User experiences on getting to play SpringRTS games

[TradeMark]

Would be cool if you guys could write here how the people experience was when they downloaded spring and tried to get to play it, and how was the playing experience.

This could help getting rid of the annoying things that stop users from playing SpringRTS games.

---

Here is the user experience from some guy i suggested this game:

User: "I want to play TA online, but i cant because of my router"
Answer: "download SpringRTS, you dont have to host games yourself because of autohosts"
User: "downloaded it, but what mods should i install?"
Answer: "BA, you get to play fast because its most popular mod and it is close enough to TA"
User: "Here? http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2528"
Answer: "yes"
User: "why does it say: disconnected from server"
User: "lol it froze"
Answer: "dont use springlobby, get tasclient from http://tasclient.licho.eu/TASClientLatest.7z"
User: "how do i register?"
Answer: "options -> lobby settings -> user -> create new account"
User: "what map is really good?"
Answer: "DSD, (Delta Siege Dry), a lot of people play it every day, but Comet Catcher Redux is also a good map for learning the game."
User: "cant find it"
Answer: "http://mapinfo.adune.nl/?N=1&find=deltasiegedry"
User: "how can i make start positions fixed?"
Answer: "you cant select start positions separately for each player, unless the map has pre-defined startpositions in correct places, then your player ID number tells where on the map the players will spawn (click minimap to see startpositions), but you can also use command "!split h 35" or "!split v 35" on autohost to add startboxes which allows you to choose own startposition on that rectangular area in the game"
User: "which map is good for 2 vs 2?"
Answer: "comet catcher"
User: "http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=130 does that work?"
Answer: "no thats old map, that is buggy, this should work http://mapinfo.adune.nl/?map=Comet%20Catcher%20Redux"
User: "thanks for help, i go play now!"
User: "omfg, i just pressed "give everything to..." and it gave all my stuff to my ally!"
User: "WHY THE FUCK IT DIDN'T ASK IF I WAS SURE?"
Answer: ":("


Shortly the flaws here:
1) The installer doesnt suggest any mod, even though everyone plays BA anyways.
2) Springlobby crashes and doesnt work. Installer doesnt offer TASClient.
3) New player doesnt know what map would be good to play for which amount of players for that mod he downloaded. There are 2000 maps to choose from, which is too much, some sort of map suggestions would be good. OR some list of top popular maps in lobby.
4) springfiles.com search feature can only search exact word matches.
5) setting up a game in TASClient and using autohosts is confusing.
6) Game UI is flawed because it lacks features that would prevent new players from messing the game up.


Thats all for now... i will post more if i introduce someone to this game again.

[CarRepairer]

OP is trolling.

[aegis]

eh, looks like good intentions - some of those things we could improve for the experience of people unfamiliar with the engine

[CarRepairer]

eh, looks like good intentions

Well that changes everything then, I'm sorry.

1) The installer doesnt suggest any mod, even though everyone plays BA anyways.

Hi Trademark and welcome. You probably aren't aware but that mod happens to contain some copyrighted material. Spring's policy is to not promote or distribute illegal content.

2) Springlobby crashes and doesnt work. Installer doesnt offer TASClient.

You're probably not aware but there was a bit of a firestorm when the maintainer of TASClient created some intentional bugs. To be on the safe side, it was removed from the installer.

3) New player doesnt know what map would be good to play for which amount of players for that mod he downloaded. There are 2000 maps to choose from, which is too much, some sort of map suggestions would be good. OR some list of top popular maps in lobby.

Mappers are able to add descriptions to their maps and people who upload those maps to springfiles can tag them with further information. See the mapping subforum to learn more about mapping.

4) springfiles.com search feature can only search exact word matches.

Unfortunately the code for springfiles is hidden from the public and there is nothing that can be done short of contacting its author.

5) setting up a game in TASClient and using autohosts is confusing.

Wait.. you just suggested that you prefer TASClient. Wut.

SpringLobby and SpringDownloader are two other lobby clients and both make it easy to host a battle using an autohost. In SpringLobby you check the relay host checkbox. In SpringDownloader it's automatic.

