The economics of Spring mod users

[Gota]

One thing i did like..
We need less tolerance towards trolling abuses insults flames etc...

[smoth]

You're not after a material reward, in the sense of money or cars or whatever, but you can't pretend that there isn't a metric there that matters.

argh, what matters as far as success and personal prestige I get outside of this community. I have no need for any further success, I am tickled that people like gundam, but frankly, I enjoy playing around with it by myself.

Otherwise, you wouldn't even release it at all. After all, if the work's the sole reward...

Because others might want to play it, no reason for me to make it and not let others know it exists. This isn't like a physical work, it can be shared so others can play it. You are talking to a guy who did commissioned miniature painting for years because I wanted to share my enjoyment of painting. I only ever charged enough for shipping and materials. I got better at painting and other people got new miniatures.

Meh. Sorry, but I can't take that one seriously. I'm 100% ok with the "I do this for free because I want to" argument... but meh, everybody wants their work to be enjoyed, if possible.

I enjoy it and that is where it matters.

I guess you could say my reward is that I get better at whatever useless skill I use in this but frankly the stuff I do in spring helps me very little in my professional career.

I just hate to see the free spirit of this community tainted with monetary pursuit. I know we already have the taint of the stolen ta content I just strongly believe in the freeware movement.

[lurker]

Let's say that it's about the number of players, or hours logged per month- it doesn't matter what the metric is, there are ways to measure success.

Over players of any game? What kind of a metric is that? If you mean on the single game, that's still very competitive.

[AF]

I could have quit NTai a long time ago and flown off to do commercial work back in 2006 2007, and so could many of the other AI developers.

Having said that, this doesn't mean I wouldnt commercialize a game I make, but the money wouldnt be the sole driving purpose fo development of such a game.

Just as Im sure in the beginning days of P.U.R.E commercial success was not at the forefront of arghs mind.

Either way such a discussion is irrelevant and likely to descend into personal conflict that will do none of us any good

[Sleksa]

BA is like a fat bird that won't leave the nest. Its not that it won't fly away and catch its own food, it wont even reach out for food right next to the nest within reach

Oh my, someone could think that you are hostile towards BA ~~



The analogue is wrong though, The BA is not a fat bird, and there is no nest.

Its a empty shell. There are no Devs(apart from TFC) working on it, improving it, creating new content or checking out how the metagame works.

And personally, im quite proud of BA, since it started out as nothing else but a simple fix to jeffies when Caydr left the building.
And here we are years later, with people still playing it, despite of the fact that its not even maintained 100% anymore, and with dozens of prettier mods out there, having even a single game open atm would be a accomplishment to me.

[Licho]

You're running a *A mod anyway. Your target audience has to consist of *A players because anyone else will just go "WTF" at any *A mod due to the extreme complexity and lack of easily available documentation.

I dont think CA is "*A" mod anymore.. And we did a lot to reduce its complexity. So I dont think people who join CA should expect BA like gameplay. In fact many leave when they realize its something else :)

Lack of ingame help/easy to use gui hurts a lot though.

[CarRepairer]

Maybe we need a good Youtube video tutorial on installing Spring plus how to get mods and maps and join games.

If we need this, we fail. Other games don't need video tutorials.

[Gota]

We do need it hence we fail.

[Gedanken]

Wow a post about improving Spring's userbase and we get all the old crones coming in and fagging up the thread, slagging each other off and swinging their cocks around.

What about making Spring Downloader the main download? So you get someone downloading that and upon installation, a number of things happen:

1. Spring Downloader checks if it is the latest Spring Downloader; self-updates if not.
2. Latest Spring gets downloaded and then unpacked in a way that won't interfere with a future update of Spring; a default lobby gets installed.
3. In a similar way to how it currently asks if TS is to be installed, it asks what mod you want to install. It has a little thing under a pretty picture of each mod saying what is currently popular (this could be pulled from the server stats or something and be updated with each release of the downloader). Or, you just have a bunch of tick boxes with all the mods and hope that your end user doesn't go "hm ima try simbase" then leave because nobody else is playing it. This would be a more level playing field I suppose.

OR AN ALTERNATIVE TO STEP 3. The new user is in #newbies - it can see what mods are being played and installs one of them.

So essentially, you just download the downloader and it pulls down the engine and the lobby, then you pick a mod and ggogogooogoggo

Of course this presupposes a Spring Downloader that is capable of these things

The point being that you don't have to worry about including the engine or content or that obsolete versions of the mod are being downloaded in the far reaches of the internet or on bittorrent - you are just essentially downloading A PORTAL TO THE SPRING UNIVARSE that deals with everything for you.

