Spring RTS Engine

Argh wrote:

Because Spring is an free/open source project it is fundamentally different from commercial games and as such advertising for it shouldn't be compared with commercial game advertising.

Advertising "when it's finished" is the wrong approach; Spring will never "be finished". If it's finished, it's dead, if it's dead, it's finished, and there's no point advertizing for a dead project.

I may agree if you say "I won't advertise now because feature XXX and feature YYY arent implemented; I will advertise when they are implemented.", but "when it's finished" WILL mean in practice "I won't advertise ever."

Quoted for mega-truth. +bazillion.

Seriously... the advertisement campaign, guerrilla-marketing, etc., etc., should be going on NOW, and should not wait for some improbable event to occur, such as delivery of completely perfect commercial-quality games. Even though P.U.R.E. (and probably Gundam, S'44 and IW, among others) will be polished games on release, it is just not practical to wait forever on this, and in fact, it just prevents us from reaching the breakthrough phase.

More popularity = more players = more developers looking at the engine = more code added to Spring = more game development = more players. Advertising in whatever way can be managed with a budget of $0 is still effective and should be a part of how things go.

we need to get on the front page of a site like gamespot, or fileplanet.
if that happens, we're in

The problem when I talk to friends about Spring:

"I tried it. Was a pain to get the main mod/maps, and when I played it I got my ass kicked and there was no way to learn the game besides getting my ass kicked. Won't try it again".

It's easier to get the mod now (it's bundled) and some of the maps (likewise) but still the fundamental issue of "download game, go get ass kicked online, find game completely opaque" isn't going to go away without some serious changes, and that gameplay is scaring off players who might not come back when (if?) that's ever fixed.

And nobody wants to fscking spec.

Pxtl wrote: And nobody wants to fscking spec.

You should play S44.


"lol, i spec".

Complete Annihilation has loads of specs, cause it's such an enjoyable mod to play and watch

maybe the lobby should shut people without the req. rank out of battles, and also make a reverse rank limit.
course this wouldn't work without an influx of new players, but if spring ever gets a surge from some new mod it'll be handy.

yeah yeah "rank doesn't mean anything" bla bla bla, at least when you claim to have played over 10 hours you should have the basic idea down.

Also I think Titles are cut off too much, nobody is reading them as far as I can tell, could just be the title in a large font, with the mod/map and max/current players with a list of players/host available in a menu or something.

Tutorials etc.

disregard if this has been posted more than once.

Machiosabre wrote:maybe the lobby should shut people without the req. rank out of battles, and also make a reverse rank limit.
course this wouldn't work without an influx of new players, but if spring ever gets a surge from some new mod it'll be handy.

yeah yeah "rank doesn't mean anything" bla bla bla, at least when you claim to have played over 10 hours you should have the basic idea down.

Also I think Titles are cut off too much, nobody is reading them as far as I can tell, could just be the title in a large font, with the mod/map and max/current players with a list of players/host available in a menu or something.

Tutorials etc.

disregard if this has been posted more than once.

what we really need is a tutorial mod!

wouldn't it be easier for every mod to have a tutorial?

Gota wrote:Of course not all the maps.
Most of them can go into the installer imo as default installer settings and maybe allow for 2 ptionsone fulll and one lite but the full should be the reccomanded one...there are tons of free online games that take from 1-2 gigs easy and people download them by the thousands.
Id we go by the weakest link than there shouldnt be new models nor effect cause some still use pentium 4 1.8 gig and a gefroce 2...
come on...

I think this is really key. Half the learning curve with Spring is finding all the stuff you need. Free games are expected to be large. Look at Americas Army, Wolfenstein ET, FEAR. All large installers which include everything you need to get started.

Once that's done the other half is getting some sort of streamlined single player experience (at least "skirmish" and a tutorial) so new players can cut their teeth without having to run a "test spring" session and figure out what options to choose.

Machiosabre wrote:wouldn't it be easier for every mod to have a tutorial?

ofc not when players get the hang of xta ba and ca(those are very similar) they will understand the game better and can start playing other mods with no/almost no problems

What Spring needs is more love.
/me imports <3

One of the biggest problems that's at the root of Spring's small playerbase isn't so much lack of advertising as it is lack of retention. No amount of advertising will keep players who have a bad experience.

New players come to Spring, and the first thing they see is the woefully badly designed site. So they have a hard time finding the installer, figuring out things like what to download and so on.

Then, they launch Spring.exe. Highly confusing, they much around for a bit then finally figure out that it's the 'Spring Multiplayer battleroom'. They they have to get registered and figure out how to join/play games.
Once they find a game, they are more often than not trash talked and/or kicked. Obviously that puts a huge damper on things, first impression means a lot. Once they're lucky enough to join a game that lets them stay, they are usually greeted by sync errors and crashes and bad framerates. Either they leave Spring forever or ask for help in the lobby. Their pleas are mostly ignored, and when there's a response it's usually insufficient, so they have to go hunting to figure things out.

