Spring RTS Engine

tl;dr, IDIL, etc but my response to the thread starter post:

People are here to play TA because most people hear of Spring as "the engine that does TA in 3d" and only the people who want TA join us. Obviously a person looking for TA will prefer a TA mod over a mod that exhibits a different gameplay, if they didn't they wouldn't have come.

Sometimes that may result in claims that non-TA mods suck, I strongly suspect that Swift considers TA to be the game that fits him and will not like a non-TA game as much. Compared to TA a game with C&C level unit counts would seem incomplete yet in any other context such a game would be complete. A game like World in Conflict would look like a minigame compared to TA yet it's considered a real RTS.

Spring just isn't known as a general engine, it's known as a TA engine even though you can do a whole load more with it now. It's about perception, not so much about quality (though the TA-style defaults do suck, most if not all other RTSes use different build systems so supporting a niche system like TA's over the more general style isn't really befitting a general engine).

Either way, we can't fix the TA defaultiness much as backwards compatibility is considered an important goal and all that crap is deeply rooted in the engine already.

Argh wrote:

The bad news is that we have a lot of programmers here, and few if any marketers.

Moreover, we have programmers who are actively hostile to using proven marketing techniques. Given a Steam-like advertising method in the Lobby client, completely optional for those who don't want to see advertisements, and I guarantee that we could gain traction for alternative game designs.

As it stands, if the next version's installer will not include pictures of the various games and a more-inviting interface that encourages users to look at all of the game choices, I'm going to boycott it, and market P.U.R.E. completely outside our box. I think that the current system is massive, obvious fail, and I don't want to be a part of Spring's installer if we're not going to fix it, I'd rather take my chances elsewhere.

I don't think any programmers are actively hostile against using proven marketing techniques, I'm pretty sure programmers are just actively hostile about everone moaning and bitching that this and that is required, while they (the programmers) always have to implement it. Remembers, it's open source, if steam like advertising is good, and some developer has time, it will be in some lobby sometime.

But apparently it either isn't considered good enough, or everyone has limited time (the latter is more likely I think), so it isnt done yet in any of the lobbies.

As for boycotting the installer; if you can pull of a decent home-brewed installer the Spring installer actually reaches one of the unwritten Spring goals: to have mods market their stuff separately, on separate sites, with separate installers, etc. (though there are quite some technical issues to overcome with this approach AFAIK)

Tobi wrote:... one of the unwritten Spring goals: to have mods market their stuff separately, on separate sites, with separate installers, etc. (though there are quite some technical issues to overcome with this approach AFAIK)

This is what I believe also.

Pxtl wrote:I think Smoth knows the real reason the other mods don't catch on - no SP. Bot-stomping is still too hard to set up, and there's no real single-player. This means that, unless you have a plethora of games online to choose from, you can't play a 2nd-tier mod. And since the 2nd-tier mods are played by only a handful of enthusiasts, you'll get torn to shreds if you do manage to find a game.

Really, do you expect someone interested in, say, EE to wait for hours so they can spectate a game before they can even think about playing? Of course not.

None of these games are intuitive either - KP and EE started that way, but have been getting increasingly opaque with each release.

The simple fact of non-BA mods is that you CAN'T play them. No players, no bots, no single-player campaign.

Yes to all of the above, the AIs play poorly on non-ta mods because they are designed to work with TA.

Singleplayer is something we are hurting for.

The UI is awful.

The UI and AI issues can be resolved later on per-mod basis but the singleplayer interface is lacking and players can really become fond of a game if given even a halfway decent singleplayer experience. However, right now the devs are stabilizing and optimizing parts of spring. This is more important so I have not really felt begging for singleplayer is really important as much as cheering on the devs for the good work they are currently doing.

Well, before you market, find something to market first. >_>

btw...
Crappage made com shooter work for a short time, and there is a game every once and a while. I think ta mods are built like com shooter, u dont want to play alone and the more the merrier. Any new mod that comes out by one person, starts with 1 person. That 1 person has to build a player base on a community that likes its 16 player games and everybody also wants to be the best. I mean geeze, this can be hard for any dev.

