TA Spring 0.62b1 readme

For up-to-date information about this project, visit the project home page at http://taspring.clan-sy.com.

About

TA Spring is a project aiming to create a new RTS.

System requirements

About 1ghz cpu and a GeForce3 or better graphics card. For larger battles the requirements increases. Some graphics effects require a graphics card which supports ARB_vertex_program/ARB_fragment_program. This is the same as having a graphics card that supports DX8/DX9.

Quick start

Multiplayer

1. Run the TA Spring battleroom and create an account

2. Login to the master server and find a game to join

Singleplayer

Spring does not include any AI for singleplayer yet. If you start the spring.exe application directly, you will get to choose between a few different scripts that show off some different parts of Spring.

Multiplayer lobby

Name registration

Before you can log into the master server, you must register a handle. Click File->Register to open up the registration dialog. Names must be no more than 16 alphanumeric characters, and is not case sensitive. However, you may format your name with capitalization.

Options

If you are behind a proxy server, or you are having trouble hosting, you might want to consider overriding the IP the server sees you as having so that people joining your battle room know where to find you

Chat

The lobby supports basic chat functions. There is a permanent chatroom called Main, which you can join by double clicking it from the list, as well as any others that may have been created. You can create a chatroom from the menu, but this room is deleted when it becomes empty.

Battle room

You can host a battle by selecting it from the menu. To choose a map, simply click the minimap and pick one from the popup window. Once in the battle room, the host may boot anyone by right clicking and selecting boot. The alliance system is a little complicated and needs a little explaining... Any number of players can join a Team, which is the equivalent of one player in OTA. Everyone on a Team shares resources, units, and LOS. The first player to join a team is the team leader, and can pick an Ally Team to join. An Ally Team is a permanent alliance. You'll notice a strange shape with two triangles to the right of the Ally Team combo box. This functions the same way as it did in OTA. If you click it, you create a one-way alliance with another ally team moving the triangle on the left to the middle. If the other Ally Team reciprocates, the triangle on the right will move to the middle. The host can then start Spring once all non-spectators have clicked ready.

Features to come

• Clan support

• Map sharing

• Unit sharing

• Private messaging

• Private chatrooms

• New, slicker looking battle room

Game controls

Camera controls

Move the camera with the arrow keys or by placing the mouse curser at the screen borders. Holding shift makes the camera move faster, and holding ctrl makes it slower. Turn on mouselook with mouse button 3 (or backspace). Use ctrl+mouse3 to toggle between the camera modes available.

Key assignments

You can configure the assignment of keys by editing the file uikeys.txt, and by running the Selectionkeys editor. These are the default key bindings:

Camera controls

Function

Mouse 1

Selects units. Drag to select a group, double click to select units of the same type. Gives order if a specific order has been selected.

Mouse 2

Gives the default order for the unit

Mouse 3

Toggles mouse look

Ctrl + Mouse 3

Toggles camera mode

Arrow keys

Moves the camera

Ctrl/shift

Increases/decreases camera movement speed

Mousewheel

Moves the camera up/down

T 

 Track a selected unit

C

Take direct control of a selected unit

F3

Jump to last message location

General

Function

F1

Toggles color coding of the map according to terrain elevation

F4

Toggles color coding of the map according to the metal density

F12

Screenshot

+/-

Increases/decreases game speed

Pause

Pauses the game

Enter

Used to send chat messages

B

Toggles the display of debug information

§/` 

Draw stuff in map that you and allies can see (mouse1=lines, mouse2=erase, mouse3=marker,doubleclick=named marker)

H

Share Interface

L

Show los and radar info in map

Unit groups

Function

0-9

Select AI group 0-9

Ctrl + 0-9

Add current units to AI group 0-9

Q

Selects an unnamed group from which at least one unit is selected

Ctrl + Q

Creates an unnamed AI group or selects an AI for an existing one

Shift + Q

Deletes the current AI group

Building buildings

Function

Shift+Drag mouse

Create a line of buildings

Shift+Ctrl+Drag

Create an axis aligned line of buildings

Shift+Ctrl+Click unit

Build a ring of buildings around existing unit

Shift+Alt+Drag

Build a box of buildings

Shift+Alt+Ctrl+Drag

Build a hollow box of buildings

Unit commands

Function

M

Move (Ctrl=keep relative distances among selected)

P

Patrol

A

Attack

S

Stop

X

Toggle on/off

Ctrl-D

Self destruct

G

Guard

K

Cloak

D

DGun

E

Reclaim (Can take an area)

R

Repair (Can take an area)

L

Load (Can take an area)

U

Unload (Can take an area)

Tips

The repeat order option can be very usefull. For example if you want to make a factory output an unlimited amount of units or if you want transport units to ferry units from one area to another indefinitly.

Ballistic weapons(maybe also other later on) can now be set to fire in a high trajectory which can be usefull to shot over mountains etc but they will lose some accuracy. (we are not entirely sure if we will keep this option or not)

External code/programs used by Spring

Nehe tutorial

nehe.gamedev.net

Window creation and main message pump. Spring is really only an overgrown lesson 02. (Lesson 200 "Your first RTS" perhaps ?)

GLEW

glew.sourceforge.net

OpenGL extension loading

HPIUtil

www.tauniverse.com/joed/

Opening HPI files

JPEGLib

www.ijg.org

Loading JPEG files

TCLAP

tclap.sourceforge.net

Command line parsing in mapconv

FreeType

www.freetype.org

Font handling in the new GUI

CrashRpt

www3.sympatico.ca/grant.mcdorman/

Generating and sending crashdumps

Rice Video

www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=26229

Creating higher resolution unit textures from the standard TA ones

Legal

This program is released under the GNU General Public License.

The download may also have included content from the game Total Annihilation which is Copyright © 1997 Humongous Entertainment. To use this, you would have to own a copy of the game Total Annihilation. However, since it (the TA mod XTA) has been available for download from www.clan-sy.com for many years, and since TA itself can be freely downloaded from abandonware sites, we have decided to include this content in some of the TA Spring packages as a convenience. It is possible that this will change in the future though.