Spring RTS Engine

Personally I suggest the simple solution of making the list of games sorted into expandable folders, that way you get the best of both worlds...

So it would be fairly organized and would still allow viewing other mods, like this:

• Mod A +
  ||--------Game 1
  ||--------Game 2
  Mod B -
  Mod C +
  ||--------Game 1
  ||--------Game 2
  

Yeah basically the current alphabet mod dominated playerbase won't bother to move to a new mod unless a few play it, see it as a better game then through word of mouth get others to play it who also find that its better.

Bringing in new players from outside of the current playerbase shouldnt have anything to do with BA as they should be subjectively interested in playing the mod you have advertised to them rather than an alphabet mod. If they end up playing an alphabet mod, its either:

Because the newly released project doesnt have enough initial support to host open games frequently - this is not hard btw you really dont need many people.

Or because the game is simply not as good as alphabet mods and despite being initially interested in, lets say, IW, they don't particularly enjoy it and try BA as a last resort, find it more fun and start playing that.

-Not to say IW is going to be bad, its the project I'm most excited about in Spring and eagerly await release, even though I don't actively support it, I've been lurking and following the progress for quite some time.

Which is also an example of an alphabet mod player (me) that is interested in a game that isn't a TA mod. I bet there are loooaaadss of people who currently play *A mods who are interested or will be interested in projects like IW on final release.

Jamuk426 wrote:Personally I suggest the simple solution of making the list of games sorted into expandable folders, that way you get the best of both worlds...

So it would be fairly organized and would still allow viewing other mods, like this:

• Mod A +
  ||--------Game 1
  ||--------Game 2
  Mod B -
  Mod C +
  ||--------Game 1
  ||--------Game 2
  

That's nice and fair, and everybody is happy.

Except the intended audience, of course. Who in the world is even going to bother with that?

The old problem with assessing new mods is that many players play them like BA (even if the load screen is basically a big RTFM), lose their first few games while not knowing what to do and decide it's because the mod sucks.

Meh, WZ, I didn't realize I was creating the seeds of a revolution here. I thought that the P.U.R.E. release would be the only real protest made about the current system, which pretty much guarantees that new games will not find an audience.

At any rate, I am open to forming an alliance of indie titles, to seek new solutions. If nothing else, maybe we can all refer each other's sites, or something?

P.U.R.E.'s starting to make some (small) waves on ModDB, I expect it will continue to grow, as it gets nearer to completion and then release.

Let's all keep this clean with the devs, though. It's not about blame, it's about creating opportunities. We need to keep focused on the positive. We know how Tobi feels about it, and I don't think any of them are less unhappy about the Spring engine's lack of audience-growth than we are- the arguments have mainly been about means and methods, not ends. We're all on the same page, I think.

Nor do I see any point in engaging in any verbal warfare with fans of the dominant game design- to Sleska, DemO et al, pretty much all I have to say is that we're not against the game you like... we're for our games. It's not a zero-sum game. We can all win here.

In an ideal world, I'd really prefer to get new players, from outside the current Lobby, not "convert" people. You guys seem to think that those of us building original-content games are out to destroy your audience.

I'm telling you that's neither possible, nor is it something that's desirable, imo. Instead, I'd like to see Spring's total audience increase by at least 10X, by July of this year. Playing different games, maybe not all even aware of each other, but that's the goal. Not trying to topple BA. That's CA's job

Please do not steal other peoples credit argh. Far more work has been put into sowing the seeds of change than you are aware.

Meh, no intent to steal anything was present, AF. I am quite aware that there's been a lot of sentiment that we need to do something about the current system.

I was just registering my surprise at what's happened here, pretty much, and just wanted to remind the rest of the folks on the content-development end that we have absolutely no reason to engage in blame-game stuff- the crisis point has been reached by the happy fact that quite a few games with good production values have been built... now we just need an audience.

