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Cylindrical Maps

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22 months ago
Does spring support cylindrical maps or maps that wrap around from one side to the other side like it would on a space habitat such as an O'Neill cylinder?
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No. It would be cool if it did, but it would involve abstracting a lot of systems beyond the existing assumptions. This sounds like a decent largish project for an engine dev.
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You might be able to achieve such an effect using shaders.

The biggest problem would be the wrap-around. You could 'detect' that projectiles and units are on the border of the map, then move them to another border corresponding to their velocity. This would require tracking all projectiles which is extremely performance heavy. For beam lasers you could just spawn another beam at the other map border. For explosions spawn another explosion at the other map border, etc. You would also need to override pathfinding, Spring's pathfinding isn't designed for this. That by itself would be a big project.

Additionally, I never tried this but it in theory could work, you may override some of the built-in Spring functions with your own. In particular,
Spring.GetUnitsInRectangle
Spring.GetUnitsInBox
Spring.GetUnitsInSphere
Spring.GetUnitsInCylinder
Spring.GetUnitNearestAlly
Spring.GetUnitNearestEnemy
Spring.GetProjectilesInRectangle
to account for the wrap-around.
This might smooth out some of the problems that could occur with the other gadgets and widgets.
The camera might be a problem.

You would also have to override unit aiming and targeting, basically everything...
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22 months ago
My personal suggestion to achieve an equivalence (almost) of a ring map would be to have the very ends of a long map transport into each other like with djinn. Projectiles might not transport but units could. I think a ring map is a cool idea.
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See also :
«Spherical (like a planet) maps»
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/31522?postID=222903#222903
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22 months ago
And the equivalent Spring threads :

«Spherical Maps and the like» (2005) :
https://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3275

«WIP Map: Pacman» (2010-2011) :
https://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=24611

«Toroidal Maps?» (2011) :
https://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=25748&p=480431

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22 months ago
You could make a large donut shaped map, with lava in the center and outer rim.
Then you'd only need to implement "no fly zones" somehow..
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That's a nice approximation of cylindrical topology, except for :
- curved (annoying for a still quite square-based game)
- inside ring shorter than outside ring
- preventing long-ranged weapons and newton ramps to fire over the middle ??
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