no respect for spring

[Warlord Zsinj]

Yeah, I don't think it is encumbent upon BA to do anything at all - I'm just asking for the ability for mods to be able to funnel their new users into an area in the lobby where they are not confronted with hoardes of rabid BA players or BA games.

And, while I'm looking forward to seeing you implement that in your lobby AF (the word "eventually" scares me though ), I still think it should be a high priority for whoever is running the current spring lobby (betalord?). If the lobby had that sort of functionality, then it would be no question regarding whether I should consider moving to my own server - I'd be able to get the best of both worlds.

[Argh]

Satirik runs the current Lobby.

[LordMatt]

I have said it a ton of times, spring needs a better single player gaming experience and non-BA mods need to cater to that to build a userbase.

[Caydr]

We haven't even got a place to host 'em... How professional does that look?

I think the absolute very first measure I take of a game, before even reading reviews, is the number of well-developed fansites. Spring has nothing of the sort except for individual mods, and they aren't networked worth a damn either. There's no decent central hub, the wiki isn't used properly... if you want to discuss Spring anywhere but here, you're segregated into one of a dozen insignificantly small communities.

This thing needs a proper community site in addition to the engine site, like any other game has. I'd volunteer to set one up but - *GOLDEN CAYDR EXCUSE #23* - I haven't got the time right now.

What I mean is, actively updated news, a forum that's not so barebones, and file hosting.

[Warlord Zsinj]

It's true that websites should be networked better, but I think it is also good that the majority of Spring discussion is focused on these forums. I'd almost be tempted to say that all mods should simply have their own private forums on this forum to make things totally centralised, but some people prefer the independence (and Gnome would probably throttle me).

Regarding Single Player, I agree that it is stifling Spring's growth considerably. However, the work required to get a solid singleplayer working (specifically missions, but even a solid AI for skirmish play- especially if your mod is changing things significantly from the TA model) is far greater then the work required to allow custom lobby profiles to be distributed with mods; and the effect on the forumulation and longevity of specific communities for individual mods would be considerable, in my opinion.

[det]

Hostility does exist, just see the many threads in here about PM and #main spamming. Those are completely unprovoked - now throw some poor guy that has never heard of Spring before, that has stumbled on IW, and decides to check out the lobby. "Hi! How do I start a game of IW?" he innocently asks. "IW IS GAY PLAY BA NOOB" is the inevitable response.

Honestly now, advertising is _not_ the same thing as hostility.

"Come play CA. Morph units who gain experience!"
vs
"Come play CA, SW:IW suxors"

I rarely, if ever, see TA mod authors or players acting hostile towards non-TA mods. Really, people just don't care about these mods, not even enough to bad mouth them. I am tired of seeing people playing the victim of BA and using this falsehood to constantly attack it under the guise of "HELP! IM BEING OPPRESSED!".

And somewhat more likely, less offensive, but more insidious is the fact that initially players are likely to log on to the lobby, see a couple of IW games, perhaps none, and see 30 BA games going. Of course, they are going to check out BA. IW needs to have the hance to build up it's player base, and competing against a mod that has had effectively 10 years to build up a player base is no easy task.
The rest of your points makes a lot of sense.

There is a lot of truth in this. I think it would be a great thing if projects could release a custom TASClient that was, by default, centric to their mod and advertising it to outside the Spring community.

[Warlord Zsinj]

I'm glad we're in agreement then!

What I'm proposing isn't a 'seperate' TASClient, but simply for new players to be funneled into the same TASClient (perhaps skinned with the mods flavour), but a client that has had a certain default profile attached to it that directs the new player to a specific mod channel, and filters out all unrelated mods (or whatever mods according to the mod-makers preference). New players would then enter what is effectively a "mod-only TASClient" - with the exception that they are still on the server, so any say, IW games that they host don't only appear to all the new players in #SWIW, but also to any players using a standard TASClient and idling in #main. That way you do not split the community into different, unrelated servers. Everyone is still congregating on the same server.