I think we have enough devs, but its nice to have some fresh blood. You'll need to learn lua, but i think the lua society in spring is going illuminati or gnostic on us.

First off argh your comments on a steam liek itnerface are somewhat pointless when you dont even have the encessary media to market a game int he first place. You have no posters, banners, adverts or websites. To fidn pure I have to search the modders forum, to see what it looks liek I have to search pages of threads.

And this goes for almost every other piece of content out there. You ahve no websites I can visit, no banners I can ogle, no advertisements I can show off. You cannot advertise your own content as it is, I couldn't even do it for you if I wanted I don't have the resources to easily put a "Get XYZ its great" box on my website or in my display pic. I have no idea what the story or the point of each faction is beyond the way their units look and their names. There's no easy to install package that gives em your game without going to download maps from this place or having to download the spring engine as a pre-requisite.

The only people who have come anywhere near to bucking this trend is Smoths gundam website which he has done pretty much nothing to maintain and advertise since he built it, the spring 1944 website which isnt advertised anywhere near as much as it should but is at least something they should be very happy about, and the CA wiki which while a good idea for development purposes, that's all it is, it doesn't really fix anything Ive been talking about and isn't anywhere helpful to new users wanting to try it out as it could be.

I cant really comment on evolution because I haven't seen the latest sites incarnation but I do know I haven't seen anything, no banners advertisements etc outside of the odd download link in their channel topic in the lobby so there's room for improvement there.

So please don't complain about there being no links to content in the lobby. The user should see content which leads them to the lobby not the other way around.

And all of you who complain you dont have time to build a website or add AI support or work on campaigns, what a load of nonsense. If you don't have time yourself there's nothing stopping you putting up a thread titled "ModXYZ: Web Designer Wanted" or "We need someone for AI support". Nobody asked you yourself to do it, they're just asking that it gets done.

And when people in the community do it for you give them credit and say theyre a part of your team. Those poor AI config builders how spent 100+ hours play testing and fiddling values to experiment to see if ti made the AI harder to beat rather than banging out a working AI config in 20 minutes and pretending it was finished. Those poor people who take the time to add support for your content to other projects, lobbies, ladders, building media and websites, why do you shit all over them by refusing to acknowledge they even exist? What they're doing is arguably even more effort and time cosnuming than what your doing!

And +infinity to smoths AI and UI points and the whole single player thing.

AF wrote:The only people who have come anywhere near to bucking this trend is Smoths gundam website which he has done pretty much nothing to maintain and advertise since he built it,

I also post frequently on modb. but yeah my site needs an update, I want to redo it in PHP.

AF wrote:And all of you who complain you dont have time to build a website or add AI support or work on campaigns, what a load of nonsense. If you don't have time yourself there's nothing stopping you putting up a thread titled "ModXYZ: Web Designer Wanted" or "We need someone for AI support". Nobody asked you yourself to do it, they're just asking that it gets done.

I have asked people to help with NTAI configs and I get ignored but past that gundam has MASSIVE changes per version. This would nullify and break any configs or missions between versions. In this next version KDR & I are hammering out the resource system and with KDR implementing the lua I have had GREAT help. So I hope that the next version will be nailed out in a way that would make it pretty ready for an ai config but when we add the research system I am fairly certain AIs will break. Feel free to pm me for details AF.

AF wrote:And when people in the community do it for you give them credit and say theyre a part of your team.

I do, and it is KDR, past him, EROM did the cursors.

AF wrote:Those poor people who take the time to add support for your content to other projects, lobbies, ladders, building media and websites, why do you shit all over them by refusing to acknowledge they even exist?

I have asked many times for someone to write a gundam config for NTAI.

AF wrote:What they're doing is arguably even more effort and time cosnuming than what your doing!

um no. Not really.

Sometimes that may result in claims that non-TA mods suck, I strongly suspect that Swift considers TA to be the game that fits him and will not like a non-TA game as much. Compared to TA a game with C&C level unit counts would seem incomplete yet in any other context such a game would be complete. A game like World in Conflict would look like a minigame compared to TA yet it's considered a real RTS.

I 100% agree with you on that.

