Spring - User contributions [en]

Ubuntu install

2011-01-30T22:53:28Z

Dragon45:

[[Linux|Linux Setup Guide]] < {{FULLPAGENAME}}

__TOC__
[[Image:Ubuntulogo.png]]

packages are available for: 10.10, 10.04, 9.10, 9.04, 8.10

For packaging <font color="#00DD00">requests</font> or <font color="#FF0000">complaints</font>, please contact [[Linux:Packaging#Ubuntu | the packagers]].

= Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04 and 10.10 =
== Installation Instructions ==
Go to ''Applications - Ubuntu Software Center'', search for ''springlobby'' and click go.
If you want to be able to play online, see [[#Updating to newer releases|the next section]].

== Updating to newer releases ==
Go to ''System - Administration - Software Sources'', click the Other tab, click ''Add''. Type '''ppa:spring/ppa''' and close the window. Allow it to reload the packages, and you will find the new version of Spring and Spring Lobby in update manager.

If you're running Ubuntu 10.10, see "Missing repositories in Ubuntu 10.10 on this help page for software sources: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu.

= Ubuntu 9.04 and 8.10 =
We now have a maintained and up to date APT repository for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and 8.10 (Intrepid). If you have some older version of Ubuntu, you can easily upgrade with these instructions: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading.

You will need to add the Spring PPA below and install the ''springlobby'' package. Or you can upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 and just install the ''springlobby'' package from the new Software Center.

== Installing the repository key ==
First, we need to add the Launchpad PPA package-signing key; this allows Ubuntu to know the packages have been provided by the right people can can be trusted to be installed. If you skip this step then Ubuntu will complain about an unverifiable package every time there's an update for Spring.

Go to:
[http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFC66403D8670A035]

Cut and paste the page contents to a file called ''ppa-spring.pgp'' or something recognizable like that. Do not use ''Save As'' in your browser, as this will likely not work because of added HTML formatting. You can use ''Applications - Accessories - Text Editor'' to copy&paste into and save to disk.

Security-conscious people can go to the Spring Developers PPA page at [https://launchpad.net/~spring/+archive/ppa launchpad.net] to verify that the key mentioned above is indeed the right one to trust.

Now go to ''System - Administration - Software Sources'' and click on the ''Authentication'' tab to add the saved ''ppa-spring.pgp'' with the ''Import Key File'' button. The new key should now pop up in the list.

== Installing the repository ==
In ''System - Administration - Software Sources'', click on the ''Third-Party Software'' tab. Then, click the ''Add'' button, and paste one of the two lines corresponding to your Ubuntu release (9.04 or 8.10).

'''Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope"''':
<code><pre>
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu jaunty main
</pre></code>

'''Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex"''':
Note: Please note if out of date. (It i easy enough to try.)
<code><pre>
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu intrepid main
</pre></code>

Close the dialog, and click on ''Reload'' when it asks.

After that is done, you can just [http://springoo.mooo.com CLICK HERE TO INSTALL EVERYTHING]. Alternatively, you can head to ''System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager'', and search for ''spring''. For the bare essentials, you will need to install the ''spring-engine'' and ''springlobby'' packages.

SpringLobby can be found in ''Applications - Games'' after install. (Please note that you also need mods and maps to play. The easiest way to get them is to download them from within SpringLobby itself.

= Alternative installation using the terminal =
Press ''Alt-F2'' to run a command. Enter:

<code><pre>
gksudo -- wget -O - "http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFC66403D8670A035" | \
apt-key add -
</pre></code>

This will add the Spring-Developers PPA package-signing key to the list of keys that Ubuntu should trust for software packages. (See above for more info).

Then do:
<code><pre>
gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/springproject.list
</pre></code>

Copy and paste the following into the file:

'''Ubuntu 9.04:'''
<code><pre>
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu jaunty main
</pre></code>

'''Ubuntu 8.10:'''
<code><pre>
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/spring/ubuntu intrepid main
</pre></code>

Save the file. You can then either use the graphical package manager Synaptic (''System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager'') and search for ''spring'' related packages, or just install spring from a terminal using:
<code><pre>
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install spring spring-maps-default
</pre></code>

== Other information ==
You can view the web page for the repository [https://edge.launchpad.net/~spring/+archive here]. Additional packages (such as one for Kernel Panic) are there as well.

The package installs the Spring executable at <code>/usr/games/spring</code> and read-only data in <code>/usr/share/games/spring</code>.

= See Also: =
* [[Template: Finalizing_linux_install]]
* [[Template: Troubleshooting_linux]]

[[Category: Linux]]

SetupGuide

2008-01-02T18:51:50Z

Dragon45: /* Dependencies */

= Install =

== Version ==

'''The guide is fully up to date with release 0.75b2.'''

To play online, you must have the same version as everyone else in the game.

Most people should get the current release, version 0.75b2. There are usually
between 100 and 200 people online in the lobby, and if you want to play with
them, you need this.

'''Do not use older than current release version''', unless you really know what you are doing.

If you want to see the bleeding edge, you can checkout svn head of spring, but
it can not be used to play with people who have the release, so you are
practically limited to playing against nemo. This is mainly interesting for
people who want to contribute to the project, for testing, finding bugs and
fixing them, and implementing new features. Head can be seriously broken from
time to time, or not even compile.

== Packages ==

If there is a package for your distributions preferred package manager, it is
recommended to use it instead of compiling the program yourself from sources.

=== http://www.springlobby.info/images/debian-small.png Debian Etch ===

This is for version 0.75b2.

We need to use Yokozar's Ubuntu package, so we need some tricks.

The --build step will take about 15 minutes. Hopefully we have precompiled binaries for etch soon too.

<code><pre>
wget -q http://buildbot.no-ip.org/~yokozar/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | \
sudo apt-key add -

wget http://buildbot.no-ip.org/~yokozar/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list \
-O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/springproject.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep spring -y
sudo apt-get --build source spring -y
sudo dpkg -i spring_0.75~b2-1_i386.deb spring-data_0.75~b2-1_all.deb
</pre></code>

If you want to install SpringLobby also, follow the instructions in http://trac.springlobby.info/wiki/Install#Debian

Your paths are: Spring executable in <code>/usr/games/spring </code> and
read-only data in <code>/usr/share/games/spring</code>.

=== http://www.springlobby.info/images/debian-small.png Debian Unstable ===

This is for version 0.75b2.

Ubuntu instructions should work for debian unstable as is at the moment. They are right below.

=== http://www.springlobby.info/images/ubuntu-small.png Ubuntu ===

This is for version 0.75b2.

We now have a maintained and up to date APT repository for Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

If you have some older version of ubuntu, you can easily upgrade to Gutsy with these instructions: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

Do the following:

'''Those lines are long and split to fit on this page, you can copy-paste this to your terminal as is, as long as you copy all lines and not just one.'''
<code><pre>
wget -q http://buildbot.no-ip.org/~yokozar/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | \
sudo apt-key add -

sudo wget http://buildbot.no-ip.org/~yokozar/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list \
-O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/springproject.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install spring -y
sudo apt-get install spring-lobby-springlobby -y
</pre></code>
Also, if you want to download a few large maps you can do following:

<code>sudo apt-get install spring-maps-hunterw spring-maps-deltasiege spring-maps-smallsupreme</code>

For configuring the lobbies, you can note that the package installs the Spring executable at <code>/usr/games/spring</code> and
read-only data in <code>/usr/share/games/spring</code>.

=== http://www.springlobby.info/images/gentoo-small.png Gentoo ===

This is for version 0.75b2.

'''The location of the overlay will change as soon as we get this in official portage.'''

An overlay to use with layman is provided. If gentoo overlays and/or layman are new to you, [http://overlays.gentoo.org/ read about them], as they are an essential part of gentoo.

This example assumes you never used layman before. If it's not your first time, you hopefully know what to do.

<code><pre>
emerge layman
layman -f -a spring-unofficial \
-o http://svn.springlobby.info/trunk/gentoo/overlays.xml
echo "source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf" >> /etc/make.conf
echo "games-strategy/spring ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge spring
</pre></code>

Layman makes upgrading really easy too:

<code><pre>
layman --sync ALL
emerge spring
</pre></code>

Your paths are: Spring executable in <code>/usr/games/bin/spring</code> and
read-only data in <code>/usr/share/games/spring</code>.

== Build From Source ==

'''You might encounter sync errors in online play if you are not using the exact same version of the compiler and same compiler settings as used for prebuilt packages!'''

For 0.75b2 these are: TODO add them here.

If there is no package tailored for your distribution, you have to install from sources manually. Doing this for distributions where packages are available is not recommended.

=== Get Source ===

You can either download the source as a 3.9MB tarball (recommended; v. 0.75b2) or get it from the subversion repository. Either way, the result is the same.

==== Tarball ====

<code><pre>
cd /usr/local/src # or /var/tmp, or whatever
wget http://spring.clan-sy.com/dl/spring_0.75b2_src.tar.bz2
tar xjf spring_0.75b2_src.tar.bz2
cd spring_0.75b2
</pre></code>

'''NOTE: The .zip release is for windows only. Linux users have to get .bz2 like shown above.'''

==== Subversion ====

<code><pre>
aptitude install subversion # if you are not on debian, figure it out
svn co https://spring.clan-sy.com/svn/spring/tags/spring_0.75b2 /usr/local/src/spring_0.75b2
cd /usr/local/src/spring_0.75b2
</pre></code>

=== Dependencies ===

For Etch (debian 4.0 stable) and Sid (debian unstable), I've confirmed the
following to be the minimal set that is necessary to get. I have not tested
with any version of Ubuntu, but the line is probably almost identical if not
the same. Quilted tested with ubuntu fiesty fawn on july 28 2007 WORKS. Note
that Spring 0.75b2 depends on the boost libraries version 1.34.* and won't
work on lower versions. (updated libboost-serialization-dev, and libvorbis-dev dependencies for 0.76b1)

<code><pre>
aptitude install scons build-essential zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev
aptitude install libsdl1.2-dev libopenal-dev libglew-dev libboost-dev
aptitude install libboost-thread-dev libboost-regex-dev libdevil-dev
aptitude install libboost-serialization-dev python2.5-dev zip
aptitude install sun-java6-jdk
aptitude install libvorbis-dev
</pre></code>

This has been tested to work with a clean install of gentoo 2007.0:

<code><pre>
emerge dev-util/scons \>=media-libs/freetype-2.0.0 \>=media-libs/libsdl-1.2.0
emerge media-libs/openal =dev-lang/python-2.4\* media-libs/glew dev-libs/boost
emerge media-libs/devil app-arch/zip
</pre></code>

Users of other distributions should be able to figure out the correct package
names from this. The scons configure will whine if you forget something, but it
does not check if you remembered to install zip, even though you still need it.

=== Build And Install ===

The build will spew out warnings like the following, which you can safely ignore:

<code><pre>
warning: division by zero
warning: 'q' may be used uninitialized in this function
</pre></code>

Configure and build:

<code><pre>
scons configure
scons
</pre></code>

Install:

<code><pre>
scons install
mkdir -p /etc/spring
echo '$HOME/.spring' > /etc/spring/datadir
</pre></code>

Your paths are: Spring executable in <code>/usr/local/games/spring</code> and
read-only data in <code>/usr/local/share/games/spring</code>.

== Network ==

If you have a public ip and no firewall, then you don't need to do anything.

If you don't want to host any games, just join them, you shouldn't need to do anything.

If you have a firewall, to be able to host, you must enable incoming udp to port 8452. If you are behind a NAT, to be able to host you must either use nat traversal / hole punching feature in your lobby client, OR port forward that port from your public ip to your gaming machine.

= Finalizing installation =

Now all the things you needed to run as root have been done. Some stuff needs to be done by the user who is going to play spring.

