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Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 26 May 2012, 23:18
by PicassoCT
we need something to drag them back.. and we need to do research on why people leave. obviously people get bored after some time. Else they would stay. So why not ask that question.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 26 May 2012, 23:43
by luckywaldo7
gajop wrote:or if you had good singleplayer/co-op it wouldn't matter how big the player base, since there's always something to do
Gimmie a linux-compatible mission editor. :D

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 27 May 2012, 03:45
by gajop
luckywaldo7 wrote: Gimmie a linux-compatible mission editor. :D
i'm trying to, but finishing final projects and master paper is taking all the time i have right now

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 05:45
by Forboding Angel
Google_Frog wrote:It isn't I tested.
Yes it is, I've tested much more than you.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 06:14
by SinbadEV
To summarize, this is our ideal “net”... this is what I think we need in order for our "product" to be "sticky" and convert interest into long term players.

Stable Installer Containing:
Stable Game
Tutorial Missions
Manual and Quick Reference Guide
Functional AI
A Few Great Maps
A Few Great Widgets
Stable Lobby
A Ranking System
Stable Spring Engine with Pathfinding that doesn’t fail

A Great Website with:
Screenshots
Gameplay Videos (Trailer Style)
Lobby Rank
Manual and Quick Reference Guide
Additional recommended Maps and Widgets.
Community support for everything in the installer as if it’s a “Game”
Members to participate in regularly scheduled "free play times” (when a bunch of people will intentionally be online and try to have games)

It sounds to me like we are very close on a lot of these things... (I'm sure there's stuff to add/remove, this is just a second draft)... but if we had something like I've described to promote... it would be an awful lot more effective... it practically sells itself.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 06:48
by MidKnight
Why don't you go play Zero-K for a few hours tomorrow, Sinbad? It'll be fun!

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 07:48
by Google_Frog
SinbadEV some of those things aren't even worthwhile things to aim for. Sorry but it's a little painful, I have experience trying to do what you're suggesting while as far as I am aware you haven't tried. To all those points my answer is either "great, when are you going to do it?", "there is no point" or "where have you been the last few years??".

Prime example: widgets. Presentable games should have a UI. They should not have a bunch of widgets which are included with the game for users to mess around with. Simple UI tweaks should be done in a way such that users cannot screw up the UI completely.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 08:03
by hoijui
i strongly recommend to not go for a lobby that does not have its sources opened, and to not rely on any promise that they will be opened sometime, but only accept it once they are.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 28 May 2012, 13:09
by SinbadEV
MidKnight wrote:Why don't you go play Zero-K for a few hours tomorrow, Sinbad? It'll be fun!
I haven't actually out-and-out tried in a while but the last time I did was on a computer that died, got repaired, then died again, then got harvested for parts. My "computer" right now is a laptop with one of those "not a graphics card" chipsets.

I think what you are probably saying is that ZeroK has most of what I am asking for already?
Google_Frog wrote:SinbadEV some of those things aren't even worthwhile things to aim for. Sorry but it's a little painful, I have experience trying to do what you're suggesting while as far as I am aware you haven't tried. To all those points my answer is either "great, when are you going to do it?", "there is no point" or "where have you been the last few years??".

Prime example: widgets. Presentable games should have a UI. They should not have a bunch of widgets which are included with the game for users to mess around with. Simple UI tweaks should be done in a way such that users cannot screw up the UI completely.
I can see you point in removing it from the list, if the game has a great UI it wouldn't need custom widgets.

Otherwise my answers are "I wasn't planning on it, I was responding to "when is Spring ready for primetime", "OK, then I'll take it off my wishlist" and "Where I said 'It sounds to me like we are very close on a lot of these things...' the implication was that these requirements have nearly been met so it wouldn't take much to push forward to get all of them."

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 29 May 2012, 04:53
by SwiftSpear
I've had to delete a flame war about open source lobby discussion. I don't think it's a topic worth calling each other idiots over. Please refrain from doing so.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 29 May 2012, 10:22
by Forboding Angel
Notalobby is the only customize-able lobby that's built with spring portable/isolated being used with only 1 game in mind making it perfect for the job. Also the interface is excellent.

Complain all you like, but no other lobby comes even close except weblobby (and weblobby is built for the masses which pretty much immediately disqualifies it).

To my credit, I begged car to design it for singles originally and he didn't really listen (which is the case of all lobby devs except danil and andrew).

So:
hoijui wrote:i strongly recommend to not go for a lobby that does not have its sources opened, and to not rely on any promise that they will be opened sometime, but only accept it once they are.
Yeah, whatever dude.

@Swift, Good thing I keep a record of what I've written then. Don't delete my response just because you didn't like it. If you're going to delete my response, then you need to delete his post as well.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 29 May 2012, 10:43
by koshi
I don't do what now?

