Spring RTS Engine

And it's not going to create "seperate universes", stop being so dramatic. All it'll mean is that BA is going to have to market itself along with any other mod.

Not true! Because all of the independent games will then be totally out in the cold, in terms of support in the Spring development community, and we'll be introducing lots of technical problems, as well. I mean, with something like Steam, which is what I still think we should be doing, everybody goes to a common portal, can see advertisements about the latest games... picks / downloads the game they want to play, then sees a list of servers available to play in, for that game, and that game alone.

With what you're talking about, we'd require a separate installation of Spring, different main Server, etc., etc., etc. It really would be a separate universe, in every real sense, and quite a lot different than the idea of simply filtering other games out, in a way that players could disable fairly easily.

Quite a lot of bother for players, tbh, just so that they can play one game variant on an engine designed to bring the games together for players. And it'd mean that players gained by one game aren't ever going to feed other ones, when they invariably become bored with your games, if they downplay the fact that they're all built with Spring. Which, to be real, I could see happening, if a game became popular enough.

I still think that a Lobby partition offers the best compromise between these two possibilities, but meh, I see no sign we're going to get what we need here, so you're probably advocating the solution we're going to need to implement.

The Lobby

Whats the point of having separate desktop shortcuts for each mod?

Frankly I hate having loads of icons on my desktop, its much nicer to just have one icon for Spring.

I like the way the lobby is currently, you can play whatever mod you like without having to switch anything or change applications.

I think spring should be marketed as a platform for multiple games. You can use the strong link between TA and Spring to draw players to the engine, and once they have spring they can play one of the many mods.

The new lobby should startup with a screen that shows all the mods you have installed: the name, a small screenshot, a and tiny description. Also a link to download additional mods. From there a user can select which mod they want to play, and they are taken to the lobby of that mod. (Also a seperate link to be taken to the singleplayer menu)

The Site

Why aren't you guys using http://www.springrts.com ???? That is a great domain name and you should be using the website to promote Spring as an engine with lots of different RTS games, not just as a TA remake. spring.clan-sy.com doesn't exactly instill a great sense of confidence in spring for potential players.

The current site is outdated with lots of TA related content, which should be replaced with content showcasing various mods (still with some emphasis on TA content, since that is the biggest draw).

Something not unlike this:


That design is pretty solid IMO, if you just had some AJAX rollovers with descriptions of the various mods when you hover over the image, then that would be pretty slick.

Overall, I'm saying that Spring should be marketed as a platform, and not just different mods being promoted separately and independently.

This isn't Planet Spring, we don't have a legion of webmasters who can afford the time to keep themselves up-to-date on everything going on in the community and make constant site changes, news updates and things of that sort.

If anything, seperatism would relieve some of the pressure on the Spring community; people splintering to run off with their favorite games would leave the Spring core website with better ability to focus on engine development (and draw in more developers who don't come to this website and get assimilated into the utter madness).

This website should, afterall, focus almost exclusively on the development of the Spring engine, not also be the sole pillar holding up the entire player community.

AF's 2nd last post = pretty much exactly what I've been trying to say in the prior pages of this thread.

Arghs posts about a "filtering" aka BLOCKING system = exactly what I've been trying to discourage in the prior pages of this thread.

WZ's posts about a filtering system = good compromise IMO.

Glad to see some of you following my line of thought in the last couple of pages. Whether or not we shared this from the start I don't know, perhaps I was just hugely misinterpreted (and vice versa).

Whats the point of having separate desktop shortcuts for each mod?

With what I am proposing, there would only be one lobby icon for any player.

If I downloaded SWIW, there would be the "SWIW lobby" icon. That'd be it. (ideally we'd have a single icon with a front end that leads to single player, lobby, etc, rather then a specific icon for each). From there, I could use that same icon for all my Spring gaming, because I can just turn off the filters and use it as a generic lobby.

Similarly, someone who just downloads Spring from the spring website will have a generic-themed lobby that displays all mods.

I think many people commenting in this thread have not read the majority of it, forcing people (particularly me) to repeat ourselves.

FuzionMonkey wrote:The Lobby

Whats the point of having separate desktop shortcuts for each mod?

BECAUSE THEY ARE GAMES, NOT MODS

So, pretty much what we want is something like GPGnet. It's 1 client that can be opened in specific modes (ie. chat, Forged Alliance, Supreme Commander), but we'd also want one that displays all modes.

I fail to see what the problem with this is. It's precisely what SupCom does.

So, pretty much what we want is something like GPGnet. It's 1 client that can be opened in specific modes (ie. chat, Forged Alliance, Supreme Commander), but we'd also want one that displays all modes.

