Assuming intelligence on the part of the player, how is that any different from the current setup?Argh wrote:I agree, that's not what we actually need. Just a config that specifies that we want other games / mods blocked by default, if playing X game. IOW, if somebody opens up P.U.R.E., it'd show P.U.R.E. games, but the user could just hit a button or hit a key, and it'd un-filter the games list. I think that would be the right way to go.I also entirely disagree with you regarding mods being able to block all other mods with no ability to unblock them.
no respect for spring
Moderator: Moderators
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Felix the Cat
- Posts: 2383
- Joined: 15 Jun 2005, 17:30
Re: no respect for spring
Re: no respect for spring
Because it's on by default, newbies will see our games first, pretty much. After a short period, they'll no doubt be told to "click the filter button off", or whatever. I don't see any reason to make this something painful or mysterious, merely a way for a game to create a feeling of exclusivity for its initial audience.
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Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
Re: no respect for spring
For reasons expounded in the last 6 or so pages?
In summary:
- Because when a new player downloads the mod, having never played Spring before (which for existing universe-based mods like S44 and SWIW is likely to be a large part of it's potential player base), they will only see games of the mod they have downloaded.
So if they log in and see 5 IW games going, but none open, they are likely to stick around in the channel and wait for a game to open up. The channel they are being funnelled into will also be a mod-specific channel, so the people in the channel are going to be interested in the same mod, and far more helpful in that regard.
This is compared to the alternative, where they log in and have to dig through 40 BA games to find their SWIW game, and if they are closed, wondering "why is nobody playing SWIW, and why are there 40 games going for this BA thing? Why don't I just try that instead?".
... And thereby allowing smaller mods to build up their own personal community, but still allowing a reasonable amount of transfer between mods.
Further, as I stated earlier, if this happens, then I could potentially sit in #main with S44, SWIW, BA, XTA, Gundam and whatever else installed, and I can idle in main, and join any of those mods, because they will all appear in the unfiltered lobby profile. That means that the people who are just using the SWIW lobby profile don't have to complete only with people who are also using that lobby profile, and players who are in the know can keep track and join all their favourite mods at the same time, and play whatever they feel like from the same lobby program.
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Felix the Cat
- Posts: 2383
- Joined: 15 Jun 2005, 17:30
Re: no respect for spring
But my point was - assuming intelligence on the part of your users, and thus assuming that they figure out how to set the filter to filter nothing quickly, and then see that there's 20 open BA games and 2 open IW games, how is that situation any better than what we have now? They'll still see that BA is the mod they should have in order to be able to have a game whenever they'd like, and will then download and play BA, which completely defeats the purpose of the filter.
If you have links to the Spring website on your game's (as you should!), players will have the opportunity to grab the standard download. I'm not advocating forcibly preventing players from playing other games - simply making your game an exclusive experience from the time you click on the desktop icon to the time you're finished.
If you have links to the Spring website on your game's (as you should!), players will have the opportunity to grab the standard download. I'm not advocating forcibly preventing players from playing other games - simply making your game an exclusive experience from the time you click on the desktop icon to the time you're finished.
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Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
Re: no respect for spring
Well, as the person who is potentially at the brunt of people working that out, I'm willing to take the risk.
Of course most players will work out how to use the filter - that's half the point. But I suspect they won't work it out (unless it's extremely obvious, and it should probably be in the options menu) until they've atleast had a few games of SWIW, which is all we want really. It's also just as important that they be funelled into a specific channel.
I think the chance that most players will just end up working out how to turn the filter off in the first few minutes on joining is well worth the risk in order to provide all players, irrespective of the mod, with the functionality that I described - that is, that people can have multiple mods installed and play whatever they want.
I mean, by your logic, anyone downloading SWIW would only be able to play with other people who have downloaded that lobby. What would happen if BA decided to also block it's users from playing any games other then BA? We would have a totally divided community, with no sharing between any games, despite sharing a central server.
I think that players can switch between whatever mod and try WWII if they feel like it, or Star Wars, or TA, is one of Spring's greatest attributes.
I just want it so that the primary mod does not suffocate smaller mods trying to develop their initial community and player base by pure inertia of players and popularity.
I feel that the changes I'm requesting is enough to minimize this risk while still maintaining the interconnectedness of the Spring community in general.
Of course most players will work out how to use the filter - that's half the point. But I suspect they won't work it out (unless it's extremely obvious, and it should probably be in the options menu) until they've atleast had a few games of SWIW, which is all we want really. It's also just as important that they be funelled into a specific channel.
