Massively growing the community

j5mello · Post by **j5mello** » 23 Feb 2007, 18:01

i have only one question:

WTF is the purpose of this thread? Cause i have no damn clue...

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 23 Feb 2007, 18:33

I have the plan worked out, waiting for some factors outside my control to change.

iamacup · Post by **iamacup** » 23 Feb 2007, 18:51

10053r wrote:@Tobi

I'm not sure why we can't have people download maps and mods from people who have them, rather than from unknown-files. It would be a little slower, perhaps, but would scale with any number of players, rather than putting increasing pressure on the central servers. And it would be very convenient. To be fair, implementing what is basically a very basic bittorrent is not trivial, but I think that it should be on the developers' radar rather than written off as straight up undesirable. People could still download from unknownfiles if they weren't getting enough dl speed, but it would take a big load off of unknownfiles, and eliminate a big bottleneck in the growth of spring as a community

for most areas the folloing stats are true (ADSL)

current UK max download speed = 8 MB (effectively 8000 kbps)
current UK Max upload speed on the same connection = 256 kbps(effective 25kbps)

this is why a torrent system would fail.

but yes, unknown files will not be integrating its downloads into the lobby. I Simply cant affoard it.

espylaub · Post by **espylaub** » 23 Feb 2007, 19:40

Ah, but you see, most people in a battle room usually have the map already, so the 1-3 people without the map would be leeching from multiple people, some of which will have much better upstream than 25kbps. It wouls still be a bit slower, but it should work. Even better version: leech map from all players in the lobby (not just your battle room), but not in a game.

There would still have to be a server somewhere to start a map's propagation, but the torrent system could be a huge help. And it the new map format ever gets off the ground... :D

In other news, I think the TASClient is actually pretty fine. It does what it is supposed to do quite well, despite being somewhat unintuitive (ally team and all that).

Desyncs should have the priority at the moment. No point in having a flashy lobby if none of the games ever get finished.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 23 Feb 2007, 20:56

PumpkinKing wrote: Yes it has steep hardware requirements, but that doesn't make the game bad in fact you are really just a flat out idiot if you claim TA springs Gameplay is great and supcoms isn't as all Supcom is , is TA with a larger scale and a bunch of great new interface tools!

Fuck off fanboy. I do not play spring for TA if that is all you think it has to offer I have NOTHING to say to you.

Why did you come here acting nice and then spend the whole thread jacking off about supcom?

superppl · Post by **superppl** » 23 Feb 2007, 23:38

What people don't realize is spring is just the engine. Don't say the engine is bad because of a short coming in a mod.
SupCom does have some obvious advantages: larger budget, more advertising, and lawyers.
And besides GPG is ignoring linux and mac communities, so to me the game is completely, wholly, absolutely useless.

AF · Post by AF » 24 Feb 2007, 03:11

I played supcom earlier andwas veyr surprised when all the AIS crippled eachother than started rebuilding in an almost cyclical nature,a nd at the same time dealt pretty bad blows to me, I had all my power and mass fabricators stuck together and they all blew and I too would ahve been dead if I hadnt spread out a bit.

supcom isnt phail, its just something new, its liek usign BA tactics in gundam, it doesnt work and your left dissatisfied, despite gundam being great.

However, the user friendliness of spring and tasclient is beyond contempt.

TASClient got us a bad comment in PC Zone remember(popular UK PC gaming magazine that mentioned starwars TA in its freeplay section), and the hassle of figuring out howto start playing has been mentioned in many other places and gained the ire of many a potential newcomer.

Snipawolf · Post by **Snipawolf** » 24 Feb 2007, 03:19

Gained the Ire? Who are we pullin in here!!?? Players that don't know the difference between PS3 and XBox 360!!!???

(Nahh, honestly though, I know several people who play Halo, but don't know what an XBox 360 or PS3 is....

)

If settin up Spring to run "gains their ire" then I don't think they are video gamers, true video gamers (People like me who still play PS1, can't beat originality :D), or intelligent persons of any kind...

I can see how modding, dev'ing, or coding could gain some ire.. But settin up Spring..?

AF · Post by AF » 24 Feb 2007, 03:43

You mustnt be that sort of person then, but it does indeed happen.