6) Game UI is flawed because it lacks features that would prevent new players from messing the game up.

Spring is actually not a game but a game engine. There are games that run on spring, which are sometimes called mods. If you want to see improvements in the interface you should contact the developers of the mods you play and offer them suggestions, they will know how to do it. You can use the project subforum to start a discussion.

Have fun playing spring!

[aegis]

didn't say his solutions were the best, but the problems still exist.

[SirMaverick]

User: "omfg, i just pressed "give everything to..." and it gave all my stuff to my ally!"

Sounds like Spring works.

User: "WHY THE FUCK IT DIDN'T ASK IF I WAS SURE?"

Because you don't want to click a second time for every command.

[Peet]

Sure you don't want to be pestered with confirmation for actions that will be done often and repeatedly, but something as profound and game-ending as the 'give all' button should really require confirmation. By your logic, every application window's close button should simply call exit() (the user pressed the close button so he obviously doesn't want to save his work), and the recycle bin should not exist. One time I went to pay my power bill online and forgot the decimal point...but I obviously meant to pay them six grand so the payment confirmation screen should be removed.

[TradeMark]

User: "WHY THE FUCK IT DIDN'T ASK IF I WAS SURE?"

Because you don't want to click a second time for every command.

I was thinking there could be confirmation, and then checkbox: "[X] do not ask again" like every program usually has...

Also i think the window close button (X) doesnt ask anything from the user in Spring? not sure though... i remember closing the game in accident few times

Mappers are able to add descriptions to their maps and people who upload those maps to springfiles can tag them with further information. See the mapping subforum to learn more about mapping.

i wish they all did that, there are some mappers that doesnt add any useful info there, like only adds their own name to the description "made by ..." which rreally annoys me as a user.

Wait.. you just suggested that you prefer TASClient. Wut.

I didnt, the user was forced to use TASClient because springlobby crashed.

6) Game UI is flawed because it lacks features that would prevent new players from messing the game up.

Spring is actually not a game but a game engine. There are games that run on spring, which are sometimes called mods. If you want to see improvements in the interface you should contact the developers of the mods you play and offer them suggestions, they will know how to do it.

I know, but most mods have the basic UI functions (for example when sharing units). IMO the engine should offer functional UI functions without need to script everything yourself in the mod you make.

[HeavyLancer]

Shortly the flaws here:
1) The installer doesnt suggest any mod, even though everyone plays BA anyways.
2) Springlobby crashes and doesnt work. Installer doesnt offer TASClient.
3) New player doesnt know what map would be good to play for which amount of players for that mod he downloaded. There are 2000 maps to choose from, which is too much, some sort of map suggestions would be good. OR some list of top popular maps in lobby.
4) springfiles.com search feature can only search exact word matches.
5) setting up a game in TASClient and using autohosts is confusing.
6) Game UI is flawed because it lacks features that would prevent new players from messing the game up.

Here's a solution: Go and make a BA installer with the engine, TASClient, game and a few maps. That would solve most of the problems.

[Hobo Joe]

Shortly the flaws here:
1) The installer doesnt suggest any mod, even though everyone plays BA anyways.
2) Springlobby crashes and doesnt work. Installer doesnt offer TASClient.
3) New player doesnt know what map would be good to play for which amount of players for that mod he downloaded. There are 2000 maps to choose from, which is too much, some sort of map suggestions would be good. OR some list of top popular maps in lobby.
4) springfiles.com search feature can only search exact word matches.
5) setting up a game in TASClient and using autohosts is confusing.
6) Game UI is flawed because it lacks features that would prevent new players from messing the game up.

Here's a solution: Go and make a BA installer with the engine, TASClient, game and a few maps. That would solve most of the problems.

Yesssss please

[Jazcash]

I think the biggest problem is that new players have no idea what mexes are, or anything. So they just start wherever and ready up. This causes all the other players to rage vote to kick him out the game. New player is like "wut", then tries again. Same happens, he quits Spring.

[Gota]

as maps go there are 2 problems.
If you suggest the most popular ones you doom other good maps that have the same potential to obscurity.
If you don't suggest maps you make newbies frustrated cause of the huge amount of maps.
This is again an issue because ta mods do not have installers.
BA needs an installer with all files widgets and an assortment of maps...