I think the chance that most players will just end up working out how to turn the filter off in the first few minutes on joining is well worth the risk in order to provide all players, irrespective of the mod, with the functionality that I described - that is, that people can have multiple mods installed and play whatever they want.
I mean, by your logic, anyone downloading SWIW would only be able to play with other people who have downloaded that lobby. What would happen if BA decided to also block it's users from playing any games other then BA? We would have a totally divided community, with no sharing between any games, despite sharing a central server.
I think that players can switch between whatever mod and try WWII if they feel like it, or Star Wars, or TA, is one of Spring's greatest attributes.
I just want it so that the primary mod does not suffocate smaller mods trying to develop their initial community and player base by pure inertia of players and popularity.
I feel that the changes I'm requesting is enough to minimize this risk while still maintaining the interconnectedness of the Spring community in general.
Re: no respect for spring
Balkanization of the Spring community is not a worthwhile goal here.
If it becomes necessary, because no other solution is found, then that's just how it is, but I don't think it's the way to go.
And I don't think that, even if it's an obvious button, it'd go unused.
People will rapidly get used to the idea that if they start up the P.U.R.E. icon, they'll just see P.U.R.E. games, and if they don't want that, either they just start up the standard Lobby client, that's not filtered by default, or they hit a button or whatever, and turn it off.
Honestly, I suspect that all major games / mods will probably want to use such a feature, just because it'd make players' lives a bit easier, and feel more professional- if all they want is BA SpeedMetal games, then they can start up from a BA icon, have a BA filter applied, and just look through the available games for SpeedMetal... kind've like how Counter-Strike players who just want to play Dust2 can start up CS:S, then search for servers with Dust2 going and a reasonable ping. The problem is that while the current Lobbies have some filter options, they're all things that people have to have had a lot of time reading documentation and setting up, and there are no game-side controls to help new players out.
Felix, tbh, I think you massively over-estimate how quickly the average user of Spring figures out how to do everything. You keep saying "assuming they're intelligent", but what you're really saying is, "assuming they're intelligent and are quite computer-savvy", which is not the same thing.
What we want is to serve the non-computer-savvy folks, by showing them our games right off the bat. Not make it so that they cannot play anything else, or use the Lobby application like they do today.
Like many things in Spring, it's been designed with a huge number of features, by very tech-savvy people who wanted them... not necessarily with Average Joe Gamer in mind. And the end result, while very sophisticated and flexible, hurts games trying to build an audience and is probably massively confusing to newbies as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the average two-bar player doesn't even know how to join a channel, frankly- they're still figuring out Spring, in all of its glorious complexity, and the game they're playing. A filtered Lobby would really help these folks, imo, because they'd just see our games at first, like in commercial titles. After that, if they want to see everything, that's not really a problem, because if they're at that point, we probably "have" them, as Spring players who are hooked on the concept that Spring is cool. If they end up playing BA, or whatever is dominant at that point... meh, that's just life.
Now, mind ye, this one change wouldn't be a massive thing, if it was in the context of games / mods that hadn't gone to the effort to bring outside players in. Games that don't market well are still going to fail to find an audience. And I definately think this is just one thing out of many that should be tried, along with changes to the main website and the official installer.
But this would give us a good tool for keeping our players, if our games are decent and we've marketed well.
One thing I've been thinking, WZ, is that maybe there's a way to start up the Lobby through an icon that actually runs a batch script that filters out other games when the Lobby starts. That may be possible, without anybody having to even alter the current Lobby clients at all... probably not, because of interface issues, but it might be worth investigating, to test this idea with.
If it becomes necessary, because no other solution is found, then that's just how it is, but I don't think it's the way to go.
And I don't think that, even if it's an obvious button, it'd go unused.
People will rapidly get used to the idea that if they start up the P.U.R.E. icon, they'll just see P.U.R.E. games, and if they don't want that, either they just start up the standard Lobby client, that's not filtered by default, or they hit a button or whatever, and turn it off.
Honestly, I suspect that all major games / mods will probably want to use such a feature, just because it'd make players' lives a bit easier, and feel more professional- if all they want is BA SpeedMetal games, then they can start up from a BA icon, have a BA filter applied, and just look through the available games for SpeedMetal... kind've like how Counter-Strike players who just want to play Dust2 can start up CS:S, then search for servers with Dust2 going and a reasonable ping. The problem is that while the current Lobbies have some filter options, they're all things that people have to have had a lot of time reading documentation and setting up, and there are no game-side controls to help new players out.
