SpringInfo "Player Portal"

[Forboding Angel]

Please follow this link: http://springinfo.info
If you get an error (or send to evolutionrts.info), it means that dns hasn't propagated yet.
and read the post (in it's entirety) as well as checking it out in general.

Let me know if you have any questions or would like to help in any way.

[AF]

=\ The amount of time and effort that has gone into that site is several orders of magnitude greater than that needed to deploy the new spring site.

I would also switch the red logo at the side to an official logo

[Machiosabre]

So what happens when someone new finds that site and proceeds to open the spring lobby? :D

[Forboding Angel]

So what happens when someone new finds that site and proceeds to open the spring lobby? :D

Multiplayer


How to play in Multiplayer in Spring

Once you have installed Spring, you will notice that in Start > Program Files, there is a shortcut to Multiplayer >TASClient.

Currently TASClient is the multiplayer lobby that is included with spring when you download it. Once you start up TASClient you will need to create a unique username. Currently you can have as many usernames as you wish, but it is advisable to stick with one, so that people know you are and your ranking will be properly displayed.

If you are not immediately prompted to create a new username, you may click on the ├óÔé¼┼ôOptions├óÔé¼┬Ø button at the top of TASClient, and then click on the ├óÔé¼┼ôAccount├óÔé¼┬Ø tab. When you have filled out the username and password fields, click on ├óÔé¼┼ôCreate New Account├óÔé¼┬Ø. This will register your new username with the server so you can log in. You may also want to register with the Ladder if you would like to participate in ranked ladder games.
Using TASClient

Using TASClient is fairly simple, but the documentation on it├óÔé¼Ôäós features is a little behind. Some of the common commands used are:

* /ingame ├óÔé¼ÔÇØ This command will display your total time spent ingame on this particular username
* /join #[Channel] ├óÔé¼ÔÇØ This command is used for joining custom chat channels (very much like IRC in some ways). You will notice that when you first log in that you are connected to #main and #newbies. The newbies channel is a great place to ask questions and gain information, don├óÔé¼Ôäót be afraid to ask away, even if you think your question may not be a good one.
* /me ├óÔé¼ÔÇØ Works just like IRC in most cases. Use this command for indicating an action E.G. ├óÔé¼┼ô/me watches #newbies intently├óÔé¼┬Ø.

At the bottom of the screen in tasclient you will notice that there are many games listed, sorted but Open, Full, or Ingame. A green square means that that particular game is open for players to join. A green Square with a ├óÔé¼┼ôP├óÔé¼┬Ø inside means that that game is open for players who know a password of the game to join. An Orange square means that the game is open to spectators, but has the allotted amount of players.

At the bottom of the TASClient interface you will notice a long bar that the bottom of the games dialog. Here you can set filters for games you would like to join.

Spectating in spring is as easy as clicking a checkbox in the battle window labeled ├óÔé¼┼ôSpectate├óÔé¼┬Ø. Be aware that some hosts do not care for spectators and will either ask you to ├óÔé¼┼ôUnspec├óÔé¼┬Ø or leave the game. Some hosts may kick you outright from the game. Don├óÔé¼Ôäót be offended though. Many times this sort of behavior is related to:
The Myth of Spectator Lag

It is uncertain as to where this myth originated, but here we set the record straight. Spectators will not cause your game to lag, even if you have tons of spectators. The reason that spectators do not drag down the performance of that game is because of many reasons, but the most pertinent reason is that the spectator is not processing data like the players are, nor are they constantly sending data to the host. Only the commands are sent (like talking to other spectators or players). The actual simulation is being played out on the spectators own computer.

It is technically possible for a spectator to lag the game, though very improbable. The only way that it would be possible for a spectator to lag the game is if that spectator has a subpar computer which cannot keep up with the simulation of the game. If you realize that your computer cannot handle the game at the required performance, please be respectful of the players and exit the game, however, as stated, the likelyhood of this occurance is very minimal.
Hosting your own game

To host your own game there are a few things that need to be set up first. You will need to port forward your router (if you are behind one) port: 8452 - UDP to your local IP address via your router├óÔé¼Ôäós interface. Here is a wonderful resource on what port forwarding is and how to do it: http://www.portforward.com.

Additionally you can use what is called ├óÔé¼┼ôHole Punching├óÔé¼┬Ø and ├óÔé¼┼ôNat Transversal├óÔé¼┬Ø (available as options on the Host Battle dialog). It is not necessary to know how these work, all that is necessary for you to know about them is that they are not guaranteed to always work. Essentially these are ways of ├óÔé¼┼ôTricking├óÔé¼┬Ø your router.

If you are not behind a router you do not need to worry about it.

Once the battle screen has opened you have many options. In the upper left corner you will see a minimap of the map you have selected and the name off to the right. To change the map simply click on the dropdown box to the right of the map name to see a list of the maps you currently have installed.