I'm assuming bash here, but you can use anything you like to do it of course.

== Data Directories ==

Do this to create your per-user data directories. You will be downloading maps and mods etc to these dirs later.

<code><pre>
mkdir -p ~/.spring/{base,maps,mods}
</pre></code>

If the above did not work for you, then you can try:

<code><pre>
mkdir ~/.spring ~/.spring/base ~/.spring/maps ~/.spring/mods
</pre></code>

== Maps ==

You need at least one map to succesfully run spring.

Go to [http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/category/13/Maps/ Unknown Files, Map Section] and download at least one map. Save it under ~/.spring/maps/ without unpacking the file in any way.

Hint: If you know the map name you want, there is a Quick Search in the top right corner of the page. Just write a part of the name, like one word, and you'll easily find what you were looking for.

== Mods ==

You need at least one mod to successfully run spring.

Go to [http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/category/14/Mods/ Unknown Files, Mod Section] and download at least one mod. Save it under ~/.spring/mods/ without unpacking the file in any way.

Hint: If you know the mod name you want, there is a Quick Search in the top right corner of the page. Just write a part of the name, like one word, and you'll easily find what you were looking for.

If you want to view unit stats of mods, [http://modinfo.unknown-files.net/modit/modit.php this] is the site for you.

== OTA Content ==

If you want to play mods based on Total Annihilation, for example XTA, AA, BA, then you have to do the following:

<code><pre>
wget http://ipxserver.dyndns.org/games/spring/mods/xta/base-ota-content.zip
unzip -d ~/.spring/base base-ota-content.zip
</pre></code>

Note that you need to own a copy of Total Annihilation, to download this file legally.

Mods that do not require this file are at least NanoBlobs, TODO list other mods that don't need it.

== Settings ==

Defaults should be usable, so you can ignore this until you want to maximize your eye candy or fps :)

When you run spring the first time, it creates ~/.springrc which contains all the settings. It is a simple text file with name=value lines, most of which are pretty obvious and can be edited by hand.

If you want a tool for editing the file, you can use [http://springlobby.info SpringLobby]. Besides being a lobby client, it can also edit spring settings.

=== Dual Head ===

To make Dual Monitors work add/change these settings in your .springrc file.
"DualScreenMiniMapOnLeft=1,
DualScreenMode=1,
XResolution=2560,
YResolution=1024"

Make sure to use your own resolution for the X,Y resolutions. For example: you have two monitors configured for 1280x1024, the X,Y is 2560x1024.

Save then restart Spring.

== LuaUI ==

Spring UI is scriptable with Lua. This is called LuaUI, and it is not enabled per default.

Replace LuaUI=0 with LuaUI=1 in your ~/.springrc to use LuaUI.

To install some LuaUI scripts, start by copying LuaUI folder from you read-only data directory to your read-write data directory.

<code><pre>
rm -r ~/.spring/LuaUI
cp -r /usr/share/games/spring/LuaUI ~/.spring/LuaUI
</pre></code>

Then go find the LuaUI scripts you need from [http://spring.unknown-files.net/category/19/Lua_Scripts/ Unknown Files LuaUI Section]. All LuaUI scripts are released there, so if you make good ones yourself, make sure to upload them.

The scripts can come in any setup, so prepare to decompress them if they are compressed. They might have a whole directory structure, and they should have their own instructions on how to install them. Check which directory you need to extract them to. Most likely it is ~/.spring/LuaUI but it might be a directory inside this directory too for some script.

Once you have copied the script into place, when you start spring next time, you can press F11 to enable/disable anything from your list of installed LuaUI scripts. If your new script is not there, you copied it wrong.

== Lobby Client ==

To setup online games, you need a lobby client. There are several options to choose from.

You can also use lobby client to setup single player matches against the AI. TODO more information about setting up tasclient to play against AI.

Recommended lobby client for linux is either SpringLobby or AFLobby. You can use them in windows and mac too.

=== Omni ===

This project has been abandoned, and you should not use it.

=== UnityLobby ===

UnityLobby has been abandoned since april 2007, and you should not use it.

=== [http://springlobby.info SpringLobby] ===

SpringLobby is for (at least) Windows, Linux and Mac. It's now in a usable state and has a feature set close to that of TASClient for windows. Try it out! Bug reports and feature requests are very much welcome.

Visit http://springlobby.info for all things SpringLobby.

=== AFLobby ===

This project is very promising, and is usable for online multi player. Its the oldest lobby still actively maintained.

Official webpage for the project is http://www.darkstars.co.uk which should always have the latest release for download.

=== TASClient ===

I used to recommend wine+TASClient solution before, but now you should try SpringLobby or AFLobby first, before you go this route.

Certain newish version of wine fails with tasclient, TODO can't remember which one. It should be fixed in the very latest version of wine.

This is a windows program, but it works just fine under wine in linux, and can be used together with native linux spring. I used it myself before moving to SpringLobby.

The only two downsides in using this are that you have to use wine (which should not be a big problem) and your rank won't increase as long as you use it (also because of win-linux binary interaction).

TODO there is a way to make it support rank increases too, using trepans cool proxy, add info.

Download the installer of Spring for Windows, and run it in wine:

<code><pre>
wget http://spring.clan-sy.com/dl/spring_0.75b2.exe
wine spring_0.75b2.exe
</pre></code>

No configuration of wine should be needed, if your distribution is sane.

Complete the install, and let it install to the default location, which is Program Files\Spring.

Assuming you completed the earlier step of creating the data directories, now we need to link the windows and linux data together:

<code><pre>
WINESPRING=~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Spring
NATIVE=~/.spring

touch "${WINESPRING}/script.txt"
ln -s "${WINESPRING}/script.txt" "${NATIVE}/script.txt"

rm -r "${WINESPRING}/maps"
ln -s "${NATIVE}/maps" "${WINESPRING}/maps"

rm -r "${WINESPRING}/mods"
ln -s "${NATIVE}/mods" "${WINESPRING}/mods"

rm -r "${WINESPRING}/base"
ln -s "${NATIVE}/base" "${WINESPRING}/base"

rm -r "${WINESPRING}/demos"
ln -s "${NATIVE}/demos" "${WINESPRING}/demos"
</pre></code>

For the windows-TASClient to be able to launch native linux spring, we need a wrapper exe in between them. Source code for wrapper exe is:

<code><pre>
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <tchar.h>

#define NATIVE_SPRING_LOCATION TEXT("/usr/games/spring")
#define SPRING_VERSION_REPLY "Spring 0.75b2"

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
if (argc > 1 && !strcmp(argv[1], "/V"))
{
puts(SPRING_VERSION_REPLY);
return 0;
}

STARTUPINFO si;
ZeroMemory( &si, sizeof(si) );
si.cb = sizeof(si);

PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;
ZeroMemory( &pi, sizeof(pi) );

// Start the child process.
if (!CreateProcess(
_tcsdup(NATIVE_SPRING_LOCATION), // No module name (use command line)
GetCommandLine(), // Command line
NULL, // Process handle not inheritable
NULL, // Thread handle not inheritable
FALSE, // Set handle inheritance to FALSE
0, // No creation flags
NULL, // Use parent's environment block
NULL, // Use parent's starting directory
&si, // Pointer to STARTUPINFO structure
&pi)) // Pointer to PROCESS_INFORMATION structure
{
printf( "CreateProcess failed (%d).\n", GetLastError() );
return 1;
}

// Wait until child process exits. Wine actually does not know how to wait
// for native linux process, so this will return instantly and your gametime
// counter does not increase so you don't get any rank.
WaitForSingleObject( pi.hProcess, INFINITE );

// Close process and thread handles.
CloseHandle( pi.hProcess );
CloseHandle( pi.hThread );

return 0;
}
</pre></code>

You might need to modify the define-lines in the beginning to match your location and version. Remember, the version reply must be exactly right, or your game just breaks totally in multiplayer or you can't even login to lobby server.

Save this code to spring.cc for example, and then we need to install a windows-crosscompiler and compile a windows binary from it inside our linux box like this:

<code><pre>
aptitude install mingw32
i586-mingw32msvc-g++ spring.cc -o ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Spring/spring.exe
</pre></code>

This assumed debian for installing the crosscompiler, but mingw32 is probably simple to install on other distributions as well.

TODO should provide binary packages for this launcher, as all people don't have the possibility to set up cross compiler.

Then you should make a script for launching TASClient. The script can be named tasclient for example, and just put it somewhere in your path and make it executable. The script code is:

<code><pre>
#!/usr/bin/env sh
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Spring
wine TASClient.exe
</pre></code>

Now you should be able to type tasclient on the command line, and the lobby appears. '''This cd operation is necessary. If your working directory is not the same as TASClient.exe's location, it will just give access violations to you.'''

Note that every time when you have added new maps, the lobby client caches them and this will take some time, or a long time if you downloaded many maps since last time. Just wait patiently.

Then you should register an account and login with it, and you should be ready to join an online multiplayer game from the list that appears.

It's likely that you don't have the correct map or mod at this point, so just get them and join the game. You don't need to restart your lobby client after downloading the files.

It's recommended that you spectate a couple of high rank games first, to get some idea of how the game should be played. Some hosts don't allow spectators, but most do.

= Troubleshooting =

== Ingame ==

=== LuaUI Crash Ingame ===

LuaUI can crash during game, because some lua script you use has a bug. 0.75 should be resistant to this problem, but 0.74b3 is not. After crash, you won't see the bottom left tooltip box and top right resource bar anymore. Fear not, help is near:

<code><pre>
/resbar 1
/tooltip 1
</pre></code>

These might not be necessary in 0.75 anymore at all.

Also, you won't be able to change the build menu page with mouse anymore, but keys , and . do the trick.

=== Mouse is slow in fullscreen mode ===

Run:
<code><pre>
echo 'export SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE=0' >> ~/.bash_profile
</pre></code>
And log out and log in again.

The mouse should now be as fast as in windowed mode.

=== Rotating Buildings Ingame ===

You can rotate a building before you give the build order, but the keys that do this don't work in linux by default for some users. Issue the following commands in the beginning of the game:

<code><pre>
/bind keycodex buildfacing inc
/bind keycodey buildfacing dec
</pre></code>

Keycodex and keycodey above are just placeholders. What you want to write depends on which key you want to use. To see what keycodes any keys have, do:

<code><pre>
/keydebug yes
</pre></code>

And then hit the keys you want to use, and spring prints the keycodes in the message buffer.

TODO: add information on how to save the settings so that they work the next time you start spring.

=== Map is White ===

If the whole map is only shades of white and grey, there is a problem with your display driver. Maybe your gpu is very old and does not support some needed opengl feature. For example I had this problem with matrox g550 but not with some very old geforce.

== Startup ==

=== Missing Default Cursor ===

This or any similar error of not being able to find a specific file are usually because the mod you are using needs ota content, download & install as explained [[SetupGuide#OTA_Content|earlier in this document]].

=== sounds/button9.wav "cant find wav file" ===

Same problem as above.

=== GL_ARB_texture_compression not found ===

This can be an issue with your gpu drivers. The drivers you are using do not support a feature that is required to run spring. You might have better luck with the closed source official drivers of nvidia or amd cards. If your gpu itself is really old, this might not help.

If you use the fglrx ati-graphics driver and you are getting this error there might be a chance that still spring work (I use this with ubuntu gusty).
At first we must check that fglrx is installed correctly:

<code><pre>
~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6747 (8.40.4)
</pre></code>

Then lets check the glx-extention.

<code><pre>
~$ glxinfo | grep direct
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":1.0".
direct rendering: No
</pre></code>

If you get this message, notice that glxinfo releates to display ':1' and fglrxinfo to display ':0'!! Lets check the glx-extention on display :0 now.