Everything we release is viewed from this mindset. It's very, very hard to change that perception, and I don't see any point in trying to- it's just a waste of my time.

I don't think any programmers are actively hostile against using proven marketing techniques, I'm pretty sure programmers are just actively hostile about everone moaning and bitching that this and that is required, while they (the programmers) always have to implement it.

While I think that the "bitching and moaning" comment is well deserved(meh, I just had to open my big mouth, didn't I... sheesh)...

This issue of marketing is a major core issue that keeps coming back and causes so much friction, and I think it's pretty obvious that the only way to change that is to give people effective marketing tools, so that then it's really down to whether people have made a decent game or not.

It's the cause of so much controversy around here, because everybody designing games knows that the playing-field isn't level; if you're not working on SWS, you're likely below everybody's radar outside of Spring, and within Spring, you don't see enough users give your products a try to have any real hope of gaining momentum.

Spring needs to re-brand itself, as a game engine first, and an implementation of OTA second, and move as far away from OTA as it can, while changing the marketing dynamic, to affect major change. It's a perception issue. You wouldn't need to change anything but the branding stuff- i.e., a website that made Spring, the engine, stand out in front of the games made with Spring.

While I'm ranting... what happened to the site makeover stuff? The last time I saw things happening, people were yelling at each other, instead of just getting something done. If there's real interest in getting something done, meh, let's hold a mockup contest, to design a new frontend look, with the winner getting implemented, and get that over with.

I'll participate in making art for that. I just wasn't really interested in all of this controversial stuff about how it was coded, and reading pointless posts about it when good looks are the major thing, with any decent website. I mean... it's just a front end. Doesn't need to be dynamic, with super-amazing code that does stuff. That's nice, but meh, it's not life or death.

People forget that it can just be simple, and still get the job done, when many game sites have very simple front ends, imo. You can always have a frame to show a news-ticker, or whatever... it doesn't need to be some giant mess of dynamic content. The current frontend is practically a static site anyhow....

if you can pull of a decent home-brewed installer the Spring installer actually reaches one of the unwritten Spring goals: to have mods market their stuff separately, on separate sites, with separate installers, etc. (though there are quite some technical issues to overcome with this approach AFAIK)

I don't think I'm going to have time to do that, before this release, but yeah, it's definitely a goal, at this point, and I plan to offer the installer, with instructions, from my website, to allow people who come to the game from outside Spring to use it as a way to install the game engine.

If you really want to facilitate that, if that's an end-goal... meh, it'd be nice if the Installer could install silently to the default directory, without user intervention, if sent some parameter. That'd make it relatively straightforward.

I don't think it'd be good for anybody to send users to a wholly different Lobby yet, but that's a relatively minor wrinkle, until the day that there's enough audience for it to matter.

You have no posters, banners, adverts or websites.

Actually, that's not true, albeit my website needs to get rebuilt before release, to be sure... I've actually been doing minor promo elsewhere, to get going on that prior to release...

I'd make stuff for some sort of advertising interface to the Lobby in a heartbeat, though. Make a simple advertising interface in AFLobby, tell me the specs for pictures and text, I'll have you one in less than a week.

And all of you who complain you dont have time to build a website or add AI support or work on campaigns, what a load of nonsense. If you don't have time yourself there's nothing stopping you putting up a thread titled "ModXYZ: Web Designer Wanted" or "We need someone for AI support". Nobody asked you yourself to do it, they're just asking that it gets done.

It's not that simple, AF. Really. If I really thought I could cure all evils by asking for volunteers, I'd do that, and I actually do ask for help on certain things, you're just not aware of it, because I don't do it in public.

[BIG EDIT]

Y'know what... I'll start a "design a new front end" contest right now... meh. If it comes to nothing, so be it, but I'd rather try and get this moving. The more I think about it, this is one of the big issues where I lacked time and didn't push it, and then lost interest when it was obvious it wasn't going anywhere useful, and I feel that it's a major deal.

I can't get to making a new design until Sunday at the earliest, but that's all right, we need to get rolling and get this done.

