New User Impressions and Suggestions

[Hobo Joe]

The issue of how hard it is to get started in Spring has been brought up a lot of times, but nothing has ever really come out of it. Not because nobody cares, but because the Spring community is so fragmented. As you mentioned, having a unified installer will require a single flagship lobby, and probably a flagship mod. But right now we have at least 3 lobby's, and a huge number of mods, the most popular of which has questionable IP. Hence why it's pretty much out of the question for it to be the flagship mod.



Little steps at a time though, right? I think a big step would be including OTA content in the installer with any download of an *A mod. The OTA content confusion is probably one of the biggest problems with newer players.

Another is that the sites for downloading content are totally separate from the official Spring site. Don't get me wrong, the download sites are great, but the fragmentation is very confusing and off-putting for new users, and at this point, new users are few and far between, and Spring needs every one it can get. I try to help new users when I see them in the lobby, but it'll take more than that.


Another problem is the lack of proper introduction to the game, which is pretty much across-the-board. The only mod I know of that really gives info on how to play in-game is CA, and even that is shaky at best. The only way for them to get familiar with the game is to jump right in with the best players. This usually leads to them getting completely destroyed. That in itself is bad enough, but there's a lot of elitism in the Spring community, and respect for unskilled players is non-existant, much less any effort to push them in the right direction.

[daan 79]

A flagship would not bring much more love for the creators for some content. I think this is teh power of spring. It is based on ppls creativity. Marketing the game isnt a wrong thing i think it must be done somehow with existing mods.

I think that looking at PURE witch is an amazing project just build for the biggest part just by one person a good example how far spring is evolving. i remember games that were in a wait situation where one guy had to download 4 maps to get the right one.

Than ther were periods sites just stopped hosting files. and what a bout all those sync errors. if you get a game running without the sync error was soemthing you could remember all day a few years ago. still the same ppl that play also build mods and art and oher stuff.

I think all those changes really make spring worth advertising. And let become slowly all those mod and stuff ppl work on be flagships on ther own. ofcourse we need to fight against the spread out shit all over all sides without caring out one face. but it must be springs real face.

[Tobi]

Little steps at a time though, right? I think a big step would be including OTA content in the installer with any download of an *A mod. The OTA content confusion is probably one of the biggest problems with newer players.

This already happens but problem is many people don't download mods through the installer.

The small change could be to always install OTA content though, regardless of whether one chooses to install an OTA based mod in the installer already.

[AF]

any people have games that use the Unreal or source engines yet we don't have an unreal or a source folder with the games all inside sub directories like we do with spring.

Its the content developers job to market their games not springs, spring engine is a dependency of their project, its time that people actually realized this rather than artificially limiting themselves by behaving as if spring is a parent project and they are dependencies of spring not spring being a dependency of their game.

As an example, argh could very well launch his own community and have it survive all on its own and use whatever spring version he wishes, because spring is merely a dependency for his game, and the end user doesn't care about spring they care about P.U.R.E. PURE already has more momentum at the moment due to its release than projects such as glest, and could get much further within this short window of time if he plays his cards right.

But if he had gone tooth and claw after primary mod status in the installer here then he would have lost and he would never have gotten where he is now. He would eb reconciled to being the mod everybody has but cant play because of BA

[daan 79]

any people have games that use the Unreal or source engines yet we don't have an unreal or a source folder with the games all inside sub directories like we do with spring.

Its the content developers job to market their games not springs, spring engine is a dependency of their project, its time that people actually realized this rather than artificially limiting themselves by behaving as if spring is a parent project and they are dependencies of spring not spring being a dependency of their game.

As an example, argh could very well launch his own community and have it survive all on its own and use whatever spring version he wishes, because spring is merely a dependency for his game, and the end user doesn't care about spring they care about P.U.R.E. PURE already has more momentum at the moment due to its release than projects such as glest, and could get much further within this short window of time if he plays his cards right.

