Want some exposure for Spring.... - Page 9

Want some exposure for Spring....

Post just about everything that isn't directly related to Spring here!

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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Forboding Angel »

Say "Updates" Sounds more professional, and makes it sound like the developers give a shit about the game and it's players.
dimm
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by dimm »

rattle wrote:due to local law no germans can see your little video because you added music from a universal music release
Suggest alt. why the whole video if it can be muted?
Forboding Angel wrote: "Updates" Sounds more professional
will do

http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/
im gonna go post this as if its news on a bunch of sites.

Entries for ZK
Done :
listal
moddb
mobygames (maybe)
Done before. http://download.chip.eu/en/

To Do (maybe)
http://www.strategyinformer.com/
http://games.softpedia.com
http://db.tigsource.com
http://freeware.remakes.org
http://www.lgdb.org/
http://spong.com/games-db/latest/
http://boardgamegeek.com
Ed:http://playthisthing.com

And Metacritic, Xfire?

So instead of me spreading the good word over at every site online maybe one of the lobbies could be expanded to run other games? That would be the proper open source spirit. There wont be a potential customer missed if every OS game runs off the SpringRts lobby.
Last edited by dimm on 10 Mar 2012, 06:02, edited 2 times in total.
Google_Frog
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Google_Frog »

Why would they be interested in the development site?
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PicassoCT
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by PicassoCT »

Google_Frog wrote:Why would they be interested in the development site?
Well, they might wanna start there own spring game, and stealing code is tardition! I always browse the trunk.
dimm
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by dimm »

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KaiserJ
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by KaiserJ »

dimm i do like the idea, but could you pick a badly reviewed game instead of GoW3? so you could make a point like "x game cost 20 grillion to make, wheras Zero-K only cost y amount and is actually fun, and won't cost a cent to play"
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knorke
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by knorke »

The rts Zero-K's code is worth 7.5M$ http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/ plus 4.3 million for SpringRTS engine
Image
Introducing a game like that is pretty laughable.
Estimate does not include map, model, sound and AI.
In case of zK the AI is a lua gadget so actually it does count towards that "cost".
Games on the spring engine focus more on features and technical proficiency than graphics, like 64 players per game and 1k+ units.
what spring game focuses on 64 players? 64 is just some arbitrarily limit somewhere in the engine and no game is really made with such playernumbers in mind.
At the moment of posting there are 170 people playing ZK.
That would mean 11 8v8 zeroK games are being played at the same time. Or 85 duels. I have never seen anything like that.
dimm
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by dimm »

You found a jerk gif just for me? How about some better suggestion instead?
zK the AI is a lua gadget
wut?
knorke wrote:Introducing a game like that is pretty laughable.
Effort, popularity, embedded gameplay video. Until someone besides me writes the article on why Spring style development is the future u have no better suggestions.
KaiserJ wrote:dimm i do like the idea, but could you pick a badly reviewed game instead of GoW3?
only Dev Cost article i could find on Esc.
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smoth
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by smoth »

Why does it need to have an arbitrary valuation at all? seems pompous.
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knorke
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by knorke »

Why does it need to have an arbitrary valuation at all? seems pompous.
pompous, but even more so it is pretty irrelevant.
How about telling what the game is? Half the post tells about the worth of the product in dollars. The post has 7 lines of text.
If you had 7 lines of text to describe zero-K, would you waste 4 lines on telling its theoretical worth in dollars as estimated by some random website? Surely there is something more interessting to tell about zK.
The thread title does not even mention the game's name.
in zK the AI is a lua gadget
wut?
http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/source/ ... ai_CAI.lua, http://springrts.com/wiki/AI:Development:Lang:Lua
How about some better suggestion instead?
-actually describe the game. use text as on the zK website
-link to the homepage. http://zero-k.info/
-embed a screenshot
-If the post is to be about zK do not put general spring stuff like "Games on the spring engine...", esp. since the given facts are questionable.
-why ask "how does this look?" if you have already posted it...

Also lolgif. The correct term is lolgif.
I find it funny when people try to "market" some stuff but struggle to put together even a basic forum posting. So I post a lolgif.
Google_Frog
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Zero-K: Open source RTS

Post by Google_Frog »

Image

Zero-K is an action packed RTS loosely inspired by TA with many difference. New ideas have been added and old mechanic questioned. If you like TA or Supreme Commander you should definitely give this a shot (to everyone else, give it a shot too).

It features about 100 units that are actually unique. They aren't hidden behind a tech tree which gives the player an immense amount of freedom. These build options are available from basically the start of the game. Combined with other mechanics such as shields, area-cloakers or terraform there is a lot of room for creative strategic thinking.

By now you may be dubious about how Zero-K stands up competitively; after all with a lot of strategies and zany units how could anything be balanced? But fear not, Zero-K has been in development for years and is considered to have good balance by the player base (~500-1000 people at a guess). High level 1v1 games are played often and many units are used in the metagame. here is a cast of one.

As well as 1v1 there is a focus on teamgames and teamplay. Games can work from 1v1 to 10v10 on dozens of different maps. Units exist to work as the game scales up in size, a 1v1 may commonly end in the tight raiding to light defence stage of the game whereas teamgames can extend to use large armies of expensive units. There even exist a few massive units for long FFA games.