It's not that simple, AF. Really. If I really thought I could cure all evils by asking for volunteers, I'd do that, and I actually do ask for help on certain things, you're just not aware of it, because I don't do it in public.

Argh, what point is promotional media if when the user follows it up there's nothing to go to. Media draws people in and right now there's nowhere to draw them into to seal the deal. That over mind is watching you for example has no context outside your thread for example.

That and you need a blog, half your posts are wasted because theyre posts whereas they'd be much more influential on a blog or as an article on a website, whereas atm they have a lifetime of a few hours before they're buried under another page of posts.

Smoth, while I agree your not upto scratch in this department I also feel you have taken a post aimed at the community in general and interpreted it as a post aimed specifically at you.

Felix the Cat wrote:IMO the REAL problem is that Spring has not expanded beyond the TA community. Everything else is derived from that.

The good news is that it's a marketing and branding problem rather than a programming problem. The bad news is that we have a lot of programmers here, and few if any marketers.

Yes, and I'm overworked with nothing to show for it yet.

@neddiedrow: what have you been doing? What can we do to help you expand your promotional efforts? I mean, if a few really sexy illustrations could help you, I'm game, I've reached a convenient stopping-place with P.U.R.E. and can spare a week if necessary to all of this stuff, not just the frontend.

Argh, what point is promotional media if when the user follows it up there's nothing to go to.

Meh, right now it sends them straight to the game and to Spring's installer. Not exactly sophisticated, but I haven't had a lot of time to spare to this.

That over mind is watching you for example has no context outside your thread for example.

I know, I haven't really talked about the backstory, that was going to wait for the website revamp. Hard issues all around.

That and you need a blog, half your posts are wasted because theyre posts whereas they'd be much more influential on a blog or as an article on a website

There I disagree with you. Most of my posts are intended to generate action immediately, if they don't, they're probably just philosophical in nature, or speculative, and therefore aren't worth keeping around. Heck, many of the speculative posts are full of me being half-asleep and stressed out, and spewing various stupid things anyhow. I know that. I expect most people know that, by now. I should never post when I'm tired, it should be a rule- 4AM, Argh's not allowed to post, period. I've been doing so little sleeping lately, trying to get P.U.R.E. out the door, I think I'm more than a little loopy most of the time anyhow, tbh


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Meh, enough about me, this whole subject isn't about me, and I've wasted enough words on egotistical blather that's derailing the central thrust of argument.

This effects Fanger, Warlord Zhinj, Smoth, KDR_11k, Peet, Forboding Angel, Sheekel, Krogoth86, Tired, FLOZi, NOIZe... and a load of other people who I'm sorry didn't get listed, in advance, please don't club me like a baby seal...

This issue is about, "why isn't Spring burning up the charts?". The OP arrived, and is obviously under the impression that various game designers aren't out there, trying to show him fantastic products.

Well, guess what... we ARE. We're just defeated by a bad website, a lack of marketing tools in the Lobby, a playerbase that's apathetic to our cause, no big promo push for Spring through the Linux gaming channels and no really huge third-party waves created outside our box, with the major exception (and hugely unfortunate disaster) of SWS.

I'm really, really tired of reading this stuff, then nothing happens. I'm going to make the sexiest frontend I can think up on Sunday, see what transpires. I sat out of the last round, because it turned into stupid arguments about technical issues, when it's mainly about look, feel, and immediacy. A frontend full of text is complete fail, when people refuse to read anything over a couple of paragraphs anyhow

warzone 2100 is open (http://wz2100.net/) but its mostly forgotten


I agree so much with the thread starter. I think this is the thread i attempted to make a while ago. And rts is definitely my passion as well.

Argh wrote: As it stands, if the next version's installer will not include pictures of the various games and a more-inviting interface that encourages users to look at all of the game choices, I'm going to boycott it, and market P.U.R.E. completely outside our box. I think that the current system is massive, obvious fail, and I don't want to be a part of Spring's installer if we're not going to fix it, I'd rather take my chances elsewhere.

Feel free. I wish the installer allowed mods to to proper marketing, but this is not possible inside of NSIS (you can't even expand the window size to full screen to allow for decent pictures). If you have an alternative, and get it to work for your mod, I'm sure a lot of other mods would be interested in using it too. That being said, you would have to be sure to include the core spring files the same in all installers.