Further, with what I am suggesting, new players who have downloaded the custom TASClient but are curious about other mods are not forbidden from trying them out (as you might see on a mod-specific server). Because they are logging into the same server, all they need to do is adjust what mods are being filtered by their personal TASClient (instead of 'only show SWIW games', you set it to 'display all games', or something like that).

I think that allowing this server to be divided up in this way is necessary for the survival and growth of communities for smaller and newer mods, but still allows us to centralise our community on a single server, and still allows an easy transferral between different mods. Specifically it means that someone who wants to occasionally play BA, and occasionally play s44, or IW, does not need to join different lobby servers in order to do so, and can keep in touch with all the different mod channels (and other channels), keep an eye on all those games being hosted currentlyand retain a constant user ID throughout is perfectly able to do that, which benefits the Spring community as a whole.

... And the record, I don't think I've ever seen a mod author say 'this mod is suxxorz, come play my mod', creators on the whole tend to be reasonably respectful towards other works, if very jealous. I have seen hostility from players towards smaller mods in favour of bigger mods, but it is fair to say that it was most likely from a moronic few rather then a majority. Without a doubt, the slower threat that I described (that is, joining to play IW, seeing 4 IW games and 30BA games) is far larger, and what my solution is intending to address.

[Saktoth]

Now, I realise we're all lovey dovey let's all share things and be merry here - but I'm not making IW to be a feeder of people for the popular *A mod. I want to give my mod the best chance it can have to establish its own playing community. This may force me to move to my own server, but as stated earlier, I'd much rather not do that.

Who is to say it wouldnt be the other way around? BA players like Star Wars too, if your mod is up to the same gameplay quality you might be 'leeching' off of them. I hope your confidence in your ability to get in new players is warranted (I believe it may well be).

Even if you do manage to get a large playerbase though, the core of your community, the best players, the most valuable playtesters, the trend-setters unit abusers and strategy-inventors, are for quite a long time going to be OTA mod players. They'll be the one teaching all the new players how to play, and exploring and exploiting the mod to its max.

... And the record, I don't think I've ever seen a mod author say 'this mod is suxxorz, come play my mod'

lol CA/SA.

[Nemo]

Personally I think the risk of having your trickle of players be absorbed into the masses of BA games is greater than the potential benefits of drawing people away from BA/whatever. The spring community really isn't that large; the number of players a new game could snag from BA is perhaps 20% of their current players, fairly optimistically. The estimate there arising from the fact that that's around the number of people who switch between CA and BA depending on where the games are. The rest will likely not switch until the only DSD 5v5 open is a non-BA mod and there are no large BA games to join. That 20% or so is very probably less than what you could manage with a well-run marketing push with an independent server and system.

So to put numbers on it: you can take a more-or-less assured playerbase of 1000 people in an independent server (registered accounts; this is less than half the size of the current spring community), sacrificing 200 or so potential BA switchers, or risk having those 1000 new folks enter the server and see 2 S44/IW/Gundam/PURE/whatever games listed with 40 BA games, and either leave because they can't play the game they came to play, or download BA and play that because its the easiest thing to do.

It's all about which mod its easier to find a suitable game for. For a lot of people, a 'suitable game' means an 8v8 or something on DSD. Which will be pretty hard to come by in the early stages of a new game's marketing, and impossible if the stream of new people heading into the server are absorbed.

I think that there's a sense from a few corners that BA is in its place purely because its such a good game, not because of the self-perpetuating momentum. It is certainly a good (excellent, even), competitive, well balanced game, but I'd argue that a significant part of its dominance is also the "inertia" factor - where someone goes into the lobby and says "hey, who's up for a game of (insert non-*A mod) and is told by the #main people "just play BA" so they give up after waiting around for ten minutes for a game and play BA. Playing BA is the easy thing to do. And it'll stay that way, in all likelihood, unless one of the new games manages to bring in a HUGE influx of players in a VERY short period of time (an influx comparable to the first weeks of a major commercial game's release), something that strikes me as particularly unlikely.