But if he had gone tooth and claw after primary mod status in the installer here then he would have lost and he would never have gotten where he is now. He would eb reconciled to being the mod everybody has but cant play because of BA

Maybe so i think its moddev's job to just do what they are good at; make a game. I would think if spring had good promotion it uses all different aspects(mods) and go out together. Like in a demo where ppl can just play all mods just one level and than asked to get the multiplayer update. They been several video artist here i seen made great movies that are voluntering. Same goes with maps and other resources. Everybody does what he of she is good at dont need to do your own coding in a mod if it takes you 10 years while someone other makes it to have fun time.

[daan 79]

To make it a bit less theoratically

We all agree on the fact that the subject of post is worked hard on and alot got realised allready.

We all see the need of a more structured layout of what is been done and how should we do it.

And we know not everybody has the skillz or computerpower to make good advertisements stuff.

Ther could be groups working on an advertisment line. Like say a topic with some stickies about who wanna be part of the advertise group. And some stickies about general ways of advertise policies(some ideas to not post shit on supcom sites) And some stickies about resent publicity notifications.

This way there could be all kinds of requests of what more to contribute to make advertise much more effective. Also you can share thoughts about how a demo or a game pack could be realised. I think ther is a lot potantial in 1944 for a mission teaser in the demo for instance. Also i seen some need clan logos and i know some ppl that are really got skillz so they could post some shit in ther to see of they could anyhow contribute.

Also i could think of a group that would kinda organised some libraries of content. I seen a lua gadget interface and all those stuff combined could make a good ordening system.

[nxain]

Little steps at a time though, right? I think a big step would be including OTA content in the installer with any download of an *A mod. The OTA content confusion is probably one of the biggest problems with newer players.

This already happens but problem is many people don't download mods through the installer.

The small change could be to always install OTA content though, regardless of whether one chooses to install an OTA based mod in the installer already.

I ended up with very different installs of Spring because I'm behind a solid firewall at work where I need to open a port to do certain things (such as automatically download content). On my laptop at home, I was able to download the mods I checked just fine. The problem is... the two installs don't look or act that much alike and I have no idea why. My research on how to get the latest content was just a confusing, with some of popular content requiring me to start an account before I decided if it was worth the effort. Most of the mods have been difficult to get (outside the installer), difficult to install (it's hard to tell if they worked) and difficult to access once added. Adding insult to injury is trying to figure out how to get a game kicked off and what AI to use. Yea, I realize I'm supposed to start and account and play online, but I'm not (yet).

Here's a few more suggestions:

1) Don't require a user account to get out of the gate. Either set up the mods properly with a easy to get to skirmish mod ("quickstart") for people to dig into or provide a default generic account that works for all new players and puts them into newbie servers together. The moment a user has to do work before he knows what the pay off is, he just moves on to something else.

2) Maybe it's time to really rethink how Spring is being presented. I keep hearing that Spring is just the platform, but without standalone games ready to be downloaded and installed (Pure), then Spring is all there is (or maybe I should say, the Spring Lobby thingy is the face of Spring). If I want to play a game based on the UE 3 engine, I don't go to Unreal's developer website (or drive across town for me, since Epic is a few miles away). I go to the game's website and get the game. The fact that is uses X engine is not directly relevant to the end user. This is a really good reason to have a flagship game (maybe even called "Spring"). The only reason I started looking at Spring was to see what you guys were able to do with TA in 3D (i.e., TA was the face of Spring to me for awhile).

3) Evo and Pure are both going the right direction. They are trying to make it easy for someone to get a game started and get into the gameplay, with enough hand holding that someone get learn the game. My only real criticism with those products right now is that they still feel like TA under the hood (which brings up the question of why not just play TA?) The Evo install didn't work at work due to the firewall, but I tried again when I got home and was able to add the mod (starting it up was the real problem).

