The elephant in the room (evolution rts and spring)

[knorke]

My thread in the evolution rts subforum got deleted 1 minute after creation.

In april the game was released on steam.
It is september now and most major issues are not adressed.
Does anyone think this project can realistically be saved?

It sounds kitschy but are "Open Source" and "Free Software" not concepts and ideals that this community is built on? The moment these concepts get used as excuses for delivering a bad product it is mocking the whole idea.
Thus the game should be taken off steam, it is not doing a favor to spring or OS in general to leave it up in this state. Take it off, get a team or learn the nessecary skills, then in a year try again.

It is not wished to discuss this?
Or maybe it was unclear what this is about, in that case I will explain in more detail but I purposely left it general. There is no good way to begin such discussion, after long thinking blunt and honest seemed best.

[PicassoCT]

Ahem, no?

Okay, so a game is something that gets better by not beeing played. Good thing to know, thats why jw starts warping reality by now.

why not have it on steam. And let some who like it play it. Its just a casual game. Its in its very nature it doesent draw the persistent community that zero-k has.

PS: Forb is a free man, so its forbs decission?

PS: Deleting steam threads, even those you dont agree with is a lousy reaction.

I would greatly approve if forb would redirect those who of his players who are leaving to Zero-k and BAR.

[gajop]

It's Forb's game, and he can do whatever he wants with it (as long as it respects GPL).

[smoth]

It is still burning your beaver? As far as I know forb is super busy irl post the offending bug list. Evo is not frontpage on steam, it works fine for many people, this is not a democracy

[Silentwings]

I think the decision as to whether or not it gets left on Steam has to be left to Forboding Angel.

My only real contribution to this kind of discussion, which I've said before: I think all lobbies that use the official lobby server (launch or no launch) should be required by default to display all games using the lobby server. Ofc it would result in some cross-publicity, probably not much unless a game launch really went wrong, but afaics the overall rate of retention for Spring could only be higher as a result.

[PicassoCT]

I think it should be a two side deal- if you play zero-k, or BAR after a launch period, you should allow unrestricted access to other games, such as EVO, and even promote it.

If you caught your audience you have nothing to fear, and those who wander off in search of filled servers, wander off anyway, so better have them trickle into the spring universe then back into the steam(ing pile)

But this is again not a democracy.
People dont see the engine. People will remember the game.

[MetalSucker]

You made me register just to post this.

Evo complaints on steam are 70% lobby related.

The rest of them are complaints about content downloading time, lack of tutorial missions / single player.

I believe around 10% of them are related to the actual game crashing.

Now if you think about it, the lobby sucks for all the games, not just evo, every game has long inconvenient download times for the maps and there are no decent missions or tutorials out there.

<3 Evo!

There's a serious disconnect between the game developers and the end users and there seem to be serious disfunctionalities inside the developer community.

2c

[Silentwings]

@MetalSucker, possibly you have not realized that there is no "the lobby". There are many functioning lobbies and it is the responsibility of the game, and no one else, to provide a viable lobby if it offers a standalone download (and some do, without getting many complaints). You are also wrong about map dl-times being the same for all games; different games use different autohosts and choose different maplists. You are also wrong about missions/tutorials; Zero-K offers many (although I have not tried them myself) and I believe other games do too, if you look for them.

[Jools]

You made me register just to post this.

Was it non-cumbersome? Recently there has been some spamming so they upped the protection and that may cause some problems when registering

There's a serious disconnect between the game developers and the end users and there seem to be serious disfunctionalities inside the developer community.

While I believe this is true in general, Forboding is a guy not disconnected from the users, so I don't think it's this problem when regarding evo. But the lobbies are not made by him so yes, there you may have a point.

You should also know that there are many lobbies in spring, with their own advantages/disadvantages.