<code><pre>
~$ DISPLAY=:0 glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
</pre></code>

Tis message mean that you can start spring by typing (in a terminal)

<code><pre>
~$ DISPLAY=:0 spring
</pre></code>

If you use the TASclient with wine and the native linux spring. Start the whole TASclient-start-script by typing.

<code><pre>
DISPLAY=:0 start-TASCLIENT-script
</pre></code>

But Notice under circumstances is no windowmanager running on screen :0! This means there are NO windowframes at the TASClient window! You can't move it or close it by clicking the closebutton (unless you click at the close button on the terminal-window in witch you startet TAS). You can although close TAS with the keys ALT-F4

=== OpenAL Segfault ===

If spring crashes with this output:

<code><pre>
OpenAL: ALC_EXT_capture AL_EXT_capture AL_EXT_vorbis AL_EXT_MP3
AL_LOKI_quadriphonic AL_LOKI_play_position AL_LOKI_WAVE_format
AL_LOKI_IMA_ADPCM_format AL_LOKI_buffer_data_callback ALC_LOKI_audio_channel
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
</pre></code>

Then bug nemo in #taspring to finish this troubleshooting entry. He knows how to fix it.

This is mod-related, ie. it only happens on some mods. Please list here the mod versions that give this error for you.

- Star Wars mod, unknown version, by user report

The problematic mod contains a sound file that crashes openal. You can try to unzip the mod file that crashed for you, and play each sound file. Please report any sound files that fail to play right, just list them here.

- unknown file

== Compiletime ==

=== make_gamedata_arch.sh not found ===

The .zip you downloaded is for windows, you must download a .bz2, instructions [[SetupGuide#Downloading_A_Tarball|earlier in this document]].

=== invalid use of ILvoid ===

During compiling, if you get a lot of the following errors:

<code><pre>
/usr/include/IL/il.h:497: error: '<anonymous>' has incomplete type
/usr/include/IL/il.h:497: error: invalid use of 'ILvoid'
</pre></code>

This happens because the version of libdevil-dev you have installed is not compatible with gcc version 4.2 and newer.

You should upgrade your libdevil-dev to fix this issue. However, in some distributions (at least gentoo), the fixed package has the SAME version number as the older unfixed package, so you might actually need to remove your current libdevil-dev package completely and reinstall it.

TODO: add critical version numbers of libdevil.

== Network Setup ==

Usually you don't need to do any network setup whatsoever, because the lobbies take care of nat traversal with firewall hole punching, but if you need to know the topology, it goes like this:

Host needs to enable incoming udp to port 8452, and outgoing replies to those.
Non-host players need to enable outgoing udp, and incoming replies to those.
So basically only non-host players initiate "connections", and only the server listens on a well-known port.

== If You Still Have Problems ==

Join to #taspring on Freenode and tell me (semi_) that you have problems with installing, and I'll try to improve this guide to solve your problem, if I have time.

However, generic linux problems not really related to installing this should be asked elsewhere.

Prepare to tell me your distribution, which installation method you used, and what exactly is the error. Don't ask if I'm here or not, just state your problem there and I'll look into it when I come back.

Other common problems and solutions coming soon.

== IRC ==

# #taspring @ FreeNode
# #sy @ QuakeNet

== Asking For Help ==

Ok so you need human help. This is how '''NOT''' to do it:

<code><pre>
15:54 -!- **** [n=****@*] has joined #taspring
15:54 < ****> Hi, i have a problem with compiling spring on debian
15:54 < ****> can anyone help me?
15:57 -!- **** [n=****@*] has quit [Client Quit]
</pre></code>

Don't ask to ask, instead go straight to business by stating the exact problem you have, and giving all necessary information. What you were trying to achieve, how did you try to do it, what happened and what did you expect to happen.

Then WAIT for someone to notice you.

== Configure Options ==

If you want to see the configure options, because of a bug in the buildsystem you have to have spring configured first. But if configure fails, you are out of luck. So I have listed the options here:

<code><pre>
$ scons --help
scons: Reading SConscript files ...
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
Succes building streflop!
Updating bitmaps.sdz
Updating springcontent.sdz
scons: done reading SConscript files.

platform: Set to linux, freebsd or windows
default: None
actual: linux

debug: Set to yes to produce a binary with debug information
default: 0
actual: 0

syncdebug: Set to yes to enable the sync debugger
default: False
actual: False

optimize: Enable processor optimizations during compilation
default: 1
actual: 2

profile: Set to yes to produce a binary with profiling information
default: False
actual: False

cpppath: Set path to extra header files
default: []
actual:

libpath: Set path to extra libraries
default: []
actual:

fpmath: Set to 387 or SSE on i386 and AMD64 architectures
default: 387
actual: 387

prefix: Install prefix used at runtime
default: /usr/local
actual: /usr/local

installprefix: Install prefix used for installion
default: /usr/local
actual: /usr/local

datadir: Data directory (relative to prefix)
default: share/games/spring
actual: share/games/spring

bindir: Directory for executables (rel. to prefix)
default: games
actual: games

libdir: Directory for AI plugin modules (rel. to prefix)
default: lib/spring
actual: lib/spring

strip: Discard symbols from the executable
(only when neither debugging nor profiling)
default: True
actual: True

disable_avi: Set to no to turn on avi support
default: False on windows, True otherwise
actual: True

use_tcmalloc: Use tcmalloc from goog-perftools for memory allocation
default: False
actual: False

use_mmgr: Use memory manager
default: False
actual: False

cachedir: Cache directory (see scons manual)
default: None
actual:

Use scons -H for help about command-line options.
</pre></code>

= Tips =

'''This section contains just some old crap I didn't write, and shouldn't be necessary.'''

* If spring hangs/crashes while in full screen mode, you can press ctrl+alt+backspace to restart X, so no need for a reboot.

* Spring uses OpenAL for sound, Config your sound output i.e esd / arts / oss / alsa by editing /etc/openalrc or ~/.openalrc, example: ("'(" is not a typo)<br><br><code>(define devices '(alsa))<br>(define speaker-num 2)<br><br>(define alsa-out-device "hw:0,0")<br>(define alsa-in-device "hw:0,0")</code><br><br>Adventurous people with an emu10k1 based card (sblive) can try the accelerated openal version. http://www.lost.org.uk/openal.html , don't submit audiobugs if you do.

* If you really can't figure out how to get spring compiled, or you think there's a bug in the code or the buildsystem...
:* Just poke any developer on IRC:
::* channel <code>#taspring</code> on [http://freenode.net/ FreeNode]
::* or channel <code>#sy</code> on [http://www.quakenet.org/ QuakeNet]
:* Post it on [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ the forum]
:* or file a bug in our [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/mantis/ bug tracking system].

''' [[Main_Page|<- Back to Main page]]'''

[[Category:Linux Port]][[Category:Playing]]

Smug Goat

2006-08-26T04:30:23Z

Dragon45: /* Isaac */

==The History==
[[Image:Cop.JPG|thumb|200px|right|<center> To Serve and Protect.</center>]]
There were days when the world was a formless ember in a sea of timeless cloud and chaos; days of holy ash and hellish light; days when the thought of Man was but a passing glimmer in the gazing eye of a capricious God and Creator.

SmuG was formed way, way, after those days. And as much as Nixa would like to believe it, he is not a God. Or a Creator. Except, perhaps, of SmuG. Which he was. Partially.

SmuG was formed on August 16, around Midnight (GMT -5:00). DragonMaster45 and Nixa were hanging out in a random lobby (clothes were on; holy crap, don't even joke about that) and Nixa mentioned that he wanted to form a clan that was skill based. Steven and Isaac of [LolSquad] had agreed; however, they also wished for a sweet name to be a requisite.
[[Image:Dinosafpic.jpg|thumb|200px|left|<center> Never forget.</center>]]
The founding group congregated like Baptists in a random passworded battle and brainstormed clan name ideas. DragonMaster45 suggested SAD (Shrimp And Lobster), only to realize his backcronym didn't fit. Steven, ever the satirist, suggested SmugG - Smug Goat. DragonMaster45 than suggested SmuG, for added brevity and visual appeal.

It went something like that, in any case. The SAD chapter is certianly true.

Nixa quickly invited ninjak and Silence into the fold, and so SmuG took the form it has today. It seeks to make a name for itself. It seeks - to have lesbainz. Groupies too! One day, perhaps. One can always dream...

==The Members==
<editor's note : Add yourself, people!>

*DragonMaster45: Occasionally he wears the [SWS] tags when he is doing [[SWTA|Star Wars Spring]] stuff. He actively pursues females in the real world and fails miserably. Accordingly, he hopes to be a Spring Pimp so the ladies can come to him, instead of the other way around. He plans not to use mace as much.

*Nixa: <s>While considered a God amongst mortal men, he spends most of his time sleeping... His spare time involves studying for a BE ( study? what's this word :o ) while trying to annoy day as much as possible for 1v1's. In reality, Nixa is a blatent noob who will most likely be beaten by some randoms newbs in 5 minutes.
</s> Nixa will write another bio for you SmuG fans when he is not experiencing a fit of Parkinson's.
O NOES!!!!
'''URGENT UPDATE:''' Nixa beat rANDY omggggggg

*Isaac: Gator spam kekekekekeke ^_^#

*Steven: I play guitar, i listen to gwar, led zeppelin black sabbath, i don't own a car.

No Sir, no you do not own a car. But you do own something far more important - the illusion of a small shard of dignity. Congratulations.

==The Mission==
SmuG seeks - to - conquer - the entirety - of - the - BATHROOM. Because we smell bad, and the lesbainz don't like that very much. Unless they like kinky stuff; in which case, they're more expensive. DragonMaster45 needs to get a job, then we'll be able to afford them better.

We also seek to make a name for ourselves and glorify the name of the Smug Goat who is our namesake and founder in spirit. <br />

[[Image:Isaac%27s_Smug_Goat.jpg|thumb|80px|center|<center> The Smug Goat.</center>]]
Insider's Note: We tried to pet him, but he kept eating our sleeves. D{=

==The Book of Goat==
===Weeks 1-2===

And lo, the Smug Goats went out and pwned many, noob and vet alike.
But their leetness was frowned upon, and their boasting became tiresome.
A new precept was declared by the Lord Goat-Tender Nixa: DO NOT BE DICKS.
And the Goats were much more cuddly after that. Except to jerks, whom they still destroyed with expected ferocity and bleat.

===Week 3===
And the Smug Goats continued carving their facades into the great Tablet of Spring history, and many awe-inspiring victories were achieved through practice and skill. A select few of them, those most appealing to the Great Goat were such:

*The slaying of three WarCs by Dragon45 in a stacked game on DigSite;

*The slaying of two XHCs by Nixa and Dragon45 on Green Comet;

*The annihilation of three XHCs by Dragon45 in a stacked game on NightScape, using tactics so effective that he was subsequently banned from all XHC games;

*And the ultimate victory; the crushing of the legend PRO_rAndy by Nixa in a match so epic that it shall remain a powerful lesson in tactics, aggression, expansion, and surprise.

And many bleats were pleasurably bleated by the Great Bleatiest of All Bleaters, the Great Smug Goat himself, and he continued masticating shirt-sleeves.

==Bleated Wisdoms==
Contained herein are the wise words of the followers of the Goat.
===Isaac===
*If you make too many slices of toast they will be cold before you finish buttering them. Getting too greedy means you have to eat cold toast :( <cite><br>August 25, 2006</cite>

Smug Goat

2006-08-26T04:30:12Z

Dragon45: /* Isaac */

Smug Goat

2006-08-26T04:29:58Z

Dragon45: /* Isaac */

Smug Goat

2006-08-26T04:29:18Z

Dragon45:

==The History==
[[Image:Cop.JPG|thumb|200px|right|<center> To Serve and Protect.</center>]]
There were days when the world was a formless ember in a sea of timeless cloud and chaos; days of holy ash and hellish light; days when the thought of Man was but a passing glimmer in the gazing eye of a capricious God and Creator.

