Game installers

[Forboding Angel]

Last saturday. There is your abundance of examples.

[SpliFF]

On the other hand, it might just be because BA players have been around longest and had the most time to accumulate broken old user widget versions.

That.

Not to mention the majority of Spring users are BA players. When 90% of a community are having/causing 90% of the problems that still means each user has exactly the same number of issues as any user from the other 10%.

If there is a difference I suspect it boils down to zk/ct/gameX players being generally more experienced and dedicated whereas BA players are more casual gamers looking for something familiar.

[Silentwings]

Last saturday. There is your abundance of examples.

That's the sort of mature and considered response which will lead to solving your problems.

@Spliff; I think BA has more long time gamers than ZK, at least the BA players who play both genrally say that ZK has alot less experienced players. But I completely agree that its likely that having had eons to build up a collection of broken user widgets is the cause of any incompatibility.

[CarRepairer]

Not to mention the majority of Spring users are BA players.

90% of a community

Check your facts. http://planetspads.free.fr/spring/stats/graph_110.html

[PicassoCT]

If people want to play "Spring" they can come here and DL it and play.

No they cant, what they get is a engine, and a bunch of readme instructions on how to proceed. What they dont get is the comfort of a fullblown steam like installer, that would actually be apropriate.

If people want to play Evolution RTS, they can go DL Evolution RTS and play it.

Yeah, they can, but guess what every gamedev who allready has his installer is not even asked here. Meanwhile, those who are not far enough into the i make my own game process (or simply hate gui-development) get hit over the head lessons here.

People completely fuck their spring installs up playing multiple games. So many BA players' installs are so fucked up that they can barely manage to play Evo or ZK, whereas if you install Evo via desura, it will work perfectly, each and every time.

Which is a argument for what? Having multiple springs? Accepted. No real argument for seperate installers though.

You're welcome to your opinion, but if that is really your opinion, then why does S44 have an individual installer?

Because fashion, and "Everyone-is-his-own-best-dev"mentality. Suddenly...

**************************************************

Might be a bit harsh here, but else noone here is gona hear it.

[SinbadEV]

One thing to note on the Steam/Desura front is that it goes, Downloader>Game>Lobby Not Lobby>Downloader>Game

You can't play counter-strike from the team fortress lobby.

[Forboding Angel]

^^ this. Doin it rite.

[gajop]

desura

Desura seemed pretty bad last time I tried to use it to install evo. It would prompt me for login every time (instead of remembering the username/pw) and it would do full downloads (instead of using rapid) every time evo got updated.

One thing to note on the Steam/Desura front is that it goes, Downloader>Game>Lobby Not Lobby>Downloader>Game

Incorrect. You need steam/desura (lobbies) that you use to download games.

I don't know about Steam, but Desura not using rapid (or something similar) makes updates pretty large.

ZKL on the other hand uses rapid and has spring:// URLs for certain actions. Extend that with rapid links (e.g. spring://evorts:stable@rapid) and you've created a download system usable by any lobby.

[Forboding Angel]

and it would do full downloads (instead of using rapid) every time evo got updated.

This is total bullshit. Evo has always used rapid, even when it used Springlobby as the main lobby.

Your post is so full of BS and false statements (and a rather pathetic attempt at FUD) that it makes me very angry.

Additionally, ZKL is not cross platform, and Desura/NotaLobby/Spring are; and since you give such a huge crap about Open Source, Desura is open source and currently maintained by a large cadre of linux developers. With the addition of Static builds in spring 93 for linux, that removes the last *nix obstacle.

[gajop]

This is total bullshit. Evo has always used rapid, even when it used Springlobby as the main lobby.

From what I understand "evo" is a game, not a lobby, it can only be posted on rapid, but it doesn't autoupdate itself, and it relies on other lobbies to do that.
Desura itself doesn't seem to be using rapid, although it seems to have been recently updated to do some delta updates.
It takes long to do file checks:

And it does needlessly large updates:

And it spews some errors and ends up failing to update:
http://pastie.org/6440641

There is nothing there that even hints rapid.
Note that I focused on Desura, and never mentioned NotaLobby not using rapid (which it does afaik).

Your post is so full of BS and false statements (and a rather pathetic attempt at FUD) that it makes me very angry.

Take a deep breadth... FUD are supposed to be lies.

Additionally, ZKL is not cross platform, and Desura/NotaLobby/Spring are; and since you give such a huge crap about Open Source, Desura is open source and currently maintained by a large cadre of linux developers. With the addition of Static builds in spring 93 for linux, that removes the last *nix obstacle.