[Jools]

@MetalSucker, possibly you have not realized that there is no "the lobby". There are many functioning lobbies and it is the responsibility of the game to provide a viable one if it offers a standalone download (and some do, without getting many complaints). You are also wrong about map dl-times being the same for all games; different games use different autohosts and choose different maplists. You are also wrong about missions/tutorials; Zero-K offers many (although I have not tried them myself).

He is not wrong when he's writing that his experience is that. It does not matter if there are many functioning lobbies and single player modes, if people can not easily make themselves aware of it.

[MetalSucker]

Here's the thing: Joe enduser gamer wants to start the game and have a pretty menu with 1) tutorial 2) automagically find 1v1 or 2v2 or 3v3 multi.

Joe enduser does not want irc-like client with 10 tabs and potentially dark scary background with huge table of hosts, host versions, supported engine versions, map sync messages.

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-R ... e+me+think

I went as far as looking at the lobby protocols and checking + compiling the latest springlobby. Multi engine support = fail. Writing config files = fail..

Zero-k lobby on linux - seriously - make me install wine!??! Why mono.

Weblobby actually works (very sluggisly) since it's no longer browser based.

It should be dumb simple. It's not.


Now as far as the development goes, I actually saw some really great looking units in BAR, those were really impressive, even nice walk cycles.

But since this is about steam and end users..
If there's any sort of learning curve towards starting a simple game
IT'S WRONG.


The zero-k tutorial missions are bugged as hell and there are actual messages on the site about this.

I don't mean to come off as an asshole, I have a great deal of respect for what you've done here in terms of coding, improving pathfinding, ai experiments in kernel panic, moving a lot of stuff to LUA, blender import/export.

But that says nothing about what joe average user wants: something simple to use. Hand holding. Not being intimidated with complicated interfaces.

[knorke]

The game being on steam is a bad idea because it is too bugged and critical parts (like singleplayer, tutorial etc) are missing. Just look at the reviews at steam for more details.
Or go back a year and see what happend with the desura release, it was the same situation.
Forboding Angel does not have the technical knowledge to fix even the slighest thing.

Steam is not comperable with the usual situation spring is in, where everyone is doign whatever he wants and it has little impact on anything. Remember the long discussion when someone tried to advertise spring/games in random gaming forums and did it in quite unlucky way? There was long discussion about what to do and what not do in advertising.
Now there is a spring game on steam, a large online plattform, presented to thousands of players and it is bad and does not work. And nothing is said about that?

It has nothing to do with "search of filled servers."
Sure, now nobody is playing the game or even trying to.
But go to the replays site and look up some older replays like this one http://replays.springrts.com/replay/03a ... c79b8f899/
Notice how there were 40+ specs? And that is just one game of many rooms that were filled at the same time.

It is still burning your beaver? As far as I know forb is super busy irl post the offending bug list. Evo is not frontpage on steam, it works fine for many people, this is not a democracy

I posted the bugs often enough, in forum, bugtracker and chat.
FA has zero idea of Lua, it is absoluetly no use to discuss it with him.
Even if the fix was posted as well, YOU said to every report that "it is not an issue" and nothing was done. And thus evolution rts has the same bugs as one year ago.
That is not "making descissions", that is ignorance and very bad managment.
And yes, evo was on steam frontpage for some time: http://i.imgur.com/f0Ca6w8.png


One could argue that one bad spring-game does not reflect badly on spring as a whole. Even if you want to make this (imo far stretched) assumption one can not deny that other things do directly reflect on spring.
For example when statements are made about spring to explain issues in the game: "the engine can not XY / it is too difficult", "springfiles is a cesspool", "spring lua coders have bad practices."
That is directly badmouthing and blaming spring.

Now if you think about it, the lobby sucks for all the games, not just evo, every game has long inconvenient download times for the maps and there are no decent missions or tutorials out there.

There are two crucial differences:
1) Other games know about their issues and fix them. Forboding Angel knew about all this, ignored it and still found it good enough for release.