SmuG was formed way, way, after those days. And as much as Nixa would like to believe it, he is not a God. Or a Creator. Except, perhaps, of SmuG. Which he was. Partially.

SmuG was formed on August 16, around Midnight (GMT -5:00). DragonMaster45 and Nixa were hanging out in a random lobby (clothes were on; holy crap, don't even joke about that) and Nixa mentioned that he wanted to form a clan that was skill based. Steven and Isaac of [LolSquad] had agreed; however, they also wished for a sweet name to be a requisite.
[[Image:Dinosafpic.jpg|thumb|200px|left|<center> Never forget.</center>]]
The founding group congregated like Baptists in a random passworded battle and brainstormed clan name ideas. DragonMaster45 suggested SAD (Shrimp And Lobster), only to realize his backcronym didn't fit. Steven, ever the satirist, suggested SmugG - Smug Goat. DragonMaster45 than suggested SmuG, for added brevity and visual appeal.

It went something like that, in any case. The SAD chapter is certianly true.

Nixa quickly invited ninjak and Silence into the fold, and so SmuG took the form it has today. It seeks to make a name for itself. It seeks - to have lesbainz. Groupies too! One day, perhaps. One can always dream...

==The Members==
<editor's note : Add yourself, people!>

*DragonMaster45: Occasionally he wears the [SWS] tags when he is doing [[SWTA|Star Wars Spring]] stuff. He actively pursues females in the real world and fails miserably. Accordingly, he hopes to be a Spring Pimp so the ladies can come to him, instead of the other way around. He plans not to use mace as much.

*Nixa: <s>While considered a God amongst mortal men, he spends most of his time sleeping... His spare time involves studying for a BE ( study? what's this word :o ) while trying to annoy day as much as possible for 1v1's. In reality, Nixa is a blatent noob who will most likely be beaten by some randoms newbs in 5 minutes.
</s> Nixa will write another bio for you SmuG fans when he is not experiencing a fit of Parkinson's.
O NOES!!!!
'''URGENT UPDATE:''' Nixa beat rANDY omggggggg

*Isaac: Gator spam kekekekekeke ^_^#

*Steven: I play guitar, i listen to gwar, led zeppelin black sabbath, i don't own a car.

No Sir, no you do not own a car. But you do own something far more important - the illusion of a small shard of dignity. Congratulations.

==The Mission==
SmuG seeks - to - conquer - the entirety - of - the - BATHROOM. Because we smell bad, and the lesbainz don't like that very much. Unless they like kinky stuff; in which case, they're more expensive. DragonMaster45 needs to get a job, then we'll be able to afford them better.

We also seek to make a name for ourselves and glorify the name of the Smug Goat who is our namesake and founder in spirit. <br />

[[Image:Isaac%27s_Smug_Goat.jpg|thumb|80px|center|<center> The Smug Goat.</center>]]
Insider's Note: We tried to pet him, but he kept eating our sleeves. D{=

==The Book of Goat==
===Weeks 1-2===

And lo, the Smug Goats went out and pwned many, noob and vet alike.
But their leetness was frowned upon, and their boasting became tiresome.
A new precept was declared by the Lord Goat-Tender Nixa: DO NOT BE DICKS.
And the Goats were much more cuddly after that. Except to jerks, whom they still destroyed with expected ferocity and bleat.

===Week 3===
And the Smug Goats continued carving their facades into the great Tablet of Spring history, and many awe-inspiring victories were achieved through practice and skill. A select few of them, those most appealing to the Great Goat were such:

*The slaying of three WarCs by Dragon45 in a stacked game on DigSite;

*The slaying of two XHCs by Nixa and Dragon45 on Green Comet;

*The annihilation of three XHCs by Dragon45 in a stacked game on NightScape, using tactics so effective that he was subsequently banned from all XHC games;

*And the ultimate victory; the crushing of the legend PRO_rAndy by Nixa in a match so epic that it shall remain a powerful lesson in tactics, aggression, expansion, and surprise.

And many bleats were pleasurably bleated by the Great Bleatiest of All Bleaters, the Great Smug Goat himself, and he continued masticating shirt-sleeves.

==Bleated Wisdoms==
Contained herein are the wise words of the followers of the Goat.
===Isaac===
Iif you make too many slices of toast they will be cold before you finish buttering them. Getting too greedy means you have to eat cold toast :(

<cit>August 25, 2006</cit>

Smug Goat

2006-08-24T19:36:18Z

Dragon45: /* Week 3 */

2006-08-17T04:32:49Z

Dragon45:

Using Spring

2006-07-21T17:28:08Z

Dragon45: /* General Function Keys */

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current [http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/springrts/taspring/README.html README.html] (should be mirrored [[Readme|here]])or [[Read_Me_First]]. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the [[Spring_guide%21]]. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the [[Mods]] section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/changelog.txt changelog] or the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ TA Spring Forums].

==Camera Controls==

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

===Camera Modes===

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

====Classic Overhead(TA) Style====
The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

====Total War Style====
The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

====FPS Style====
In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

====Rotatable Overhead Camera====

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

====FPS "Mode" (C)====
Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:
*Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
*Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
*Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
*Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
*Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
*Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

===Zooming Changes===
Starting in version 0.72b1 there were some changes made to the zooming controls.

====Mousepoint Zooming====
When you zoom out the camera will move back from the center of the screen in such a way as to expand your view. When you zoom back in, however, the camera will shift focus towards the mouse pointer as your new center.

====Tab Zooming====
Pressing the TAB key will zoom you out to the point where the entire map will be visible from a special top-down perspective(in future versions this view will be [[CustomUnitIcons|iconified with CustomUnitIcons]]), then pressing the TAB key again with zoom you back to the same height and angle of view you were at before, but again, using your mouse pointer position as the new center.

===General Function Keys===

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

*'''F1''': Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) indicates a height difference of 32.
*'''F2''': Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
**'''Mobile Unit Selected''': If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
**'''Builder Selected''': When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
*'''F3''': Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
*'''F4''': Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
*'''F5''': Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
*'''F6''': Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
*'''F7''': Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
*'''F8''': Save the Game. Not currently supported.
*'''F9''': Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
*'''F11/F12''': Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
*''';/L''': These commands toggle visible Fog of War and Radar Coverage areas. <b>L</b> toggles visible line of sight while <b>;</b> controls radar and jammer coverage viewing within the Fog of War mode. All Radar and Line of Sight is impeded or helped by terrain; placing a radar/jammer on a hill will allow you to view/jam most of the area; placing either in a pit will not allow you to view/jam beyond the pit. Sonar coverage is included in these overlays.
**'''Color Key''':
***'''Light Green''' = Radar and LOS
***'''Green''' = Aerial LOS and Radar
***'''Dark Green''' = Radar only
***'''Normal''' = LOS only
***'''Grey''' = Aerial LOS only
***'''Dark Grey''' = No coverage in that area
***'''Light Red''' = Jammed with LOS
***'''Red''' = Jammed with Aerial LOS
***'''Dark Red''' = Jammed with no LOS
***'''Light Yellow''' = Jammed, LOS and Radar
***'''Yellow''' = Jammed, Radar, and Aerial LOS
***'''Dark Yellow''' = Jammed and Radar
**'''Important''': Areas with Aerial LOS permit viewing only of air units, projectiles, and certain graphics such as smoke and shields. A perfect base would have light yellow everywhere. Due to lack of code optimization, the LOS/Fog of War overlay is updated about once every two seconds (?), so it would be unwise to rely upon it to give you coverage information about fast moving units such as Peepers and Eagles.

*'''TAB''': Toggles "[[Using_Spring#Tab_Zooming|Tab Zoom]]"
*'''Pause''': Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

===Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View===
Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

==Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI==

===The Selection Editor===

'''SelectionEditor.exe''' is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your '''selectkeys.txt''' configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 Forum Thread] has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

===Default Selection Controls===

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

====Selecting/Deselecting Units====
Unless you have issued a pending command(see [[#Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)|Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)]]), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group will select all visible (camera bounds) units of the clicked type. Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection.

CTRL+Z is a shortcut to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.
<br />
<table><tr><td>"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface. If units are selected, this information is the sum of all information about all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show information about the terrain.
</td><td>
[[Image:CommanderTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Commander Selected]]
[[Image:TerrainTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)]]
</td><td>
[[Image:BuildMexTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover]]
[[Image:RepairTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Repair Command Hover]]</td></tr></table>
[[Image:PeeweeGroupTooltip.png|frame|center|Group of units Selected]]

====Basic Unit Groups====

Spring supports assigning units to numbered groups. You can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from its current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. If you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

====Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs====

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See [[#Select_AI_.28CTRL.2BQ.29|Select AI (CTRL+Q)]] for information on these "Group AIs".

See [[#Assign/Select_Current_Group (Q)|Assign/Select Current Group (Q)]] to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

==Issuing Orders/Building==

====Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)====
As covered in [[#Selecting/Deselecting Units|Selecting/Deselecting Units]], left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action, which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu. Mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

====Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)====
Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

====Queueing Orders====

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding SHIFT will show the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this is to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. Just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemy's base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

===Building Buildings===
When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).
<br><br>
{| align="center" width="500px" bgcolor="white" border="1px"
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
|[[Image:BuildPlateOkay.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
|[[Image:BuildPlateResolvable.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.
|[[Image:BuildPlateBad.png]]
|}

====Build (select structure then left-click)====

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

====Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)====

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

====Build Line (SHIFT)====
(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Build]]
|}

====Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)====
(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)====
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTUNIT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)====
(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease.

Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Build]]
|}

===Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)===

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

=== Default Commands and Hotkeys===
It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

====Active State (X)====
This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off.
If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats.
For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar. Turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up", increasing it's armor.
This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

====Attack (A)====
Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them (depending on their [[#Move State|Move State]]) a certain distance before returning to their starting location.

====Capture====
The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant and forgotten to protect it, grab a nearby construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's [[#Fire State|fire state]] to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

====Cloak (K)====
Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

====DGun (D)====
Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used by the Commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this.

====Fire State====
Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

''' Fire at Will :''' This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

''' Hold Fire :''' This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

''' Return Fire :''' Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

====Guard (G)====
The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, Units 1 and 2 would also join Unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

====High Trajectory====
If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.

A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.

Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

====Move (M)====
There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. In this case, formation means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving, as with the "Square Move" command.

'''Notes:''' Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on [[#Repeat|Repeat]], units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

====Move State====

Like [[#Fire State|Fire State]], this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

====Patrol (P)====

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling, it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, [[#Move State|move state]], and [[#Fire State|fire state]].

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

*If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged (or under contsruction) owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.

*If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

====Reclaim (E)====

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

'''Default Behavior:''' Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will not increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

====Repair (R)====
When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health.
Valid targets are any damaged units and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

====Assign/Select Current Group (Q)====
This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring#Default_Selection_Controls Default selection Controls] for more info on groups.

====Repeat====

When turned on, Repeat moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, if you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Repeat may literally be used with any command set. The power of this command must not be underestimated! For example, it is possible to create a an air transport whose sole purpose is to fly units to the front lines or to another area automatically from the factory:
<Repeat> Group-Load, Group-Unload

It is possible to create a "repair zone" using Group-Repair and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Repair

It is possible to create a "reclaim zone" at the front lines using a nano tower or other construction unit, and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Reclaim

It is even possible, to bypass the limitations of the Patrol command using repeat. Units on patrol tend chase down enemies; however, if Repeat is used in conjunction with the standard Move command, you could pontentially set artillery units to go near the enemy front lines, fire several shots, and then come back to a repair zone, only to go back and repeat the cycle!

