About developers, and producers

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 29 May 2007, 11:26

It's best, imo, when working on a game for gaming's sake, to just concentrate on doing the best job I can, instead of arguing with Internet trolls and other forms of loser, or participate in lengthy, pointless debates about gameplay, when in the end, I'm going to do what makes me and my team happy anyhow.

If you do so, your mod might be of very good quality, but underknown and never played. The arguing with internets trolls and forum losers, the participation in lengthy, pointless debates about gameplay, helps building a connection with your audience and showing you care for them, helps building an audience in the first place, helps grabbing people interest, etc... In short, while it may not help with improving the quality of the mod itself, it helps with the hype and advertisment. And, let's not deny it, the hype and advertising plays a bigger part in getting successful than the quality of the work itself. Maybe you'll answer that you're not looking for success but just to make a game you'd like to play, but then I'm sure that deep inside, you'd be lying to yourself.

Then, sometimes, promising stuff, have people reminds you they want your mod, knowing you've got a playerbase, can help with motivation. If I know something is broken in my stuff but no one complains about (exemple: my mobile factory upgrade), I may not fix it ever, but if the day after release there's several complaints (exemple: KP1.2 with basic water), then I'll go fix it asap.

But anyway, I haven't released a lot of mods for several game engines, I have released about zero mod of my own, for one and a quarter game engine, so

Post by **Tim Blokdijk** » 29 May 2007, 13:39

Argh, I generally alternate some between things, it keeps me fresh. So a few months the focus is on Spring then I focus on party's and on getting to know my friends better for a few months, then I do some extra project at work, help my sister out with her difficulty's and then get back to do some things for Spring.
If I don't I lose track of the bigger picture, people get to dependent on me, I burnout as the one thing I focus on is to important (every set-back is killing then) not to mention the effect on all the other things that are important to me.

And talking to the users is just another tool in the shed, I get valuable feedback from time to time although I need to help them give quality feedback. Users (I talking about my work now) generally have trouble thinking out of the box, to see limitations or to understand the amount of (programming) work is required for something they like to see done.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 29 May 2007, 16:09

Bah, the thing is that you can share your ideas never promising and even saying that they may not be implemented. However, posting such notions may be good for inspiring thoughts in others. It is is important to share ideas as you are working on things.

This is important for many reasons. One of my favorites is if someone else likes the idea, then you can see how they did it. Maybe it was better or worse but it is always interesting to look at another's implementation. Also by posting ideas or works in progress you add to the pool of people who can aid in the critique process. Possibly even recruiting new members and getting opinions from players.

Believe me, I love surprises and you do not have to tell people everything you are working on. Keeping a few features silent and announcing them at release is a huge thing to those who are waiting to play it.

As far as letting the players down goes that is not really a concern. Unless you hype up your project by saying stuff like you effects are going to make other peoples stuff look like crap... which you have said before. Be humble, tell people you have some nice new effects and that people may like them. In my opinion that is the best way. Never nail it down to a definite just let them know areas are going to be improved upon. They don't have to see it and that does leave a surprise for them.

In the end if you make a release of a FREE project the players are already getting more then they payed for. So develop it for you. Not so you can leave but because you will want to play it! If you do that I am sure people will find it fun and interesting.

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 30 May 2007, 04:58

I have the largest dislike of NDAs imaginable. I think they are a bane and curse to game development's design segment.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 05:17

yeah, I hate NDAs also. I was a lithtech developer at 18 years old. I did work for the now defunct Grimware. I left the job for college and only have my first paycheck to show for it with no ability to discuss what I was doing.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:18

*flames smoth repeatedly*

flameflameflameflameflame

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 05:19

wow, I really missed something.. could a moderator pm me on the details or was it so bad that I should feel glad that I do not know?

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:23

No, I'm just being rather quarrelsome. I have nothing against you. In fact, I'm just doing this to stir up trouble. Been really dull around these parts as of late

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:23

Although I have to wonder: Where are these so-called 'flames', eh? Show us zeh poof! (as the chinese profs at my uni say)

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 05:27

well, lets not derail this thread further, if I am the subject of the flames and I was the only target I can be fine with it. I am just tired of all the hate. I think it has been like this for 2 months now. first it was the ba,ca,xta scrabble as ba began to lose player strength then it was smoth's a jerk for writing in pink now something else and I am still not sure why I am a target.

also no worries dragon, I know you were just trying to lighten the mood.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:35

but i even posted in our blog about it

.

please please can we pretend like this is a big deal? stop acting mature smoth.

http://smuggoat.net

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 05:40

sorry dragon, I am no longer the gasoline soaked tarball wrapped in hay and sawdust that I used to be.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:41

Okay back on topic

I think it's important to note that this community, like so many other "spinoff" communities, is pretty much born mature. It's like popping out a fully grown man. It's an offshoot of the TA community wihch was already old by the time this happened.