I fail to see what the problem with this is. It's precisely what SupCom does.

Yes, that's exactly what I'd like...

With what I am proposing, there would only be one lobby icon for any player.

If I downloaded SWIW, there would be the "SWIW lobby" icon. That'd be it. (ideally we'd have a single icon with a front end that leads to single player, lobby, etc, rather then a specific icon for each). From there, I could use that same icon for all my Spring gaming, because I can just turn off the filters and use it as a generic lobby.

Similarly, someone who just downloads Spring from the spring website will have a generic-themed lobby that displays all mods.

I think many people commenting in this thread have not read the majority of it, forcing people (particularly me) to repeat ourselves.

Or that would be just fine as well... either way, it accomplishes the purpose, which is to give gamers ways to interact with our products by themselves, or to enjoy the current benefits of the generic Lobby. Not a system that forces everybody to be separate, no matter what, or the current system, which forces everybody to be in the same area, whether or not that's appropriate.

But, we don't need to plan to give users the functionality of the current lobby client... because we already have the current lobby client.

What I see being proposed seems a rather poor idea: lock the noobs into your game until someone tells them how to "unlock" their game to play anything. Shortly after your game is released, nearly everyone will be either unlocked or in a position to be unlocked - due to the same exact community dynamic that makes "locking" or filtering necessary in the first place - that you're back to square one.

Focus on what functionality will make your game the most successful, and leave the generic functionality to TASClient and the other lobby clients. This seems to be the best way to ensure your game's success - not some half-measures designed to fool noobs into maybe playing your game once before they figure out that everyone plays BA.

Felix, please don't tell us what to do. This is for us to decide. If this is what you want to go for with S44, then have a word to nemo, flozi and Spike - most of whom have expressed support for the approach I am supporting. Specifically, if you want to be completely isolated from other mods, simply sort out your own hosting for your own server. If you or any other mod wants to do that, they are welcome too.

I believe I've said exactly why I think that having new players enter into a private area, with filtered mod options, and then allowing them to discover the full extent of the lobby in due time is a good compromise between having the advantages of a more private lobby, and the advantages of having a centralised lobby server. Please read my earlier posts, as I don't want to force everyone else to sit through another long post repeating exactly what I've said already.

And, I don't intend any particular offense if this post seems terse; I'm just sick of having to argue the point rather then see it get done, which the majority of content providers appear to want, and the BA players appear to be soothed about.

WZ, tbh, I think they're mainly still arguing because we're still replying. We've already said what we want about 15 different ways now, yet DemO still thought I was saying something different from you, when I said that I agreed with what you wanted ... what, 3 pages ago? Meh.

I'll leave this alone for the time being, and make final decisions depending on whether anything actually gets done before I'm done with P.U.R.E... I've pretty much said everything that mattered already anyhow.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:Felix, please don't tell us what to do. This is for us to decide. If this is what you want to go for with S44, then have a word to nemo, flozi and Spike - most of whom have expressed support for the approach I am supporting. Specifically, if you want to be completely isolated from other mods, simply sort out your own hosting for your own server. If you or any other mod wants to do that, they are welcome too.

I believe I've said exactly why I think that having new players enter into a private area, with filtered mod options, and then allowing them to discover the full extent of the lobby in due time is a good compromise between having the advantages of a more private lobby, and the advantages of having a centralised lobby server. Please read my earlier posts, as I don't want to force everyone else to sit through another long post repeating exactly what I've said already.

And, I don't intend any particular offense if this post seems terse; I'm just sick of having to argue the point rather then see it get done, which the majority of content providers appear to want, and the BA players appear to be soothed about.

You read way too much into my post.

It wasn't directed at you, WZ, of SW:IW in particular. You, WZ, of SW:IW in particular may not be familiar with the English language, but the word "you" in modern standard English can mean either a particular you - as in you, WZ, of SW:IW in particular - a group of people - as in you, the developers of SW:IW - or a generalized reader/addressee which is analogous to the very formal "one", as in "one may want to stop reading too much into other peoples' posts".

Also, as Argh noted, if you're (this being you, WZ) not interested in discussing something, then you (WZ) generally stop posting about it. Such is the way of the Internet - if one (using a formal term to make you, WZ, less confused, since you seem to be prone to confusion) keeps posting, one is clearly interested in continuing the discussion; if one stops posting, one is clearly NOT interested in continuing to partake in the discussion.