Felix, tbh, I think you massively over-estimate how quickly the average user of Spring figures out how to do everything. You keep saying "assuming they're intelligent", but what you're really saying is, "assuming they're intelligent and are quite computer-savvy", which is not the same thing.
What we want is to serve the non-computer-savvy folks, by showing them our games right off the bat. Not make it so that they cannot play anything else, or use the Lobby application like they do today.
Like many things in Spring, it's been designed with a huge number of features, by very tech-savvy people who wanted them... not necessarily with Average Joe Gamer in mind. And the end result, while very sophisticated and flexible, hurts games trying to build an audience and is probably massively confusing to newbies as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the average two-bar player doesn't even know how to join a channel, frankly- they're still figuring out Spring, in all of its glorious complexity, and the game they're playing. A filtered Lobby would really help these folks, imo, because they'd just see our games at first, like in commercial titles. After that, if they want to see everything, that's not really a problem, because if they're at that point, we probably "have" them, as Spring players who are hooked on the concept that Spring is cool. If they end up playing BA, or whatever is dominant at that point... meh, that's just life.
Now, mind ye, this one change wouldn't be a massive thing, if it was in the context of games / mods that hadn't gone to the effort to bring outside players in. Games that don't market well are still going to fail to find an audience. And I definately think this is just one thing out of many that should be tried, along with changes to the main website and the official installer.
But this would give us a good tool for keeping our players, if our games are decent and we've marketed well.
One thing I've been thinking, WZ, is that maybe there's a way to start up the Lobby through an icon that actually runs a batch script that filters out other games when the Lobby starts. That may be possible, without anybody having to even alter the current Lobby clients at all... probably not, because of interface issues, but it might be worth investigating, to test this idea with.
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
Re: no respect for spring
A real game should be allowed to create that aura of exclusivity. Being able to see everything at once is of benefit to the high end user, but it has no practical purpose for the game designer, it just distracts a potential user and contributor into looking at someone else's content instead. Now, sure, you can make the argument that it's just that game designer being an asshole and trying to keep the gamer to themself at the expense of all the other modders and game makers that worked hard on their project. But ultimately, if I work my ass off advertizing SW:IW, and then basically just end up with more BA players as a result, because everyone joining the server, possibly not even familiar with the interface, just sees a whole bunch of BA games open and can't be assed to find SW:IW exclusive content, well that's a problem for me one way or another.Argh wrote:Because it's on by default, newbies will see our games first, pretty much. After a short period, they'll no doubt be told to "click the filter button off", or whatever. I don't see any reason to make this something painful or mysterious, merely a way for a game to create a feeling of exclusivity for its initial audience.
Basically, it just feeds into a natural learning cycle. People get frustrated and give up on things that look complicated right away. So you can actually teach people alot more, and maintain attention alot better, if you spoon feed people information in smaller doses. Really, it's presumptuous to even assume that a brand new spring user even understands the difference between different "mods" in the client interface right away. It allows every mod to distribute a contained package that works right without having to redirect users to some external website, or explain to users in detail how the lobby client describes what you are getting into when you click onto the game buttons at the bottom.
Re: no respect for spring
Argh, your batch script idea is going to give you two answers, either "A batch script would need to monitor the lobbies network traffic to hide the existence of these games, at which point I as a developer would program in huge warning signs when this is detected" or "This would mean moving the mods outside of springs folders which would slow down lobby start-up times by several orders of magnitude while exposing the archives to possible corruption should anything happen mid-transfer such as a crash or a shut-down procedure starting".
With regards to filtering, my preferred method would not to be to hide the existence of other games until a switch is flipped, but rather to show them but give prominence to the preferred games. For example a tab control with a table of preferred games and on the other all the rest, with shinier icons and bigger entries on the preferred table to make it more attractive. That way if the user wishes to look for the other games they still can, but the games for that profile are highly visible and display first.
I very much doubt that most users know how to join channels. I also think that the idea that tasclient was designed by tech saavy people for tech saavy people is nonsense. TASClient was designed to work in a world where the only lobby was a C# lobby that crashed every 5 minutes. It has been copied in other programs not because TASClient has good design but for nostalia and familiarity.