I'm not saying that Spring needs to cater to the lowest common denominator or use focus groups (both of which I despise). I am saying that the future of Spring can be very bright, but only with some serious changes. Honestly, without these kind of changes, I think Spring will just remain footnote in Open Source and developers will move on to other more robust projects, leaving Spring to whither.

And one more note... I have recruited from mod projects before for professional positions in game development (I raided the hell out of the Red Orchestra team before they won the 'make something unreal" contest. Short of a game development veteran, mod groups are my first choice to find new talent (when you do it for free, it shows you really want to be doing it). Overall, the game industry is really moving towards Lua for scripting and gameplay. Another tool that has caught on like wildfire is Google's SketchUp. For designers and prototyping, it rocks for blocking out space and is highly modable (I hope my studio can go public with our work with SketchUp at some point). There are great careers and people in game development. Fable 2 was also blocked out with SketchUp.

- nXain

[Hoi]

Yeah, I'm learning some lua now(and texturing...), and it's pretty interesting what you can do with it, there are alot of possiblity's.
Also Sketchup is great to make a rough idea of a model, it's the best tool I found so far.

[SpliFF]

I's like to re-enforce a point made by Hobo Joe (and others).

Spring is a very powerful engine, as a modder who has worked on both I would have to say it is almost on par with Supreme Commander in terms of overall features. The differences between the two are mostly decorative rather than substantial.

The biggest issue Hobo Joe raised is the elitism. The very first game of Spring I joined basically started with my "allies" drawing penises around my commander while I was still coming to terms with the differences from TA. In fact I couldn't even find my commander due to the strange camera placement I was given by default.

I have a sense of humour but the game left a sour taste because I got the feeling that everyone must have been playing Spring for years before I came along and I'd never catch up. It's a poor incentive to hang around and build your skills.

I uninstalled the game and came back to it this year when I was looking for a platform to develop a new RTS on. I experienced the same elitism but this time I was ready for it and basically told my allies to shut up and play.

I'm much better now but the lesson learn't is that Spring needs a dedicated n00b autohost to really gain traction. Elite players should be parred from playing (though they could spec) so new players don't get overwhelmed.

I am planning to set one up (hosted in Australia) but I am waiting for a better autohost. Springie is nice enough on windows but my servers are linux. Apparentely Spring 0.77 will have a dedicated server so we'll see what happens.

Please, if you're a good player, help n00bs. Don't automatically get jumpy because they don't know where to start. You never know what the community might lose in the long run.

[[TS]Lollocide]

Elitism is a bullshit term.

If you're playing a 5v5 and one of your players starts doing retarded things (Building depth charge launchers on land maps, using basic solar+metal maker econ), you are a player short, which in a team game, is crap.

Nobody wants to play a 5v5 with a player who hasn't a clue how to play the game, especially when they start bugging you with questions while you're trying to hold off two/three enemy players. Especially when you're playing a 6-7v7 game and you're the only one to advance while three people behind you start econning or building a guardian in their own fuckin base.

[Crayfish]

The real answer to this is to get a small singleplayer skirmish or campaign mode up.

On downloading, players should be encouraged to practice solo play with AI or chickens before attempting to play online. When they make it to the online stage, it should be emphasised that the best way to spend your first game is spectating.

I always try to help noobs because, with the lack of any system in place to dissuade them from diving headlong into 5v5 DSD, it isn't their fault. However, I agree that the presence of one newbie can easily wreck a game for 9 other people.

This is one of the biggest challenges and shortcomings of the Spring user experience.

[SpliFF]

@lollocide

Bullshit.

You know before the game starts what their rank is. Making an issue out of it after the fact is just being a prick. Yes, you might lose, but you could at least lose with some grace. If you can't handle it leave the lobby and join a game with with a minimum rank.

It's amazing how quickly some people forget they were n00bs themselves once. Nobody is born knowing how to play Spring mods. The fact that some players seem to forget this reflects more on the flaws in their character than the people they're trying to insult.

@Crayfish

Spot on, though a n00b server would be nice too, given the poor state of AI at the present time.