[AF]

It may be noted also that when the lobby was first put up Absolute Annihilation was almost immediatly ported and the AA fans quickly set up games within the first few days of its release.

While this is a testament to the dedication of fans of Absolute annihilation who ported AA before caydr had a chance, it also meant that AA had a huge headstart and a lot of inertia since it enjoyed a majority of games somewhat akin to what BA has now.

The only reason XTA survived this initial onslaught was because the SY's supported it in the installer and because no other mods had come to compete yet, so XTA didnt have to share its minority pie with the likes of other mods that already existed such a gundam or starwars.

[DemO]

Having the lobby set up so by default it filters to only show games from a specific mod is a backwards way of approaching the issue of the distribution of the playerbase in spring. I agree that it would be useful to be able to filter games to a specific mod, but by default the lobby should show all games over all mods.

Spring should pride itself on the diversity of mods available to play, and I cant think of a single reason why it makes sense to limit players to being part of a specific sub-community. In the end, the players will decide for themselves what they want to play. If the reason they decide to play BA rather than IW is simply because there arn't enough games hosted for IW and they don't want to wait around, then let them do that. Its better that they at least play something rather than log onto a lobby that is filtered to show only games from one mod, find that theres no games at that time and leave, potentially never to return again.

It seems like the only possible benefit of this suggestion from the modmakers perspective is to mask people from the reality there are infact other mods in spring and through doing so, retain a larger percentage of new players which otherwise might be lost to mods like BA. In essence, its a weak attempt to stop newcomers being aware of other projects in Spring on a SHARED LOBBY.

1. You see how rediculous this is yet?
2. Newcomers WILL find out about other projects pretty quickly.
3. This is hypocritical and goes against pretty much all the principles that developers in this forum preach about with regard to this topic.

Misdirecting your playerbase into thinking that your mod is the only one played in a lobby that is shared by many mods is not fair or rational. If you are worried about other projects potentially "stealing" a percentage of your player base, make your own site, your own independent lobby and completely seggregate your playerbase from the current one, but dont try to do it on a shared lobby...

There are several other ways to go about promoting specific mods through the lobby. As long as new mods are released on the current shared lobby they are going to HAVE TO make do with the reality that the only sources of a playerbase is to either convince the current BA/CA/XTA etc players to move over and play regularly or to advertise outwith the Spring community to try and create a new playerbase.

Developers need to get out of this mindset that *A mods are limiting their potential playerbase. If anything, these mods will contribute towards a bigger playerbase because they have already established a community in the Spring lobby which you can advertise to very easily. I agree in saying that so far, people come to Spring to play Total Annihilation mods, so if you intend on catching these players interests and making them part of your mod's playerbase, your mod obviously has to be subjectively more appealing to these players. This does NOT mean to say that developers should try to develop TA style mods, simply that it will be much easier for TA style mods to succeed in the current spring playerbase, as has been shown to date.

New mods that are vastly different to TA should not blame the *A mods for their failures. Blame yourself. It's YOUR job to build a playerbase, advertise outside of Spring and envoke new players to try, enjoy and continue to play your game. You would HAVE to do this if there were no *A mods. At least with the current community of *A players, you have a playerbase that is easy to access and advertise to.

/rant

[AF]

May I point out that the ideal shared community vision people are fighting for is fundamentally flawed and I dont need to justify ti because I have seen it for the last 2-3 years, and as of yet none of the arguements to justify it have proven correct.

The playerbase has not expanded because non Ta mods have created communities, if anything these non TA communities have died out or stifled into a core set of fans, and even the TA communities are shrinking.

Even the players themselves have asked for filtering without any prior prompt from a mod developer, of their own accord. The END USER is asking for them, the people we're developing for, the people who play your content, the people who download your stuff, visit your websites (or rather serch for the lack of them).