Developer-Community dynamics change a lot based on the following things:

1) The age of the community
2) The nature of its core product (opensource, commerical, cult hit or not, etc)

I remember when TA was a newer game still the CD threads were full of people posting unit requests like "i tink that there shold be a krogth for arm but instead od gun it smoks a crack pipe lol"

(saw a few of these, no joke)

It's a kind of bell-curve, IMHO. In the prealpha stagse you have hardcore fans and betatesters offering constructive helpful input that devs listen to (check out the http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com forums f.ex), while the more popular the game gets, the worse the signal-to-noise ratio gets. This reaches a peak of popularity, after which the game begins its decline in terms of popularity. Then, the curve shallows out again and you get lesser people, but a better signal-to-noise ratio because only good, mature, hardcore fans have remained.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 05:44

that is one thing I wonder about for spring with new features every soo often, it being open source and the vast possibilities that we can execute in it.. would spring have several peaks?

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 05:48

I doubt it wil lhave more peaks. People tend to have an attitude of "ive tried it once, it was no good, why other again". So it takes a significant amount of marketing effort to get them interested in that old name again, if it was 95% perfect when they first tried it.

That's why Command Engine needs to be finished IMHO; bcause even if it is just basically Spring 2.0, it has a different name and peopel will say "oh, i havent tried this before".

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 30 May 2007, 06:39

I think spring will be better at keeping the addicts around since it's continually improving, but ya, like dragon says, people try something once and say "oh ya, I've tried that before" and then forget about it. Now... if we can get some spring mods that legitimately compete with the OTA stuff, not only on the gameplay level, but also on their marketability, THEN we might see some serious new peaks. But that requires modders to take themself a little more seriously then just thinking they are building a sub-piece for the spring engine. Building a mod of that level means you need to take the whole thing to the level that you would a serious game.

Zpock · Post by **Zpock** » 30 May 2007, 07:15

Yeah maybe if one could make his own installer, client, dedicated webpage, tutorial, campaign... basically hide all the ugly spring stuff under a nice shiny surface, together with a solid mod in the first place. All mods so far kind of have their achilles heels tough IMO... not going into details on that tough for obvious reasons.

Spring is sort of the modders plaything, not the players. The ratio of modders/mods to players is really high. Wouldn't say that's a bad thing tough.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 30 May 2007, 16:08

Zpock wrote:Yeah maybe if one could make his own installer, client, dedicated webpage, tutorial, campaign... basically hide all the ugly spring stuff under a nice shiny surface, together with a solid mod in the first place. All mods so far kind of have their achilles heels tough IMO... not going into details on that tough for obvious reasons.

See, making a mod that is high-quality is hard work in and of itself.
The online marketing can/should be automated in some respect if possible... i mean, its possible to create a shiny website from templates, and basically all mods have a similar requirements set, namely stuff like:

1) Forum/Feedback
2) Mod Features
3) "Contact
4) Unit List/Information
5) Download
6) News and Updates
7) Screenshots

It should be possible to automatically generate a site containing these elements. Very, very possible. Only thing that would need changing would be the colorscheme/theme (layout too).

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 30 May 2007, 16:46

Zpock has a very good point that is why I have been trying to get people to call things like EE, starwars, 44 and gundam to be called games in their own respects. Kp and nanoblobs could be included with spring as "minigames" to denote that they are fast to learn and do not have as many units to deal with.

I have long though the distinction between the games and TA mods needed to be made. I think that it is important to the image of spring. As I said before, noone cares about downloading several mods that belong to a game but a download that gives them several FREE ganes.. yeah that is something we can get people interested in.

I honestly want to start lobbying pcgamer to cover spring but I want to do so after the resync is there!

Post by **Tim Blokdijk** » 30 May 2007, 23:10

@SwiftSpear
You should plan to convince people to try Spring twice.

The first time I tried Linux I had this "alright looks ok I can see what the advantages might be over Windows.. but as a gamer it's not my thing" experience.
One and a half year later I tryed it again but now I had this "omg it's far more useful, I can use my isdn modem now and it auto detects my screen resolution!" then it hit me what this Open Source development model actually means. Development on all levels is continues, everything is constantly in motion. This is Springs killer feature, a user only understands this when he tries it twice with some time in between.

The other thing that is really cool about open source is that it attracts people that like to do really creative stuff, you are going to get people with wacky idea's that break several "rules" and that are totally out of the box but end up really entertaining at the same time. (Anybody up for playing spring with two mouses? I mean two pointers, 4 buttons and two scrollwheels? Why not?) A few of these things and your the new Couter-Strike.

Spring RTS Engine

About developers, and producers