At any rate, we'll see if anybody's interested in some sort of promotional alliance, to get this side of things really rolling. For those of you who're reading this... bear in mind, it's likely to be temporary in nature, as games build sustainable audiences, but during the first few months, it'd probably help us all- a Spring gamer is a Spring gamer, and they'll find a game they like, including OTA mods.

I would welcome any project that's interested in participating in some sort of link-sharing or cross-promotional campaign.

KDR_11k wrote:The old problem with assessing new mods is that many players play them like BA (even if the load screen is basically a big RTFM), lose their first few games while not knowing what to do and decide it's because the mod sucks.

You couldn't have summed it up better. To be honest, I felt exactly the same when I first played Spring. I'm an OTA player from way back when (1998 ish) and I felt it just seemed a little amateur-ish because not a lot of effort was given to presentation. It may sound fake.... it may sound somewhat vain but presentation and image count just as much as content. Decent boot-up screens and lobby's add to the user experience and the build-up of the game. I know everyone wants to concentrate one content but don't neglect obvious things like presentation too.

Think about the way a website is designed... Fair enough let's say a site has an absolutely revolutionary design and promotes a completely fresh idea but it isn't aeshetically pleasing nor useable by the average-joe. Not only will it only be accessible by the elitist community but only the elitist community will acknowledge it!

Oh, and before you say anything. I do understand how to program interfaces and believe me Swing or java.awt.* can provide much better interfaces than those I've seen by some Swing products/mods I've seen so far.

I'm not saying people should concentrate entirely on the UI to improve the user experience I'm just saying to immerse the user completely in all the functionality of the game you have to immerse the user in the game first!

For me it just seems like the mod community can't be arsed with doing the last 10% after they've already done a very decent 90%!!

Saktoth; that what we are saying is largely academic is somewhat unavoidable! None of the big mods have really had major releases yet. What we are doing is not doomsaying, just risk management. You are right, a new mod might be able to hold it's own in the lobby.

But, given what we have witnessed with smaller *A mods, with other mods that have got quite good reviews coming from players (EE, nanoblobs, kernel panic, etc) but have never been able to break into the larger 'player market' because of the dominance of the primary mod (be it AA, or BA). A quick look at one of the lobby pie charts is very telling.

So, no, we don't know for sure, but it's a pretty big risk to be taking - atleast from IW's point of view. When we finish, we have one big release to capture a number of players that are purely star wars fans, and have never heard of Spring. What we do with those players in the starting few weeks will really determine the long-term life of SWIW, I think.

And yeah, that catch-22 situation is precisely what we're trying to resolve here. Our logic is that if players arrive and see 40 games of BA, of which half are open awaiting players, and say, 4 running games of IW, some of them may be committed enough to stick around and wait for a new game of IW to clear up. I think most will wonder what this BA thing is that everyone seems to be playing, and why they are mucking around with IW when clearly it is only a fraction as popular.
They might also ask on #main about how to get a game going, or if anyone is interested in a game of IW. I daresay that the majority of responses are unlikely to help the new IW player reach that end.

On the other hand, if they log on to a specific IW channel, and *only* see 4 games of IW that are currently going, their likelihood of sticking around and waiting for a few open games of IW to start up are more likely - especially if they're funneled immediately into an #IW channel, where we will likely be idling, along with other specifically Star Wars fans. If they do that, then the next person and the next person are even more likely to get a game, and so on until we can have a self-perpetuating community. Yes, it's all hypothetical at this point - but a reasonably probably outcome, at least from my reckoning.

I mean, im not adverse to per-mod listing necessarily, i just think too much is being piled at the feet of BA here.

I'm also a little sorry that my argument has been sidelined into an apparent BA witchhunt. BA is a very good game, and has done nothing wrong in all of this. What I am doing here is trying to work around BA, because that seems to be the best way to give my mod the chance it needs. That it's BA is irrelevant, it could well be AA, or CA or any other mod in the top slot. It is simply a fact that it has the most players, and that this fact alone (how it got there relative to the worth of it's content is irrelevant, other then more players = more playtesting = better feedback) is enough to mean that has a self-perpetuating community that has the potential to stifle out smaller mods competing against it on the same platform, not because of any reason other then the fact that it is simply heads and shoulders more popular then any other mod.