Further to the right you have several options concerning what sort of game type you want to play. These are ├óÔé¼┼ôStart Position├óÔé¼┬Ø and ├óÔé¼┼ôGame end condition├óÔé¼┬Ø. Simply mouse over them to get a description of what each option does. All the way on the right are resource settings. The metal and Energy bars are how much metal and energy you will start the game with. The units slider designates the total amount of allowed units per player in the game.

Below the resources section you have the ├óÔé¼┼ôMy Options├óÔé¼┬Ø settings. Here you can change your team color, the side that you wish to play as and you can choose whether or not you would like to spectate the game. Additionally you can change your player ID and what team you are assigned to.

To the left of the ├óÔé¼┼ôMy Options├óÔé¼┬Ø section you have a player list. As the host if you right click on a players name you have the option to change that players ID, the team they are assigned to, give them a bonus (discussed in a moment), kicking that player, banning that player, forcing them to spectate the game, or ringing the player (plays an audable ringing telephone on the users end to get their attention).

That the very bottom of the screen below the chatbox you have the options of ├óÔé¼┼ôAdmin├óÔé¼┬Ø Functions, adding AI Bots to the game, designating that you are ready to start the game, and whether or not to lock the game.

Don├óÔé¼Ôäót forget to check the tabs at the top of the battle window. Especially the one called ├óÔé¼┼ôMod Options├óÔé¼┬Ø. These are game specific options that can change the gameplay based upon the creators intentions. The options are different for each game so we won├óÔé¼Ôäót elaborate on them now.

When all players have the bright blue box next to their name indicating that they are ready, you may start the game!
Hosting - Player Bonus

The bonus system works on a percentage scale from 0 to 100 percent. If the bonus is set to 100% then the play that is assigned the bonus will receive 100% more resources in the game than the opposing players without bonuses. Likewise for any other percentage amount. Make sure you get approval from the other players before handing out player bonuses.

Read... It really is ftw.

@AF
Wiki... Nuff Said.
It's for the players, nothing else. It's a place where modmakers, mapmakers, etc can post their new stuff and show it off in a public place. At what point did I not make that clear?

THink TAU... Annihilated. Do you really want to point a new user at the spring wiki to learn how to play? That wiki is for dev,s content devs, and very little for players. You are always free to copy pasta what I have written into the newspring wiki... That's kindof the point.

Also, am I as a content dev going to get access to post news on the spring site? Are mappers going to have access to the main page of the newspring site news?

Thus: We have SpringInfo.

[Machiosabre]

I was talking about the fact that no mod mentioned on the site gets played and the opposite.

sort of sets up a new player for a fall.

[very_bad_soldier]

I somehow like the site, it has the information that is REALLY interesting to (new) players. Its better then leading them to the jungle of informations that is called our wiki.
The wiki is surely more complete but its too much for most casual players IMO.

[SinbadEV]

I really like the idea... oh so many problems with the actual implementation but I figure those are just kinks you'll work out as time goes on.

I suggest you steal this article and fix it up a bit for the format of your site and put it under getting started or something.

Should have a list of mods available duplicated on the page that explains what a mod is.

[Forboding Angel]

Well TBH I had a significant amount of trouble finding info in one place for CA and BA that was useful in this context. They aren't excluded for any other reason than that tbh. The Idea is that saktoth and noize would register and get access to create their own pages. I honestly figured it would be best this way.

The majority of the other mods already had info set up in a way that I could do copy pasta and have most of the needed info already there.

That said, many of those pages need to be redone in a prettier fashion. It was a lot of content grabbing, so I didn't take the time to make them super pretty. That is the modder's job. Notice that even evolution's page is jsut a copy pasta of the about page on http://evolutionrts.info

The point is, There isn't some devious plan to exclude *A mods, it's just that they have very little info available in 1 nice coherent place.

[Forboding Angel]

Thanks sinbad. I'll hop on that now

Getting started is a daunting task to write and tbh there is so much that I will miss (or at least I think I will).

Also keep in mind, modders will have access to edit these pages and whatnot. The idea is that responsible community members keep it current and so on (of course this includes myself).

[SinbadEV]

Also keep in mind, modders will have access to edit these pages and whatnot. The idea is that responsible community members keep it current and so on (of course this includes myself).

Like the wiki is supposed to be :D

TBH I'd prefer if the "new site" went live, was filled in by responsible community members and when you came to the home-page it would default to a player view with a sub-portal for dev/modders/mappers... but your thing is what I'd like to call "proactive"... sadly this place has a very strong "if you want things to get done, do it yourself... and then fight with the community, admins and everyone else for a while to convince people they want it, get fed up and leave the community for a while and then come back later and find out that someone else has done what you wanted to do but half-assed and it got accepted" attitude for some reason so going and doing your own thing and letting us know about it is awesome... maybe we'll copy-pasta you back when we got our stuff together.

I hear there are french and Chinese Spring communities with their own sites and game servers along with a silent mass of players who only play on home-lans and in single-player... they could be rumours though.


