Spring RTS Engine

Pretty sure my mod filtering suggestion predates your blogposts AF. Either way we're in agreement!

Most people join spring because they are told its "TA in full 3D". I can appreciate the desire to move away from the shadow of the collosus here, but that's not really realistic. I really hate to do this to modders, because I know you guys are working your asses off and it's really not an issue at all of intelligence or hard work, but the reality is, until the modding scene can produce a mod that stands on it's own, attracts new users in reasonable numbers, and keeps users playing, we're going to continue to be the project that "remakes TA in full 3D". The ball is in no one's court but the game developers here. No one else can make the community, or gaming scene at large, take you seriously.

I think this is a circular argument. The fact of the matter is that BA has it's own inertia simply through the sheer mass of players playing it. While I think by all means it 'deserves' this, it didn't exactly 'earn' them from scratch, because it really took over all the AA players, who took most of the UH players from OTA, who took a large proportion of the original OTA players. It had it's player base from the outset of the Spring engine - arguably before the Spring engine was even thought of.

It is very difficult for mods to develop their own self-perpetuating community (that is, a community with their own inertia) when competing against BA. As the disclaimer again, I think BA is a very solid game, and Noize is up there with my most respected modders for Spring.

But the fact of the matter is that if I have players downloading Spring through my website in order to play IW, but booting up into #main, and then looking for a game of IW amongst 30+ games of BA, I'm not going to retain enough of those users to start my own scene, irrespective of how good my game is. Under those conditions, I have to consider moving to my own server, where I don't have to deal with those problems at all. And as I said before, I have no desire to do that, as I consider myself a contributing part of the Spring community, and it would be a blow to the community if it started fracturing in this way.

If my new players, however, are dumped into #swiw, and initially can't see any games except IW, I have the opportunit to make that initial impression on them, to gain and keep them as a member of my personal IW community - to allow my player base to pick up self-perpetuating momentum. After which, they will very quickly discover the other games available. From that point, if they decide they like BA more then IW, so be it. I've had a fair pitch at them. What's more likely to happen is such people like both games, and play both. Which is where the strength of keeping everyone in the same lobby comes in.

Well, Hoi, that can be a problem. I belive that if more games reached a critical mass and had self sustaining playerbases, Spring would get a larger influx of new players as a whole (that is, for every mod/game). How to reach it, I do not know, but BA's "passive oppression" certainly isn't helping.

I belive BA would prevail due to its gameplay, and benefit from a situation where other mods had working playerbases. It's a win-win situation for everyone.

The first thing a mod should do is get beta testers, when the mod will be released, the beta testers+ creators of the mod will be the community, those people should get their mod autohosted, and should play alot, so the new people will actually have something to play, so they wont leave, then after x amount of games, the new players that downloaded the mod with it's own installer (I am going to make as soon as I fixed the current installer) will be able to see the rest of the mods, so they will continue to play the game they dl'ed, and other games.

koshi wrote:good thing that the preset filter has been possible for months now in SpringLobby, so i don't have to shut up and can repeat myself, yay

Ok, so what do we need to do, as game designers, to set it up? I mean, are we talking about a config script, or what?

And yes, I read the documentation which comes with SpringLobby, which is... sparse.

basically you take a default config file from a vanilla springlobby install, change filters/autojoins/whatever to your liking and distribute that alongside the exe in your installer.

what a waste of time, I read the thread thinking it would be interesting.

Otherside wrote:lol at all of you go read the disclaimer and GTFO this has nothing to do with CA

get banned

ps springlobby rules

koshi wrote:basically you take a default config file from a vanilla springlobby install, change filters/autojoins/whatever to your liking and distribute that alongside the exe in your installer.

shithot!

SwiftSpear wrote:... but the reality is, until the modding scene can produce a mod that stands on it's own ...

You are so full of shit.

I'm sorry I spent the 2 minutes it took the skim this thread. What swift said above is a mental ploy that causes people to think that the OC Games lying around are so unfinished that they aren't worth playing. It's a load of shit. The funny thing is that all of them have more features than BA.

Forboding Angel wrote: I'm sorry I spent the 2 minutes it took the skim this thread.

i spent 2 mins laughing at your post

causes people to think that the OC Games lying around are so unfinished that they aren't worth playing.

What swift said above is a mental ploy

What swift said above is a mental ploy

What swift said above is a mental ploy

you have uncovered the WarC ~Mind Control~ plan of world domination!

It's a load of shit. The funny thing is that all of them have more features than BA.