2) 1) Other games are trying to create missions & tutorials and have a realistic chance of completing that.
On the other hand when Forboding Angel talks about a "20 campaign mission" and "Lua ingame lobby" or "revamping the singleplayer" then that is nothing but pipe dreams.

FA can not program at all and has no idea of spring modding beside changing some numbers.
I do not mean that in "his scripting is maybe a bit inefficient", it is literally that he needs help to edit a script that counts 1,2,1,2,1,2 into a script that counts 1,2,3,1,2,3 and similiar things.
Yet somehow he thinks he can decide what bugs are criticial or not?

[gajop]

@MetalSucker, possibly you have not realized that there is no "the lobby". There are many functioning lobbies and it is the responsibility of the game, and no one else, to provide a viable lobby if it offers a standalone download (and some do, without getting many complaints)

I completely agree with this.
Your game, your responsibility (lua, engine, lobby, steam integration!).

[knorke]

@MetalSucker, possibly you have not realized that there is no "the lobby". There are many functioning lobbies and it is the responsibility of the game, and no one else, to provide a viable lobby if it offers a standalone download (and some do, without getting many complaints)

I completely agree with this.
Your game, your responsibility (lua, engine, lobby, steam integration!).

Now there is a "developer" who knows nothing about these things.
And yet you say he can do whatever he wants?
Legally the GPL license might permit that, but that does not mean it is a good idea.
We might have no influence what happens on steam, but can maybe think about if such project needs to be given a plattform on spring.

[smoth]

Was on the frontpage, not any more, for some time.

He understands some of lua, but personally I think it is just something that is unknown and bewilders the guy. I have been there in the past with different things and still get there.

[MetalSucker]

The GPL would allow pretty much anyone to fork the engine to AutumnRTS and build the game on that without any needed permission.

[Silentwings]

GPL does allow that, yes, provided the rest of the GPL license is also observed, along with any other licenses that cover all/part of the games content, some of which might have come from elsewhere (and which might be stricter than GPL in the case of e.g. artwork). Spring also has an (internal) policy that you can't use someone else's content if they don't want you too, regardless. But all that is off-topic, since afaik Evo's license is fine.

edited to reflect what smoth says below

[smoth]

forking the engine creates it's own problems. Forb doesn't want to try and split the community would be the simplest answer to the engine split question.The engine devs do not see the lobby situation as an issue and until they do, we cannot get support for developing in-engine lobbies until we start making them, it is a catch 22 and frustrates me. Or at least that is the impression the engine devs leave me with.

Metal can you post some of the NONlobby related issues that need resolution? Most of that is easily addressed.

Silentwings
Artwork can be included in a secondary module which is a dependency of the main module, this making the art license a NON-issue. That is how I was planning my next game. All artwork in the content module will be closed license where as the main game and GBS module were going to be open source.

[knorke]

The GPL would allow pretty much anyone to fork the engine to AutumnRTS and build the game on that without any needed permission.

The GPL does not require that such game is hosted on the spring servers or advertised in banners on this forum or given space for news on this frontpage.
A community can make its own rules, some examples from spring are:
1) No "offensive" maps, like with pornographic images etc
2) BA branding and mutators policy
3) No "evil mutator maps" that alter the game without the player noticing. More an unwritten rule (I think), but in past files were deleted for violating that.

So yes, you can create many things but beyond that...

Was on the frontpage, not any more, for some time.

The point is? That is not as bad that a broken spring is on steam because it is not on the front page anymore?

He understands some of lua, but personally I think it is just something that is unknown and bewilders the guy. I have been there in the past with different things and still get there.

He knows nothing.

[knorke]

And please stay on topic:
This is not about listing which "NONlobby related issues" evolution rts has.
It is not about discussing the bugs and shortcomings in detail. There was a time for that but that time has passed.
Players have been told for long enough time how this and that will be fixed soon.
Face the reality and recognize that evolution rts has been released, it is months after release.
Now we are in post-apocalyptic stage , the question is how to deal with it.