Promotion/Advertising for Spring

[zwzsg]

I don't think Spring is ready to be advertised in it's current state...

Problem with that mindset, is that it will never get ready. It's been nine year already since Spring initial release, and you still believe it's about to get better just round the corner? To the contrary, I would say that as time pass, Spring ages, other, better, games and engines come out, so Spring is getting less and less susceptible to get a big break through.

[scifi]

I don't think Spring is ready to be advertised in it's current state...

Problem with that mindset, is that it will never get ready. It's been nine year already since Spring initial release, and you still believe it's about to get better just round the corner? To the contrary, I would say that as time pass, Spring ages, other, better, games and engines come out, so Spring is getting less and less susceptible to get a big break through.

Indeed, not just better but more advanced and noob friendly.

An Engine is something that supports games to be built upon it. Thing is spring doesnt have some ultra fancy editor like unity3d or unreal engine, so spring cant compete with those, not by a loong shot not even feature wise.

Spring can compete in the RTS and maybe a bit on the RPG scene, but problem is when you talk with people and call it a engine they expect all the things an engine is supose to come with. They think what language do i need program in it, and they never know that spring is a platform designed to support RTSish kind of games.

I know you can hack your way into making tetris in spring but thats not what you should be doing with it.

[SinbadEV]

I don't think Spring is ready to be advertised in it's current state...

Problem with that mindset, is that it will never get ready. It's been nine year already since Spring initial release, and you still believe it's about to get better just round the corner? To the contrary, I would say that as time pass, Spring ages, other, better, games and engines come out, so Spring is getting less and less susceptible to get a big break through.

I think you need to re-read the rest of my post because you seem to have gotten hung-up on the first line.

I definitely do not think "it's about to get better", I think a concerted effort to improve the "ecosystem" to a point where the project, as a whole, is fit for public consumption would be a better use of community resources than "promotion".

[scifi]

I don't think Spring is ready to be advertised in it's current state...

Problem with that mindset, is that it will never get ready. It's been nine year already since Spring initial release, and you still believe it's about to get better just round the corner? To the contrary, I would say that as time pass, Spring ages, other, better, games and engines come out, so Spring is getting less and less susceptible to get a big break through.

I think you need to re-read the rest of my post because you seem to have gotten hung-up on the first line.

I definitely do not think "it's about to get better", I think a concerted effort to improve the "ecosystem" to a point where the project, as a whole, is fit for public consumption would be a better use of community resources than "promotion".

But if there is a lack of people interested in doing that improvement, as zwszg said its been 9 years.

[luckywaldo7]

But if there is a lack of people interested in doing that improvement, as zwszg said its been 9 years.

If only there were as many people interested in doing that improvement as there were people interested in complaining about it.

[Silentwings]

to a point where the project, as a whole, is fit for public consumption

Within a long term open source project I don't see a real advantage or reason to aim towards some single 'finished' version - people enjoy developing content and developing the engine. New features will appear and old ones will be maintain/improved as and when people enjoy doing so.

[knorke]

Super Deluxe 12-games-in-1 Bonus Package

Oh that so reminds me of those 1000-games-in-one nintendo cartridges that had the same game with various palettes.

Advertising Spring as "thing with many different games" can indeed make it look like the mentioned collection of fail.
But there are game collections that did it right and were popular:
-The Orange Box (various games on half life 2's engine)
-Humble Indie Game Bundle (various random games)
-the original half life (which later many bought just for its mods)
-Command & Conquer pack (includes all games from the series)
-steam and similiar plattforms are a bit like this too

The crappy games from the 1000-games-collection do not get better if you put them onto seperate CDs with seperate installer.

[luckywaldo7]

You are listing collections of games that had already been marketed and sold independently first. The packs were just to encourage another wave of sales.

The crappy games from the 1000-games-collection do not get better if you put them onto seperate CDs with seperate installer.

1000 independent crappy games don't get better if you push them onto one installer. How about not trying to sell "crappy" games.