[Forboding Angel]

3) Evo and Pure are both going the right direction. They are trying to make it easy for someone to get a game started and get into the gameplay, with enough hand holding that someone get learn the game. My only real criticism with those products right now is that they still feel like TA under the hood (which brings up the question of why not just play TA?) The Evo install didn't work at work due to the firewall, but I tried again when I got home and was able to add the mod (starting it up was the real problem).

Grr, this comment is frustrating. First off, the install did work, the update was the only thing that failed (you wouldn't realize it unless you looked but it's actually 2 seperate processes, which is good, it means that I wuz doin it rite with the way I set it up).

What really gets my goat is that you say they feel like TA under the hood... Did you spend more than 2 minutes in it? The premise is entirely different. The gameplay is entirely different. In Evolution you capture map points to cause your enemies tickets to count down, the more you have capped the faster they go down (just like BF1942, bfvietnam, bf2, 2142...) When tickets hit 0, boom, the losing team asplodes. Meh what's the point, the ingame documentation isn't there anyway, so I can understand you not getting it (there's really no way that you could get it).

Noobs join 5v5's so that they can fade into the background. It's very common. When you first get cs source and join a server, you join the most populated one for the exact same reason.

[nxain]

What really gets my goat is that you say they feel like TA under the hood... Did you spend more than 2 minutes in it? The premise is entirely different. The gameplay is entirely different. In Evolution you capture map points to cause your enemies tickets to count down, the more you have capped the faster they go down (just like BF1942, bfvietnam, bf2, 2142...) When tickets hit 0, boom, the losing team asplodes. Meh what's the point, the ingame documentation isn't there anyway, so I can understand you not getting it (there's really no way that you could get it).

I played for about 1/2 hour, playing with the units, making buildings and stuff like that. It's my second pass on trying out Evo. Basically after getting used to the artwork, I was like... mmmm, better get a metal extractor up, some energy producing buildings and some defense turrets (sound familiar?). No, it's not exactly like TA and the gameplay rules are different (just a win condition mode, really), but it''s TA inside and it feels like it.

I'm not trying to insult you, I know you put quite a bit of work into the project and there are some cool things there (I would really like to see where it goes in the long run). But, my point is that at the end of the day, it's still basically TA gameplay with a different skin and different win-condition ruleset. This goes back to why Spring needs a flagship product driving development. A flagship product is a focused design that drives features, systems and FX. Right now, whether acknowledged or not, that flagship product is TA. It needs to evolve away from TA gameplay and find it's own voice.

I'll use UE mods as a good example. I've seen quite a few of them over the years. The ones that stick out and really had an impact were the ones that didn't look anything like UT (Red Orchestra). Some of them weren't even FPSes (Alien Swarm). The source engine is used in some very innovative ways, with the best products looking and playing very little like Half-life or CS.

- nXain

[El Capitano]

Comparing being a noob in an FPS to being a noob in an RTS is so utterly ignorant it's unbelievable. In an FPS, you largely point and shoot, in an RTS it's a whole other kettle of fish. Noobs get derided because they often display an utterly selfish entitlement attitude. Go play small games for a while before jumping in and ruining 9 other players' games.

Now, granted, Spring mods tend to lack a tutorial or single player campaign to get people up to speed, but good god the number of newbies who turn up and don't even say a word in the lobby is shocking. If you need some help, ask for it or have the common courtesy to spec a game or 2 before jumping in.

Oh, and label me elitist all you want, but when I'm new to a game, I don't join the largest server I can find and fuck over my team.

[Hoi]

@Crayfish
Spot on, though a n00b server would be nice too, given the poor state of AI at the present time.

You need a way to recognise if a 'noob' is a smurf.

[Hobo Joe]

As some others have mentioned, getting a simple single player campaign, even if it only has a couple missions, would be a huge step. It would enable players to get familiar with the game before they jump into the deep end with the people who have been playing for years.