[SirMaverick]

[...]

Only first quote is mine. Rest is CarRepairer.

[Tim-the-maniac]

Surely SpringDownloader will be packaged with the next spring release?

Why include something so buggy when we have a decent alternative?
SD is also imo much more noob friendly and makes it more apparent that spring is an engine with many games (you get a screen with all the games showing and must click one to view the available battles rather than have a huge list with all battles listed together)

[HectorMeyer]

Would be cool if you guys could write here how the people experience was when they downloaded spring and tried to get to play it, and how was the playing experience.

tldr cool story coming up:

between 2000 and 2005 i didnt play TA at all, but always followed the swedish yankspankers site a bit. kinda followed how the development from demo recorder to 3D engine developed. i think i downloaded spring first around 2005. launched the "single player" application (i mean, every new player, epecially in RTS genre, wants to get to know the game in a few singleplayer games, right?), where you could launch some test scenarios. there were some mods and maps preinstalled, so you could launch "fighter test" or something without further ado. looked pretty smooth and impressive, but it seemed it was just a highly unpolished extension of the old TA demo recorder in a testing stage and the actual content, easy set up of single player scenarios and playing multiplayer TA games over a lobby was missing. the lobby actually might have existed, but i didnt want to bother anymore after that experience.

then kinda stumbled about it again in 2008, and somehow (there was is no hint on the homepage at all, how about some screenshots?) realized that there actually was an active lobby with lots of players and games. hosted my first game, called it "noobs" or something, some other players joined pretty quickly. the preinstalled stuff (current BA, CA version etc., some maps) really helped, since the important content site jobjol, which i discovered much later, got very limited no exposure on the homepage. then struggled a lot with things like LOS (why not default on? why no option to activate, but need to press L?), widgets (F11, another important key to remember), slow scrolling speed (after i asked on the lobby, i learned i had to edit the registry to get values higher than 10, which was way too sluggish), and the forced right mouse button interface (really miss the old LMB interface). i was stunned that there was no comprehensive options menus, and no hotkey list in game. after that it all went pretty smooth, but the whole package (homepage and game), although TASClient is really nice, still feels unappealing, unprofessional, unfinished and sandboxy as hell, which is a shame considering TA is the best RTS to date and BA DSD 8v8 is the way TA was always meant to be played :D

[Satirik]

you don't have to suggest the most popular maps/mods, if they want to join a battle it will auto download both, so just suggest the best maps, the main problem is that we think new user just want to login and join an existing battle (where everything is done automatically) but they want to try the game alone to learn and not be stressed, so either we need a BA + best maps installer or something in the lobbies (like in SD) to show a list of mods with description + maps, and it should be done in the main lobby aka SpringLobby

[CarRepairer]

Wait.. you just suggested that you prefer TASClient. Wut.

I didnt, the user was forced to use TASClient because springlobby crashed.

He wasn't forced. You told him to use it. You didn't suggest SD which hosts battles using autohosts, then you complained that it's difficult to use autohosts. Next time think about suggesting SD to a new user instead of a complex lobby client like TASC.

[knorke]

while sd is alright isnt this that lobby where there is no "start game" button and you change maps by typing !map and then springie says insufficient funds - collect more vespin gas? And everybody is black all the time.

[Satirik]

if someone wants to make a welcome page for tasclient, to present spring, the different games and the best maps in html it would be great

a nice screenshot for the background or using this or this with some simple transparent (vista style) box on it would be good enough i think

edit :

User: "how do i register?"

fixed (i removed the register button instead of the ladder register button on the logon form)

[TradeMark]

Wait.. you just suggested that you prefer TASClient. Wut.

I didnt, the user was forced to use TASClient because springlobby crashed.

He wasn't forced. You told him to use it. You didn't suggest SD which hosts battles using autohosts, then you complained that it's difficult to use autohosts. Next time think about suggesting SD to a new user instead of a complex lobby client like TASC.

SpringDownloader is a lobby client these days? wow i didnt have an idea, i'll tell that guy to use SD instead of TASClient then. Thanks.