And, just to clarify things, I said nothing about S44 in that post, I have said nothing about S44 throughout this thread, I will say nothing about S44 regarding to this topic, and when the time comes for things to be said about S44 they will be exactly where you'd imagine the place for things to be said about S44 would be, which is the S44 website. I'm rather offended that you (WZ) seem to think I'm pushing some personal agenda, whether it be onto you (WZ) or the rest of the S44 team. I honestly, really, don't give a rat's ass what you and the IW team decide to do - I played an early release of your mod, didn't think it particularly fun, and probably won't play it again unless I hear rave reviews about some future release. So get the rather conceited idea that I care about your (WZ) mod in particular out of your head, because I don't. What I do care about is seeing Spring evolve out of the current *A rut wherein new users either play the *A of choice at the moment or die, and into a truly multi-game community running a truly generic, fully-featured engine. I don't happen to think that your (WZ) approach will work, but that's simply my opinion - and I'm doing exactly as you're doing, voicing your opinion on the matter. Go ahead and try it. More power to you if it works, and I'll certainly congratulate you and be the first to admit that I was wrong.

tl;dr: fuck off if you need a tl;dr, you lazy assholes.

First off, the only way we're going to get out of this *A rut is if there's some distancing going on between *A, the engine, and game development. As long as there are hundreds of *A fanboys frothing at the mouth around these forums for their next *A fix, and babbling incoherently in #main, new development is going to be stunted.

First off, it's going to paint our games in a bad light; like Nemo said, if some dude picks up S:44 from our website, downloads and installs the engine and S:44 and goes into the lobby and sees 2 empty autohosts for S:44 and 20 raging *A games going on, what do you think their first impression will be?

Secondly, for each of our games there will be two basic gamer types who will play: *Aers, who, by definition, really aren't interested in anything but *A, or a very close clone thereof, generally speaking (they are, afterall, part of the problem); and people who are brought from "outside" the community, who have seen the game on our website.

Frankly, I'd prefer cutting our losses with a new server; we'd still get *plenty* of exposure simply by being a game developed on this engine (and already well-known in the community), plus we would get the added exposure of independance, of having a dedicated little server where we just may be able to generate a little community of our own.

And the only "barrier" or "seperation" between us and the current lobby would be that one is started with one desktop icon, and the other with another. Hell, you could probably have both open at the same time if your (generally-speaking) little heart desired it.

Patronising me at this point achieves little when you've forced me to repeat myself throughout the last few pages simply because you failed to read earlier posts that I have made. Essentially, all the points you are raising I have already rebutted previously. Short of requoting myself endlessly, I really can't be arsed repeating myself again.

And the only "barrier" or "seperation" between us and the current lobby would be that one is started with one desktop icon, and the other with another. Hell, you could probably have both open at the same time if your (generally-speaking) little heart desired it.

Erm, no... that's what Tobi was saying earlier. It's not that easy. It could be made that easy, by having Spring just read a text file that contained stuff like the default IP addresses of the server, Settings, etc., but that hasn't been done.

The supcomish idea is hands down the best one.

Spring really annoys the crap out of me, you know why? Because we have an engine. We can't reliably tie our games to it. We can't have our own little world that is part of a bigger one. So ppl dl our stuff, see 1 to 0 games of it and go fork right off.

Alternatively, you could ban all "illegal" IP from being played in spring. That would cause a ruckus eh?

The point is, something needs to be done, and it needs to be done freaking yesterday. There is absolutely no reason for any of us to seriously market our games to people at this point, because we have 0 room to grow as the weeds block all the sunlight.

I agree with what you're saying, FA, but careful with your terminology. I have nothing against BA, and I definitely still want all mods to be able to be viewed in the same game list (if the player adjusts his filters to be that way) - but I do think mods need to be able to funnel their new players into mod-friendly communities.

I wasn't being serious. That was for shock value. Some people need a leemer once in a while to get back on track.

FYI btw, contrary to what urban dictionary says, a "Leemer" was originally defined in the 60's as a cold shot of urine to the heart (for those of you who still don't understand it, that would be a cold spike of fear in your heart).

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Argh wrote:WZ, tbh, I think they're mainly still arguing because we're still replying. We've already said what we want about 15 different ways now, yet DemO still thought I was saying something different from you, when I said that I agreed with what you wanted ... what, 3 pages ago? Meh.

This is why I thought you were saying something different:

Argh wrote:Nothing that doesn't deliver exclusivity is going to have enough impact to actually matter. You've tried to make everybody happy and offend nobody, and that's not possible with this issue.

Exclusive

Like I've said countless times before, If you want exclusivity there is simply no option but to have your own exclusive lobby, website and playerbase. By definition you cant have exclusivity if you're using a shared lobby, a playerbase that plays several mods and a website that links to all of them...