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 29 May 2012, 12:16
by Forboding Angel
SL and TasC don't count because they were designed originally with a different purpose in mind (to be a lobby for the whole of spring), moreover the "Individual Game" didn't exist back then and there was no splitting off of spring even if you wanted to.

I am referring to the new lobbies that are cropping up. Starting with the closed aflobby/icarus, cheeselobby, weblobby, qtlobby, and the list goes on.

I begged the developers to take pity on single game installs and was ignored by every single one except notalobby.

If you just want to play BA or *A in general, then use SL or TASC or Weblobby. If you want to package your game, then using notalobby is the only real choice (though weblobby shows a lot of promise in this regard). If SL had rapid support it could be realistically be included as well (although the ui suffers from a lot of unfortunate happenings in windows -- As I understand it, not so much a fault of the app as the way it's designed (I.E. Wasn't really designed to be shoehorned so much)).

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 29 May 2012, 12:35
by gajop
Forboding Angel wrote:SL and TasC don't count because they were designed originally with a different purpose in mind (to be a lobby for the whole of spring), moreover the "Individual Game" didn't exist back then and there was no splitting off of spring even if you wanted to.
I'd rather have lobbies that are made for the whole spring - much like what I consider steam client to be. Customization for a specific game is a separate issue, and that should be something that comes with the game, not the lobby.

To stay on the issue, I'd like to see somewhat improved rapid packages (think I mentioned this somewhere once). It would be nice if we could add meta-information in form of detailed package descriptions such as:
  • type: game/map/mod/dev tool
  • advertising url/html page: main page for the package, which may include media such as images, youtube/video links; would primarily be used to advertise the game/map or w/e to people who don't have it
  • page hierarchy: list/graph of pages that can be used by the lobby to display concrete "game" tabs, f.e having subpages such as "planetwars" "matchmaking", "news" in the zero-k page hierarchy part of the rapid package
  • etc...
This would allow for creation of multi-platform content-independent lobbies while still allowing content-concrete stuff to appear as the content dev wishes it to.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 30 May 2012, 04:53
by SwiftSpear
Forboding Angel wrote:@Swift, Good thing I keep a record of what I've written then. Don't delete my response just because you didn't like it. If you're going to delete my response, then you need to delete his post as well.
I did. I don't have a problem with the non-flamey part of the discussion. I removed the unneeded heated part on both sides.

For the record, We have permanent record of everything we've "deleted". If you need to recover some great argument that was victim to a flamewar deletion (I don't have time to pick through 6 essay length posts and edit the language until it's acceptable), we can PM you back the contents of your deleted posts.

I have no intention of censoring valid opinions. But if you're using ad-hominem arguments you're gonna have a bad time.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 30 May 2012, 11:21
by PicassoCT
SwiftSpear wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:@Swift, Good thing I keep a record of what I've written then. Don't delete my response just because you didn't like it. If you're going to delete my response, then you need to delete his post as well.
I did. I don't have a problem with the non-flamey part of the discussion. I removed the unneeded heated part on both sides.

For the record, We have permanent record of everything we've "deleted". If you need to recover some great argument that was victim to a flamewar deletion (I don't have time to pick through 6 essay length posts and edit the language until it's acceptable), we can PM you back the contents of your deleted posts.

I have no intention of censoring valid opinions. But if you're using ad-hominem arguments you're gonna have a bad time.
Is there a way to only read the dark side of spring? I want to see that hell!

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 19 Jun 2012, 23:28
by 100Gbps
Beherith wrote:For BA? Very soon.
Should low-spec pc owners (not me) expect worse performance?
What if we don't like the new models and prefer the old ones? Any option to restore them?

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 19 Jun 2012, 23:34
by SinbadEV
100Gbps wrote:
Beherith wrote:For BA? Very soon.
Should low-spec pc owners (not me) expect worse performance?
What if we don't like the new models and prefer the old ones? Any option to restore them?
Play Total Annihilation?... or just keep using the last version of BA released before the newer models are released I guess.

On a side note, better looking models won't necessarily be all that much of a difference anyway... Spring usually bottlenecks on CPU usage long before the GPU get's strained.

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 19 Jun 2012, 23:50
by gajop
SinbadEV wrote: Play Total Annihilation?... or just keep using the last version of BA released before the newer models are released I guess.
Or code a 2D display spring version which should work fast and display only unit icons or something!

Re: Primetime ETA?

Posted: 20 Jun 2012, 07:10
by Forboding Angel
SwiftSpear wrote:I have no intention of censoring valid opinions. But if you're using ad-hominem arguments you're gonna have a bad time.
You need to read up on what ad-hominem actually means. My argument was most decidedly NOT ad-hominem.

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html