Your enthusiams are hurt my brain. Spring already has easily 1000 players, there's 200 in the lobby virtually 24/7.
Response to another random idea:
el_matarife wrote:
TheFatController wrote:BA's learning curve is what keeps people hooked in my opinion, I have little patience for most other RTS's as I get bored quickly, it's the mystery that there might always be some hidden winning strategy hiding in those 300+ units that keeps BA interesting for me.
Yeah, the depth is really appealing. The question is how do we get newbies into those depths without scaring the death out of them in the first 20 minutes? A tutorial mission laying out the techtree? A PDF manual with unit descriptions and a tech tree flowchart? Making the in game unit descriptions cover more in depth information about what units counter and give some tips?
Nobody will read those, ever.
Here's the problem. BA has a ton of units. Other RTSs sometimes have a lot of units too, but 9/10 of them are typically just there to fill out the unit menu and aren't actually useful. Or alternatively there are units which are purposefully crippled so you have to use them in conjunction with other units - thereby creating that "wow we have to use more than one unit holy **** this game is DEEP!" mystery meat that tricks people into thinking they're not still just playing R-P-S.
Example. Most RTSs have exactly one unit that can fire a long distance at each tech level, if such a thing as "tech level" even exists. At tech one, BA has at least 2 per side if you count samsons. At tech two... well I can just end the sentence there.
Example. Most RTSs have exactly one game-ending "super powerful" type of unit. BA... not so much. Everything's a game-ender if used properly. You could probably end the game with spies if you were smart. Certainly with bombers. Or krogoths... or uh.. well pretty much anything. Just target the commander, and leave the mop-up to whatever you have lying around.
Example. Most RTSs have one or two naval units capable of actually slugging it out with each other. BA has an asston. Also it has hovercraft, submarines, and amphibious units. AND AMPHIBIOUS UNITS WITH TORPEDOES!
Example. Most RTSs have units which are practically painted red, green, and blue for the sake of simplifying the obvious "what is the counter to what" question - since they're all just games of rock-paper-scissors in disguise. BAs units can generally fight each other equally. If you want to make an attack, you can attack with almost anything and have a decent shot of winning if you use them right and aren't an idiot.
People have never played a game like BA before, ever. The problem, really, is finding other players who are as unfamiliar with this as you are. Nobody wants to watch demos/replays. Nobody wants to get stomped in the first 5 minutes. Either I don't know what the solution is, or I'm saving the solution for a groundbreaking new mod. Let's assume the former.
i didnt read any posts heare or anything but NOBODY WANTS TO HAVE TO READ A FUCKING MANUAL TO PLAY A GAME.
ingame tutorial is the best. include a noob tut and a skirmish mode IN WHICH YOU CAN CHOOSE FUCKING BOTS START POSITIONS. does this really have to be said? why the fuck are bots starting positions determined by an unchangable, irrelevant join ID? that has to be one of the stupidest programming decisions i've ever seen.
literally these two things are all thats needed. advertising is dumb. people download spring and promptly delete it time and time again. they need to be able to play single player to find out if they like the game or not, which is currently the most ass-backwards, hardest thing to do ever.
hunterw wrote:a skirmish mode IN WHICH YOU CAN CHOOSE FUCKING BOTS START POSITIONS. does this really have to be said? why the fuck are bots starting positions determined by an unchangable, irrelevant join ID? that has to be one of the stupidest programming decisions i've ever seen.
An .exe you can start up (didnt BA or something have something similar? Or something), which brings you to a main menu, where you can choose Single Player, Multiplayer (LAN or Internet), Settings, Exit (4 options, like TA!). Something you can put on your desktop and double-click and start and from there do anything you'd like to do.
Frankly though, you do realize those of us making independant games on the Spring engine bare absolutely no love for you and will ditch you at the slighest provocation. Eventually -- and I don't think S:44 is alone in this -- if we get to that development stage, we will not hesitate to branch away from this community entirely and develop S:44 as a seperate entity rather than a "plug and play" Spring mod.
SpikedHelmet wrote:Spring also desperately needs a front-end shell.
I really feel that most lobbies have missed the boat as they already are a front-end shell, they just don't expose the functionality in a way that most users expect.
