Spring RTS Engine

I know this might come out as the most pointless topic in the history of man kind, but never the less I thought IÔÇÖd sign up and just say a massive thank you to everyone who works on BA.

I get the feeling TA Derived mods are somehow shamed by some of the Spring community, but never the less I can assure you a good amount of us from the internet community AGMC (a minecraft community!) love your game and enjoy destroying each other. Sure we may play in some amateurish way, but itÔÇÖs one of the most enjoyable games we play.

Every update you do is so deeply appreciated by all of us, so yes, thank you BA & Spring people.

djdclarke wrote:most pointless topic

I wouldn't worry about it.

I get the feeling TA Derived mods are somehow shamed by some of the Spring community

OLOLOLOL

anyway, hai&np

SinbadEV wrote:

djdclarke wrote:most pointless topic

I wouldn't worry about it.

Well, I stand corrected Now I must go and make a topic about the fact I just opened a bottle of diet cola... thats not spam? Right? Guys?

SinbadEV wrote:

djdclarke wrote:most pointless topic

I wouldn't worry about it.

This.

Please, continue to play and drag new meat to the engine. Out of curiosity, if BA had different graphics/newer graphics would you play it?

Better graphics are nice, but I don't think any member of our community (we've had a couple of big matches, and a torny which I lost ) has ever commented on the graphics, they don't stand out (ZK has the best I think it would be fair to say),

The only thing people still arent major fans of speaking for our community is the UI. The NOTA one (supcom style) is many many degrees better. The stuggle we've faced is getting people to understand Spring and how Spring is the engine, and then you plug games on top of that - SpringRTS isn't the type of open source game that is easily accessible.

The reason we play BA over the others though is it feels ready (of course it has the history of TA to fall back on) and feels big! ZK never seems to get the same sense of battles as BA provides.

What about the non-TA content, like Gundam RTS or The Cursed? Fresh opinions always desired.

What about the non-TA content, like Gundam RTS or The Cursed? Fresh opinions always desired.

I struggle to get people to play Gundam because they think it's Animie . I've personally played it and very much enjoyed it. Right now as I type this 3 of us are about to play NOTA, so we do like to try out the other mods. In terms of Cursed, it's very very well made but does not seem to have the same level of longtivity.

I was just speaking with the two we're about to play with and the consensus is it's still too hard to explore the new content. Maybe some form of in lobby game selector with details (screenshots etc) would be a wise idea, heck I'd even be willing to help code it.

djdclarke wrote:

What about the non-TA content, like Gundam RTS or The Cursed? Fresh opinions always desired.

I struggle to get people to play Gundam because they think it's Animie . I've personally played it and very much enjoyed it. Right now as I type this 3 of us are about to play NOTA, so we do like to try out the other mods. In terms of Cursed, it's very very well made but does not seem to have the same level of longtivity.

I was just speaking with the two we're about to play with and the consensus is it's still too hard to explore the new content. Maybe some form of in lobby game selector with details (screenshots etc) would be a wise idea, heck I'd even be willing to help code it.

What the Frak is wrong with geeks these days... when I was a High School/College Student throwing giant animu robots into anything guaranteed it's acceptance by geeks everywhere... #kidstoday

http://forums.agmc.in/index.php?/forum/60-springrts/

That's cool, you seem to have a decent number of players just on that board. Did you do the tutorial vid yourself or just link to it?

Yes blame me for the tutorial video! I know its got some of the worst things to do in a battle, heck I even line up my LLT for a lovely 1 shot chain! Still, it gets people to know the basics.
I think the surge of 10 year olds loving big robots destroy it's street cred! I will battle the players to get them to try Gundam! I promise :)

djdclarke wrote:I was just speaking with the two we're about to play with and the consensus is it's still too hard to explore the new content.

If you use ZK Lobby (Windows only) all you have to do is open a new game or join an existing one and it does the rest. You don't have to download anything explicitly. This works for games registered on the "rapid system."

Oh indeed, we use TAS which obviously does the same - that being said AFAIK both clients don't actually explain much about the games in the list being played.

@djdclarke: great that u guys play this!


off topic:

CarRepairer wrote:

djdclarke wrote:I was just speaking with the two we're about to play with and the consensus is it's still too hard to explore the new content.

If you use ZK Lobby (Windows only) all you have to do is open a new game or join an existing one and it does the rest. You don't have to download anything explicitly. This works for games registered on the "rapid system."