Then when they're lucky enough to actually join a game and have it work, they're greeted by a uninformative GUI and no directions or help of any kind. Then they're crushed within a couple minutes.

It's an exceptionally rare player who will put up with this and make it through the huge learning curve.

In order to help with this, I try to give small training games to new players to give them a good first experience and to teach them the basics of Spring. This community need a lot less bashing a noobs and more helping.

EDIT:

Heh, just read this. Says almost the exact thing that I did. http://www.darkstars.co.uk/2007/leaky-bucket-syndrome/

Leaky Bucket Syndrome

If you do not read this post, please see the last comment b4 you move on. thank you

Woot! :

Hoi wrote:we need to get on the front page of a site like gamespot, or fileplanet.
if that happens, we're in

Hobo Joe,
It is indeed sad; how difficult it is to get started and play spring.
I to do the same thing, helping noobs, but that is not why most of us are here, and we normally do not have the time and do not get payed for it either.

Machiosabre,
There are rank limits. Noobs can be forced to spec, which is the fastest way to learn. Noobs in the wrong spot: problem fixed
Good players playing down do not do so if they are there for a fun game. So that takes care of that. If they are their they will most likely be helping.

This is a biger problem than we give it credit.

Hobo Joe wrote: One of the biggest problems that's at the root of Spring's small playerbase isn't so much lack of advertising as it is lack of retention. No amount of advertising will keep players who have a bad experience.

He goes on to explain how hard it is for a noob to start playing spring.

Hoba Joe wrote: Heh, just read this. Says almost the exact thing that I did. http://www.darkstars.co.uk/2007/leaky-bucket-syndrome/

About the significance of a good community
Back ground of the conversation: discussing community, prior topic in the discussion was clans, and how in a good community there purpose of a clan as challenging teams with excellent team work are already present.

Excerpts from the Battle Window wrote: [2:14:39 PM] <Edible[CA]> It can discourage new players
[2:14:45 PM] <123v[NOTA]> well the nice thing is that we do not have a lot of asses, as ba has
[2:14:47 PM] <Google_Frog[CA]> define good
[2:14:50 PM] <melonacolypse> AGREED
[2:14:50 PM] <Edible[CA]> If everyone is already good
[2:14:57 PM] <melonacolypse> balanced = shit
[2:15:04 PM] <[PH]Panda> =/
[2:15:12 PM] <[PH]Panda> That's a seperate issue from having a good team scene
[2:15:15 PM] <Edible[CA]> Yeah i have too say 2/3 of the reason I play CA is the people
[2:15:28 PM] <Edible[CA]> Well its the same issue
[2:15:32 PM] <123v[NOTA]> company is half the fun
[2:15:33 PM] <123v[NOTA]> IMO
[2:15:40 PM] <[7uP]Neddie> Good teams do not necessarily mean overwhelming teams.

channel spam was cut out^^

No Words can effectively stress the accuracy, and reality of the last three posts on page 2. They were posted by Pxtl, malric, and Argh. As I did not want to spam Posts I did not quote them.

Please read them.

http://www.moddb.com/games/6372/gundam-rts

hey look, 400+ people read the profile today..

Yet I do not believe any of those 400 took the time to try spring, and were probably people from the spring site curious what with the recent references to moddb

It's worth noting that Battle for Wesnoth became the darling of the open source gaming community by advertising heavily even before they made extremely basic improvements - it's shocking to compare the current state of the project with the crap that nonetheless managed to pull in many of the users during the last major advertising push.

However, they did at least have several functioning and interesting single player campaigns...

TA and SC (StarCraft) came out at the same time. Starcraft had a good story line, and good SP missions which taught players the game and taught them to play well. These SP missions gave SC a huge player base, while TA did/does not. I hope I do not need to say anything more to convey the value.

A general example of what we need to do to be noob friendly:
A ticket for the spring lobby:

PMs do not ring you by default.
Some people do not like the ringing, but it is important a noob notice a PM.
I am posting this because this is a failing problem. It is hard enough as it is and making aid even harder is worse.

This is worth an immediate update.

It is better that we make spring friendly to newcomers than convenient to old comers.
This is very bad. And noob retention should be the number one goal, as we are pushing far to many new players away every day. The difficulty of getting started and knowing what to do is great enough.

Problems like this are being discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15167&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=20

New Topic:
Post subject: How We Pressent The Spring Project
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15208

123vtemp wrote:A ticket for the spring lobby:

has already been implemented: http://trac.springlobby.info/ticket/284

Complaints about the behaviour of the community are pointless since u cant force people to help noobs.
About thefact starcraft became popular cause of thesingle player...
That was a logn time ago and the gameing wolrd has changed a lotsince than becoming much mroe multiplayer oriented and while a single player is important you can do without it.

about content like maps and mods that is the lobbies responsibility to make a way for totaly new users to know exactly how to get their content whether by a tutotrial iside the lobby or some other way.