Oh noes!

[MidKnight]

Some say that CA is dying. This is not a good thing. There is some proof that CA may be dying: another important dev has left us. The last one who did so was Evil4Zerggin, and his absence contributed greatly to the push to get rid of OTA IP.

I am determined to try and overcome this latest setback, and I hope the rest of the CA dev team is behind me in turning all of our efforts towards increasing out playerbase and making CA a game that isn't just for a niche of 40 or so regular players. If we can achieve this, I am confident that we will be able not only to lure our recently lost devs back into activity, but also get more interested players and new active devs, and thus be able to work even harder towards our other goals.

So, let's do some organization.

Our #1 goal is to get more players.

How do we achieve this?
Every new player is a nub. to get and keep new players, we must make CA more accessible to nubs.

Again, how do we achieve this?
We need coherent branding, an easy method of installation, tutorials, more noob-friendly gameplay mechanics, intuitive methods of doing things, and a new GUI to get new players.

We need good gameplay and balance, singleplayer content, different game modes, a supportive playerbase, and lots of addictive stuff to keep players.

What has been done?
We have given certain devs supervisory titles to help better manage our progress. We have also introduced a task system to help get things done and cut down on unfinished projects. Ironically, both of these systems were the brainchild of the late developer. they can be found at http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/Tasks

I have additionally departmentalized CA, see http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/Todo . this will help to better organize our workforce and take a look at current tasks and their progress. You can help by filling out the todo page.

We have made different levels of progress in different fields and categories. These will be posted on the Todo page as soon as I or somebody else writes summaries of current progress.

What can I do?
Excellent question! What you can do depends on your talents, we have need of people of all types, and even if you do not have any skill in particular, we can probably find a use for you. Please feel free to ask if you can help.

[knorke]

ok, i never contributed anything but i will complain anyway about my main problem with CA at the moment:

When I am online there is always only 1 CA game, but that has all the players and lots of specs. WTF. If you do not join this battle, you can not play. Problem:
It takes ages to ready up, sometimes lags, you have to restart dozens of times then wait some more and then one team rushes or something and suddendly everything is imbalanced again and LOL FFA SUCKS oh lets change some options oh wow and spam some votebla
spam some votebla
spam some votebla
wait some more
spam some votebla
spam some votebla
spam some votebla
and NOW YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAYEST MAP POSSIBLE!

Even if you go to an empty autohost, new players will just join the battle in progress and just IDLE THERE FOR HOURS WHILE WAITING FOR THE GAME TO FINISH. ATOMLOL.
If the autohost says "10 player game in progress, started 8 minutes ago", what makes you stay in this room? The game will probally take 60 minutes to finish. Does everybody have 2 screens with, one with spring and one with pr0n so they do not mind waiting?
What is wrong with people? How is it fun to sit in a chat and idle or spam stuff while trying to organize the megasuperduper ultra-balanced hypergame?
I would rather like to see more small games, so there is always an open battle to join and while waiting for one more player to even the teams I prefer to just play a fast FFA instead of just waiting. With the autohost there is a communication lobby <-> game so this is no problem.
blablablabfldshbdfghrft

[bobthedinosaur]

host your own game and ask around if any one wants to play.

[knorke]

nobody ever wants to

[CarRepairer]

It's still the #2 mod. Once in a while there's a day where NOTA grabs the #2 spot but that's just once in a while. Not that it's a competition (more power to NOTA for staying in the game, all of spring benefits from variety), but from the stats you can see CA is still #2.

[JohannesH]

more noob-friendly gameplay mechanics

Why would this make you more popular?

[Gota]

I'm not a newbie.
I Think CA is fit to play with chickens.
It's fun but i do not enjoy playing ca in team or 1v1 games.

I don't like boost Cause it ruins the start of the game.
I don't like A lot of impulse.
I don't like when a lot of units do alot of dmg to ground.
I don't like how you said you'd have flat balancing but the "t2" labs are still better at the middle late game just like in BA.
You still haven't managed to reach a state where both "light" and "heavy" labs are as efficient at both game start end and middle.
Obviously something else is necessary to achieve that final result.
I do not enjoy constant lab shifting as it is done now.
Find a different way for the player to change labs or what he is building without having to manually reclaim labs(allow to morph labs to others?).

I do not enjoy CA cause of the GAMEPLAY not cause of models.
i have heard many say the same.
Polish gameplay make it less annoying by,for example,removing the way units have to circle when turning...THIS MAKES MICROING ANNOYING AS FUCK!!
Inspect area of effect.
CA units and battles feel clumsy,like you are out of control.
Heretic unit movement,maybe large areas of effects on the weapons,a lot of impulse..
these factors make CA feel much less precise and microable.

Some of the new models are good.

[DavetheBrave]

EVERYTHING DIES

Mans greatest motivator is the fear of death so perhaps you could threaten to kill people if they don't join CA.

[Gota]

EVERYTHING DIES

Mans greatest motivator is the fear of death so perhaps you could threaten to kill people if they don't join CA.

some would still choose death. XD

[Saktoth]

And so the thread tumbles down the well of inconstructivity. Gota, you just listed some of CA's best features. The point of flat balancing though, is not that all units are equally viable in all situations, or all factories are start factories, but that the appropriateness of a unit or factory is situational. Tanks are geared all towards heavy porc busting. This is, quite clearly, useless at the start of the game.