Bringing in new players from outside of the current playerbase shouldnt have anything to do with BA as they should be subjectively interested in playing the mod you have advertised to them rather than an alphabet mod. If they end up playing an alphabet mod, its either:

Because the newly released project doesnt have enough initial support to host open games frequently - this is not hard btw you really dont need many people.

See the hypothetical above. It's not that we wont get games of IW - it's that anyone who is coming for an RTS will surely wonder what is going on when they arrive at the server and find less then a handful of games going for the mod they have downloaded, and 40+ games going for some other mod they've never heard of.

And, getting enough people to build up a self-perpetuating community is a hard task. You need enough players that there are games going and open at almost any time of day, and several going at peak hour. Achieving this is a lot easier in a specific community without the threat of attrition to other, more popular mods.

Again, I ask based on the win/win situation I proposed earlier - what do people have to lose from the change? A lot of people are attacking my reasoning for wanting the change, but my reasoning is based on my own observations and opinions, and your is equally subjective. What is concrete is that if the change is made, nothing really happens to BA or any of the *A mods. If it isn't made, I'm forced to consider moving to my own server.
So, my reasoning behind wanting the change aside, are there any specific problems with the repercussions of the change? Because I can't see any negative ones from where I am standing.
Remembering that only people who don't know any better (ie: people who haven't heard of Spring and are downloading purely for the mod) are the only ones that will be funneled into a 'mod-specific' lobby profile.

NKrypt: If you can do UI's and are interested in giving mods a better chance and better presentation, send me a PM if you're interested in helping out with SWS.

Also, it's the weekend, and I need to get some SWIW work done, so I'll try to avoid replying to this thread until I'm back at work on Monday.

AFAIK I was the only one to try to package a mod as a game with its own installer. And I got many people complaining that they didn't appreciate how I changed some of their Spring settings (that and I made some bad choice in the uninstallers).
So, we have here a technical difficulty preventing Spring to be used as a mere engine for varied game:
- Currently there can only be one Spring installed. Things like demo get confused when you try to have more working Spring exe's in more than one folder.
- Currently there can only be one Spring set of settings, as it's stored in the registery.

Though, don't go making one set of settings per mods. Would be a nightmare, since in truth, sharing settings between mod is mostly a good thing, specially when you got 50 mods that are basically tiny variant of the same thing. But permitting to have totally independent Spring installed, each with their settings, their own exe, their own version (because a modder might want to stay to the previous version long enough to fix all the breakage introduced by a new Spring release), could help with using Spring as an engine.


Otherwise I'm glad people agree that the best solution is a shared lobby, with cosmetic touchup on the interface, and filtering out BA game. I've been using an anti-BA filter lately, and it really help to help notice the daily EE game or random KP occurences.

But it would be an interesting experience to have SWS going solo on its own server. Any other game would instadie, but with SWS, I'm curious to see how it'd go. I'm not saying it would do better, just that it could be interesting to try.

So basically, pretend that BA/CA/XTA/insert-popular-mods-here dont exist by using filters and misdirect new players in the hope that they dont find the toggle off checkbox which no doubt will be hidden somewhere completely obtuse, whilst trying to steal players away from mods that already have a decent player base using the same lobby server, because its fair that all mods should have no apparent competition despite pooling players out of the same userbase because AA didnt have any, but lets forget that the circumstances then were totally different from now because.

Yes. That, or merge Spring lobby into Battlenet, and see how long BA survives.

dont cry that all the gamers are faggots who cant distinguish superior mods from inferior ones.

They are. For instance, all gamers have been brainwashed into thinking that Halo is the new Jesus.

Make a game that is better and people will flock to play it.

Tested and proved wrong.