And while we may agree that the lobby and the spring site itself have flaws, I think your using them as a scape goat for your own issues. There is nothing stopping you from taking spring and your content, making a website, putting it all together in an installer, and starting your own server, and building a community from scratch while having nothing to do with spring.
The bad spring site etc damages yes, but its damaging spring, its not damaging starwars or pure or gundam. If it is then that's your fault for depending on spring for users despite knowing full well there is no market for new users here at the moment.
Your not making mods, your making games, and you need to wake up to this. There is no parent game to look after you here, you cant just build a nice archive and advertise it to a ready made community anymore, it just wont work, and it isn't scalable. I don't care if you want to call it a mod, it is a game whether you call it a game or not, and if your going to call it a mod and still treat it as if its a mod then your fatally undermining your content. Its like seeing air fresheners that look great until you realize its just a refill, its a huge turn off to potential new users.
Also keep in mind the vast majority of people haven't a clue what RTS stands for despite possibly playing games like command and conquer or starcraft.
Also keep in mind that whatever sleksa and demo say, and regardless of wether their points are valid or invalid, at the end of the day it is not something for spring as a whole to do, it is something for you as a content creator to do. You have no reason to persuade them if you and the other people on your development team all agree with eachother, just agree to disagree.
For the BA fans out there worrying that their games are going to be auto filtered out of existence, since Im the one lobby developer who has offered the profiles feature and is likely to be the first one to do it, I refuse to offer the functionality to outright delete all indications of other games in AFLobby in profiles.
The emphasis is on organisation and emphasis, not censorship. This feature is intended to help increase the immersion the user experiences, it should not hinder their experience. You have nothing to worry about here!
With regards to filtering, my preferred method would not to be to hide the existence of other games until a switch is flipped, but rather to show them but give prominence to the preferred games. For example a tab control with a table of preferred games and on the other all the rest, with shinier icons and bigger entries on the preferred table to make it more attractive. That way if the user wishes to look for the other games they still can, but the games for that profile are highly visible and display first.
I very much doubt that most users know how to join channels. I also think that the idea that tasclient was designed by tech saavy people for tech saavy people is nonsense. TASClient was designed to work in a world where the only lobby was a C# lobby that crashed every 5 minutes. It has been copied in other programs not because TASClient has good design but for nostalia and familiarity.
And while we may agree that the lobby and the spring site itself have flaws, I think your using them as a scape goat for your own issues. There is nothing stopping you from taking spring and your content, making a website, putting it all together in an installer, and starting your own server, and building a community from scratch while having nothing to do with spring.
The bad spring site etc damages yes, but its damaging spring, its not damaging starwars or pure or gundam. If it is then that's your fault for depending on spring for users despite knowing full well there is no market for new users here at the moment.
Your not making mods, your making games, and you need to wake up to this. There is no parent game to look after you here, you cant just build a nice archive and advertise it to a ready made community anymore, it just wont work, and it isn't scalable. I don't care if you want to call it a mod, it is a game whether you call it a game or not, and if your going to call it a mod and still treat it as if its a mod then your fatally undermining your content. Its like seeing air fresheners that look great until you realize its just a refill, its a huge turn off to potential new users.
- Build a website.
- Build an installer.
- Advertise outside the spring community.
- Don't advertise until you have a polished finished product your fairly happy with.
- Get AIs working in your game.
Also keep in mind the vast majority of people haven't a clue what RTS stands for despite possibly playing games like command and conquer or starcraft.
Also keep in mind that whatever sleksa and demo say, and regardless of wether their points are valid or invalid, at the end of the day it is not something for spring as a whole to do, it is something for you as a content creator to do. You have no reason to persuade them if you and the other people on your development team all agree with eachother, just agree to disagree.
For the BA fans out there worrying that their games are going to be auto filtered out of existence, since Im the one lobby developer who has offered the profiles feature and is likely to be the first one to do it, I refuse to offer the functionality to outright delete all indications of other games in AFLobby in profiles.
The emphasis is on organisation and emphasis, not censorship. This feature is intended to help increase the immersion the user experiences, it should not hinder their experience. You have nothing to worry about here!
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Forboding Angel
- Evolution RTS Developer
- Posts: 14673
- Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43
Re: no respect for spring
The simple fact is that there is no point in me advertising anything. THe lobby system sucks, and even if they did want to play some evolution they would be completely swamped by the current lobby wash.
Until we can do something at least somewhat exclusive with our games, there just isn't any point to advertising.
