And the most popular spring game of 2012 is:

[luckywaldo7]

I don't agree with a lot of the player gathering tactics though, but hell, it worked, so who can argue with results?

To be fair, many of the players it gathered were not RTS players, but mostly people looking to do perform silly antics in team games.

[aiphee]

Congrats :)

I tripped on Spring when searching some Linux games to kill time.

First mod i tried was BA, which looks ugly, i would live without pretty graphics but there are many anoying elements (like reversed zoom, annoying beep sounds, ugly interface)

Second game i tried was ZK, and this was something completely different, there were some obstacles but game looked nice so digged in and after almost two years i still enjoy playing and im excited about fast development which brings new cool stuff and polish old.

I think that most of people sticks with BA, because they loved Total Annihilation and probably played it through their puberty. And we all now that old habits are firm.

[Silentwings]

I dislike the current #main spam almost as much as the old ca/zk spam. But I think what killed the discussion in #main is two things:

1) ZK lobby doesn't even load #main (or #newbies for that matter).

2) The default window arrangement for the lobbies all changed; in the old days you saw #main and your battle together so you could chat in #main while you waited for a game, without having to switch window all the time.

The solution is to make your springlobby look like this:

[Silentwings]

...like reversed zoom, annoying beep sounds, ugly interface

Reversed zoom is configurable with spring. I've never heard BA beep, ever, but equally I've never found a single RTS game with enjoyable sounds. Battles just don't sound nice - press f6 and use music.

If you asked most people why they play BA/read forum discussions you'd hear that the players are concerned with the quality of the gameplay+controls and don't care all that much about fancy gfx.

[Vladimir]

heh its about time ZK became most popular

and I'm one of the few BA players that went ZK

I think it's mostly just old habits and closed-mindedness that keeps people playing crappy old ba dsd

sure the GUI and the ZKLobby look like they were designed by a 5 year old with downs syndrome but you can customize the GUI and use TAS Client. I think the real reason you guys won't play ZK is laziness and unwilling to try new thing, but that's silly, it's so alike BA except it's not ugly, old and dead, it's so much more fun with all it's fancy units and strategies etc

when I go back to BA now, I'm speccing 1v1 with 2 best players and falling asleep, it's all the same boring crap, the same units every game, the same tactics all memorized by every player on the same maps played every day since forever

I won't bother listing the endless amounts of cool features that make zk better than ba because you guys can just play it and find out

[PicassoCT]

Never forget the day googlefrog banned me from zk-dev channel.. the king is dead, long live the king-

écrasez l'infâme

[scrotum]

would like to have seen the community all playing one game instead of this fractionalization

[PicassoCT]

yes, fractionalisation is bad. I feel the very same thing. Its that fear of of apetribe internal warfare, lowering the survival likelihood for every dumbass. Follow the leader. Do not think diffrent.
Come to think, the biggest historic sucesses certainly didnt root in countries/continents fractured into thousands of little paralle executed attempts. The Chinese emperor did rule the world for the last thousand years for a reason, not that european backwater with its hundreds small kingdoms.

Its hard to admit, that statistics might be right. That you are not only blind, but wrong, and not even able to grasp that as what it is- a mental handicap, which even doesent cease to exist when every other ape feeling the same way as you raise his paw to vote for that.

Would you recognize a world that is opt- if you were blind for it?

[Google_Frog]

"The Community"? Is this site housing a player community?

I don't see many people from the ZK community on this site and those that are around are often involved in development somehow or old players. I assume from the inactivity of the BA subforum that the BA community has been moved to some external site as well.

[luckywaldo7]

Usually when someone says that they mean "I have an idea of my ideal game and I think everyone should work on it".

[PicassoCT]

Hope nobody gets this in the wrong pipe up there, was not meant against the zero-k comunity or devs. They do a good job, and have earned there place.

Might be frustrating for some who want a game up, to go around and ring everyone they see and realize that many of them are there for -other mods - or not to play at all. Sorry if i offended someone with the post above.

[smoth]

I don't see it a fractured community. This forum is not a community for any 1 game. It is a community for games on the spring engine. The zk community lives on the zk site. Which IMO is good. Yes there are many here who are here to work on projects and others who like to play them all. This is the SPRING community and any talk about how it should be only about 1 game can just go.

The strength of this community is behind ZK just like every other project. This community is strong because most of the content devs and engine devs work together and help each other. So to say the community is fractured.. ha! The community having many different interests is why it is STRONG. IT is because the community, at least the ones who get off their ass, because we all have different perspectives. Growing evolving from discussions comes greater gameplay, art and tools. I think to dismiss this means to deny the greatest aspect of spring, the open and strong willed nature of the people making the games people play.

So players you guys can go cry about everyone not playing the game you like. I will always remind you it is because people play the other games that your favorite game was forced to evolve to where it is now.

