Spring Network

[AF]

It would be a bad idea to use the same site for both TA and non TA games. It would infer games like S44 are mods of the TA content. It would also further the disadvantage they face in that lots of sites refuse to list spring games because theyf ear the wrath of Atari and nonTA games suffer.

[Hobo Joe]

seriously are we still worried about Atari? If they were going to do something they would have done it already.

[Forboding Angel]

That isn't the point Joe. The fact is that regardless of whether atari will do anything about it or not, stealing is stealing no matter how you slice it.

Also, Modder != Game Developer. A modder rarely knows all that much about what he's doing and normally doesn't bother taking the time to learn.

Also, *A stuff is like arsenic to many linux users, and the rest of us do not want to be grouped with that category as potentially a large group of our players could end up coming from that platform.

[AF]

Its not that we're afraid of Atari, its that everyone else is afraid.

[MidKnight]

Maackey and I were working on something like this a while ago. Hit us up on the lobby, and we'll show you what we have so far.

[Forboding Angel]

I think jaz wanted me to post this:

11:09 AM] [Fx]Droid I was going to ask you to make a post in my thread stating I'm still working on the sites but won't be able to show progress for 2 weeks cause I'm banned
[11:09 AM] [Fx]Droid I'm almost finished on the first page of the CA site
[11:09 AM] [Fx]Droid http://94.136.50.63:81/jazcash/index.htm
[11:11 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel Lookin good jazzypoo
[11:11 AM] [Fx]Droid <3
[11:11 AM] [Fx]Droid I'm a complete newb to web design
[11:11 AM] [Fx]Droid That's my first proper working design
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid I think it still needs a lot of work though
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid The code's a little messy still
[11:12 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel index.HTML << n00b!
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid And my god, is IE hard to please
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid htm? :D
[11:12 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel no
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid D:
[11:12 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel I'm jsut teasing you... PHP maen!!!
[11:12 AM] [Fx]Droid D;
[11:12 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel all the cool kids are using it!
[11:12 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel lol
[11:13 AM] [Fx]Droid Maybe I should learn PHP after al
[11:13 AM] [Fx]Droid Seems pretty useful
[11:13 AM] [Fx]Droid I was trying to learn Javascript
[11:13 AM] [Evo]ForbodingAngel yeah it's pretty awesome. If you know php, css, and html you're in pretty good shape

Recent Progress: http://94.136.50.63:81/jazcash/index.php

[maackey]

Well, I do like the site and design you've made so far. I'm not sure if you've seen a similar project I started (and put on hold) a while ago (due to some disagreements with CA's direction). I would certainly hate to overlap efforts.

[oksnoop2]

Forb, the link you posted seems to not work.

[Forboding Angel]

I fixed it a while back, but updated as jaz asked me to change ending to php xD

Btw jaz, I was just teasing you, I hope you didn't do it all as php just because of what I said. I was just joking

Edit: nm he did it for epic imagerotatorwinness

[KaiserJ]

looks great;

if i can make one suggestion, i would "normalize" the borders around the boxes and make them all look the same; it's a very colorful design and i feel that this small change will pull everything together and make it more organized looking... just a suggest tho

[Jazcash]

Bought my own hosting and domain: http://springnetwork.info/CA/

Still to do:

• Make a root Spring Network site with links to the Spring Engine and all the games and stuff
• Make sites for other games that are interested
• Make video for CA site
• Pester developers to make installers for their games
• Hunt Neddie down to discuss S44, KP, legalities and things

If the game owners/developers of games like XTA, EvoRTS, Gundam, BA, KP, S44 and others could make some kind of post here to say whether you'd be alright with a promotional page like the CA one that would be helpful. I don't need anything from you, just a yes or a no, it wouldn't add to your workload.

[zwzsg]

So I just say "yes" and you handle everything else? Sounds too good to be true.

[Jazcash]

So I just say "yes" and you handle everything else? Sounds too good to be true.

Apart from an installer for your game, which isn't vital but would make the pages a lot more game specific rather than all linking to the Spring Engine. I'll handle everything else, including video now which I finally got working.

[Hobo Joe]

You are a hero

[zwzsg]

The KP installer is there: http://springfiles.com/1683

You can also use http://www.moddb.com/games/kernel-panic which looks much more game specific, and where the download link is easier to find. But the installer at moddb isn't as easy to update (there's a validation time during which the file is unavailable for a day or two after I update it), so sometimes it's a little behind.

[Jazcash]

Hmm, is it really necessary to have to make a new installer at every release? Isn't it possible to include the bulkiness of the game in the installer and then just have some kind of auto-update system after that to apply the small changes or whatever?

Ideally, I suppose the games could have their own installer which would install the game, a lobby client or two, Spring Downloader and maybe a few optional related maps. Once that's done, updates could just be applied through Spring Downloader which wouldn't be that much of a problem right? That way, the installer wouldn't have to be changed all the time, not to mention other public downloads for the games.

I believe CA is working on a CA specific version of Spring Downloader, so I suppose if that goes well, it would just be a simple matter of copying the installer and switching some files around and maybe images.

[hoijui]

i have heard, most games do not have their own installers, cause modifying the installer is tedious. (?) If that is the case, we could work on that. I do not know what would be ideal; maybe some that have a modified installer already, could share it, and then we can modularize it to an extend that only a simple set of files (info.properties, logo.png, background.png) could be dropped into a folder, and a script be called, and voila.

we would need cooperation.

[zwzsg]

i have heard, most games do not have their own installers, cause modifying the installer is tedious.

Not really, with a well made nsis it's only a matter of changing the mod file and changing the mod version string in the .nsi.

Most games do not have their own installer because the game dev do not cares about making an installer (all but 3), do not care about updating the installer when a new Spring version comes out (S44), do not care about using my installer when I gave them one already made (GRTS), prefer automatic continuous update (CA, EvoRTS), ...

maybe some that have a modified installer already, could share it

I'm sharing mine since August 2007.


Oh and I'm only taking into consideration Windows installer there. Linux is its own mess.

[AF]

May I note that Smoth doesn't want Gundam in this and would like to arrive at a solution in his own time.

He mentioned it to me a while back, thought I should throw it out there just in case someone hadnt mentioned it.

I would also mention a lot of the sites structure and aesthetics I could easily duplicate with my darkstars theme and some minor additions on a brand new wordpress install

[Jazcash]

I would also mention a lot of the sites structure and aesthetics I could easily duplicate with my darkstars theme and some minor additions on a brand new wordpress install

As much as I love Wordpress, I think there's a time and a place for it and this isn't one of those times or places. This isn't meant to be a news site for the simple reason that zwzsg stated, most developers including himself wouldn't want more work to do.

Also, the only reason I am doing this is because I'm relatively new to web design and am just trying to "learn stuffs", as it were. I'm aware you're very handy with web design yourself, but I think if you chucked this on Darkstars, it wouldn't take long before your face was plastered over everything <3