ZKL was mentioned as an example which has spring:// URLs, that can be used to control whatever lobby the user has installed. Imo, having an open API is far more important than software being open source.
The reason it was mentioned is that an URL scheme like that could be used to spread spring content in a similar way it's done for other popular distribution systems like Steam (or Desura, but that's not that popular tbh).
Using "Spring" (rapid, plasma or w/e DL systems it supports) as a distribution system seems superior to a half-assed solution that is Desura. Just installing a chat lobby (e.g. NotaLobby in your case probably), and rapid/plasma would allow you to install any spring game by using a spring:// URL, if that were to be widespread.
So, what obstacle exactly does Desura remove?

PS: The auto-login still isn't working (it just prompts you to enter credentials every time), although I've no idea how to show that.

[Forboding Angel]

Evo rapid (via pool/packages) is installed by default. The lobby then updates to the latest version when you join a host. That update is trivial. The version included with current Desura is 4.9 and the update to 6.04 is about 5 mb.

Desura uses file comparison (not byte comparison) for updating the installation files, so your "omghugeupdates" line is a load of bunk. However, if I update the pool and packages files (which I do only once in a great while in order to get the base version up), then those must be updated yes, but my last few desura updates have been about 2mb apiece. I only update desura when I add a new evo default map, or when spring changes versions.

Before notalobby, evo used rapid.exe in order to update to latest revision.

You know why it has to compare 10000 fucking files? Because rapid can't read an sd7/sdz and use that info for the pool files, so desura's file checks have to go through all of that crap. The other option is to have a user get into the lobby and have to dl 200mb worth of game, and that's crappy.

But as I said, I update desura like 2 or 3 times a year. Cry me a river.

12:39 Please check you are connected to the internet
12:39 and try again or check console for more info. [59.0]
12:55 ScriptCore Logging Started.

If you lose connection to the internet, you can expect the download to fail.

PS: The auto-login still isn't working (it just prompts you to enter credentials every time), although I've no idea how to show that.

Works fine for me.

The Spring Project • View topic - Game installers - Google Chrome_2013-03-10_06-07-55.png

(28.9 KiB) Downloaded 1 time

Take a deep breadth... FUD are supposed to be lies.

More often than not, FUD is half truths.

[knorke]

You can't play counter-strike from the team fortress lobby.

Actually you can.
In server browser, there was a filter and one filter setting was "Game", just like in spring's lobbys.

If anyone remembers, the half life menu looked like this:


Notice the "Custom game" button.
That button was still there after selecting a custom game / mod, for example Team Fortress:


No matter what game was currently started, you could always set the server list to show filters for a different game / all games. On joining, the correct game started.

Even the steam server browser still allows to show multiple games:


With steam it is not even limited to games of the same engine anymore.
Today nobody plays "counter-strike from the team fortress lobby."
I would guess most players do not even "play team fortress from the team fortress lobby."
Instead, in steam friends list you can see who is in what game and "join same game."
Steam is one gaming hub for multiple games.

Spring should and could be the same, almost already is, there are good download systems and shared content. (maps, server, the players) But instead of building on that, there seems to be a urge for seperation.

[gajop]

knorke++, my thoughts exactly;
i even once thought how cool it may be to merge other open source game lobbies with spring (especially strategies), although that's probably not trivial

[smoth]

considering anyone in spring can join any game, even if they DON'T have the same spring version as the host and DON'T have the same version of a game.

IMO hosts should be able to block people from joining if they don't have the same game or right version of spring. This needs to happen at the host level and NOT at the lobby level!

[FLOZi]

knorke++, my thoughts exactly;
i even once thought how cool it may be to merge other open source game lobbies with spring (especially strategies), although that's probably not trivial

AFLobby used to work for something else too.. Glest maybe?

[Licho]

Lobby server now supports protocol to advertise engine version. AFAIK nota lobby and ZKL implemented this, dont know about springlobby.

There is also easy way to download engine version (zipped) needed to join the battle room in the same way as mod or map.
Works now even for linux.

[smoth]

[abma]

Lobby server now supports protocol to advertise engine version. AFAIK nota lobby and ZKL implemented this, dont know about springlobby.

where is the documentation so others can implement it, too?
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=29873

[danil_kalina]

The compat flag set on login is "eb"

You will recieve
BATTLEOPENEDEX
with two new arguments between map hash and map name there are 2 new parameters:

- engine name
- engine version

( "Spring" and "91.0" for example )


You can also use OPENBATTLEEX and set those parameters for battles you host.