Licho · Post by **Licho** » 24 Feb 2007, 12:40

AF wrote:At the moment the engine isnt ready.
Our main major criticisms are:

lobby is awkward to use
mods and maps are awkward to install at first
the spring sites not very user friendly
The GUI graphics arent upto scratch

TA has best game lobby I have seen so far. Nothing compares to TAs client in the ease of use. Yes it could use some improvements and features, but have you seen supcom lobby??

Dihi · Post by **Dihi** » 24 Feb 2007, 13:39

I think the main thing preventing people from taking up Spring on mass, is the "out-of-the-box-ness". I.e. you should just be able to download a "setup.exe" file, install, jump in a game and play.

TBH, this is almost there. The TAS Lobby client is brilliant IMO - just needs more automatic map downloading to help the noob on their way (I found it a little confusing trying to navigate unknown files before my first game, when everyone was shouting "ready up" in the lobby).

To fix this I suggest we make map downloads automatic when you join a game - the map is downloaded from other players in that game who already have the map (like Starcraft, but downloading from all players in game, not just the host).

Now that I have got into Spring, I must admit it is possibly the RTS with the best strategic element I have played in the last 10 years. Keep it up, devs!

(My PC won't run supcom well

)

iamacup · Post by **iamacup** » 24 Feb 2007, 14:20

i think there should be an installer with most mods included, i dont care what people say about how its not GPL or whatever

people hate having to go find all the mods to play it.

simple as

if you want more players

release an installer (along side the GPL version) that has BA, EE, Gundam(?) NanoBlobs and FF(or ES) in it.

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 24 Feb 2007, 14:57

That'd annoy modders who have released new versions after the installer was released. Also, as was demonstrated when Caydr threw more mods into the AA download, people don't WANT to play other mods.

1v0ry_k1ng · Post by **1v0ry_k1ng** » 24 Feb 2007, 15:12

AI-The best AI in any RTS game ever...(note: AI in the demo was dumbed down, not sure why)

1v0ry_k1ng wrote: I beat supreme AI on my first game of supcom.

by logic then I cant be a supcom noob

grumpy_Bastard · Post by **grumpy_Bastard** » 25 Feb 2007, 03:39

PumpkinKing wrote:I don't get why theirs some many idiots in Spring that bash supcom.

Yes it has steep hardware requirements, but that doesn't make the game bad in fact you are really just a flat out idiot if you claim TA springs Gameplay is great and supcoms isn't as all Supcom is , is TA with a larger scale and a bunch of great new interface tools!

Whoever things Supcom's requirements are steep, needs to place their pentium 2 dell "gaming pc" in the garbage and take a look at what modern computer components are avalible. Supcom will run quite nicely on 3 year old midrange hardware.

Videocard: Pixel shader 2.0, 128MB memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_Series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_9800

CPU : at least 1800Mhz for those who still think Mhz actually means something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd_athlon#Athlon_XP.2FMP

With the exception of peter, with a missing AGP slot, upgrade your crusty computer or buy a nintento Whee. New games actually need a videocard made in this millenium.

Peet · Post by **Peet** » 25 Feb 2007, 03:42

grumpy_Bastard wrote:With the exception of peter, with a missing AGP slot, upgrade your crusty computer

Shush, you!

mehere101 · Post by **mehere101** » 25 Feb 2007, 03:53

Where'd you pull those requirements from? I can't handle largish battles (>50 units) without having my FPS drop drastically! I have a 2.4 ghz P4 with 768mb of ram, and a Geforce 7600. I honestly don't see that my computer is old enough to ignore. Lets face it, performance wise Spring>Supcom. Once Spring has had a few semi-professional mods released, the graphics of spring will be close enough not to matter. Then what does supcom really have that spring doesn't?

Peet · Post by **Peet** » 25 Feb 2007, 04:06

mehere101 wrote:Once Spring has had a few semi-professional mods released, the graphics of spring will be close enough not to matter.

mehere101 wrote:Once I pull my head out of my ass and acknowledge the existence of EE and Gundam, not just mods with TEN YEAR OLD MODELS, I will realize that the graphics of spring are close enough not to matter.

Fixed.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 25 Feb 2007, 04:10

mehere101 wrote: Once Spring has had a few semi-professional mods released, the graphics of spring will be close enough not to matter. Then what does supcom really have that spring doesn't?

.......................................................... wow.

Candleman · Post by **Candleman** » 25 Feb 2007, 04:43

Mehere, do you play Spring?

Spring RTS Engine

Massively growing the community