Spring RTS Engine

djdclarke is my fav newcommer ^^ i like what he says.

Wombat come play LOL.

u mean LoL ?

djdclarke wrote: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.

Actually TAS cannot download mods from rapid system..
Neither can SpringLobby...

This means mod is either not available or you have to download it fully on each mod update instead of just changes and you cant reuse content from different mod version/clutter your disk.

Licho wrote:you have to download it fully on each mod update instead of just changes

thats a lie

Though as an admin I do mind bandwidth, as a user I don't (!), as long as it's in the range of ... 20 MB - that's the size of BA - 20 MB is like a joke compared to what goes down the tube of most people every day.

As a user of a multi-game-lobby I would expect to get noticed if a new version of a mod I play is released, as well as get noticed of entirely new games. Also I would expect to get some screenshots and description and weblinks (and changelog) all clickable and colored and funky in these notices. Also it would be cool to be able to download "UI themes" - changing the ingame-UI in the lobby.

Most users don't mind 20 MB - they want a nice and efficient interface.

On a totally different matter: I'm under Linux, so no ZK, but I wonder if rapid can diff Zip->7zip->Zip? Or does it assemble a mod them from extracted content to share content between mods?

Neddie wrote:Out of curiosity, if BA had different graphics/newer graphics would you play it?

Personally, I'd be like

Cause I'm fuckin keen on the OTA GFX style.

dansan wrote:I'm under Linux, so no ZK, but I wonder if rapid can diff Zip->7zip->Zip? Or does it assemble a mod them from extracted content to share content between mods?

[Warning... I don't know what I'm talking about but will do my best to answer until someone who does comes along and corrects me]

I believe that rapid keeps mods in an SDD (spring data directory?). The archived (sd7 or sdz) and extracted (sdd) versions of the games DO sync because the "thing" that confirms this reads the contents of the archives... however you can't use rapid to update from a archived version to an SDD version... rapid would just download all of the of the files again.

dansan wrote:Though as an admin I do mind bandwidth, as a user I don't (!), as long as it's in the range of ... 20 MB - that's the size of BA - 20 MB is like a joke compared to what goes down the tube of most people every day.

As a user of a multi-game-lobby I would expect to get noticed if a new version of a mod I play is released, as well as get noticed of entirely new games. Also I would expect to get some screenshots and description and weblinks (and changelog) all clickable and colored and funky in these notices. Also it would be cool to be able to download "UI themes" - changing the ingame-UI in the lobby.

Most users don't mind 20 MB - they want a nice and efficient interface.

On a totally different matter:

Code: Select all

 21M BA720.sdz
 20M ba730.sd7
 21M ba731.sdz

I'm under Linux, so no ZK, but I wonder if rapid can diff Zip->7zip->Zip? Or does it assemble a mod them from extracted content to share content between mods?

Eh, it is work in progress but zklobby sounds most of what you want; unfortunately it can't run on linux currently. If you are interested in rapid alone it can be run on linux:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=22637

Wombat wrote:

Licho wrote:you have to download it fully on each mod update instead of just changes

thats a lie

Wait what? I mean, it is possible to release a mutator of changes, but has any BA release ever been done that way?

lol no ofc, but SA did. i use tas to dwl ca since the very beginning. does it counts D:

luckywaldo7 wrote:

Wombat wrote:

Licho wrote:you have to download it fully on each mod update instead of just changes

thats a lie

Wait what? I mean, it is possible to release a mutator of changes, but has any BA release ever been done that way?

I think what Licho was saying was that while tasclient and springlobby do allow you to download updated versions of a mod they don't support incremental updates using the rapid system.

Historically AA Spring (which is and ancestor of BA I believe) was being released using the "update package that relies on the last released package" model... so that's probably what Wombat was referring to.

That said, I'm not sure how dependencies are handled by the tasclient and springlobby downloaders so I can't confirm or deny that they would be smart enough to download only the needed packages.

Wombat wrote:

Licho wrote:you have to download it fully on each mod update instead of just changes

thats a lie

Tasclient and SpringLobby don't use rapid, they download whole file always.

thats a lie !

Yuri wrote:Cause I'm fuckin keen on the OTA GFX style.

Unless OTA style means any amalgamation of low polygon 3dos, AA-derivatives are not OTA =p

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."

Which means, you chosse your games by name only. Got to have a A at the end.. wait Zero-KA.. no, GUNDA-M..no..BA..yeaaaa.

The man has a point, a ingame selector with one glamour screenshot would be fine.

no push to get new players, zilch

there is trying to reach new players, ie very actively by evolutionRTS, gundam RTS and zeroK.
Those games have their own homepages, pages on moddb etc. (other games have pages too but do not update them nearly as often/put as much effort into them)
on moddb gundam+evo have quite high download count but it does not (yet?) seem to transform into online playernumbers. (i find it hard to believe that there are thousands of people playing spring offline but well, maybe.)

To me it does not seem that the advertising is working out, ie the evolutionRTS trailer only got ~1500 views on YT although it was featured on several big websites outside springrts.com
Even one of my totally stupid spring related videos got about half of that view count.
So if a herp derp video gets 600 views without any advertisement outside the spring forum while a trailer for a real playable game only gets several hundred more despite being much more spread, something is not working. I dont know what though


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rapid needs to display description for files.

pick a game by random from this list? uhm i would rather not want new players to do that.

to be usefull for new players, it must also download a mappack that works with the selected game. (not sure if thats technically possible already but atm there seems to be no such package on rapid)

http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/issues/ ... %20Summary

CarRepairer wrote:

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

And you cant make it do so without forcing a install dir? No ZK for me then.

knorke wrote:rapid needs to display description for files.

i agree. would that need a protocol discussion/change?

idk, here is an issue about it: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/issues/detail?id=304 (nobody responded)