====Restore====

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or the contruction of a building.

====Resurrect====

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponent's army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.

Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurrected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)

Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them (probably the one the engine decides actually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

====Select AI (CTRL+Q)====

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "[[AIs|Group AI]]" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

The following [[AIs|Group AI]]s ship with Spring. More might be available from other sources.

None
[[Simple Formation]]
[[Central Build AI]]
[[Metal Maker AI]]
[[Radar AI]]
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

====Self Destruct (CTRL+D)====
Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular explosion after a specific count-down (default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D (Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

====Stop (S)====
Makes the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

====Wait (W)====

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, press Shift+W, and then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Wait is a standard command; by using Repeat in conjunction with wait, it is possible to create precisely timed strike and raiding groups.

==Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands==

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

===Basic Text Commands===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr>
<th>Command</th><th>Effect</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.info</td><td>Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.clock</td><td>Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.take</td><td>Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost ''all'' their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setmaxspeed #</td><td>Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setminspeed #</td><td>Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)</td>
</tr>

</table>

===Cheat Codes===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr><th>Cheat Command</th><th>Effect</th></tr>

<tr>
<td>'''.cheat'''</td><td>'''enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this'''</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.nocost</td><td>Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.spectator</td><td>Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.team 0, .team 1, etc.</td><td>Change player</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, .give all, etc.</td><td>Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition. Use the "all" switch to get ALL the units in the current mod.</td>
</tr>

</table>

==Map Doodles==

Hold the ` or \ key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game. Good teams will use this frequently mark out attack patterns and enemy weak points. Be creative; do not be annoying. Drawing select portions of human anatomy on the map becomes very stupid very quickly.

Hold ` or \ while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` or \ and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: On some keyboards, the ` is replaced with Ã‚Â§, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file.

On azerty keyboards, * and ÃƒÂ¹ (near return) work, although ~ does not.

== Customizing keyboard shortcuts ==

There are several categories of keys in Spring that can be customized.

===Unit Action Keys===

These are keys that control unit actions. They're all listed [[Using Spring#Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys|above]] and in the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Readme#Key_assignments Key Assignments] section of the README. The README can also be found in the docs folder of your Spring installation.

These keys are hardcoded and cannot be changed. While a unit is selected, 'A' will always issue an attack order and 'M' will always issue a move order. You can still bind the key to something else in uikeys.txt or the Selection Keys Editor, but your binding will only work when you don't have any units selected.

===User Interface keys===

{{Uikeys_Commands}}

Many key bindings related to the user interface can be edited through the '''uikeys.txt''' file found in Spring folder. You should be able to work out the format by skimming it, it's fairly simple. Key bindings load upon game start, and can't be changed in middle of the game.

A few keys related to the UI can't be changed:

- Mouse button functions.

- Behaviour of shift/control

- Behaviour of shift/control + Middle mouse button.

The correct way to bind keys is to put single-quotes around letter keys, like this:

''bind 'x' mouse3''

You can also comment out any bind to quickly disable it by putting "//" before it:

''//bind home increaseViewRadius''

Function keys and some other keys don't need single quotes. They're listed in the "Special Bindable Keys" list, below.

{| style="float: center; background-color: white;"
|Special Bindable Keys:
{|
|
'''Function'''
* Home
* End
* insert
* delete
* space
* f1-f12
* esc
* `
* Ã‚Â§
* enter
* backspace
* pause
* pageup
* pagedown
|
'''Modifiers'''
* ctrl
* Shift
'''Arrow'''
* Up
* Down
* Left
* Rigth
|}
|}

===Selection keys===

This is the best part, and is already covered [[Using Spring#The Selection Editor|earlier]] in this document.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well these keys, as all that are related to "selected units" are now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to pro levels.

Look at [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 this thread] to learn more on editing these selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.

[[Category:Playing]]

Using Spring

2006-07-21T17:26:55Z

Dragon45: /* General Function Keys */

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current [http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/springrts/taspring/README.html README.html] (should be mirrored [[Readme|here]])or [[Read_Me_First]]. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the [[Spring_guide%21]]. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the [[Mods]] section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/changelog.txt changelog] or the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ TA Spring Forums].

==Camera Controls==

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

===Camera Modes===

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

====Classic Overhead(TA) Style====
The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

====Total War Style====
The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

====FPS Style====
In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

====Rotatable Overhead Camera====

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

====FPS "Mode" (C)====
Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:
*Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
*Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
*Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
*Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
*Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
*Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

===Zooming Changes===
Starting in version 0.72b1 there were some changes made to the zooming controls.

====Mousepoint Zooming====
When you zoom out the camera will move back from the center of the screen in such a way as to expand your view. When you zoom back in, however, the camera will shift focus towards the mouse pointer as your new center.

====Tab Zooming====
Pressing the TAB key will zoom you out to the point where the entire map will be visible from a special top-down perspective(in future versions this view will be [[CustomUnitIcons|iconified with CustomUnitIcons]]), then pressing the TAB key again with zoom you back to the same height and angle of view you were at before, but again, using your mouse pointer position as the new center.

===General Function Keys===

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

*'''F1''': Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) indicates a height difference of 32.
*'''F2''': Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
**'''Mobile Unit Selected''': If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
**'''Builder Selected''': When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
*'''F3''': Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
*'''F4''': Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
*'''F5''': Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
*'''F6''': Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
*'''F7''': Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
*'''F8''': Save the Game. Not currently supported.
*'''F9''': Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
*'''F11/F12''': Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
*''';/L''': These commands toggle visible Fog of War and Radar Coverage areas. <b>L</b> toggles visible line of sight while <b>;</b> controls radar and jammer coverage viewing within the Fog of War mode. All Radar and Line of Sight is impeded or helped by terrain; placing a radar/jammer on a hill will allow you to view/jam most of the area; placing either in a pit will not allow you to view/jam beyond the pit. Sonar coverage is included in these overlays.
**'''Color Key''':
***'''Light Green''' = Radar and LOS
***'''Green''' = Aerial LOS and Radar
***'''Dark Green''' = Radar only

***'''Normal''' = LOS only
***'''Grey''' = Aerial LOS only
***'''Dark Grey''' = No coverage in that area

***'''Light Red''' = Jammed with LOS
***'''Red''' = Jammed with Aerial LOS
***'''Dark Red''' = Jammed with no LOS

***'''Light Yellow''' = Jammed, LOS and Radar
***'''Yellow''' = Jammed, Radar, and Aerial LOS
***'''Dark Yellow''' = Jammed and Radar
**'''Important''': Areas with Aerial LOS permit viewing only of air units, projectiles, and certain graphics such as smoke and shields. A perfect base would have light yellow everywhere. Due to lack of code optimization, the LOS/Fog of War overlay is updated about once every two seconds (?), so it would be unwise to rely upon it to give you coverage information about fast moving units such as Peepers and Eagles.

*'''TAB''': Toggles "[[Using_Spring#Tab_Zooming|Tab Zoom]]"
*'''Pause''': Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

===Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View===
Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

==Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI==

===The Selection Editor===

'''SelectionEditor.exe''' is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your '''selectkeys.txt''' configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 Forum Thread] has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

===Default Selection Controls===

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

====Selecting/Deselecting Units====
Unless you have issued a pending command(see [[#Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)|Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)]]), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group will select all visible (camera bounds) units of the clicked type. Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection.

CTRL+Z is a shortcut to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.
<br />
<table><tr><td>"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface. If units are selected, this information is the sum of all information about all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show information about the terrain.
</td><td>
[[Image:CommanderTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Commander Selected]]
[[Image:TerrainTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)]]
</td><td>
[[Image:BuildMexTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover]]
[[Image:RepairTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Repair Command Hover]]</td></tr></table>
[[Image:PeeweeGroupTooltip.png|frame|center|Group of units Selected]]

====Basic Unit Groups====

Spring supports assigning units to numbered groups. You can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from its current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. If you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

====Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs====

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See [[#Select_AI_.28CTRL.2BQ.29|Select AI (CTRL+Q)]] for information on these "Group AIs".

See [[#Assign/Select_Current_Group (Q)|Assign/Select Current Group (Q)]] to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

==Issuing Orders/Building==

====Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)====
As covered in [[#Selecting/Deselecting Units|Selecting/Deselecting Units]], left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action, which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu. Mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

====Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)====
Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

====Queueing Orders====

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding SHIFT will show the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this is to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. Just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemy's base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

===Building Buildings===
When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).
<br><br>
{| align="center" width="500px" bgcolor="white" border="1px"
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
|[[Image:BuildPlateOkay.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
|[[Image:BuildPlateResolvable.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.
|[[Image:BuildPlateBad.png]]
|}

====Build (select structure then left-click)====

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

====Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)====

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

====Build Line (SHIFT)====
(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Build]]
|}

====Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)====
(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)====
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTUNIT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)====
(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease.

Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Build]]
|}

===Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)===

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

=== Default Commands and Hotkeys===
It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

====Active State (X)====
This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off.
If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats.
For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar. Turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up", increasing it's armor.
This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

====Attack (A)====
Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them (depending on their [[#Move State|Move State]]) a certain distance before returning to their starting location.

====Capture====
The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant and forgotten to protect it, grab a nearby construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's [[#Fire State|fire state]] to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

====Cloak (K)====
Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

====DGun (D)====
Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used by the Commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this.

====Fire State====
Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

''' Fire at Will :''' This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

''' Hold Fire :''' This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

''' Return Fire :''' Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

====Guard (G)====
The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, Units 1 and 2 would also join Unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

====High Trajectory====
If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.

A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.

Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

====Move (M)====
There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. In this case, formation means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving, as with the "Square Move" command.

'''Notes:''' Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on [[#Repeat|Repeat]], units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

====Move State====

Like [[#Fire State|Fire State]], this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

====Patrol (P)====

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling, it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, [[#Move State|move state]], and [[#Fire State|fire state]].

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

*If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged (or under contsruction) owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.

*If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

====Reclaim (E)====

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

'''Default Behavior:''' Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will not increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

====Repair (R)====
When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health.
Valid targets are any damaged units and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

====Assign/Select Current Group (Q)====
This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring#Default_Selection_Controls Default selection Controls] for more info on groups.

====Repeat====

When turned on, Repeat moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, if you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Repeat may literally be used with any command set. The power of this command must not be underestimated! For example, it is possible to create a an air transport whose sole purpose is to fly units to the front lines or to another area automatically from the factory:
<Repeat> Group-Load, Group-Unload

It is possible to create a "repair zone" using Group-Repair and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Repair

It is possible to create a "reclaim zone" at the front lines using a nano tower or other construction unit, and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Reclaim

It is even possible, to bypass the limitations of the Patrol command using repeat. Units on patrol tend chase down enemies; however, if Repeat is used in conjunction with the standard Move command, you could pontentially set artillery units to go near the enemy front lines, fire several shots, and then come back to a repair zone, only to go back and repeat the cycle!

====Restore====

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or the contruction of a building.

====Resurrect====

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponent's army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.

Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurrected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)

Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them (probably the one the engine decides actually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

====Select AI (CTRL+Q)====

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "[[AIs|Group AI]]" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

The following [[AIs|Group AI]]s ship with Spring. More might be available from other sources.

None
[[Simple Formation]]
[[Central Build AI]]
[[Metal Maker AI]]
[[Radar AI]]
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

====Self Destruct (CTRL+D)====
Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular explosion after a specific count-down (default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D (Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

====Stop (S)====
Makes the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

====Wait (W)====

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, press Shift+W, and then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Wait is a standard command; by using Repeat in conjunction with wait, it is possible to create precisely timed strike and raiding groups.

==Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands==

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

===Basic Text Commands===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr>
<th>Command</th><th>Effect</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.info</td><td>Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.clock</td><td>Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.take</td><td>Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost ''all'' their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setmaxspeed #</td><td>Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setminspeed #</td><td>Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)</td>
</tr>

</table>

===Cheat Codes===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr><th>Cheat Command</th><th>Effect</th></tr>

<tr>
<td>'''.cheat'''</td><td>'''enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this'''</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.nocost</td><td>Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.spectator</td><td>Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.team 0, .team 1, etc.</td><td>Change player</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, .give all, etc.</td><td>Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition. Use the "all" switch to get ALL the units in the current mod.</td>
</tr>

</table>

==Map Doodles==

Hold the ` or \ key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game. Good teams will use this frequently mark out attack patterns and enemy weak points. Be creative; do not be annoying. Drawing select portions of human anatomy on the map becomes very stupid very quickly.

Hold ` or \ while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` or \ and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: On some keyboards, the ` is replaced with Ã‚Â§, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file.

On azerty keyboards, * and ÃƒÂ¹ (near return) work, although ~ does not.

== Customizing keyboard shortcuts ==

There are several categories of keys in Spring that can be customized.

===Unit Action Keys===

These are keys that control unit actions. They're all listed [[Using Spring#Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys|above]] and in the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Readme#Key_assignments Key Assignments] section of the README. The README can also be found in the docs folder of your Spring installation.

These keys are hardcoded and cannot be changed. While a unit is selected, 'A' will always issue an attack order and 'M' will always issue a move order. You can still bind the key to something else in uikeys.txt or the Selection Keys Editor, but your binding will only work when you don't have any units selected.

===User Interface keys===

{{Uikeys_Commands}}

Many key bindings related to the user interface can be edited through the '''uikeys.txt''' file found in Spring folder. You should be able to work out the format by skimming it, it's fairly simple. Key bindings load upon game start, and can't be changed in middle of the game.

A few keys related to the UI can't be changed:

- Mouse button functions.

- Behaviour of shift/control

- Behaviour of shift/control + Middle mouse button.

The correct way to bind keys is to put single-quotes around letter keys, like this:

''bind 'x' mouse3''

You can also comment out any bind to quickly disable it by putting "//" before it:

''//bind home increaseViewRadius''

Function keys and some other keys don't need single quotes. They're listed in the "Special Bindable Keys" list, below.

{| style="float: center; background-color: white;"
|Special Bindable Keys:
{|
|
'''Function'''
* Home
* End
* insert
* delete
* space
* f1-f12
* esc
* `
* Ã‚Â§
* enter
* backspace
* pause
* pageup
* pagedown
|
'''Modifiers'''
* ctrl
* Shift
'''Arrow'''
* Up
* Down
* Left
* Rigth
|}
|}

===Selection keys===

This is the best part, and is already covered [[Using Spring#The Selection Editor|earlier]] in this document.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well these keys, as all that are related to "selected units" are now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to pro levels.

Look at [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 this thread] to learn more on editing these selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.

[[Category:Playing]]

Using Spring

2006-07-21T17:25:25Z

Dragon45: /* General Function Keys */

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current [http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/springrts/taspring/README.html README.html] (should be mirrored [[Readme|here]])or [[Read_Me_First]]. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the [[Spring_guide%21]]. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the [[Mods]] section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/changelog.txt changelog] or the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ TA Spring Forums].

==Camera Controls==

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

===Camera Modes===

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

====Classic Overhead(TA) Style====
The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

====Total War Style====
The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

====FPS Style====
In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

====Rotatable Overhead Camera====

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

====FPS "Mode" (C)====
Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:
*Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
*Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
*Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
*Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
*Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
*Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

===Zooming Changes===
Starting in version 0.72b1 there were some changes made to the zooming controls.

====Mousepoint Zooming====
When you zoom out the camera will move back from the center of the screen in such a way as to expand your view. When you zoom back in, however, the camera will shift focus towards the mouse pointer as your new center.

====Tab Zooming====
Pressing the TAB key will zoom you out to the point where the entire map will be visible from a special top-down perspective(in future versions this view will be [[CustomUnitIcons|iconified with CustomUnitIcons]]), then pressing the TAB key again with zoom you back to the same height and angle of view you were at before, but again, using your mouse pointer position as the new center.

===General Function Keys===

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

*'''F1''': Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) indicates a height difference of 32.
*'''F2''': Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
**'''Mobile Unit Selected''': If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
**'''Builder Selected''': When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
*'''F3''': Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
*'''F4''': Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
*'''F5''': Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
*'''F6''': Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
*'''F7''': Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
*'''F8''': Save the Game. Not currently supported.
*'''F9''': Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
*'''F11/F12''': Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
*''';/L''': These commands toggle visible Fog of War and Radar Coverage areas. <b>L</b> toggles visible line of sight while <b>;</b> controls radar and jammer coverage viewing within the Fog of War mode. All Radar and Line of Sight is impeded or helped by terrain; placing a radar/jammer on a hill will allow you to view/jam most of the area; placing either in a pit will not allow you to view/jam beyond the pit. Sonar coverage is included in these overlays.
**'''Color Meanings''': Light Green = Radar and LOS
Green = Aerial LOS and Radar
Dark Green = Radar only

Normal = LOS only
Grey = Aerial LOS only
Dark Grey = No coverage in that area

Light Red = Jammed with LOS
Red = Jammed with Aerial LOS
Dark Red = Jammed with no LOS

Light Yellow = Jammed, LOS and Radar
Yellow = Jammed, Radar, and Aerial LOS
Dark Yellow = Jammed and Radar
**'''Important''': Areas with Aerial LOS permit viewing only of air units, projectiles, and certain graphics such as smoke and shields. A perfect base would have light yellow everywhere. Due to lack of code optimization, the LOS/Fog of War overlay is updated about once every two seconds (?), so it would be unwise to rely upon it to give you coverage information about fast moving units such as Peepers and Eagles.

*'''TAB''': Toggles "[[Using_Spring#Tab_Zooming|Tab Zoom]]"
*'''Pause''': Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

===Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View===
Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

==Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI==

===The Selection Editor===

'''SelectionEditor.exe''' is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your '''selectkeys.txt''' configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 Forum Thread] has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

===Default Selection Controls===

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

====Selecting/Deselecting Units====
Unless you have issued a pending command(see [[#Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)|Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)]]), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group will select all visible (camera bounds) units of the clicked type. Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection.

CTRL+Z is a shortcut to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.
<br />
<table><tr><td>"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface. If units are selected, this information is the sum of all information about all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show information about the terrain.
</td><td>
[[Image:CommanderTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Commander Selected]]
[[Image:TerrainTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)]]
</td><td>
[[Image:BuildMexTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover]]
[[Image:RepairTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Repair Command Hover]]</td></tr></table>
[[Image:PeeweeGroupTooltip.png|frame|center|Group of units Selected]]

====Basic Unit Groups====

Spring supports assigning units to numbered groups. You can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from its current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. If you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

====Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs====

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See [[#Select_AI_.28CTRL.2BQ.29|Select AI (CTRL+Q)]] for information on these "Group AIs".

See [[#Assign/Select_Current_Group (Q)|Assign/Select Current Group (Q)]] to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

==Issuing Orders/Building==

====Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)====
As covered in [[#Selecting/Deselecting Units|Selecting/Deselecting Units]], left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action, which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu. Mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

====Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)====
Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

====Queueing Orders====

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding SHIFT will show the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this is to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. Just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemy's base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

===Building Buildings===
When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).
<br><br>
{| align="center" width="500px" bgcolor="white" border="1px"
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
|[[Image:BuildPlateOkay.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
|[[Image:BuildPlateResolvable.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.
|[[Image:BuildPlateBad.png]]
|}

====Build (select structure then left-click)====

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

====Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)====

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

====Build Line (SHIFT)====
(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Build]]
|}

====Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)====
(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)====
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTUNIT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)====
(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease.

Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Build]]
|}

===Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)===

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

=== Default Commands and Hotkeys===
It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

====Active State (X)====
This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off.
If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats.
For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar. Turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up", increasing it's armor.
This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

====Attack (A)====
Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them (depending on their [[#Move State|Move State]]) a certain distance before returning to their starting location.

====Capture====
The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant and forgotten to protect it, grab a nearby construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's [[#Fire State|fire state]] to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

====Cloak (K)====
Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

====DGun (D)====
Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used by the Commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this.

====Fire State====
Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

''' Fire at Will :''' This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

''' Hold Fire :''' This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

''' Return Fire :''' Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

====Guard (G)====
The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, Units 1 and 2 would also join Unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

====High Trajectory====
If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.

A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.

Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

====Move (M)====
There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. In this case, formation means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving, as with the "Square Move" command.

'''Notes:''' Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on [[#Repeat|Repeat]], units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

====Move State====

Like [[#Fire State|Fire State]], this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

====Patrol (P)====

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling, it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, [[#Move State|move state]], and [[#Fire State|fire state]].

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

*If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged (or under contsruction) owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.

*If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

====Reclaim (E)====

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

'''Default Behavior:''' Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will not increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

====Repair (R)====
When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health.
Valid targets are any damaged units and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

====Assign/Select Current Group (Q)====
This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring#Default_Selection_Controls Default selection Controls] for more info on groups.

====Repeat====

When turned on, Repeat moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, if you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Repeat may literally be used with any command set. The power of this command must not be underestimated! For example, it is possible to create a an air transport whose sole purpose is to fly units to the front lines or to another area automatically from the factory:
<Repeat> Group-Load, Group-Unload

It is possible to create a "repair zone" using Group-Repair and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Repair

It is possible to create a "reclaim zone" at the front lines using a nano tower or other construction unit, and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Reclaim

It is even possible, to bypass the limitations of the Patrol command using repeat. Units on patrol tend chase down enemies; however, if Repeat is used in conjunction with the standard Move command, you could pontentially set artillery units to go near the enemy front lines, fire several shots, and then come back to a repair zone, only to go back and repeat the cycle!

====Restore====

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or the contruction of a building.

====Resurrect====

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponent's army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.

Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurrected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)

Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them (probably the one the engine decides actually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

====Select AI (CTRL+Q)====

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "[[AIs|Group AI]]" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

The following [[AIs|Group AI]]s ship with Spring. More might be available from other sources.

None
[[Simple Formation]]
[[Central Build AI]]
[[Metal Maker AI]]
[[Radar AI]]
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

====Self Destruct (CTRL+D)====
Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular explosion after a specific count-down (default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D (Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

====Stop (S)====
Makes the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

====Wait (W)====

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, press Shift+W, and then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Wait is a standard command; by using Repeat in conjunction with wait, it is possible to create precisely timed strike and raiding groups.

==Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands==

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

===Basic Text Commands===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr>
<th>Command</th><th>Effect</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.info</td><td>Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.clock</td><td>Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.take</td><td>Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost ''all'' their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setmaxspeed #</td><td>Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setminspeed #</td><td>Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)</td>
</tr>

</table>

===Cheat Codes===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr><th>Cheat Command</th><th>Effect</th></tr>

<tr>
<td>'''.cheat'''</td><td>'''enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this'''</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.nocost</td><td>Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.spectator</td><td>Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.team 0, .team 1, etc.</td><td>Change player</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, .give all, etc.</td><td>Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition. Use the "all" switch to get ALL the units in the current mod.</td>
</tr>

</table>

==Map Doodles==

Hold the ` or \ key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game. Good teams will use this frequently mark out attack patterns and enemy weak points. Be creative; do not be annoying. Drawing select portions of human anatomy on the map becomes very stupid very quickly.

Hold ` or \ while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` or \ and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: On some keyboards, the ` is replaced with Ã‚Â§, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file.

On azerty keyboards, * and ÃƒÂ¹ (near return) work, although ~ does not.

== Customizing keyboard shortcuts ==

There are several categories of keys in Spring that can be customized.

===Unit Action Keys===

These are keys that control unit actions. They're all listed [[Using Spring#Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys|above]] and in the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Readme#Key_assignments Key Assignments] section of the README. The README can also be found in the docs folder of your Spring installation.