Until we can do something at least somewhat exclusive with our games, there just isn't any point to advertising.
Re: no respect for spring
+500 i dont know if it would work to have different servers for different games tho, but i guess it would help to solidify players for certain mods ~~~~~~~~And while we may agree that the lobby and the spring site itself have flaws, I think your using them as a scape goat for your own issues. There is nothing stopping you from taking spring and your content, making a website, putting it all together in an installer, and starting your own server, and building a community from scratch while having nothing to do with spring.
Re: no respect for spring
I've been trying to convince Zsinj of this for the better part of two years. At least, the own server part, he never argued against a site or installer, of course.AF wrote:And while we may agree that the lobby and the spring site itself have flaws, I think your using them as a scape goat for your own issues. There is nothing stopping you from taking spring and your content, making a website, putting it all together in an installer, and starting your own server, and building a community from scratch while having nothing to do with spring.
Your list of things to do pretty much summarized what we're trying to do, it's just that getting there is a tall order with a minimal crew (I've ranted on that before, no need to derail again) but until we get a release that's more good than "oh that's kind of neat but that bug kills it" we probably won't be able to recruit much external talent. It's a nice catch 22: it takes less time with a larger team, but building a large team is hard when no one has any reason to have any confidence in the team
Re: no respect for spring
I think the separate server would just annoy everyone, means you have to have two different accounts in two different clients open (and since the clients tend to use the registry you'll have to manually change all the data every time you log in) to see all the games and when someone has a game on the regular server he can't have the SW-only players join.
Re: no respect for spring
While I appreciate the time put into this idea, AF, I'm not interested in using that.
Nothing that doesn't deliver exclusivity is going to have enough impact to actually matter. You've tried to make everybody happy and offend nobody, and that's not possible with this issue.
Nothing that doesn't deliver exclusivity is going to have enough impact to actually matter. You've tried to make everybody happy and offend nobody, and that's not possible with this issue.
Re: no respect for spring
The profiles feature is not confined to the issues being discussed in this thread. Should the issues all become resolved tomorrow morning profiles would still have a use.
Re: no respect for spring
<shrugs> Well, I'm not interested in this, nor in promoting AFLobby or using it in an installer as an alternative to the current Lobby, unless it delivers what we actually need. Sorry, but the time for half-measures is over. I'm not interested in compromising beyond the point we've already reached here.
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Warlord Zsinj
- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
Re: no respect for spring
I've been saying it since page 4 of this thread.
Yes, moving to our own server is on the table.
But, as I've said in three other posts in this thread, I don't think that will be to my advantage or to Spring's advantage..
The only reason why I would consider moving to a private server is if the situation as it currently exists, does not change at all. In that case, then the problems that I face in moving to my own server (and they are considerable) are minimal compared to having to compete in the same room as BA, and having all my new players dumped into #main on joining.
If the changes I suggested are implemented - that is:
- all users that run the 'swiw lobby profile' (anyone who doesn't know any better will do this automatically when they first run IW) are dumped into a private channel, #IW or whatever.
- First time users running the IW profile will have the lobby filter (which should be adjustable somehow, probably through a sequential screen such as through the options menu) automatically geared to only filtering SWIW games. They are able to adjust this filter later on to allow/disallow any mods they like.
If those are included, then my concerns regarding staying with the current lobby will be removed, and I won't need to consider moving to my own private lobby.
To reiterate it again,
It is to everyone's advantage if we make the changes to the current lobby - as we retain the interconnectedness of mods and users, while smaller and newer mods are able to build up communities and not be strangled out by the primary mod/s - this helps the diversity of what Spring can offer.
I look forward to seeing it done for AFLobby, but until that forms the primary lobby that the majority of users are using, it is unfortunately not that helpful)
Yes, moving to our own server is on the table.
But, as I've said in three other posts in this thread, I don't think that will be to my advantage or to Spring's advantage..
The only reason why I would consider moving to a private server is if the situation as it currently exists, does not change at all. In that case, then the problems that I face in moving to my own server (and they are considerable) are minimal compared to having to compete in the same room as BA, and having all my new players dumped into #main on joining.
If the changes I suggested are implemented - that is:
- all users that run the 'swiw lobby profile' (anyone who doesn't know any better will do this automatically when they first run IW) are dumped into a private channel, #IW or whatever.