As I understand it if you moved the downloader into a separate dll you could make the necessary changes in the custom dll plugin rather than relying on the nsis script and its limitations.

Neddie has been doing alot. He's got fingers into all kinds of different advertising avenues. The thing is... spring isn't really all together right now. There's not alot to advertise. There's little or no information on how to start up your own project if you're an outsider. You basically need to be able to tutor under someone like argh or smoth, which isn't really advertizable... So you can advertise the current projects, most of which are unfinished, or you can advertise TA, which is what we've been doing for years, and while that's cool, it doesn't really bring our status up at all.

As we keep repeating over and over. Spring needs to be more than TA3D, it needs to be a full fledged engine that also runs TA.

We need a platform which can attract new developers, and we need a game base that can attract new players not interested soully in TA content.

[edit]Ok, one other thing I'll point out. 80% of RTS fans are Starcraft fans. This project will never be more than a curiosity without some titles that actually work well in a competitive environment. The RTS market is a very cyberathlete oriented environment.

so, make more titles or support more titles?

I am currently doing both, but i think its an interesting discussion.

You know, alot of corporate projects have millions of dollars of backing but don't have anything like the potential Spring has. The difference is that we don't have any money, because if we did, even mediocre advertising of Spring on the net would cause our community to explode.

I remember when somebody advertised on Tribal War, tons of players came in. Reason? cause some guys on there played OTA and knew how good it was, and since opinions matter on that forum we had alot of new members.

By doing this I disconnect myself from condoning any spam noobish advertising which misrepresents spring. If someone chooses to advertise spring, I would hope they do so tactfully and professionally. This is asking alot considering there is no money and anybody can do what they want.

/rant

Who are you talking to here dmhorus? The Devs, both engine and mod, are doing more than can really be expected of them.

The players will play the game that is the most enjoyable. You really cant ask them to do anything else.

The OTA mods have had 10 years of refinement and perfection. They are incredible games, and OTA was great to begin with.

Most of these other projects are unreleased, nobody can play them. Even if they could they need a lot of balance testing and a lot of work on the gameplay of these mods until they are in a state where they can come near challenging the gameplay of the OTA mods.

If you want to help out, dmhorus, then put your own work into projects you think are worthwhile. We can talk about theory about how Spring should be advertised and the projects we should be working on and what the games and engines need, but in the end someone just needs to sit down and do it.

Edit:

one of the unwritten Spring goals: to have mods market their stuff separately, on separate sites, with separate installers, etc

Can i just mention that i think this is a terrible idea? It just leads to a load of different standards and conflicts. I used the KP installer for example and it generally fucked with my spring install (settings etc) and i had to uninstall it eventually as it was conflicting with everything else.

Separate lobbies (though you did mention that) are an especially bad idea. Its a huge boost to smaller or new mods to have people just hanging around in the lobby for the game, who are there to play something else like BA, but can be roped into something new. If a new or unpopular game has its own lobby, people probably wont even join it to check if there is a game.

Wish we could do Advertising the viral Way, attaching Spring to some sort of popular Meme- like YouareaPirate- how about a "Hype-Spring-Contest"

PS: You could draw Multiplicators out of the TotalAnything Comunity to your Mod by naming Units after them. And from day on the Tank was called Swiftspear...

...you will be assimilated, resistance is futile.

-we need a Slogan that becomes Internetslang - like:
"as Free as Spring"
"Springtime" as a Replacement for the word pron
-> we could Googlebomb some Todays-RTS to lead to Spring..

PS: I hate PR-People, they are scum & plague and a real danger for the democratic system. It goes with the job, once they see how effective someone can manipulate public opinion, strength the stupid voice over the one with good reasons, people turn into a sort of stupid crowd of sheeps before their eyes. Burn them all!! Only dead PR-People are good People..

+1 to a better Animationsystem - that Non-Keyframe-Animation/Non-Splinemodelling and the lack of a ClickyourselfaModcodeToolkit scared myself away from messing up a Mod on my own..