Your feedback is appreciated knorke but the major problem there is not enough players. We dont control the meta-game. We cant decide where they play or how large the games are. We have a lot of specs because people like to watch CA (esp devs)- they'd be playing if they wanted to play, so specs arent a problem.

If the game lags or crashes more than other mods though, thats a problem. We really cant afford that kind of thing.

We should push for 1faction model set to finish, then we can re-brand, re-launch, and re-vitalize the project.

[Licho]

It's still the #2 mod. Once in a while there's a day where NOTA grabs the #2 spot but that's just once in a while. Not that it's a competition (more power to NOTA for staying in the game, all of spring benefits from variety), but from the stats you can see CA is still #2.

This is sooo wrong car..
NOTA is second for long time. Just stats you are checking also count specs and empty autohosts so it does not look like it.
Check bibim stats instead..

[Licho]

Oh and I also hated this strong impulse/random flying. (I know I know it was me who added it).

Also the turninplace=off on some slowly turning units really is annoying and makes units run in circle..

For example tell reaper to move forward and then set it waypoint behind it to one side.

It will make huge circle continuing great deal forward which is extremely annoying, i want it to stop and turn not run towards enemy more.

Also someone disabled moving backwards on units.

[Saktoth]

I thought you werent devving?

Impulse isnt ideally implimented in the engine (sometimes units just spaz out, and unit bunches explode like they all have rockets under them), but the newton is coolsocks.

But it'll be better once we have gravity override.

[Gota]

If your gonna override all the map options why not just have one map perfectly as you want and play only that one map...

[SirMaverick]

If your gonna override all the map options why not just have one map perfectly as you want and play only that one map...

Boring. Optimal would be a random height map created each game start.

[Pxtl]

People play BA because you can find a game. Either make a launcher to make a bot-match easy to set up, or make sure that somebody is always willing to play on Springie.

Oh, and rename the mod something starting with A so it's before BA in alphabetical order.

edit: I like the impulse. However, I'd like to see a gadget to handle units immobilized by the impulse. Stuff falling down hill (and taking damage), land units trapped underwater "drowning", etc. Maybe spawn some effects when units hit the ground to make them look more substantial?

[momfreeek]

NOTA has been getting more popular without any advertising or major changes. Its no easier to play one player and its not simple for nubs.

NOTA has seemed almost dead a few times, but always comes back. Each single player in an autohost waiting for a game to start improves the chance of someone else joining. It might take a while to get 2 players, is quicker to 4 and often just as quick to 8.

Compared to CA:

• NOTA has a low technical bar for entry (just dl from a website and play, it'll work as well as BA on your comp). Each player lost due to the complexity of getting CA is probably another player lost cause there's less people waiting in an autohost.
• NOTA has fairly regular updates with clear changelogs (every ~20 days from a quick look at jj). You can't be in the battle room while dling a mod, figure how that affects the growth rate of a game (its huge). Forcing new downloads also hurts retention, but notable gameplay changes keep people interested.. strike a balance.
• NOTA has a simple, clear interface. NOTA does have a huge array of (often confusing) build options but it doesn't have the wall of unnecessary order buttons and the crazy widget spam that ca has (had?). NOTA is complex, but the complexity is revealed once you start playing rather than getting in the way of that.
• NOTA has one gameplay guide in one place which outlines the differences to ota and basic gameplay concepts. Its not easy to find, but at least its easy to point people there and its easy to read.

Unfortunately, CA devs seem intent on ignoring those first 2 points. As the 2nd most popular mod I think it did a disservice to the community; those who decided to try something other than BA were likely to go to CA and get unstuck by all the additional demands to play which in turn might put them off trying anything else. Unless this changes, I guess I'm happy with CA resigning itself to its fate.

Once S44 settles on a stable version with a few reliable autohosts I think it will be on the way.

[Pxtl]

The Test server, Oxygen, is now passworded and most games are happening on the Stable server, so CA is no longer "Springdownloader Only", which negates the first point and half the second one. A clear changelog for major releases is really your only point.

On the other hand, I found that, getting into CA, I had clear documentation explaining CA's gameplay, unit-by-unit. All I can find on NOTA is this:

http://springrts.com/wiki/NOTA_players_guide

[momfreeek]

ok, good start, its on jj . Perhaps nailing down a release cycle, standard version numbers and concise changelogs are worth discussing.

IMO, mark the change:
v1.0

On the other hand, I found that, getting into CA, I had clear documentation explaining CA's gameplay, unit-by-unit. All I can find on NOTA is this:

http://springrts.com/wiki/NOTA_players_guide

Well, thats kind of the point: this is just about sufficient. Where's the clear CA documentation?

[JohannesH]

• NOTA has a low technical bar for entry (just dl from a website and play, it'll work as well as BA on your comp).

Not really true in my experience, NOTA games tend to have much more units than BA games, which means much worse fps for a lot of people (like me).

Hmm maybe bit offtopic but anyway