Mass Promotion Plan

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 16 Mar 2007, 22:07

I've been working on this plan for a considerable amount of time now in private, and while it has been revealed on Smoth's development forums, I would like now to open it up on this forum. I may not need the help of anyone, but the community is encouraged to offer video files, images, and perhaps textual accounts for me to draw upon as this is designed to benefit the entire community.

My scheme is not going to go into effect until the next version of the engine when the desync errors are fixed and a number of new features are added, so we have some time to discuss and organize my efforts.

I am going to attempt a twelve-pronged publicity stunt on a number of sites based around creative exploits, video games and strategy. I will also target a number of smaller communities with niche needs, to whit, Gundam and Star Wars fans. Expand & Exterminate will be my other focus in terms of the games that run on the engine - it will be the headline title for all of the larger threads and I will promote it along with Gundam RTS to the fullest. Originally I was not going to bring up Epic Legions or Final Frontier. The former because it is incomplete and on the shakiest legal ground of all the software avaliable, the latter because it is generally considered a poor representation of what space warfare can be on the engine. However, I am now planning to include them as well in particular places.

1944, Gear Commander and Battletech aren't going to be forgotten either. All of these are in Alpha or Beta release stages, so my writing on them may be both brief and unspecific, but I plan to show the best of them off.

Content based off of Total Annihilation will be included, at the end of the main advertisements. They will not be the main focus of the articles and advertisements. I intend to mention XTA, AA, BA, NOTA, BOTA, TA-Battlefleet, Xect Vs. Mynn, Talon, Rhyoss, KuroTA, LLTA as one group. The niche mods of Commander Shooter, Kernel Panic, etcetera... will also be included.

I believe, over three months I can quadruple the active community size if I play my cards right. That gives you at least a three-fold increase in individuals who are programming literate, unless my estimates are far off.

This is a brief overview, feel free to ask me anything on the specifics. I should be on at some point this weekend.

Relative · Post by **Relative** » 16 Mar 2007, 22:20

So how to do plan to spread this? What sort of publicity stunts are we talking about? Will you need assistance from other members?

Also, on a side note, you said in a couple of posts you were starting a rewrite of the wiki and FAQ. Do you want any help with that?

AF · Post by AF » 16 Mar 2007, 22:54

Having tested a current SWTA dev build I'd suggest you speak with the SWTA team first, as its in the middle of a huge upheaval and that was at least a month ago.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 17 Mar 2007, 00:04

I've noticed there's a heck of a lot of videos of Spring on Youtube. If we tagged all the current vids with SpringRTS or something so it'd all show up in one search I think we'd get some interest. We should also look into separate badass trailers for each mod along the lines of Spring Showcase or Spring Tricky Tricks to show off engine features and the mods available. We should also take all this stuff and put it on all the other video sharing sites, and coordinate a Digg.com campaign to get the best Spring vid on Digg's frontpage.

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 17 Mar 2007, 14:13

RE: Star Wars fans, we would like to be contacted before this happens, simply because we've done a lot of work since the last pack, and don't really want people to get too used to that when a lot of things are going to change. The art content has improved significantly on the last release too, but we're not quite ready for a release yet.

VonGratz · Post by **VonGratz** » 17 Mar 2007, 14:46

Very Good news

This time Im trying my new career as Spring movie director to colaborate with brand new TA BattleFleet movies when I learn something

VonGratz

udm · Post by **udm** » 18 Mar 2007, 11:40

I've an idea: videos made out of singleplayer campaigns tend to interest people. Everyone likes a good story. I just checked UF and there are a few missions made by the same person, so I figure a singleplayer campaign is possible. Furthermore, with so many mods around, you don't have to buy anymore RTS games for at least 10 years

I don't know how to mod for TAS though, but I can do simple videos out of Adobe Premiere, so let me know if you guys want to get this idea working

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 18 Mar 2007, 15:04

I'd say only advertise mods that are done and ready to play right now. So no StarWar (the new one is nothing like the previous one), Epic Legions, Gear Commander or Battletech (unless they were released and I wasn't aware). As a player I hate to be lured by some attractive screenshots/videos/concept/whatever promotional material only to realise it's not done yet and I have to come back in an undefined amount of time.

