Springform

Springform is a ship editor designed to model warships, eventually covering designs dating from the late 19th to late 20th centuries. It is primarily intended for use with naval wargames. Springform can be used to model historical ships, and also to design realistic hypothetical alternatives.

Springform's strange sounding name refers to it starting out as a set of Windows forms based programs that were similar to earlier programs named with a 'Spring' prefix. Users of Springstyle and Springsharp will recognize the heritage. Though it started out as a set of forms programs Springform is now programmed in C# and uses XAML for its interface, no longer using forms at all. C'est la Guerre.

Unlike its ancestors, Springform saves data a database file that might be useful as a game file, it also has quite a bit more detail about the ships' guns & armour, and it helps create ship profiles (pictures) programmatically, for the artistically challenged like myself. Like the earlier programs, it is free.

Click on an image to see more detail.

Latest images: 2 March 2007

Gun data

Guns in profile

Click here for all images.

Download

An alpha preview of Springform will be avilabale soon.

Alpha software warning

There's a whole lot that still needs implementing & fixing, but you can get a good idea of what's to come in the download. Don't download it if clicking on a button or menu & nothing happening infuriates you, if that's the case I recommend waiting a few versions for the beta release.

File formats may change, do not spend a lot of time generating libraries of ships (yet).

Design goals/Ulterior motives

My figuring is that a reasonable stock of ship data might be built up by other people using a freeware ship editor like this for their own ends, in parallel with me (or someone else, or both) making a game to use those designs.

License

The bulk of this software is covered by the MIT/EXPAT License. There are a host of different licenses though, consult the help file for details. All of the different licenses allow for both free & commercial use.