Game Content: 75b1 Release

[Neddie]

The Community Promotion Initiative is being granted a reprieve by the tentative Spring roadmap, as the next version of the Engine will not include fully tested desync/resync code, but will include significant advances in LUA functionality and other areas.

Not everybody knows about the Community Promotion Initiative, so I will try to summarize it quickly for the purposes of this thread. We need promotion to honor the effort expended by contributors and developers. We need promotion to attract additional players and diversify the player base. We need promotion for long-term survival. The Community Promotion Initiative is a multi-stage costless advertising plan to target numerous sectors of the internet in an attempt to generate sustained growth of lobby population by 200% to 400% over the six months after the release addressing desync is completed by the developers.

While the Initiative will not be put into effect at the next release, many content developers will be utilizing new features and revamping their releases to match the engine advancement. I would like to know, therefore, what teams/individuals are planning the release of game content over the next few months, and what they can provide in terms of advertising resources - images, videos, articles.

The Initiative will request permission to promote from individual content developers before the advertising campaign is put into effect, and intends to credit all involved fairly. If content is not provided to work with, the Initiative will attempt to generate images and articles independently.

[MR.D]

It sure will be nice to have that resync code asap, I don't think I've finished a game that moves past that 20 min mark in the last 2 weeks without a massive desync and its getting depressing

[Pressure Line]

once i have enough units in UP to do some balance testing i'll get you some glory shots neddie :)

[vraa]

For what it's worth, the games I host, I get a desync maybe 10% of the time only.

In my opinion, I'd rather have more folks play versus desyncs fixed.

I just kick the desyncers, works out well.

If you need any help promoting this game, let me know. I know digg is one method of getting the word out.

[smoth]

neddie, what PRECISELY are you going to need?

[Neddie]

Anything you can give me, do I have to spell it out? There isn't a format that all of them must adhere to. A few ace screenshots, a story synopsis, a video here or there, a user guide, an ace replay... whatever is on hand.

[imbaczek]

An installer which installs a game instead of an engine. (being worked on, which is good.)

[CautionToTheWind]

I think that fixing the desync should be the topmost priority. I understand its hard work, but the sync problem makes it look like an amateur project. Everything else is secondary. vraa's idea that kicking the ppl that desync solves the problem is the kind of idea that can kill a community and a project.

Consider for a moment having to explain to a new player (that desynced) that not only is his game over even thou it doesn't seem so, but also he's getting kicked for it, althou he did nothing wrong and there's no way to prevent it next time.

I, too, rarelly experience desyncs, but they are the functional equivalent of a crash to desktop. I wish it was a crash to desktop, it would probably be much easier to fix, and it would seem more important to all.

Having said that, i consider spring+BA the best open source RTS and even among commercial games i haven't been able to find one i want to play more than spring for many months.

[Ishach]

Desync seems to be a scapegoat that the community likes to pin all its problems on.

Half the commercial RTS's ive played desync 10x as much as spring.


The good chance is that 9/10 of new players will stop playing spring before they even see a desync.

Some more pressing problems:

• -Horribly unintuitive UI
  -Very different resources than a traditional RTS
  -Lack of tutorial or introduction
  -Outdated information in the wiki
  -Having to download a map from a third party site and copy it into a specific folder for every game they join
  -Unintuitive lobby

[Boirunner]

Half the commercial RTS's ive played desync 10x as much as spring.

What? That's stupid. On a typical evening where I'm hosting newbie games, on average about one in four games can't be played to completion because of desyncs. That's pretty tough to get a newbie to stick around after that.

I can't imagine that any commercial game is that bad.

[Ishach]

Ive probably desynced 40 times in my whole spring career of approximately 1400 games


Pretty much every synchronous online game ive ever played has desynced more than that :S

[smoth]

I never desynced in starcraft or warcraft III

[Warlord Zsinj]

Why is the "Initiative" starting to sound like "the illuminate", or indeed, "The collective"?



Is resistance futile? While I be annihilated?

I do support this push, and would like to get SWS involved, but there are a number of concerns with putting out a large advertising push, largely because our release is still a while out and we don't want to get hopes up, and also because we hope to run a large marketing push just prior to release, and have concerns with regards to the "well, we've heard this before" oversaturation of interested players. I'd rather get people hyped up about SWS when there's a release around the corner, rather then months away.

That being said, contact me when things are picking up regarding this, and if I can't hook you up with a build I can atleast throw you some screenshots and videos.

[Ishach]

I never desynced in starcraft or warcraft III

Blizzard's level of quality make them an exception rather than a standard

[Agnus]

Blizzard's level of quality make them an exception rather than a standard

Still, in my eyes desyncing causes much frustration and should be considered high priority

[Cabbage]

if you desync almost everygame its down to your cpu or something, desyncs are alot rareer than people make out

[pktm]

[quote="imbaczek"]An installer which installs a game instead of an engine. (being worked on, which is good.)[/quote]

Where?

[Relative]

The desync issue is pretty big, but I think many of you are ignoring the other more important issues. Ishach mentioned a few, but there is also the problem of mod diversity. I'm not saying that there should be equal proportion of types of mods played, but the current statistic show up to 100% TA based mods on some nights.

I feel that prior to the Initiative there needs to be a push towards other, non-TA mods to build up a non-TA player community. Currently there is little effort towards promoting other mods beyond a passing mention of their existence, if that. I fully acknowledge that this community has deep roots in Total Annihilation, the reason why checked out spring in the first place was because I heard of 3D remake of TA, but other mods can deliver in terms of player experience just as much as the TA mods.

I propose that the more influential members of the community activity push for mod diversity by hosting games regularly and by word of mouth promotion, like how BA rapidly replaced AA in such a short time fame despite its popularity. The average player didn't have that much of a problem with balancing issues of AA 2.23, but when the most influential players promote it they listen.

With mod diversity, projects with new IPs would become more viable, the legal issues with TA content mods would be lessened, and players will have a choice thus increasing player diversity and population, thus ensuring long term community survival.

[vraa]

If it means anything, the more testers we have on Wednesday's the easier it is for the devs to spot issues...

[tombom]

There are only a few "full" mods and of those only EE is really any good for competitive play. The reason that people don't play mods more often is mostly because they can't be arsed to try them but also when they do, they're not really an improvement on BA.