These keys are hardcoded and cannot be changed. While a unit is selected, 'A' will always issue an attack order and 'M' will always issue a move order. You can still bind the key to something else in uikeys.txt or the Selection Keys Editor, but your binding will only work when you don't have any units selected.

===User Interface keys===

{{Uikeys_Commands}}

Many key bindings related to the user interface can be edited through the '''uikeys.txt''' file found in Spring folder. You should be able to work out the format by skimming it, it's fairly simple. Key bindings load upon game start, and can't be changed in middle of the game.

A few keys related to the UI can't be changed:

- Mouse button functions.

- Behaviour of shift/control

- Behaviour of shift/control + Middle mouse button.

The correct way to bind keys is to put single-quotes around letter keys, like this:

''bind 'x' mouse3''

You can also comment out any bind to quickly disable it by putting "//" before it:

''//bind home increaseViewRadius''

Function keys and some other keys don't need single quotes. They're listed in the "Special Bindable Keys" list, below.

{| style="float: center; background-color: white;"
|Special Bindable Keys:
{|
|
'''Function'''
* Home
* End
* insert
* delete
* space
* f1-f12
* esc
* `
* Ã‚Â§
* enter
* backspace
* pause
* pageup
* pagedown
|
'''Modifiers'''
* ctrl
* Shift
'''Arrow'''
* Up
* Down
* Left
* Rigth
|}
|}

===Selection keys===

This is the best part, and is already covered [[Using Spring#The Selection Editor|earlier]] in this document.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well these keys, as all that are related to "selected units" are now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to pro levels.

Look at [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 this thread] to learn more on editing these selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.

[[Category:Playing]]

Using Spring

2006-07-21T17:24:38Z

Dragon45: /* General Function Keys */

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current [http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/springrts/taspring/README.html README.html] (should be mirrored [[Readme|here]])or [[Read_Me_First]]. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the [[Spring_guide%21]]. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the [[Mods]] section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/changelog.txt changelog] or the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ TA Spring Forums].

==Camera Controls==

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

===Camera Modes===

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

====Classic Overhead(TA) Style====
The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

====Total War Style====
The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

====FPS Style====
In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

====Rotatable Overhead Camera====

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

====FPS "Mode" (C)====
Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:
*Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
*Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
*Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
*Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
*Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
*Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

===Zooming Changes===
Starting in version 0.72b1 there were some changes made to the zooming controls.

====Mousepoint Zooming====
When you zoom out the camera will move back from the center of the screen in such a way as to expand your view. When you zoom back in, however, the camera will shift focus towards the mouse pointer as your new center.

====Tab Zooming====
Pressing the TAB key will zoom you out to the point where the entire map will be visible from a special top-down perspective(in future versions this view will be [[CustomUnitIcons|iconified with CustomUnitIcons]]), then pressing the TAB key again with zoom you back to the same height and angle of view you were at before, but again, using your mouse pointer position as the new center.

===General Function Keys===

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

*'''F1''': Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) indicates a height difference of 32.
*'''F2''': Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
**'''Mobile Unit Selected''': If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
**'''Builder Selected''': When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
*'''F3''': Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
*'''F4''': Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
*'''F5''': Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
*'''F6''': Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
*'''F7''': Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
*'''F8''': Save the Game. Not currently supported.
*'''F9''': Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
*'''F11/F12''': Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
*''';/L''': These commands toggle visible Fog of War and Radar Coverage areas. <b>L</b> toggles visible line of sight while <b>;</b> controls radar and jammer coverage viewing within the Fog of War mode. All Radar and Line of Sight is impeded or helped by terrain; placing a radar/jammer on a hill will allow you to view/jam most of the area; placing either in a pit will not allow you to view/jam beyond the pit. Sonar coverage is included in these overlays.

**'''Color Meanings''':
Light Green = Radar and LOS
Green = Aerial LOS and Radar
Dark Green = Radar only

Normal = LOS only
Grey = Aerial LOS only
Dark Grey = No coverage in that area

Light Red = Jammed with LOS
Red = Jammed with Aerial LOS
Dark Red = Jammed with no LOS

Light Yellow = Jammed, LOS and Radar
Yellow = Jammed, Radar, and Aerial LOS
Dark Yellow = Jammed and Radar

**'''Important''': Areas with Aerial LOS permit viewing only of air units, projectiles, and certain graphics such as smoke and shields. A perfect base would have light yellow everywhere. Due to lack of code optimization, the LOS/Fog of War overlay is updated about once every two seconds (?), so it would be unwise to rely upon it to give you coverage information about fast moving units such as Peepers and Eagles.

*'''TAB''': Toggles "[[Using_Spring#Tab_Zooming|Tab Zoom]]"
*'''Pause''': Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

===Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View===
Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

==Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI==

===The Selection Editor===

'''SelectionEditor.exe''' is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your '''selectkeys.txt''' configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 Forum Thread] has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

===Default Selection Controls===

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

====Selecting/Deselecting Units====
Unless you have issued a pending command(see [[#Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)|Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)]]), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group will select all visible (camera bounds) units of the clicked type. Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection.

CTRL+Z is a shortcut to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.
<br />
<table><tr><td>"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface. If units are selected, this information is the sum of all information about all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show information about the terrain.
</td><td>
[[Image:CommanderTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Commander Selected]]
[[Image:TerrainTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)]]
</td><td>
[[Image:BuildMexTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover]]
[[Image:RepairTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Repair Command Hover]]</td></tr></table>
[[Image:PeeweeGroupTooltip.png|frame|center|Group of units Selected]]

====Basic Unit Groups====

Spring supports assigning units to numbered groups. You can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from its current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. If you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

====Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs====

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See [[#Select_AI_.28CTRL.2BQ.29|Select AI (CTRL+Q)]] for information on these "Group AIs".

See [[#Assign/Select_Current_Group (Q)|Assign/Select Current Group (Q)]] to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

==Issuing Orders/Building==

====Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)====
As covered in [[#Selecting/Deselecting Units|Selecting/Deselecting Units]], left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action, which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu. Mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

====Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)====
Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

====Queueing Orders====

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding SHIFT will show the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this is to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. Just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemy's base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

===Building Buildings===
When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).
<br><br>
{| align="center" width="500px" bgcolor="white" border="1px"
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
|[[Image:BuildPlateOkay.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
|[[Image:BuildPlateResolvable.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.
|[[Image:BuildPlateBad.png]]
|}

====Build (select structure then left-click)====

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

====Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)====

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

====Build Line (SHIFT)====
(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Build]]
|}

====Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)====
(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)====
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTUNIT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)====
(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease.

Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Build]]
|}

===Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)===

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

=== Default Commands and Hotkeys===
It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

====Active State (X)====
This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off.
If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats.
For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar. Turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up", increasing it's armor.
This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

====Attack (A)====
Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them (depending on their [[#Move State|Move State]]) a certain distance before returning to their starting location.

====Capture====
The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant and forgotten to protect it, grab a nearby construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's [[#Fire State|fire state]] to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

====Cloak (K)====
Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

====DGun (D)====
Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used by the Commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this.

====Fire State====
Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

''' Fire at Will :''' This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

''' Hold Fire :''' This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

''' Return Fire :''' Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

====Guard (G)====
The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, Units 1 and 2 would also join Unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

====High Trajectory====
If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.

A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.

Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

====Move (M)====
There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. In this case, formation means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving, as with the "Square Move" command.

'''Notes:''' Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on [[#Repeat|Repeat]], units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

====Move State====

Like [[#Fire State|Fire State]], this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

====Patrol (P)====

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling, it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, [[#Move State|move state]], and [[#Fire State|fire state]].

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

*If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged (or under contsruction) owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.

*If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

====Reclaim (E)====

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

'''Default Behavior:''' Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will not increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

====Repair (R)====
When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health.
Valid targets are any damaged units and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

====Assign/Select Current Group (Q)====
This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring#Default_Selection_Controls Default selection Controls] for more info on groups.

====Repeat====

When turned on, Repeat moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, if you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Repeat may literally be used with any command set. The power of this command must not be underestimated! For example, it is possible to create a an air transport whose sole purpose is to fly units to the front lines or to another area automatically from the factory:
<Repeat> Group-Load, Group-Unload

It is possible to create a "repair zone" using Group-Repair and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Repair

It is possible to create a "reclaim zone" at the front lines using a nano tower or other construction unit, and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Reclaim

It is even possible, to bypass the limitations of the Patrol command using repeat. Units on patrol tend chase down enemies; however, if Repeat is used in conjunction with the standard Move command, you could pontentially set artillery units to go near the enemy front lines, fire several shots, and then come back to a repair zone, only to go back and repeat the cycle!

====Restore====

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or the contruction of a building.

====Resurrect====

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponent's army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.

Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurrected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)

Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them (probably the one the engine decides actually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

====Select AI (CTRL+Q)====

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "[[AIs|Group AI]]" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

The following [[AIs|Group AI]]s ship with Spring. More might be available from other sources.

None
[[Simple Formation]]
[[Central Build AI]]
[[Metal Maker AI]]
[[Radar AI]]
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

====Self Destruct (CTRL+D)====
Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular explosion after a specific count-down (default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D (Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

====Stop (S)====
Makes the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

====Wait (W)====

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, press Shift+W, and then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Wait is a standard command; by using Repeat in conjunction with wait, it is possible to create precisely timed strike and raiding groups.

==Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands==

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

===Basic Text Commands===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr>
<th>Command</th><th>Effect</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.info</td><td>Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.clock</td><td>Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.take</td><td>Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost ''all'' their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setmaxspeed #</td><td>Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setminspeed #</td><td>Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)</td>
</tr>

</table>

===Cheat Codes===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr><th>Cheat Command</th><th>Effect</th></tr>

<tr>
<td>'''.cheat'''</td><td>'''enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this'''</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.nocost</td><td>Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.spectator</td><td>Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.team 0, .team 1, etc.</td><td>Change player</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, .give all, etc.</td><td>Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition. Use the "all" switch to get ALL the units in the current mod.</td>
</tr>

</table>

==Map Doodles==

Hold the ` or \ key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game. Good teams will use this frequently mark out attack patterns and enemy weak points. Be creative; do not be annoying. Drawing select portions of human anatomy on the map becomes very stupid very quickly.

Hold ` or \ while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` or \ and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: On some keyboards, the ` is replaced with Ã‚Â§, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file.

On azerty keyboards, * and ÃƒÂ¹ (near return) work, although ~ does not.

== Customizing keyboard shortcuts ==

There are several categories of keys in Spring that can be customized.

===Unit Action Keys===

These are keys that control unit actions. They're all listed [[Using Spring#Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys|above]] and in the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Readme#Key_assignments Key Assignments] section of the README. The README can also be found in the docs folder of your Spring installation.

These keys are hardcoded and cannot be changed. While a unit is selected, 'A' will always issue an attack order and 'M' will always issue a move order. You can still bind the key to something else in uikeys.txt or the Selection Keys Editor, but your binding will only work when you don't have any units selected.

===User Interface keys===

{{Uikeys_Commands}}

Many key bindings related to the user interface can be edited through the '''uikeys.txt''' file found in Spring folder. You should be able to work out the format by skimming it, it's fairly simple. Key bindings load upon game start, and can't be changed in middle of the game.

A few keys related to the UI can't be changed:

- Mouse button functions.

- Behaviour of shift/control

- Behaviour of shift/control + Middle mouse button.

The correct way to bind keys is to put single-quotes around letter keys, like this:

''bind 'x' mouse3''

You can also comment out any bind to quickly disable it by putting "//" before it:

''//bind home increaseViewRadius''

Function keys and some other keys don't need single quotes. They're listed in the "Special Bindable Keys" list, below.