Should myself, nemo, argh, smoth, fang, foreboding, KDR, snipawolf, gnome, peet and the honourable warlord all leave, the nonTA scene would collapse and content development in this community would slow to a snails pace.

The only content of note would be the TA mods and as we should all know by now, most people will refuse to link to us or even mention us on the ground of Atari IP. They do not consider spring a free game, they consider it illegal warez.

[Nemo]

Spring should pride itself on the diversity of mods available to play, and I cant think of a single reason why it makes sense to limit players to being part of a specific sub-community. In the end, the players will decide for themselves what they want to play.

Here's the thing, though. When it comes to garnering players, I'm really not concerned about getting more players for "Spring engine games." I'm looking for players for the project that I've invested hundreds, if not near a thousand hours in. I understand that this seems unfair from a player's perspective, but seriously. I did not spend all that time working on a game and then advertising it just to introduce more players to BA. I hardly see all the games on the quake3 engine sharing a client because it makes it easier for the players to find a different game they like.

Things like "Spring should pride itself" are the wrong mindset, I think; Spring is an engine. a great engine, totally unique and very cool, but it's not something to build a community around (except a community of devs and game devs). To go back to the quake3 example - why would players go to a forum to discuss the quake3 engine, as opposed to the huge numbers of games created on it?

[Sleksa]

Hostility does exist, just see the many threads in here about PM and #main spamming. Those are completely unprovoked - now throw some poor guy that has never heard of Spring before, that has stumbled on IW, and decides to check out the lobby. "Hi! How do I start a game of IW?" he innocently asks. "IW IS GAY PLAY BA NOOB" is the inevitable response.

BA fanbois r just generally close minded and only play it cos they been spoon fed BA and r resistant to change and being pwned again relearning a game

The hostility is kind of justified. Someone throws random stuff together, tweaks stats a little, copies CA's widgets and gadgets and then expects to earn some respect in return. For what?

BA players should be going to the BA website to get spring+BA. That they're using the spring engine website is a testament to BAs neglect of their duties outside of the actual content archive itself. Modding doesn't end at the sdz file it carries on to the website, the advertisement, the installers, the howtos, the guides etc.

Imagine it as wealth. BA and its players are swimming in a sea of self perpetuating cash. Why should they take the effort to pave the way for potential rivals when they can exert minimal effort and sit pretty? Well naturally the sea of cash has to come from somewhere and its beign funded at springs expense.

Yeah, I don't think it is encumbent upon BA to do anything at all - I'm just asking for the ability for mods to be able to funnel their new users into an area in the lobby where they are not confronted with hoardes of rabid BA players or BA games.

The rest will likely not switch until the only DSD 5v5 open is a non-BA mod and there are no large BA games to join. That 20% or so is very probably less than what you could manage with a well-run marketing push with an independent server and system.

It may be noted also that when the lobby was first put up Absolute Annihilation was almost immediatly ported and the AA fans quickly set up games within the first few days of its release.

While this is a testament to the dedication of fans of Absolute annihilation who ported AA before caydr had a chance, it also meant that AA had a huge headstart and a lot of inertia since it enjoyed a majority of games somewhat akin to what BA has now.

Here's the thing, though. When it comes to garnering players, I'm really not concerned about getting more players for "Spring engine games." I'm looking for players for the project that I've invested hundreds, if not near a thousand hours in. I understand that this seems unfair from a player's perspective, but seriously. I did not spend all that time working on a game and then advertising it just to introduce more players to BA.

Ba is infact cancer, communism , nuclear holocaust, satan and all the plagues in the world.


could someone quickly count how many times ba has been said in this thread?_?

[Machiosabre]

page long posts about why mods don't have enough players instead of playing the mod is the reason mods don't have enough players.

