Spring RTS Engine

Heya all. Sorry about pushing a 4th topic by me to the front page..

I was thinking on soon running some various small BA promotions around. A few topics to large gaming forums I'm on, a post or two to certain subreddits, stuff like that.

I was hoping to make this a kind of a community initiative thing, where we would have a topic to list the places where we've advertised BA. The purpose for that is two-fold; firstly, in case of sites like reddit, other BA players can upvote the promotions. Secondly, it'd be a way for us to get some feel-good in the form of harmless backtapping from each other. As a community, we could certainly do with a bit more of that.

Before embarking on this, I wanted to just give everyone a chance to throw in some related ideas and, particularly, there are two issues I wanted to get some feedback on:

Firstly, where should new players be pointed to in getting started with BA? Right now, we've no website (there used to be balancedannihilation.org which was actually pretty fine to point to newbies). There's github.io site, but it's empty. Put Balanced Annihilation to google, and this is the first hit: https://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Annihilation it points to forums, but on the front page of these forums, there's no sticky about how you can actually play BA.

For this issue, I can extend some help. While it's a shame that we lost balancedannihilation.org, I'd be willing to pay for any .org domain that could help BA out. I'm also willing to offer performant server space for a website and I can set a CMS-backed site up with full admin access for the relevant people. I can also write up a tutorial post for the forum section.

Secondly, right now, the versioning risks being slightly confusing - the newest BA version you see in SpringLobby is not what is actually played. Can this be a risk for new players checking the game out? Is it possible that within months, BA playerbase goes with a fork, or is it more likely that the development branches of BA will eventually converge back into a single continuum?

Thanks for reading, and thanks for any feedback in this. I really hope we can turn the community from stagnation to a new bloom, even if it was just a small bloom!

Hey Tzaeru

Good to see someone stepping up with community/advertising initiatives!

BA has its own server on Discord. It is an enriched chat service, with voice capabilities if you desire. It has several channels with various topics. It has clients for all OS platforms and its accessible from the browser too. Lurking here is easier than via the existing spring chat/lobby channel system.
Discord server invite link

A new BA website was already in the works/plans. It really is needed to share basic info to newbies. That said, I didnt really like to maintain this all myself so if you would like to step up in this department that would be great.

The versioning is confusing indeed, I've tried looking for Fabrice, but i havent caught him online yet. To ask him if v9.54 can be removed from his host.
The new BA version is still in the works (v9.47 - 9.54 are unstable test versions). Maybe a month or 2 and its ready again.
The other fork has made only a single (new) change in last few months and is just there in case... I dont know.

My aim with new BA version was to polish and modernize the game, more user friendliness and directing newbs to website for BA.
Also to break out of the confinement it was in. We moved to github, created a discord server and started making plans to release a new BA website. The other thing on the wishlist is better lobby/autohost management, as you noticed the state BA community is in. But I have to pick my battles... My BA dev productivity increased a lot after I stopped adminning autohosts anymore (8 months or so ago).

That said, I' m currently the only BA developer, now that [teh]Decay resigned as balancing dev. Forboding Angel (from Evolution RTS) has helped me a lot with various stuff I wasn' t familliar with. While working on new effects/visuals I stumbled upon opportunities to make a few structural changes. I don't intend to keep maintaining the balance long after the new BA version releases and is stable, just mainly correcting the implications of those changes and finishing the ones still in the works.
There has been made some 'balancing committee' via a spreadsheet, which made some good suggestions/feedback I can agree with. But I don't think balancing according to the outcomes of the committee is viable either. The members aren't knowledgeble enough about the inner workings of BA or implications/reach/cost of changes. And people (I) code out of interrest and not on command.

Regarding website, ya ya ya, getting to it. Real Life has been a bitch lately, as you know.

Lone wolf terrorist attacks carried out by BA players wearing promotional T-shirts.

After a bunch of discussions and some Lua codin', my current plan of action is now:
1) Make a 10 minute introduction video, just very basics like explaining the goal of the game and how basic structures and units are built and how it looks like when they fight. Found a voice volunteer/partner-in-crime. My English.. Yeah, you don't wanna hear it.
2) Wait for a barebones BA website to be up, help with it if needed.
3) Wait for the next BA update, that should return most of balance to 9.46 while adding lots of tiny goodies.
4) Create a newbie-friendly BA installer for Windows. Haven't decided on the lobbyclient to use yet, but basically it just delivers a lobbyclient and the current BA version in a bundled up package for convenience.

After those steps and armed with a video, website, fresh BA version and a newbie-friendly installer, it's time to spam reddit, forums, imgur, social media walls!