[SinbadEV]

I didn't mean to imply I wanted it "finished"... I meant to say that it was embarrassingly bad and is scaring potential players, content creators and developers away... we have shown that it's possible to make a single game palatable to the masses, we just need to duplicate that veneer of competency for the project as a whole.

[gajop]

An Engine is something that supports games to be built upon it. Thing is spring doesnt have some ultra fancy editor like unity3d or unreal engine, so spring cant compete with those, not by a loong shot not even feature wise.

Nah, Spring can get there. I've been working on that with Toolbox for quite a while now. It's aim is to be something similar to those editors, and it's getting quite close.

You could help (URL here) if you want to. There's still a few engine things I need done as well.

[PicassoCT]

An Engine is something that supports games to be built upon it. Thing is spring doesnt have some ultra fancy editor like unity3d or unreal engine, so spring cant compete with those, not by a loong shot not even feature wise.

Nah, Spring can get there. I've been working on that with Toolbox for quite a while now. It's aim is to be something similar to those editors, and it's getting quite close.

You could help (URL here) if you want to. There's still a few engine things I need done as well.

Imagine if every player could customize a victory dance to his k-bots..what a show..

[CarRepairer]

You summoned, they appear.

[Peet]

I agree, we need more than anything to broadcast the dynamics of this shining example of a FOSS community to the world at large

[FLOZi]

I agree, we need more than anything to broadcast the dynamics of this shining example of a FOSS community to the world at large

*Snicker*.

[smoth]

I agree, we need more than anything to broadcast the dynamics of this shining example of a FOSS community to the world at large

[Forboding Angel]

I agree, we need more than anything to broadcast the dynamics of this shining example of a FOSS community to the world at large

[luckywaldo7]

shining example of a FOSS community

[Peet]

now that is a valid point

[nightcold]

Sad to see that this thread died,

I was never convinced with the argument that: “we should not advertise spring as a whole because it is not a ‘game’ but a ‘game engine’, the concept of a ‘game engine’ is too abstract for the populous….therefor you need to advertise my game instead”.

If your mod is if fact not a mod but rather a ‘game’ in and of itself now tell me how do people play your ‘game’. They open up a universal lobby that is used to access the engine, then they load up any map they wish as well as your ‘unit pack’(out of many others) and click play. None of the mods here are close to truly being independent from spring (ZK folks will disagree).

When I first got into spring I downloaded one of the ‘game installers’ (for S44), it ended up being a disaster and I did not get it. When it became clear to me that s44 was just a mod for spring, then it became easier.

i like to think that spring is like a game with mods that lacks a main unit set/game. Sadly there is a lack of a word for that, so it makes things trouble some.

Anyways I remember there was a conversation here a while back when StarCraft2 casting was in its prime to try to get one of casters to do a few videos about spring. These casters have done promos for games other than StarCraft in the past. They usually stream the game with a few other people playing with him (we could get a few of the established spring people playing with the caster). The idea was at first resisted, but then it boiled down to no one wanting to do the work of contacting the caster.

We could still do that, it is still not too late. Back then the major casters got around 100k views for each generic video, now they get around 20k-40k views . That is still a lot of people interested in RTS games. Even if like 1% try the game(the number will probably be much more, I am being very conservative here) and only a fraction of them keep on playing that is still a nice boost to the small spring community as it is.

something else you could do is to ask the Planetary Annihilation folks to talk a little bit about spring next time they mention TA or WTV on their development updates. I doubt spring will hurt their sales. He did mention that he is in contact with the ZK folks, they could ask him. He has also talked highly about spring in the past.

Ps. If you don’t care about spring being popular then just don’t post. Other people might care and wish to do something about it. few of the content developers actually play spring(with the acceptation of ZK folks), this thread is for the players that wish to have other people to play with (down the line).

[Silentwings]

few of the content developers actually play spring

Evidence pls? I call bollocks (& sorry for deviation from topic).