A game's quality and fun people have from playing it isnt directly related to the amount of features lol


you should set up a troll academy for poor trolls to hone their skills at, this is truly a excellent example of nearly perfect fusion of trolling and retardation

I hate this belief among some of the community that people who play BA play it because they are stupid and ignorant and lazy and misguided and somehow if only BA wasn't there these people would still be here playing their mod instead.

And how this blame over BA has become so partisan that creators of other mods are too proud to even look at BA and think about the great things it's done and build on it - that's mainly what drove me away from CA development, if you even suggested "well x works well in BA..." you'd be laughed out of the channel by "cool kids" like Otherside (expecting a stream of LULZ NOTHING WORKS IN BA!! following this - proving my point).

It's not the BA players who are causing division and drama in the community it's the independent modders who are so arrogant they actually think it's down to lazyness/ignorance that BA is successful. I've only played like 1-2 games of it in the last month but still feel obliged to take its side every time under such a wave of bullshit...

TheFatController wrote:I hate this belief among some of the community that people who play BA play it because they are stupid and ignorant and lazy and misguided and somehow if only BA wasn't there these people would still be here playing their mod instead.

And how this blame over BA has become so partisan that creators of other mods are too proud to even look at BA and think about the great things it's done and build on it - that's mainly what drove me away from CA development, if you even suggested "well x works well in BA..." you'd be laughed out of the channel by "cool kids" like Otherside (expecting a stream of LULZ NOTHING WORKS IN BA!! following this - proving my point).

It's not the BA players who are causing division and drama in the community it's the independent modders who are so arrogant they actually think it's down to lazyness/ignorance that BA is successful. I've only played like 1-2 games of it in the last month but still feel obliged to take its side every time under such a wave of bullshit...

There are some people who are reasonable about it (eg Saktoth) but yes, some people are idiots.

TheFatController wrote: It's not the BA players who are causing division and drama in the community it's the independent modders who are so arrogant they actually think it's down to lazyness/ignorance that BA is successful.

Truth, not to say that all of the independent content developers are that way. Some currently have no interest in popularity (Quantum, Smoth & Fang) they work entirely for their visions. Others recognize the difficulty of competition and the complexity of the situation (Thor, Zsinj/Gnomre & Nemo/Spiked). Still others do both (KDR_11k, Peet).

What are you working on now, FatController?

Sleksa wrote: A game's quality and fun people have from playing it isnt directly related to the amount of features lol

Yes. Because BA is chock full of fun and "Features".

Fatcontroller your a raving idiot im glad you left CA development with that attitude

neddiedrow wrote:What are you working on now, FatController?

I recently did some lua bug fixes and rewrites for imperial winter, then BA Chicken Defense (mostly scripting work) my next project is some new tower defense style modes for BA and other widgety things. Tbh i'd be willing to help out on any mod that looked interesting, I mainly stick to BA as I like to see my work being used and I'm not too interested in promoting/advertising and the stress involved.

Otherside wrote:Fatcontroller your a raving idiot im glad you left CA development with that attitude

TheFatController wrote:I hate this belief among some of the community that people who play BA play it because they are stupid and ignorant and lazy and misguided and somehow if only BA wasn't there these people would still be here playing their mod instead.

And how this blame over BA has become so partisan that creators of other mods are too proud to even look at BA and think about the great things it's done and build on it - that's mainly what drove me away from CA development, if you even suggested "well x works well in BA..." you'd be laughed out of the channel by "cool kids" like Otherside (expecting a stream of LULZ NOTHING WORKS IN BA!! following this - proving my point).

It's not the BA players who are causing division and drama in the community it's the independent modders who are so arrogant they actually think it's down to lazyness/ignorance that BA is successful. I've only played like 1-2 games of it in the last month but still feel obliged to take its side every time under such a wave of bullshit...

Well the truth is somewhere in the middle as always.
BA is good and BA also,with its player mass,shadows other less
known projects.

Hey, y'know what?

I just had a brilliant idea. Seriously.

Instead of having this silly argument, over and over again... could we have all of the Lobbies automatically open up a Channel called "Game_Adverts"... and then let anybody who wants to advertise, do so there?

No chatting, just advertisement from an impartial bot. Nobody else even gets to post there... and users can ignore / close it, if they want to.

That'd solve a ton of problems, right there, in terms of making effective outreach possible, without disruptive changes...

So,you think there will be players who will not close this chanel when faced with a moving wall of bluish links?

I was thinking it'd be a channel where the links were posted every 30 seconds or so, so it's not too fast, and clicking a link could take players to websites with information, etc., and let people browse around, etc.

So no, I don't see it as a fast-flowing spam channel, but as a slow-moving display that simply shows people what's out there, and allows them to discover the diversity at their leisure.