It's not really an engine problem. Right now Spring support switching through multiple mod better than any game I've seen.
It's not a content production problem. There have been several high quality "game package", for years, already.
The problem is just the player base.

Re-read dmhorus's post, the very first post of that threads. Sounds like he did not even notice P.U.R.E., E&E, Gundam, etc... were released.

Oh, and I find another problem preventing other game to take off, is their developper own relunctance. Fang's getting all emo and self cutting all EE copy out of the web. Smoth refusal to unleash the crown of rabid anime fan on us. Argh bashing and not caring about his own children. And the general "oh no, wait for my next version, it will be better" attitude, while the current version is very fine too.


But otherwise, yes, if we had at least one AI working with non-TA mod, and if modder spent a little time doing campaign, then the whole BA witch hunt would be irrelevent.


Or we could be glad Spring's still has hundreds of people in its lobby, even if not on our fav mod, so many years after its release. For 99.9% of open source "free" game, the lobby population is zero. Even many a highly advertised commercial game is reduced to a lobby pop average <1 after a couple years.

I suspect it would be reasonably easy to make custom profiles that could be distributed with mods that allowed the mod to have a 'custom filter policy' allowing them to adjust the 'filter settings' (which would need to be included in the lobby) to filter only mod games, as well as adjusting the default channel that is joined on connecting to the lobby.

You guys need to be able to keep your posts shorter because the longer they are usually the less the meaning.

I bet alot of players show up on the Spring site and have no idea what's going on. On the upper right it says we're all about some project to recreate TA. They probably spend a few seconds looking at the site, get bored and click the x button.

Just looks like a game in beta mode at best, and these people aren't vet gamers alot of the time so they dont know enough to look further into it.

Of course are people ready to sacrifice the main Spring site for these people?

Also in order to improve the overall look of Spring, one person has to take control. Everything looks different, from the lobby to different Lua features ingame.

Scratch; there are plans to redesign the Spring frontpage. You can find them here:
mockup

thread

My posts are long, but I'm hopefully being fairly comprehensive about what I'm saying. If you aren't careful in a place like this you'll be ripped to pieces or taken out of context in a moment. I'm also very keen to see custom lobby profiles be implemented, because it would take a weight off my mind in terms of what I am going to with regards to SWIW'sloby functions, and whether to move to a private server or not.

Well sorry about my comment, its just that I make extra effort to keep my posts short. I understand your point though.

Nice page too. Do you think they will actually use it?

zwzsg wrote: Otherwise I'm glad people agree that the best solution is a shared lobby, with cosmetic touchup on the interface, and filtering out BA game. I've been using an anti-BA filter lately, and it really help to help notice the daily EE game or random KP occurences.

So if sw:s becomes dominant in 2010, it will need to be filtered so that *superior* mods will get a better chance to form a playerbase

So basically, pretend that BA/CA/XTA/insert-popular-mods-here dont exist by using filters and misdirect new players in the hope that they dont find the toggle off checkbox which no doubt will be hidden somewhere completely obtuse, whilst trying to steal players away from mods that already have a decent player base using the same lobby server, because its fair that all mods should have no apparent competition despite pooling players out of the same userbase because AA didnt have any, but lets forget that the circumstances then were totally different from now because.

Yes. That, or merge Spring lobby into Battlenet, and see how long BA survives.

So basically what you are saying is that Since BA is the dominant mod it needs to be killed to let other mods grow.

But what happens when, lets say EE becomes the next dominant mod, instead of harmonous setup where every mod gets played, And smoth starts a second witchhunt to kill E&E in favour of his own mod?

That is just too retarded. A game needs to be killed because its popular to raise unpopular games into its place ?_?

Thats like saying that all the goodlooking and succesfull men in the world need to be shot and buried so that other men get better chances to get women |||

dont cry that all the gamers are faggots who cant distinguish superior mods from inferior ones.

They are. For instance, all gamers have been brainwashed into thinking that Halo is the new Jesus.

You misunderstood me, perhaps i should've said that in a other way.