- First time users running the IW profile will have the lobby filter (which should be adjustable somehow, probably through a sequential screen such as through the options menu) automatically geared to only filtering SWIW games. They are able to adjust this filter later on to allow/disallow any mods they like.
If those are included, then my concerns regarding staying with the current lobby will be removed, and I won't need to consider moving to my own private lobby.
To reiterate it again,
It is to everyone's advantage if we make the changes to the current lobby - as we retain the interconnectedness of mods and users, while smaller and newer mods are able to build up communities and not be strangled out by the primary mod/s - this helps the diversity of what Spring can offer.
I look forward to seeing it done for AFLobby, but until that forms the primary lobby that the majority of users are using, it is unfortunately not that helpful)
Re: no respect for spring
Why would it not be helpful? If you do your own installer you could include whatever lobby client (say SpringLobby, AFLobby) you want, no?Warlord Zsinj wrote:I look forward to seeing it done for AFLobby, but until that forms the primary lobby that the majority of users are using, it is unfortunately not that helpful)
Re: no respect for spring
I'd been planning to package Spring lobby for some time now because it:
a) supports single player
b) provides a consistent interface between platforms
c) is more logical and nicer looking than TASClient IMO
Now that you guys seem to have a lot of the bugs from previous versions I messed with ironed out (except for the process still showing in task manager when you close in windows) it's a much more realistic scenario.
I do wish you'd replace the peewee icon for AI players with something either more generic or mod-based though
a) supports single player
b) provides a consistent interface between platforms
c) is more logical and nicer looking than TASClient IMO
Now that you guys seem to have a lot of the bugs from previous versions I messed with ironed out (except for the process still showing in task manager when you close in windows
) it's a much more realistic scenario.I do wish you'd replace the peewee icon for AI players with something either more generic or mod-based though
Re: no respect for spring
It's not an issue of whether or not to include a different Lobby client. We're just saying that if none of them do what we want them to do, then meh, we're right back to having to host our own Server, and creating a separate Spring universe, more or less.
And, what's worse, is that it'd become very balkanized, because without Lobby support for some sort of filtered view, every serious project would end up having to do this, creating lots and lots of Spring clients that cannot talk to each other
That's precisely what I think should be avoided, because once it starts, it will probably never end, and Spring will just end up being a bunch of dead forks, instead of a playerbase that can shift from game to game.
And, what's worse, is that it'd become very balkanized, because without Lobby support for some sort of filtered view, every serious project would end up having to do this, creating lots and lots of Spring clients that cannot talk to each other
That's precisely what I think should be avoided, because once it starts, it will probably never end, and Spring will just end up being a bunch of dead forks, instead of a playerbase that can shift from game to game.
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SpikedHelmet
- MC: Legacy & Spring 1944 Developer
- Posts: 1948
- Joined: 21 Sep 2004, 08:25
Re: no respect for spring
Of course a lot of people are trying to look at this from the vantage point that *A is the "main game" and that all other projects (S44, SWIW, Gundam, KP, PURE, et al) are "mods".
They aren't.
Spring is an engine, not a "game"; engines need development to become games. Even BA is a game, albeit almost a direct copy of Total Annihilation.
Even if we could say that non-TA games are "mods", who gives a flying turd if you can't access all other games simeltaneously? Same goes with most other games and their mods. FH2, PR, EoD, they all have to put up their own websites, make their own content, do their own marketting, and when you click on their custom little icon you're automatically loaded into their mod's version of the game and switching requires exiting and re-starting another mod.
I don't hear people complaining about that very much.
And it's not going to create "seperate universes", stop being so dramatic. All it'll mean is that BA is going to have to market itself along with any other mod.
I say any game that wants to should be able to host its own, private server (or share with other games), with its own icon and desktop shortcut and everything.
They aren't.
Spring is an engine, not a "game"; engines need development to become games. Even BA is a game, albeit almost a direct copy of Total Annihilation.
Even if we could say that non-TA games are "mods", who gives a flying turd if you can't access all other games simeltaneously? Same goes with most other games and their mods. FH2, PR, EoD, they all have to put up their own websites, make their own content, do their own marketting, and when you click on their custom little icon you're automatically loaded into their mod's version of the game and switching requires exiting and re-starting another mod.
I don't hear people complaining about that very much.
And it's not going to create "seperate universes", stop being so dramatic. All it'll mean is that BA is going to have to market itself along with any other mod.
I say any game that wants to should be able to host its own, private server (or share with other games), with its own icon and desktop shortcut and everything.