If every mod just had an intro level or two, that would explain the basics. Building, reclaiming, managing an econ, and so forth. As of right now, the only way to learn is asking other players, which is usually not met well. If a brand new player comes into the lobby and asks how to build resources, he'll more than likely get flamed. The only other way is trying to dig around the wiki, which is not in the general interest of the average player.

1) Don't require a user account to get out of the gate. Either set up the mods properly with a easy to get to skirmish mod ("quickstart") for people to dig into or provide a default generic account that works for all new players and puts them into newbie servers together. The moment a user has to do work before he knows what the pay off is, he just moves on to something else.

This would be a good place to start, or something similar, at least. The only problem being you have noobs penned up with noobs and nobody will know what they're doing unless there's some sort of tutorial, or an experienced player telling them what to do.

[El Capitano]

Oh BTW, I completely disagree that Spring needs a flagship mod, if only because you'll never get the community to agree what it is. I haven't played EvoRTS, so I can't comment on it, but I don't see anything wrong with taking the good parts of TA. After all, most RTSes tend to be some sort of Starcraft-like or TA-like these days, with most tending towards being Starcraft/Warcraft clones in some way.

[nxain]

Oh BTW, I completely disagree that Spring needs a flagship mod, if only because you'll never get the community to agree what it is. I haven't played EvoRTS, so I can't comment on it, but I don't see anything wrong with taking the good parts of TA. After all, most RTSes tend to be some sort of Starcraft-like or TA-like these days, with most tending towards being Starcraft/Warcraft clones in some way.

Viva Pinata?
Company of Heroes?
The Total War Series?

There's plenty of room for innovation in the RTS genre as well as crossover genres that blur the lines. What can the Spring engine do that doesn't look and feel like TA? Can it do any type of destruction? Any type of "toy" game play (SimCity-esque).

My point here is that without the flagship game, you're just rehashing TA over and over. Spring is in need a vision driving game play mechanics and innovation.

Overall, the think the commerical game industry is one generation away from blender FPS and RTS into a seamless experience that does them both justice. I can easily see a Company of Heroes type of game that begins in first person and ends as and RTS, but slowly and seamless so that the play mechanics change over time (isn't this sort of the flow of Spore also?)

Here's are 3 basic game mechanics that would completely change Spring:

1) Units must be built from schematics capture from destroyed units. All units (and buildings?) are modular, pieced together. The only way to increase your build try is to kill enemy units and "harvest" them. This would require a third AI team that can be used for basic fodder.

2) Race A's development is toxic to Race B. This means that as Race A develops and builds up, the environment turns against Race B (and vice versa), centering the combat onto control areas and denial of land to the enemy. Again, through in a C team that holds all the ground at the beginning of the game, and Race A and B must tackle Race C before they are able to effective start killing each other.

3) Change the resourcing from 2 types (energy and metal) to 5. Make it Every unit would need at least 3 of the 5 to be created and which ones the player focuses on is directly related to unit creation (want to fortify, you need X, want to create aircraft, you need Y). This is more complex than normal, but it doesn't have to be difficult (and because Spring is open source, you have more freedom to experiment with resources and not follow the 2 resource convention) To make it more interesting, have the resources not crossover between the races (Race A needs mud, while Race B needs water)

The whole community doesn't need to agree or even a majority. Just a few people that work hard and share a vision. I see plenty of talent, but not much in a way of vision past tinkering.

- nXAin

[AF]

Grr, this comment is frustrating. First off, the install did work, the update was the only thing that failed (you wouldn't realize it unless you looked but it's actually 2 seperate processes, which is good, it means that I wuz doin it rite with the way I set it up).

Does nobody ever wonder why I keep harping on about usability in GUIs and websites? Please don't get annoyed with me for saying it then complain that your users say things like this. People spend more time arguing against the usability fix than it would take to actually fix it!!! Then there's the user complaints on top of that, and the fact that bug reports are harder to understand because the user doesn't understand whats happening either. Stop shooting yourselves in the foot!!!!