Major Game releases should be on the Spring frontpage

[Warlord Zsinj]

Basically what the thread topic says.

I realise in the switch to the new site we lost the community news area. While I'd like to see something like that return to the frontpage, I think until that happens, new releases, such as Spring:1944's recent release, should be featured on the frontpage.

Major releases like this are the lifeblood of the Spring engine, and I think apart from keeping people up to date about other things that are going on in Spring, it also helps to give the frontpage a bit more life and vitality above the 'spring2.3.4.5 bugfix released, now with less bugs', especially if we can get some (small thumbnailed) screenshots and pretty mod logos into the news

Consider how these two major engines include news as an element of their websites:
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/
http://www.havok.com/

Now, there is a bit of grey area with what should and shouldn't be posted. Something like S44's release totally belongs on the frontpage, but ObscureAnnihilationv123.23(bugfix) probably shouldn't be there. Determining whether something should go there is difficult, and it could be left up to mod discretion (for example, something like the way the screenshot uploads work at the moment - users post a thread, mod decides whether the thread is good enough, then moves the thread and the news appears).

Alternatively, you could go for some hard and fast rules;
- New games/mods always get their first release frontpaged
- games/mods receiving over <x> downloads or games receiving over <y>% total play time on the server get frontpaged when they make a release, except:
- A mod cannot be frontpaged twice in <x> amount of time (a month?)

I think those rules could form a nice balance between giving new games/mods a bit of exposure, ensuring people are in the know when a major mod (BA/CA) gets a big update, and giving other mods some attention.

I'd be tempted to go further and say it'd be nice to see new maps get posted up too, I always liked to read about new maps when I was reading the TAUniverse frontpage. But I'm not going to press that one, it's not the main thing I'm after here.

Also, it's pretty clear that my intentions aren't entirely altruistic - when it eventually happens I'd like to see our IW release up on the frontpage. But either way, I think such a move is important for the community and the Spring engine. I think it's a shame that S44 have made a really nice release that's been a long time in the making, and yet their big announcement is restricted to a reasonably out of the way thread in the mods/games section of the forums.

[AF]

I agree. I'd rather have a new item per day for every map and major mod release irrespective of which author or mod it is. It makes us look more active than we currently do, and people return to check whats happened.

[Warlord Zsinj]

While that approach would also work - if we went with going for quantity in newsposting, I'd be happy to even see widgets appearing in the news, a concern with that is that major releases could get quickly snowed under and shoved off the frontpage by lots of smaller, less significant newsposts.

[Argh]

While that approach would also work - if we went with going for quantity in newsposting, I'd be happy to even see widgets appearing in the news, however a concern with that is that major releases could get quickly snowed under and shoved off the frontpage by lots of smaller, less significant newsposts.

Then do it like ModDB does, where they have a major feature section, and a "flood" section (actually, sections).

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well sure, I'd be happy to see some sort of altered frontpage that allows community news as I said in the first post, but that means someone's got to edit the frontpage, and may require a slight redesign, which could take ages to sort out, whereas a simple 'yes, let's allow community news on the frontpage' can be enacted immediately.

[AF]

At which point I would think that the current version number and how many days old it is should be on the frontpage like a badge.

[Hoi]

+1, also, game releases, map releases and widget releases (ect...) should have their own space, to not make a widget release remove a bigger thing like the 1944 release.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, that'd be a good way to show it AF. Alternatively, Spring releases are really only 'news' for the first week or so after release. Beyond that anyone who wants to know the current release version (and date) should check the download page.

[imbaczek]

like I said in the other thread, +1 for including contents of springinfo rss feed somewhere on the front page.

[Otherside]

every CA release should be posted on the frontpage ^^

[det]

Came here to say what Otherside said.

[Argh]

@imbaczek: text without pictures / video will fail. Hell, ModDB knows it, and they're pretty draconian about it- no eye-candy, no chance in hell you'll get into their major news cycle, and their editors are very blunt (in a nice way) about that. Might be a hint, since they do it for a living.

Personally, I intend to keep boycotting the front page. It wasn't what I wanted, and it utterly fails as a realistic promotional tool. I'm still pretty pissed, when I think of the time sucked away from me, trying to get things rolling, only to see that the final result was just a prettier version of the first front end, with user-submitted screens, but no good tools for properly promoting our games.

I'll check out Forb's stuff when I'm closer to release- at least he's doing something about the other major issue, which is that there isn't any way to talk to the Lobby crowd without eating up hours of my RL time that I'd rather spend working on my game...

[imbaczek]

rss doesn't limit embedding anything afaik, so images should be possible.

[Argh]

Well, that might work, then. Too bad it's so low on the page that nobody will see it, unless they're running at a resolution that's uncommon among the general population.

[Forboding Angel]

you're kidding me right?

http://www.springinfo.info

If the spring site were smartish, it could include RSS as miniposts (essentially what community news was) on the main page.

Unfortunately this site is quite anti-rss, otherwise I would set it up so that if a newspost were made here, it would automagically appear on springinfo as a news item.

[imbaczek]

exactly what i was thinking about.

[CarRepairer]

Sorry to interrupt but I'd like to report that last night there was another CA release. This is big news!

Also last night there was another CA release after that one. Front page material!

[TheMightyOne]

Sorry to interrupt but I'd like to report that last night there was another CA release. This is big news!

Also last night there was another CA release after that one. Front page material!

Major Game releases should be on the Spring frontpage

i love the way springinfo does it, im constantly checking on this page and tbh id like the spring main page to be more like it, can we merge the both somehow?

[KDR_11k]

you're kidding me right?

http://www.springinfo.info

Am I the only one who hasn't even heard of that until FA started posting it everywhere last week or so? How many people regularly check the site?

[Pxtl]

you're kidding me right?

http://www.springinfo.info

Am I the only one who hasn't even heard of that until FA started posting it everywhere last week or so? How many people regularly check the site?

I had some dim memories of it back when UF had just gone down and everybody was making up new site stuff... I think.