Expensive units are not strictly better than cheap ones, they are just better suited to the situation. Balance is also uses the physics engine and does not use different damage types. For example if a large unit is weak against a small fast unit it is not due to damage modification. The large unit may have massive burst damage that is wasted on a small swarmy unit or it's projectile may be slow enough for the smaller unit to dodge.

Zero-K is open source and completely free. The official site is here, you could download it for nothing and be playing within minutes. There is an AI and sandbox mode to help new players as well as a manual. There is a video on the main site and more screenshots can be seen here.

ImageImage
Google_Frog
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Google_Frog »

I believe that is somewhat closer to how it is done. My attempt probably has a bit too much text and those images were just taken from old springfiles versions.

The cost estimate and little actual content probably hurt attempts on that forum but at least the name is not in the title. Also regarding The Escapist specifically there is a whole subforum for reviews which you failed to post in.
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smoth
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by smoth »

Excellent write up honest and informative. Minor grammatical errors but very good google frog!
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Forboding Angel »

Open-source-game-worth-12M-dollars-in-code
Sigh. :roll:

It wouldn't be worth ego wanking even if it was remotely true.

Sell the game, not the development time. How in the hell did you ever think that that was a good idea?
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knorke
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by knorke »

That seems better.
Apart from various small things the main problem might be that it is too unpersonal, for a forum post.
It reads more like something that could be on the "about"-page of zero-k.info.
I think it is important to mention that it is not some other game but "your" game. (if a dev were to post)
Don't overdo it but especially if you register just to post about zK something like "This something me and many others have made in the last few years" might be good.
For title I suggest "Free multiplayer RTS: zero-K"

The poster should also observe the thread and be able to answer questions. Some older lolmarketingspring thread has many links where threads died because a few people posted "doesnt work" or "screen is just white." In some forum two people were interessted and wanted to play each but could not figure out how to do so.

wiki page for this might be a good idea. Might seem like too much of an effort "just for some forum post, I always just type those on my iphone lolz". But actually it is the only "marketing" towards players that there is at the moment, so the same effort should be put into it as eg into the webpage.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by PicassoCT »

Forboding Angel wrote:
Open-source-game-worth-12M-dollars-in-code
Sigh. :roll:

It wouldn't be worth ego wanking even if it was remotely true.

Sell the game, not the development time. How in the hell did you ever think that that was a good idea?
It combats the idea that things for free are cheap, rip-offs or scams. People know the intertubes, the emails they get are full of "FREE as AIR" Advertisements, and you know, that somewhere at the end of the line, there is a *Star, and that one takes you were the cows are milked.

Face it, people, who are not allready have been convinced by open-source know only the two side intertubes. The Either i rip them off, and be a pirate, or the, they rip me off, and im there victim. In the middle is a small zone, were people expect "trustworthy" bargains to actually happen. Open Source never appears on that internal map of distrust.

Now consider this, you allow people who won evo in a release-lottery, to invite two friends. And only two. Suddenly that is... a full blown game, right there on the i-rip-them-offside of the canyon. Because those two can again invite two friends (dev made a bug, hurr durr, license states, that once game is get you can not revoke, so its legit).. leading to a domino effect.
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Cheesecan
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Cheesecan »

Even if it was a good idea to brag about estimated cost, you can't even evaluate cost of coding with that tool, it's not accurate.

I've never written as little as 40 lines of code per day which is supposed to be the norm. That would have to be in a rigid enterprise-level system where every single change needs 10 pages of documentation.

Also I'm pretty sure a developer working on GoW3 earns a lot more per hour than your average journeyman coder.

It's just..wrong. Plain wrong. Lines of code is a software development fallacy.
dimm
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by dimm »

"Why would they be interested in the development site?"
proof
"Also lolgif."
its not funny
"in zK the AI is a lua gadget"
none of the non-lua AIs work in ZK?

"Lines of code is a software development fallacy."
But its exciting. 12 mil Srysly? I wonder what could be done with that kind of money. Mostly the news just shows 'exciting' information being abused by the good guys.

Its supposed to be news initially. Plain old gush/ad/review gets no attention unless people have already played it. Other sources of attention may exist.
Example: escapist's review forum
It was interesting news for me and ofc not the general Esc. populous. I have been registered on Esc for a while to cheer on yahtzee and for some reason felt it was a great place to draft this thread. After googling it several times i learned how Esc embeds videos and i did! Now go bump it.

Here's a better idea; post how you find and choose new games to play.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by Forboding Angel »

Hollywood can waste 500 million dollars making a shitty movie (and have honed it to a fine art). Indie devs can waste millions of dollars of man hours making a shitty game.

Worth (even when it's bullshit), does not indicate quality.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Want some exposure for Spring....

Post by PicassoCT »

Depends.. if a single person spends 10.000 hours quality occurs. Its called becoming a professional, and if you do so on open source project.. or in your spare time - doesent matter. (Although, the time might be halfed in a company by the fact that harsh criticism and quality demands are there)
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