Some are based upon and use content from the original Total Annihilation game, this includes the games: Balanced Annihilation, Tech Annihilation, NOTA, and XTA. Spring has many games in various stages of development. Additionally, content from Total Annihilation has been modified to run on the Spring Engine, although playing games that incorporate such content requires that one own a copy of the original Total Annihilation game.
Various games leveraging the Spring engine range from free content games with minimal restrictions on use and distribution to games with commercially licensed art, such as P.U.R.E.
The official source code package includes project files for various integrated development environments (IDEs) and building tools, including CMake, KDevelop, Visual C++ 7.0/8.0, and Xcode.
The C++ code structure is written in an object-oriented manner and is documented to some extent using Doxygen. An alternative lobby, TASClient, is written in Delphi, and there are lobby servers - used to organize multi-player games - written in Java and Python. Spring 's source code, licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, is primarily written in the programming language C++, as is springlobby. Alternatively, the SpringRTS Lobby can be downloaded at mirrors. The third-party AI allows for varying degrees of difficulty. Team Players can also draw and write on the game map to coordinate tactical moves with other players.
The scripting language allows for a customizable gameplay and user interface modifications. The unit files of Total Annihilation are compatible, allowing third-party units to be imported. Spring 's rendering features include deformable terrain, 3D projectiles and multiple water renderers. It is also possible to develop plug-ins to support more languages. Currently these are Lua, C, C++, Python and the JVM languages like Java and Groovy. The engine supports Skirmish AI plug-ins to be written in a variety of programming languages. They take over the role of controlling a team and can therefore be seen as a machine equivalent to a human player but are of course less cunning. Skirmish AIs (or bots) are needed to get a normal single player game running. A mission editor with advanced functions while being intuitive is bundled with the game. Since version 0.79, Spring also features missions. Most popular in this area are the "chicken" modes of Zero-K and Balanced Annihilation, where a player has to defend against waves of monsters. Instead of using bots, some games also support special game modes that allow single player gameplay.
This can be done either by using a special single player mode, or using the multiplayer mode with a password and adding bots to the game. The lobbies for the game allow setting up single player games also. A pre-game lobby uses a specially designed protocol similar to that of Internet Relay Chat to facilitate chat, player match-making, and the adjustment of battle options. Multiplayer is supported on both Linux and Windows. Only user commands are sent to other players, preventing any active cheating. The Spring Engine uses a deterministic game simulation which is executed simultaneously on all game clients. Most Spring Engine-based games are designed to be played online, in multiplayer matches.
There are also a large number of skirmish artificial intelligences (AIs), allowing for offline play or extra players in an online game. There are also currently a number of single player missions, built on frameworks utilizing the engine's Lua scripting abilities.
Most of the games running on the engine (as of December 2010) are focused on multiplayer gameplay. Since then, the project evolved from a mere TA clone to a general RTS game engine including more flexible features like built-in high-level extensibility through a Lua scripting interface. The first release was on July 7, 2007, achieving its initial goals.
The project aimed originally to bring the gameplay experience of Total Annihilation into three dimensions and to have the game run the mods and third-party units from Total Annihilation. Since 2005 it is being developed by the community. The development was initiated by Stefan Johansson, Tomaz Kunaver, and Jelmer Cnossen, members of the Swedish Yankspankers game clan under the name TA Spring.