to.

I don't have the fps manager widget enabled, and i've tried all 3 water types. At this point i've lost all interest; too much work, not enough gain.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Theirs wasn't the best TA in 3D, or the first, or the most faithful. Look for the project TA3D if you want that - it doesn't have quite as fancy an engine, but looks alright and even uses original TA maps.

[PenguinOverlord]

First, stop the feud, I don't want you arguing in my topic, it's not productive and it's a pain to read. I find the UI decent enough, extremely easy to set up, and the rest seemed self-explanatory to anybody whom has touched TA before.(I have not.)
The game lives up to bloody TA in 3D, if you want to argue, give examples why. Is that too much to ask, really?