Make a game that is better and people will flock to play it.

Tested and proved wrong.

Do you know how long BA has been developed really? its not just NOiZE's work. It started from 1990's with chris taylor's work, later continued with uberhack, and caydr, with people possibly contributing scripts/models/whatnot into it and later on continued by NOiZE to balance it, and saktoth and CA team to provide some LUA things into it, during the time of over 10 years.

Taking all this into account all the other mod's efforts are flyshits compared to BA.

The problem is just the player base.

There is no solution to this from the playerbase's side. You need to adapt to them, not them to you.

Oh, and I find another problem preventing other game to take off, is their developper own relunctance. Fang's getting all emo and self cutting all EE copy out of the web. Smoth refusal to unleash the crown of rabid anime fan on us. Argh bashing and not caring about his own children. And the general "oh no, wait for my next version, it will be better" attitude, while the current version is very fine too.

Yes Fang basically had the chances to form a solid playerbase really, but he fucked it up by going haywire tt.

But otherwise, yes, if we had at least one AI working with non-TA mod, and if modder spent a little time doing campaign, then the whole BA witch hunt would be irrelevent.

I agree

There is no solution to this from the playerbase's side. You need to adapt to them, not them to you.

I keep telling you, man... we're not interested in converting the current playerbase. If they wanna play, great, if not, oh well. I'm not going to hang out in the Lobby for hours, hoping somebody will give my game a try, though. Sorry, been there, done that, not interested.

So if sw:s becomes dominant in 2010, it will need to be filtered so that *superior* mods will get a better chance to form a playerbase

No, what's probably going to happen is that every independent game that's serious about building a playerbase will be more-or-less its own little world. Some won't find an audience, and will die off, some will, and will thrive.

And all of them will bring in players, who will invariably try other stuff, including BA.

You seem to have a very weird view about what's actually going to happen- do you really think all those players will never figure out, "hey, Spring has all sorts of awesome games, I should try 'em all"...?

I don't think that, nor do I think anybody else with a brain does.

So basically what you are saying is that Since BA is the dominant mod it needs to be killed to let other mods grow.

No, he said nothing about "killing" BA. He said that we're going to act like it doesn't exist. Along with everything that isn't our game. It's standard practice, outside of the weird realm of Spring. I don't even see why this is an issue, frankly.

You don't see AOEIII, Kohan II, Dawn of War and StarCraft sharing the same location, in the commercial world. It'd be financial suicide, for whoever arrived last to the party.

In our case, it's about our time investment. I've been here for over two years now, Sleska. If you think I'm going piss away the time I've invested in my latest game... you're a lot stupider than I think you are. I'm not going to play by those rules. I'm going to get players from outside this box, and shake things up. Period.

But what happens when, lets say EE becomes the next dominant mod, instead of harmonous setup where every mod gets played, And smoth starts a second witchhunt to kill E&E in favour of his own mod?

Well, it won't be all that different, really. People will play what they like, assuming there are players to play with. And I assume that means that plenty of folks will play BA, simply because they can find games and love the gameplay.

I predict that the amount of change is still going to be fairly small, for all but the very best new games. Anybody who thinks we're going to create some sort of utopia by doing this is kidding themselves.

Argh wrote:There is no solution to this from the playerbase's side. You need to adapt to them, not them to you.

I keep telling you, man... we're not interested in converting the current playerbase

What are you trying to do to the current playerbase then ~~

So if sw:s becomes dominant in 2010, it will need to be filtered so that *superior* mods will get a better chance to form a playerbase

No, what's probably going to happen is that every independent game that's serious about building a playerbase will be more-or-less its own little world. Some won't find an audience, and will die off, some will, and will thrive.

Yes

And all of them will bring in players, who will invariably try other stuff, including BA.

Oh, like the current playerbase is invariably trying other stuff? ;]

You seem to have a very weird view about what's actually going to happen- do you really think all those players will never figure out, "hey, Spring has all sorts of awesome games, I should try 'em all"...?