Also, Spring can be quite complex for first timer, like, who would think that to get Spring material one has to go to unknown-files.net ? Or Ctrl+middle mouse click, or the shift click area repeat and other interface subtelty, so don't forget to point on easy instruction on how to get started.

TheRegisteredOne · Post by **TheRegisteredOne** » 18 Mar 2007, 18:03

Need more converting talon

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 18 Mar 2007, 18:19

Spring needs a total stie redesign. The engine is moire or less done; anything that's going to be newsworthy from now on are things like LuaUI, mod releases, etc.

Please, kill the current spring.clan-sy.com site as an engine site, and make it a spring portal-home... sites are important to draw players in. :)

superppl · Post by **superppl** » 18 Mar 2007, 19:45

I don't think this site could handle a lot of players with it's current structure and organization. I think a moderator should create a new subforum where we can talk about improving and expanding the community. And this shouldn't be left to several people, everyone active on the forums should participate. We should begin by stating what needs to done (creating a to-do list), then we should assign people to those tasks, and then we should get them done.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 18 Mar 2007, 21:56

Hurm. Good thing I've had everything raised thus far already accounted for.

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 19 Mar 2007, 22:53

I am planning to organize a group for this, but at the moment, I'm laying all the ground work for said potential group. Ideally I'll ask Smoth for a subforum and develop it publicly from there.

Anyway, the engine needs to be updated, the mods need new releases, the site infrastructure needs an overhaul, documentation needs to be written, and we need AI/Single Player Missions. Any specifics you want to raise, lads?

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 20 Mar 2007, 02:14

TheRegisteredOne wrote:Need more converting talon

+1

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 20 Mar 2007, 05:45

smoth wrote:
TheRegisteredOne wrote:Need more converting talon
+1

Plus Three, Holy, Disruptive

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 20 Mar 2007, 07:51

Star Wars Spring might be interested in assisting this. We don't really want to advertise a pack that may not be out for a little while yet, though, so it depends on the timeframe of when you plan to launch this. The later it happens, the more likely we are to get involved.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 20 Mar 2007, 07:55

Good luck, in all honesty, I am looking forward to swta... but you know I am going to be a bit sad to see the old e-webs gone

.

Neuralize · Post by **Neuralize** » 20 Mar 2007, 08:51

Lately it's been hard for me to decide what I spend my free time outside of school on. I would like to very much contribute to this push for more users, and ideally would like to make an updated version and more concise version of this. However another part of me is watching the Supreme Commander modding community with constant vigilance. While Spring is a great engine, it still doesn't possess the right about of gui polish that it needs to attract and keep new players. Yes, there is some fantastic lua stuff going, but for some that involves unzipping and unraring into the god forsaken darkness. While some people are comfortable with that, many computer users (even some casual gamers), are uncomfortable with taking such steps to achieve aesthetic statisfaction.

Very exciting things are happening in the supcom modding community and I'm finding myself more and more attracted to the prospect of a portfolio of 3d modeling and animation based around a Supcom mod, rather than a Spring mod. Bleh.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 20 Mar 2007, 10:45

eh, a lot of people will go to supcom. I am going to finish my mod for spring. I may port it to supcom but I am not going to make it a priority as gundam would make a horrible icon war mod.

1:33 in that video.. the old gaw model and texture... lol BANNANA ZEON!

Zpock · Post by **Zpock** » 20 Mar 2007, 11:03

Abuot supcom modding...

I just started a modding project for spring, to do it for supcom would never cross my mind. Reasons:

1. Lags like hell. Spring runs like hot knife through butter.

2. I alredy know everything about TA modding since the OTA days. Why start over learning whatever u need to mod for supcom, even if it did have some kind of marginal advantage on spring, wich I dont think it has.

3. Sure they say in supcom everything is scripted (may be the reason for 1). But spring is open source, if I wanted I could add in whatever the f I want to the engine itself. Spring wins.

4. Spring will probably get better and better since its open source, supcom will stay the same.

Does supcom have any total conversion mods going at all? Ones with tangible progress?

Spring RTS Engine

Mass Promotion Plan

Mass Promotion Plan