{| style="float: center; background-color: white;"
|Special Bindable Keys:
{|
|
'''Function'''
* Home
* End
* insert
* delete
* space
* f1-f12
* esc
* `
* Ã‚Â§
* enter
* backspace
* pause
* pageup
* pagedown
|
'''Modifiers'''
* ctrl
* Shift
'''Arrow'''
* Up
* Down
* Left
* Rigth
|}
|}

===Selection keys===

This is the best part, and is already covered [[Using Spring#The Selection Editor|earlier]] in this document.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well these keys, as all that are related to "selected units" are now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to pro levels.

Look at [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 this thread] to learn more on editing these selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.

[[Category:Playing]]

Using Spring

2006-07-21T17:23:48Z

Dragon45: /* General Function Keys */

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current [http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/springrts/taspring/README.html README.html] (should be mirrored [[Readme|here]])or [[Read_Me_First]]. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the [[Spring_guide%21]]. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the [[Mods]] section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/changelog.txt changelog] or the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/ TA Spring Forums].

==Camera Controls==

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

===Camera Modes===

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

====Classic Overhead(TA) Style====
The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

====Total War Style====
The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

====FPS Style====
In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

====Rotatable Overhead Camera====

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

====FPS "Mode" (C)====
Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:
*Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
*Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
*Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
*Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
*Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
*Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

===Zooming Changes===
Starting in version 0.72b1 there were some changes made to the zooming controls.

====Mousepoint Zooming====
When you zoom out the camera will move back from the center of the screen in such a way as to expand your view. When you zoom back in, however, the camera will shift focus towards the mouse pointer as your new center.

====Tab Zooming====
Pressing the TAB key will zoom you out to the point where the entire map will be visible from a special top-down perspective(in future versions this view will be [[CustomUnitIcons|iconified with CustomUnitIcons]]), then pressing the TAB key again with zoom you back to the same height and angle of view you were at before, but again, using your mouse pointer position as the new center.

===General Function Keys===

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

*'''F1''': Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) indicates a height difference of 32.
*'''F2''': Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
**'''Mobile Unit Selected''': If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
**'''Builder Selected''': When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
*'''F3''': Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
*'''F4''': Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
*'''F5''': Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
*'''F6''': Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
*'''F7''': Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
*'''F8''': Save the Game. Not currently supported.
*'''F9''': Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
*'''F11/F12''': Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
*''';/L''': These commands toggle visible Fog of War and Radar Coverage areas. <b>L</b> toggles visible line of sight while <b>;</b> controls radar and jammer coverage viewing within the Fog of War mode. All Radar and Line of Sight is impeded or helped by terrain; placing a radar/jammer on a hill will allow you to view/jam most of the area; placing either in a pit will not allow you to view/jam beyond the pit. Sonar coverage is included in these overlays.
**'''Color Meanings: '''
Light Green = Radar and LOS
Green = Aerial LOS and Radar
Dark Green = Radar only

Normal = LOS only
Grey = Aerial LOS only
Dark Grey = No coverage in that area

Light Red = Jammed with LOS
Red = Jammed with Aerial LOS
Dark Red = Jammed with no LOS

Light Yellow = Jammed, LOS and Radar
Yellow = Jammed, Radar, and Aerial LOS
Dark Yellow = Jammed and Radar

**'''Important''': Areas with Aerial LOS permit viewing only of air units, projectiles, and certain graphics such as smoke and shields. A perfect base would have light yellow everywhere. Due to lack of code optimization, the LOS/Fog of War overlay is updated about once every two seconds (?), so it would be unwise to rely upon it to give you coverage information about fast moving units such as Peepers and Eagles.

*'''TAB''': Toggles "[[Using_Spring#Tab_Zooming|Tab Zoom]]"
*'''Pause''': Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

===Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View===
Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

==Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI==

===The Selection Editor===

'''SelectionEditor.exe''' is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your '''selectkeys.txt''' configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 Forum Thread] has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

===Default Selection Controls===

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

====Selecting/Deselecting Units====
Unless you have issued a pending command(see [[#Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)|Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)]]), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group will select all visible (camera bounds) units of the clicked type. Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection.

CTRL+Z is a shortcut to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.
<br />
<table><tr><td>"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface. If units are selected, this information is the sum of all information about all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show information about the terrain.
</td><td>
[[Image:CommanderTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Commander Selected]]
[[Image:TerrainTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)]]
</td><td>
[[Image:BuildMexTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover]]
[[Image:RepairTooltip.png|thumb|120px|Repair Command Hover]]</td></tr></table>
[[Image:PeeweeGroupTooltip.png|frame|center|Group of units Selected]]

====Basic Unit Groups====

Spring supports assigning units to numbered groups. You can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from its current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. If you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

====Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs====

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See [[#Select_AI_.28CTRL.2BQ.29|Select AI (CTRL+Q)]] for information on these "Group AIs".

See [[#Assign/Select_Current_Group (Q)|Assign/Select Current Group (Q)]] to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

==Issuing Orders/Building==

====Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)====
As covered in [[#Selecting/Deselecting Units|Selecting/Deselecting Units]], left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action, which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu. Mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

====Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)====
Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

====Queueing Orders====

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding SHIFT will show the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this is to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. Just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemy's base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

===Building Buildings===
When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).
<br><br>
{| align="center" width="500px" bgcolor="white" border="1px"
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
|[[Image:BuildPlateOkay.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
|[[Image:BuildPlateResolvable.png]]
|- valign="top"
|
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.
|[[Image:BuildPlateBad.png]]
|}

====Build (select structure then left-click)====

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

====Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)====

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

====Build Line (SHIFT)====
(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Build]]
|}

====Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)====
(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)====
(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.
|[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Alt-Build]]
|}

====Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)====
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTUNIT.png|thumb|200px|Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
|}

====Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)====
(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)
{|
|- valign="top"
|
Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease.

Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.
|[[Image:BUILDCTRLALTSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTALTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDCTRLSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build]]
[[Image:BUILDSHIFTX.png|thumb|200px|Spaced-Shift-Build]]
|}

===Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)===

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

=== Default Commands and Hotkeys===
It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

====Active State (X)====
This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off.
If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats.
For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar. Turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up", increasing it's armor.
This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

====Attack (A)====
Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them (depending on their [[#Move State|Move State]]) a certain distance before returning to their starting location.

====Capture====
The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant and forgotten to protect it, grab a nearby construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's [[#Fire State|fire state]] to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

====Cloak (K)====
Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

====DGun (D)====
Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used by the Commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this.

====Fire State====
Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

''' Fire at Will :''' This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

''' Hold Fire :''' This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

''' Return Fire :''' Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

====Guard (G)====
The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, Units 1 and 2 would also join Unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

====High Trajectory====
If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.

A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.

Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

====Move (M)====
There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. In this case, formation means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving, as with the "Square Move" command.

'''Notes:''' Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on [[#Repeat|Repeat]], units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

====Move State====

Like [[#Fire State|Fire State]], this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

====Patrol (P)====

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling, it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, [[#Move State|move state]], and [[#Fire State|fire state]].

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

*If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged (or under contsruction) owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.

*If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

====Reclaim (E)====

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

'''Default Behavior:''' Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will not increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

====Repair (R)====
When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health.
Valid targets are any damaged units and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

====Assign/Select Current Group (Q)====
This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring#Default_Selection_Controls Default selection Controls] for more info on groups.

====Repeat====

When turned on, Repeat moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, if you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Repeat may literally be used with any command set. The power of this command must not be underestimated! For example, it is possible to create a an air transport whose sole purpose is to fly units to the front lines or to another area automatically from the factory:
<Repeat> Group-Load, Group-Unload

It is possible to create a "repair zone" using Group-Repair and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Repair

It is possible to create a "reclaim zone" at the front lines using a nano tower or other construction unit, and repeat:
<Repeat> Group-Reclaim

It is even possible, to bypass the limitations of the Patrol command using repeat. Units on patrol tend chase down enemies; however, if Repeat is used in conjunction with the standard Move command, you could pontentially set artillery units to go near the enemy front lines, fire several shots, and then come back to a repair zone, only to go back and repeat the cycle!

====Restore====

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or the contruction of a building.

====Resurrect====

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponent's army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.

Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurrected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)

Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them (probably the one the engine decides actually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

====Select AI (CTRL+Q)====

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "[[AIs|Group AI]]" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

The following [[AIs|Group AI]]s ship with Spring. More might be available from other sources.

None
[[Simple Formation]]
[[Central Build AI]]
[[Metal Maker AI]]
[[Radar AI]]
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

====Self Destruct (CTRL+D)====
Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular explosion after a specific count-down (default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D (Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

====Stop (S)====
Makes the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

====Wait (W)====

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, press Shift+W, and then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Wait is a standard command; by using Repeat in conjunction with wait, it is possible to create precisely timed strike and raiding groups.

==Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands==

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

===Basic Text Commands===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr>
<th>Command</th><th>Effect</th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.info</td><td>Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.clock</td><td>Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.take</td><td>Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost ''all'' their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setmaxspeed #</td><td>Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.setminspeed #</td><td>Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)</td>
</tr>

</table>

===Cheat Codes===

<table border="3" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">

<tr><th>Cheat Command</th><th>Effect</th></tr>

<tr>
<td>'''.cheat'''</td><td>'''enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this'''</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.nocost</td><td>Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.spectator</td><td>Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.team 0, .team 1, etc.</td><td>Change player</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, .give all, etc.</td><td>Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition. Use the "all" switch to get ALL the units in the current mod.</td>
</tr>

</table>

==Map Doodles==

Hold the ` or \ key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game. Good teams will use this frequently mark out attack patterns and enemy weak points. Be creative; do not be annoying. Drawing select portions of human anatomy on the map becomes very stupid very quickly.

Hold ` or \ while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` or \ and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` or \ and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: On some keyboards, the ` is replaced with Ã‚Â§, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file.

On azerty keyboards, * and ÃƒÂ¹ (near return) work, although ~ does not.

== Customizing keyboard shortcuts ==

There are several categories of keys in Spring that can be customized.

===Unit Action Keys===

These are keys that control unit actions. They're all listed [[Using Spring#Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys|above]] and in the [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Readme#Key_assignments Key Assignments] section of the README. The README can also be found in the docs folder of your Spring installation.

These keys are hardcoded and cannot be changed. While a unit is selected, 'A' will always issue an attack order and 'M' will always issue a move order. You can still bind the key to something else in uikeys.txt or the Selection Keys Editor, but your binding will only work when you don't have any units selected.

===User Interface keys===

{{Uikeys_Commands}}

Many key bindings related to the user interface can be edited through the '''uikeys.txt''' file found in Spring folder. You should be able to work out the format by skimming it, it's fairly simple. Key bindings load upon game start, and can't be changed in middle of the game.

A few keys related to the UI can't be changed:

- Mouse button functions.

- Behaviour of shift/control

- Behaviour of shift/control + Middle mouse button.

The correct way to bind keys is to put single-quotes around letter keys, like this:

''bind 'x' mouse3''

You can also comment out any bind to quickly disable it by putting "//" before it:

''//bind home increaseViewRadius''

Function keys and some other keys don't need single quotes. They're listed in the "Special Bindable Keys" list, below.

{| style="float: center; background-color: white;"
|Special Bindable Keys:
{|
|
'''Function'''
* Home
* End
* insert
* delete
* space
* f1-f12
* esc
* `
* Ã‚Â§
* enter
* backspace
* pause
* pageup
* pagedown
|
'''Modifiers'''
* ctrl
* Shift
'''Arrow'''
* Up
* Down
* Left
* Rigth
|}
|}

===Selection keys===

This is the best part, and is already covered [[Using Spring#The Selection Editor|earlier]] in this document.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well these keys, as all that are related to "selected units" are now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to pro levels.

Look at [http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2190 this thread] to learn more on editing these selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.

[[Category:Playing]]