Same answer as before.

So basically what you are saying is that Since BA is the dominant mod it needs to be killed to let other mods grow.

No, he said nothing about "killing" BA. He said that we're going to act like it doesn't exist. Along with everything that isn't our game. It's standard practice, outside of the weird realm of Spring. I don't even see why this is an issue, frankly.

You don't see AOEIII, Kohan II, Dawn of War and StarCraft sharing the same location, in the commercial world. It'd be financial suicide, for whoever arrived last to the party.

From my perspective, Killing and making it invisible are the same thing.

But if you mean that you are going to host your own servers/lobbies, Its naturally ok.

In our case, it's about our time investment. I've been here for over two years now, Sleska.

What a coincidence, so have i. Shall we have a dickmeasuring contest over who has the longest one now D__D

If you think I'm going piss away the time I've invested in my latest game...

Its the same thing for me, i dont want noize's work to to be thrown/hidden away.

I'm not going to play by those rules. I'm going to get players from outside this box, and shake things up. Period.

Best thing i've heard so far in this thread.

But what happens when, lets say EE becomes the next dominant mod, instead of harmonous setup where every mod gets played, And smoth starts a second witchhunt to kill E&E in favour of his own mod?

Well, it won't be all that different, really. People will play what they like, assuming there are players to play with. And I assume that means that plenty of folks will play BA, simply because they can find games and love the gameplay.

I predict that the amount of change is still going to be fairly small, for all but the very best new games. Anybody who thinks we're going to create some sort of utopia by doing this is kidding themselves.

That was not what i meant. What i meant that if you assume that every dominant mod should be "hidden", like zwzsg said, it will create a never-ending wheel where the the dominant mod changes constantly ~~

I don't particularly want to get into the quote-fest, so I'll be brief:

That was not what i meant. What i meant that if you assume that every dominant mod should be "hidden", like zwzsg said, it will create a never-ending wheel where the the dominant mod changes constantly ~~

That's a logical fallacy, sleksa, I don't see how you've arrived at that conclusion.

What we want is that when open the 'SWIW lobby', all non-IW games are filtered out.

For the third time, this would be only for people who have never played Spring before, and are joining because of the mod alone. Normal Spring users using the default lobby profile would notice no changes whatsoever. All mods would appear in the games list.

Therefore there will be no impact on BA. The only possible impact is that those SWIW players eventually try out BA, decide they like that, and move to it instead.

There can't be a 'never-ending wheel of dominant mod changes', because the lobby changes will have no impact on BA.

The whole point of separating mods out is that their player numbers and success become less intertwined with one another, and less affected by another mods relative popularity. This means that mods can develop communities largely independent of each other - which is an excellent addition, as currently there isn't enough 'room to breath' for smaller mods.

I'm not sure if you are following what we are saying correctly; please re-read my last few posts?

ie:

So if sw:s becomes dominant in 2010, it will need to be filtered so that *superior* mods will get a better chance to form a playerbase

This does not relate at all to what I have been suggesting, nor what anyone else has suggested. Why would SWS be generically filtered? Why, by inference, am I saying that BA should be generically filtered?
BA - and not just BA, all mods that aren't SWIW - would be filtered only if the person has run the 'SWIW lobby'. Just like, potentially, SWIW would be filtered if someone ran the 'BA lobby profile', or the 'S44 lobby profile'. The whole point is that new mods in 2010 will be able to safely build up their own community irrespective of SWIW's popularity, or any other mods popularity, because they would be able to provide a custom lobby profile.
And, relative worth of mods is not part of this discussion, purely popularity and the effect of that on building a new community around a new mod.

... oh, and SWIW is based on SWS, which was based on SWTA, which has been around since 1998, so nyah

Let's not forget that a lot of the work in the 10 years of the TA mods' existence was "wiggling", moving in one direction and reverting the change later on. There was no planning, just random changes that seemed good when they were made and often later turned out to be wrong so they were reverted.