I'm going to go in to a big spiel here, so bear with me for a moment if you don't mind.
I think making a successful mod for the Spring community is probably one of the hardest things one could do. The problem with the community is that it is so small already. Let me draw a parallel here with UT2004 (I know, not again! Heh, bear with me.) UT2004 is a game with a fanbase several times larger than Spring's, yet it cannot even support all of it's different gametypes. There is a problem that occurs when several gametypes (or mods) exist for the same core game - people have their favorite, and the community splinters in to groups. People get accustomed to playing one of the gametypes. If two gametypes are similar, people will have an easier time moving from one to the other.
This is the root of the problem with Spring. There are so many extremely varied mods that the community cannot support them all.
Lets take for example Smoth.
Smoth has an awesome mod called Gundam. I love Smoth's mod - there are countless hours invested in to it, and the groundwork is laid to become an extremely fun mod. As sad as it is to say, it will probably never be able to compete with XTA or AA, despite it being in a similar state to the early stages of both of those mods. The reason is that people are lazy - they could play the mod once or twice for something different, but if they really want to learn the mod and play a good game on it, they will have a problem on their hands. If they do host and fill up a game, it will most likely be half filled with people playing it for the first time. To get a good game, it's necessary to host with either an AA-based mod, or XTA, because that's what people have learned to play.
If ten times as many people played Spring, this problem would not exist. A group of people would form that say Gundam is their favorite mod, and the community for the mod could occur. The only way to balance a mod and make it fun is by playing it - over, and over, and over, with tons of different people and tons of feedback. Here, people say they want to play different mods, but they know that XTA and the AA's will be more balanced and more interesting to play, simply because more people play them.
At the same time, this does not mean Gundam is a failure. This is where I will transition to maps, because maps are basically the same as far as this is concerned. If you wanted, you could say that a map, or a mod, or a band, or any kind of art is only as good as how popular it is. In that case, the best map I've ever made is one for CS:Source, called surf_skyworld. More people have downloaded surf_skyworld than any of my maps for any other game
combined. There are five or six servers last time I checked that run surf_skyworld 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's possibly the most popular surf map for Source, yet I do not hardly give a shit about it. I made it in one day because all the surf maps I played on CS:Source sucked. It's interesting that so many people love the map, so I know I did something right when making it, but at the same time it doesn't mean much to me because I didn't put much effort in to it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I made a map for the original UT called
CTF-Hybrid which merged two gametypes - assault and CTF. This map took me longer to make than all my other UT99 maps, probably somewhere north of 200 hours. Bots couldn't work on it because of the merge of gametypes, and it was so ridiculously huge it would require at least 20 players to be fun. Needless to say, this map was not accessible for people to play, and therefore it wasn't. Not ever was a match played on it. Still, this map means more to me than surf_skyworld, because what makes a map a success to me is a combination both of how well accepted the map is and how proud I am of it.
I guess what I'm saying is that different people make maps and mods for different reasons, and if popularity to them is important, then they need to realize before going in what will make their work accessible to people. The sad truth of Spring is that until the community grows, the only mods that will truthfully be extensively played will only be XTA and AA. Modders who are making mods for themselves will be content with their work, just as I am content with CTF-Hybrid, and modders who spite the community for not playing their mods probably need to mod for a game with a larger community that can support it.
END SPIEL. DAMN THAT WAS LONG WINDED. Could (should) probably be a topic of its own. Anywho, as long as this topic is completely derailed, I might as well answer this one:
jackalope wrote:incidentally, how about a all land (no sea) map for the next one, hunter?
I'll be happy to, but I can only make the gameplay good if I understand what makes a good land map. The two maps I've made are rather large 4v4 maps that use sea, because before I made both of them, that's the kind of map I learned the game playing.
If you want me to make a good land map I'll need you to provide some demos of SmuGs and other leets duking it out on a similar style map to what you'd like me to create
).