But I pretty much just posted this idea so you old pros can tell me how retarded it is and that what would actually improve Spring is another slanging match

ps Regret and Smoth why don't you guys just take your posting one step further and irl hunt down everyone who posts something that you don't agree with and cut them up in their beds. You guys are so easygoing and cool

Good thread

[tombom]

PLayed yesterday for first time in probably a year or two. Same problems now as ever:
-Relatively time consuming to DL and install (spring, lobby, mods, maps etc)
-Lobby not pretty
-Takes too long to get game started

Considering 90% of players are like me and just want to play an improved version of Total Annihilation, I'm fairly sure you'd get way more players if they just released a single installer that installed spring, BA and most maps in one go and included a lobby which looked a bit more professional.

Most of the above doesnt really bug me (aside from long time getting games started), but its pretty offputting to most.

Its a real pity because I still think once games get going TA's possibly the most fun RTS around.

i realise the main problem is finding people with the time + skills + motivation to actually fix this stuff

[smoth]

unrelated shit about springdownloader

what? none of that had to do with what we were talking about? seriously, are you high?

ps Regret and Smoth why don't you guys just take your posting one step further and irl hunt down everyone who posts something that you don't agree with and cut them up in their beds. You guys are so easygoing and cool

you are so cool mr internet police!

[smoth]

Spring players battle is zero sum game..
So far no mod has achieved significant influx of players by advertising outside, only a trickle at best, and those few that persist are often drawn to BA, because only BA games are available at all times.

It makes much more sense to convince few already established BA players to play your mod than trying to recruit newbies who end up playing BA anyway :)

10) also it is hard for most people to host, I have no fucking clue why, they can host all of the other games just fine, spring is just a bitch.

again, no one acknowledges this fucking point. People play what is available because many of them cannot host spring matches.

[Gedanken]

unrelated shit about springdownloader

what? none of that had to do with what we were talking about?

Hey no, you're right, because you were both ridiculously and hilariously trying to prove your holiness in front of the boyz re: Argh making a commercial game and how you do so much but everyone else is all TAKE TAKE TAKE and why can't they have smoth morals . So you're right, I wasn't responding to what you were talking about - I was responding more to the original post sorry about that, but you can carry losing your shit as much as you like it's a free world man.

This thread needs more derailing let's post pictures of our dicks no photoshopping

[Regret]

Hey no, you're right, because you were both ridiculously and hilariously trying to prove your holiness in front of the boyz re: Argh making a commercial game and how you do so much but everyone else is all TAKE TAKE TAKE and why can't they have smoth morals . So you're right, I wasn't responding to what you were talking about - I was responding more to the original post sorry about that, but you can carry losing your shit as much as you like it's a free world man.

This thread needs more derailing let's post pictures of our dicks no photoshopping

Only you are derailing it.

Also, what the hell are you talking about?

[Gedanken]

I can't work out for you how you can't work out what I am talking about.

[spoiler]I made a suggestion regarding the fifth paragraph of the OP hope this helps[/spoiler]

[smoth]

Please ignore gendankens infatuation with me.

Spring players battle is zero sum game..
So far no mod has achieved significant influx of players by advertising outside, only a trickle at best, and those few that persist are often drawn to BA, because only BA games are available at all times.

It makes much more sense to convince few already established BA players to play your mod than trying to recruit newbies who end up playing BA anyway :)

10) also it is hard for most people to host, I have no fucking clue why, they can host all of the other games just fine, spring is just a bitch.

again, no one acknowledges this fucking point. People play what is available because many of them cannot host spring matches.

why is spring this way.

[tombom]

Spring is fine with hosting usually, forwarding ports just works and the NAT traversal usually works even if you can't do that.

[smoth]

so what you are saying is the users who say they cannot get the hole punching to work HAVE to port forward? why do other games NOT require this?

[Argh]

A lot of games do, if you want a smooth connection. CS:S, for example. Of course, that's just for smooth connections- due to Spring's sync system, the tolerances are a lot tighter.

[Tobi]

Not true, whether you use hole punching or port forwarding doesn't affect smoothness at all, and springs synced network _design_ definitely doesn't make tolerances tighter. If anything, it makes tolerances wider. (compare to e.g. FPSes which may be unplayable with 500ms lag.)