Sorry... that espresso hit me weird so I'm not sure if I made sense there... let me summarize...

Great work, I wish we'd done it first.

[AF]

tbh the spring site should do that anyway, I'm glad that the spring community as a whole now has an additional site on top of it, and no doubt there are things that are better suited on such a site than on here.

I have some critique but it is entirely regarding the sites template and some issues, but they're not pressing and I'll detail them in private. At some point foreboding I need a long talk with you.

In the meantime, if you can put some of the little banners in the side menu to other sites like smoth has done thatd be great. Ill add this to the links page on darkstars and I'm sure smoth would be happy to add it to the top list of his site. It's important we network our sites so that we have a greater sense of community.

[Forboding Angel]

And "Getting Started" is "Done".

I say "done" cause it probably needs a wee bit of cleaning up, but what is there is most definitely functional, good info, etc etc.

I'll spend some more time doing some housekeeping on it.

Edit: Well, possibly this site could be shown by the various lobbies upon start. Therefore, the motivation to keep it up is much greater, cause content creators know that their stuff is gonna show up to everyone who logs in.

Getting the lobby devs to do this is another story...

[AF]

Well its out of the question for battle hub since it doesn't really make sense to users of other engines, however I can link to it in that pretty list you'll have seen, but I'll need an icon that isn't the official spring logo otherwise it wont make sense to see 10 spring logos all representing different things.

[Forboding Angel]

tbh the spring site should do that anyway, I'm glad that the spring community as a whole now has an additional site on top of it, and no doubt there are things that are better suited on such a site than on here.

I have some critique but it is entirely regarding the sites template and some issues, but they're not pressing and I'll detail them in private. At some point foreboding I need a long talk with you.

In the meantime, if you can put some of the little banners in the side menu to other sites like smoth has done thatd be great. Ill add this to the links page on darkstars and I'm sure smoth would be happy to add it to the top list of his site. It's important we network our sites so that we have a greater sense of community.

@AF, the idea is that the info there, is copy pasta into the newspringsite. The information should be available at BOTH places, however, a "Player Portal" is invaluable to random users and for uses of advertising spring because it deals ONLY with info that is useful to players and potential players.

The simple truth is that the spring site is not and never will be an ideal solution for new players, because it has to cater to so many different types, devs, content devs, etc. The thing is, with a player portal it gives a great place for players to go to get info that they give a crap about, without being confronted with "How to make a map in spring" when they just want to know how to install the darn thing.

As I said, information is MEANT to be mirrored. In fact you can view the source on any of these pages and find that you can copy paste them into the spring wiki and they are already formatted! The fact that the info would be mirrored means that if the player stumbles upon either site, he gets the info that he needs, however, if he stumbles upon springinfo, he automagically has stuff that partains to just him, whereas on the spring site it's a lot more content to filter through.

I'm encouraging cooperation! NOT segregation! Segregation was never my intent, and would be a horrible disaster in my opinion. The sites (I'm including all here, E.G. Smoth's site) need to work together with the common goal of helping the users, not hindering them or each other.

[Forboding Angel]

Well its out of the question for battle hub since it doesn't really make sense to users of other engines, however I can link to it in that pretty list you'll have seen, but I'll need an icon that isn't the official spring logo otherwise it wont make sense to see 10 spring logos all representing different things.

Yep, I figured as much. No biggie, I totally understand. In fact I was thinking about that when I was writing that post. Sorry, I'm having trouble keeping up with you guys hehehe

Edit: Damn forgot to mention JobJol, but that is very much a part of it as well.

@AF, could you help me mirror the jobjol stuff on your server? Mirroring jobjol directly doesn't seem to be working, and since you are on dreamhost as well I was thinking that it should be much more readily doable that way.

[AF]

I and JJ talked about ti and tried to get mirroring working. It seems JJ was using the php fopen but dreamhost has disabled fopen for remote urls. Dreamhost says to use cURL and I tried getting that working to no availa nd ended up handing JJ an ftp account and he got it working.

If you can get JJ an ftp/user account he should know where to go from there.

And I agree, the spring site isn't exactly best for some things, but I think that gap was supposed to be filled by the BA site or the CA site etc, but alas it has not. Eitherway this is somewhere we can look when the mains ite si down and ask wtf questions lol.

[Forboding Angel]

Ooooooh, so that's what he meant. LOL, Yar will do (ftp username thingy).

[NOiZE]

Just skimmed through it, it looks awesome!

[Tobi]

Great work, good initiative.

[Forboding Angel]

O dam, I forgot to mention. The whole thing is RSS ready, so in all technicality the spring site could have a little box or ticker or something devoted to displaying RSS from SpringInfo.

BTW that brings me to another point. Once I am sure of having Content Dev support (maintaining their pages, etc), (BTW this also includes you Lua guys out there! It's a great spot to show off your new widgets and things!) I will get the domain name http://www.spring.info and we'll be in business