I just wanted to post that I am, in general, very happy with the current state of progress in the engine community.

We now have some amazing things Spring has not had ever before, like:

• Lobby support for missions, quickmatching, elo, and more
• A modern, extensible, skinnable GUI framework
• Ingame music
• Some amazing maps with no map borders and nice stuff like SSMF (Beherith, SirArturri, Kaiser, other mappers, PM me! I have to speak with you!
• Even crazier Lua awesomeness than ever before
• Somewhat modern selection and waypoint control
• Engine support for models without UpSpring (broken atm )

In addition to that,

• Smoth came out of his secret lair of modmaking and released the new GRTS, which is pure awesome.
• CA finally got rid of all of its OTA content
• Mr. Bob, Pyramid Head, and some other new modelers have appeared and consistently stunned us with their amazing pieces of art
• Our recent newbie arrivals (Ardis, DjDec) have been intelligent, literate, and open-minded toward the community's support, and the community has treated them nicely

There's a lot of other things I haven't mentioned because they don't come to mind at the moment (post to remind me!), but, in general, I'm very satisfied with the current state of the engine, the content, and the community. Thought this was gonna be another drama post, didn't ya'? >;P

Great work, guys!
Don't rest on your laurels; keep it up!

Also went backwards totally on the pathfinder. And spring has been in an unenjoyably playable state for a while cos of it.

<BrainDamage> and 416 users, this time I took a screenshot
<BrainDamage> someone else please do the same
<BrainDamage> need evidence to slap in the face for next time that some goes "lol spring is dieing"
<FLOZi> Spring is dieing!
<Nemo> 421 now
<FLOZi> Spring is dead!

yeah yeah.. but where are the tits?

Well well after what?6-7 years? yes the growth rate of Spring is amazing.
Our grandchildren will have a nice big community to play with...

<insert zwzsg's OTA boobies gif>

Here we go

You're right, at this rate, we'll soon have more players than bots!

The Spring is dead! Long live the Spring!

Oh Ive seen 420+, spring isnt dieing, its just growing slower than people would like

That number is a lie, most of those people aren't actually playing.

Yeah. The number of games being played is way down, at least from what I've observed.

ZKLobby is to thank for that. Its made it easier than ever to try new games, but its made it easier than ever to just idle and not even realize your signed in.

Indeed, the time spent ingame isn't actually growing:





There are more bots and chat-only players (IRC bridge etc.) than before.

On the other hand one could say:
ZKLobby is to blame for that. Its made it harder than ever to try new games.
So with the lobbies its business as usual :)

And the pathfinding is so demotivating.
Not just for players but also if you script something and finally get it working and then the unit herpderps right into the next wall...
Also that annoyance with Spring sometimes taking ages to scan archives which for me causes load times > 2 minutes in online games.

Hm, that sounds so negative. All in all, spring is much fun :)

nice stats bibim

so basiclly...Spring is turning from a game engine into some sort of advanced 3D chat client?

As every other old multiplayer game do.

Okay, so with midgame join we can have a Sims-type mod. I hereby announce that I will start one as yet another side project (I'm up to about 9 I think).

iam announcin iAnnounce, an online announcementmanagementsystem.

The two big spikes in late 2008/early 2009 are planetwars rounds (one is split by the lobby server outage). If you don't count that, things aren't so bad.

still an average of 60 players ingame at any time is not so bad. look at how many other free rts get:
http://wz2100.net/lobbyserver
http://www.netpanzer.org/sb/

even commercial rts often die quite fast.