[DemO]

Spring should pride itself on the diversity of mods available to play, and I cant think of a single reason why it makes sense to limit players to being part of a specific sub-community. In the end, the players will decide for themselves what they want to play.

Here's the thing, though. When it comes to garnering players, I'm really not concerned about getting more players for "Spring engine games." I'm looking for players for the project that I've invested hundreds, if not near a thousand hours in. I understand that this seems unfair from a player's perspective, but seriously. I did not spend all that time working on a game and then advertising it just to introduce more players to BA. I hardly see all the games on the quake3 engine sharing a client because it makes it easier for the players to find a different game they like.

Things like "Spring should pride itself" are the wrong mindset, I think; Spring is an engine. a great engine, totally unique and very cool, but it's not something to build a community around (except a community of devs and game devs). To go back to the quake3 example - why would players go to a forum to discuss the quake3 engine, as opposed to the huge numbers of games created on it?

Yes I suppose this makes sense, but honestly considering the size of the playerbase I think its in Spring, its projects and the player base's best interests right now to maintain some unity. I have no objections to a project that may decide to seperate itself from the rest of the current community by making and maintaining its own site, lobby, playerbase etc but from a casual on-lookers perspective it seems to me that nobody has really considered this seriously yet.

One thing that your post did remind me of (speaking of communities and games that share a common distribution method), I found out about this web-based-gaming-community-project-type-thing called Instant Action and it struck me as being a platform that could cater to Spring and its mods very well. Check it out and see what you think. My logic was that its a web-based gaming platform which could benefit from a decent RTS (especially with small file sizes like spring mods that would download quickly in a browser). If a Spring mod could be an InstantAction game, many of the common obstacles could be solved, such as ease of use for newcomers, marketing, advertising, content updates, simple but attractive lobby interface...etc etc)

[AF]

Spring looses nothign from a totally seperate community appearing that has nothign todo with us because at some point that communities going to realize it has something todo with spring and an instant payload fo new users appears.

Should that new community fail disastrously, the disastrous consequences are isolated in that community and do not destroy spring, whereas if it succeeds beyond all wildest expectation it pulls spring up along with it.

And do not underestimate the ability of an end user to participate in multiple communities. It is not a black and white choice of spring or xyz.

[Sleksa]

Yes that would be true in a world with unicorns and rainbows and fairies and elves.

wake the fuck up af, srsly ~~

[AF]

If what your saying is true than you sir are an almighty hypocrit. Please stop meddling for your own benefit.

[Argh]

If the sheer mental energy involved in this thread had been spent solving our problems by actually building solutions, we'd have at least two more new website contest entries, a revamped installer, and a better Lobby application by now.

I've done my part, with the website contest, and given you 4 days of solid work. Wasted days, mind ye, because I had the very happy surprise of seeing an excellent design arrive as our first contest entry, but meh, I completed what I started, and presented my reasoning as to what I think should get edited on the final draft, and with a completed entry, I hope that will bear some weight.

All we need, on that front, is for final polish to be done on RoflCopter's entry, and for the front end to get used.

The ModDB stuff is now straightened out, so we have the beginnings of a serious "second front" for promotional campaigns, that don't all focus on the Lobby crowd.

Now we just need the rest of it- a finished, working front end, some sort of changes to be made with the installer that would allow for either a silent install, or a more interactive experience with graphics for would-be players to see, and maybe some Lobby app. changes to make it easier for people on the games side to do even minor stuff, like maybe have new users of our games assigned to a different Channel, other than #main, and shown only our game unless they turn off the filter. Fairly easy to do, and we have lots of coders here.



Instead of fighting amongst yourselves... DO SOMETHING USEFUL. Most of you have skills of some kind, that would be useful. Go edit a Wiki article, make diagrams or concepts of how you think the software could work, do some programming... move this stuff FORWARD.

Fight about it when there's something to fight about. Present the community with stuff that's done. Focus on actually moving the debate forward with some action.