Although i'm all for user friendliness (oh wait i'm not) ZK takes it the wrong way by installing shit into documents and settings. Couldn't find a custom setting that makes it install into one specified dir only. I will never install ZK-lobby again unless it has such an option. Cant be arsed to find a proper thread for this. ty

klapmongool wrote:documents and settings

Because ZKLobby can download multiple versions of the Spring engine. Want to view replays from a year ago? Want to test the unreleased version of Spring? You can do both with ease. All your maps and mods are in one spot and the different engine versions can access them.

klapmongool wrote:ty

yw

I don't want to derail, I hate it still. I minimalize my usage of it because I store my files on a drive other than C.

so can we or can't we specify our data dir?

djdclarke wrote:Better graphics are nice, but I don't think any member of our community (we've had a couple of big matches, and a torny which I lost ) has ever commented on the graphics, they don't stand out (ZK has the best I think it would be fair to say),

The only thing people still arent major fans of speaking for our community is the UI. The NOTA one (supcom style) is many many degrees better. The stuggle we've faced is getting people to understand Spring and how Spring is the engine, and then you plug games on top of that - SpringRTS isn't the type of open source game that is easily accessible.

The reason we play BA over the others though is it feels ready (of course it has the history of TA to fall back on) and feels big! ZK never seems to get the same sense of battles as BA provides.

I made a BA installer a while back that included a couple handy widgets as well as installing a new, and much better UI. It's far from perfect, of course, but it's way better than default. I'll see about getting it updated.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11556897/springsetup.msi

That's it, if you're interested. You'll have to download lobby/engine updates after installing it, but it should still work. I'll post back if/when I get it updated.



E: Also comes with a full set of building/unit hotkeys, all listed and explained fully in uikeys.txt.

Very nice installer, something which obviously I understand takes more time which some might prefer dedicated to path finding fixes etc, but it would open up Spring to more players - Zero K makes it a lot easier than the other mods. I think once you get an easy method to install there then needs to be a focus on some visuablity of BA. For one of the most played mods it has one of the least advertised states.

No website independent from Springrts, no push to get new players, zilch. I don't know if that's due to a certain level of trying to avoid a surge of people who would have negative impacts to the community or not, but look at this this way, this BA forum is dead compared to the likes of our small minecraft community - I tend to feel more people play BA than players in our community, and yet we have 45K posts.

I'm not going to step on anyone's toes, but if you guys don't mind perhaps I can make a small site introducing people to BA, explaining the principals and then really pushing for some new players in a way which forms a community.

djdclarke wrote:Very nice installer, something which obviously I understand takes more time which some might prefer dedicated to path finding fixes etc, but it would open up Spring to more players - Zero K makes it a lot easier than the other mods. I think once you get an easy method to install there then needs to be a focus on some visuablity of BA. For one of the most played mods it has one of the least advertised states.

No website independent from Springrts, no push to get new players, zilch. I don't know if that's due to a certain level of trying to avoid a surge of people who would have negative impacts to the community or not, but look at this this way, this BA forum is dead compared to the likes of our small minecraft community - I tend to feel more people play BA than players in our community, and yet we have 45K posts.

I'm not going to step on anyone's toes, but if you guys don't mind perhaps I can make a small site introducing people to BA, explaining the principals and then really pushing for some new players in a way which forms a community.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. One of the problems with 'Spring' in general is that this site, the central hub if you will, has very little info on individual games. Download links, install instructions, gameplay tutorials, etc are little to non-existent, and it raises the amount of effort required to go from learning about the game(s) to playing them.

Part of the problem is, like you mentioned, lack of installers, which is why I created this, something that decreases the barrier to entry and also eases the transition via a better UI and widgets/hotkeys etc.


Dedicated websites are also really needed, especially considering how diffracted the community is right now (and has been for a while), where it's actively pushing to be unaffiliated with TA, but hasn't properly split to form independent communities yet, and lack of websites is a big part of that problem.

Someone started to create a website to give a basic introduction a while back, kind of like what you are mentioning, however he only added CA and KP and it has been abandoned AFAIK. http://springrts.com/springnetwork/index.php


That said, a BA crash-course website would be VERY welcome, and I don't think you'd be stepping on any toes by doing so. Something with basic info, screenshots, links to guides/tutorials etc, and of course a download link.

I'd be happy to help out with something like that as far as I am able, I can't design a website but I can help with gathering resources as needed. I'm updating the installer right now btw, it'll be up in a bit.




Installer updated, feel free to pass it around: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11556897/springbasetup.msi

More info on what it contains in this thread.