SpringEngineTODO

This page is badly out of date. Some of these items have been done, abandoned or replaced with better ideas.

Here is a TODO list for anyone interested in developing the spring code. If you are not involved in the development, please contact one of the developers first before you add things here.

• Implement saving/loading. There are a lot of direct LoadSave() functions in the game code, but the easier way would probably to finish the serialization in the class registration type interfaces (rts/System/creg), so everything can be serialized automatically.

• Implement re-sync. After a sync problem is detected, and a re-sync of the random seed does not fix it the game would pause and use the rsync to adjust game state (current plan if for float3 data) to resync, as suggested by Jesse Schoch in [1]. After using rsync on it should be able to continue normally until the next sync error is detected.

• Abstract and improve unit rendering:
  • Improve the S3O rendering: It doesn't generate nice explosion particles like the 3DO system, and it has other issues with drawing as well (refer to the s3o related threads on the forum for this, or test it and see for yourself).
  • 3DO/S3O support is not abstracted, many parts of unit rendering are spread throughout spring and assume 3DO, and the rendering is a messy mixture of 3DO and S3O stuff. Abstracting the model rendering with a sort of IModel and IModelInstance interfaces would allow adding other model formats as well (Such as a skeletal animation format).

• Improve weapon collision detection with more complex shapes for the bigger units. Giving every model a set of convex collision meshes, saved in the S3O file, could be a solution. This will need a change in the s3o format and upspring editor, so you will need some cooperate with me on that part(jcnossen).

• Make more elements of spring data-driven. Explosion bitmaps, trees, etc... A lot of graphics are hardcoded and should be changeable with scripts or config files (FBI/TDF).

• Implement a general sensor system replacing the radars, as described in http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6105

• Add a dynamic-lighting system: Allow units to have dynamic lights on them that affect lighting of other units and landscape, with sort of "approximating lights" for cases where a lot of units get close together. This is a big thing, but it would improve spring graphics a lot if done well.

• Get a mac version working. Contact the developers on the forums for this, as there are people looking into this already.

• Add context-sensitive music. Most generic way could be to allow lua to be used to play tracks included within a "sound" directory of the current mod.

• Create a Mission Development Kit: ie, do whatever it takes to make it easy to create campaign missions, eg create a gui tool that makes it easy to place units on the map, create triggers, and so on.

• Make nano particles unsynced, ie. make them respect the MaxParticles setting.

Even though this isn't really about the Spring engine:

• SpringLobby is a cross-platform lobby client, implemented in C++ and wxWidgets. We encourage you to look into our todo list on http://springlobby.info and see what you could do for it.