[scrotum]

technically its not all the same game but 3 or so years ago ~70% of the players played BA... inactivity on BA subforum is a result of players leaving the community

it was original TA players who came here to play TA in 3D and then 3rd parties jumped on the bandwagon for the spring engine... a bunch of ok-ish mods and everyone was hoping for a piece of that 70% pie

then BA development stalled/stopped, some people went over to zero K, now what you have is the small number of people who still play spring split between BA and Zero K

[Silentwings]

...BA development stalled/stopped...

has never been true. http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/timeline.

+1 to what makes spring strong is devs for different mods/maps/etc sharing stuff.

[smoth]

technically its not all the same game but 3 or so years ago ~70% of the players played BA... inactivity on BA subforum is a result of players leaving the community

maybe. I think they left because they got the stagnant and obscure land mines gameplay they wanted.

it was original TA players who came here to play TA in 3D and then 3rd parties jumped on the bandwagon for the spring engine... a bunch of ok-ish mods and everyone was hoping for a piece of that 70% pie

Untrue. Spring started with starwars and ta. Gundam came shortly there after once I was able to convert it.

then BA development stalled/stopped, some people went over to zero K, now what you have is the small number of people who still play spring split between BA and Zero K

BA development has been more active for years now than it was during it's hey day when it was AA and the years of stagnant development that happened. The current version has has many massive landmines resolved and is going towards a new and exciting direction.

[scrotum]

technically its not all the same game but 3 or so years ago ~70% of the players played BA... inactivity on BA subforum is a result of players leaving the community

maybe. I think they left because they got the stagnant and obscure land mines gameplay they wanted.

it was original TA players who came here to play TA in 3D and then 3rd parties jumped on the bandwagon for the spring engine... a bunch of ok-ish mods and everyone was hoping for a piece of that 70% pie

Untrue. Spring started with starwars and ta. Gundam came shortly there after once I was able to convert it.

then BA development stalled/stopped, some people went over to zero K, now what you have is the small number of people who still play spring split between BA and Zero K

BA development has been more active for years now than it was during it's hey day when it was AA and the years of stagnant development that happened. The current version has has many massive landmines resolved and is going towards a new and exciting direction.

well BA hasn't changed much over the past 3 years I played it (been playing since 2004), you can point at a changelog if you want but I haven't noticed much change.

Spring started with star wars and TA - TA! is total annihilation. That drew a crowd and took off like wildfire. What made AA and BA fun back then were changing the balance of units which made it a challenge for vets to test that balance. Those days are long gone.

and the community shifted from TA to AA to BA and a different dev tried to make CA and zero-k but this transition was not good and the result today is a smaller crowd than ever... you can preach diversity all you want but no one is buying it.

[luckywaldo7]

What is the nonsense about the TA community shifting to AA. Didn't Spring itself fragment that community?

[Silentwings]

@scrotum: Let us know when you've actually produced some content for spring and discovered how helpful the diversity is.

If you can muster some sort of ingenuity you could also go and check your stats and discover that springs overall player numbers have been stable for about ~5 years.

Obviously your own opinions are more reliable than the changelog.

[smoth]

and the community shifted from TA to AA to BA and a different dev tried to make CA and zero-k but this transition was not good and the result today is a smaller crowd than ever... you can preach diversity all you want but no one is buying it.

The transition between ba and ca LOL. I cannot recall if CA came before or after BA. Ca was as far as I remember it quantum doing awesome effects and then it picked up momentum with others adding to it.

The transition from BA to ZK didn't happen but for a few existing BA hardcores. ZK pulled and is pulling new different players. Many issues with the engine drove several players away. There was no transition to ZK that failed. That part of the history I know you have incorrect.

As far as me "preaching diversity" I am not. You are the knucklehead who thinks this is a gamer community and it is not that. This site, at its core, it is a development community. Yeah the BA/AA players congregated here but it wasn't intentional and to date they don't have a successful sub-community. Hell EE had more sucess on the FGJL forum when it was active. Just how the things fell. Diversity, where do you even pull that goofy shit out of your ass. Most players focus on 1 game, ba, zk, whatever. Right now ZK is pulling the most players and many spring die-hards have moved on. Many of which didn't only play BA.

Just stop, you are not really contributing anything. Just a misguided view that somehow the main game is the center of the spring universe. there were many things, bouncing units, pathing issues, the goofy shit many laptops do forcing spring to run on the intel onboard.. many things but ZK is not at fault for the current lack of BA players. The game was stagnant, it got dull, the engine had issues, new rts games came out, people grew up, got careers, and other people stopped playing for unknown reasons.

luckywaldo: spring started with XTA then AA(the spring version) came later.
Silentwings: scrot don't care.

[scrotum]

I don't understand how you can call anything a developer community when the whole point would appear to be getting people to play your games

for me anyways I've watched the game empty out over the past 5 years it could have been a lot more. I'll stop, I'm not contributing anything, I'm just a player that loves the game. I dunno what made me think my opinion had any value in it, the feedback of players should not reach the devs, I keep forgetting that...

this is not sarcastic post or pun or anything I just don't give a shit anymore and this (^^ last post by smoth) is why