I have been developing software for over 10 years now and I believe my input is needed. I will address several issues on this post so read it all
1)CLIENTS
It is extremely healthy for us to have multiple clients. I myself have been building a solo project forever, and the first thing we need to remember that these things take ALOT OF TIME. 2010 is a realistic goal for a time frame. Now first thing about clients we need is to standardize the protocol, which at the moment is text and digits, each used for different issues. This may not seem like a big deal but its just plain inefficient. Secondly TASCLIENT is overbuilt, overfeatured, and a real resource hog. We need to eliminate This application from the pool, and the only way to do that is to choose a different client as the primary download. So somebody, myself or other, needs to make a good enough client to replace it.
2)SPRING.EXE
This application has alot of issues. There are MANY MANY inefficient OPENGL calls, specifically vertices being submitted on an as-is way.
It is much more efficient to submit vertices even 1000 of them, at the same time. There are efficiency issues that are killling us, some of them very specific to LUA integration. Additionally the application degrades poorly on computers that dont have the graphical cards neccassary. This should be top priority since OPENGL can check to see what methods are available, and those methods can be downgrades to a method available.
3) LUA
A Standard GUI is needed, and it needs to be good. Ive seen some of the lua scripts people use, and some of them look like a 3rd grader wrote it. Loops that dont check themselves out correctly, Calls that are made way more often than neccassary,etc.
4)ADMINISTRATION
This is a serious issue. The moderators we have now dont do shit but troll. There is no leadership. And they fear new blood. at the very least there should always be at least 1 moderator available, but often times there are none, or they are afk. Most moderators recieved their status long ago and dont actually moderate a god damn thing. In order to move forward we need twice as many mods. Additionally we need a council that can veto a mods decision, so that it is not the final say. This causes people like me cause trouble.
5)ELECTION OF A PRESIDENT
We need an elected official. If we are going to be open source then we still need a "president" elected by our people, and for our people. This president would have broad powers, to override the council, oversee and approve changes to protocol, software, website etc.
This is a neccassary step for a fair system, and for a leadership role to be taken.
6)STOP DEVELOPMENT
For god sake this should be obvious. Mods, Maps, and Applications need to immediately cease development of new features and only work on bugs. We have ENOUGH features and as fun as some of those are, each one that sucks costs us all time and USERS. We need to create a release schedule that only involves bug fixes.
7)BUNDLE PACKAGE
A bulk download is completely neccassary, it will probably be in the form of an autodownloader, but with no options. options cause diversity and thats bad in our case. It should come with standard maps and mods, etc This MUST BE STANDARDIZED.
STOP TROLLING
This forum, and the chat rooms on spring are troll central. This is the immediate social cancer of spring and needs to be stopped. I personally am a troll, and i can tell you its just to damn easy.
9)MARKETING/FACEBOOK
Lets face it(no pun intended), facebook is where the people are. If we want users then thats how its going to have to be. We need a Spring facebook group that works, and even possibly a facebook app for spring. Millions of users, we have like 1000. the 60000 estimate is crazy, half of those are just me with proxies anyways. Plus many users have dynamic IP. Or play from work and home etc. We neeed facebook integration ASAP.
3) No a standard ui is not needed, that is very project specific. Spring already has a sort of half-assed ui that is generic but most projects will eventually have to have our own. I tried to lobby for ICEUI to supplant the current default but meltrax says ICEUI is really slow.
6) Stop development on what? On the content side we are not able to address engine specific bugs and with each release of the engine we often see several things BROKEN. Not saying it is the rule but it happens often. These bugs cannot always be quashed immediately as we all have lives etc but just saying, this point needs a bit more clarification as I am unsure of what you are asking.
7) bundled content, this is the responsibility of the content developers and not the engine devs. KP did this first, Gundam does this, pure did when it was free, many projects are including content bundled with their release. Several have installers.
Sefidel wrote:
6)STOP DEVELOPMENT
For god sake this should be obvious. Mods, Maps, and Applications need to immediately cease development of new features and only work on bugs. We have ENOUGH features and as fun as some of those are, each one that sucks costs us all time and USERS. We need to create a release schedule that only involves bug fixes.
Personally, I think it would be great if there was a really great "Stable" branch of Spring that had almost no bugs. There's really two main factor to our user bleed, and why we're not converting downloads to online players: Bugs and user unfriendliness. If we cleaned up some of the bugs and then really tackled the unfriendly aspects (Noobtraps, confusing stuff) of the way the whole Spring ecosystem behaves from the engine to mods to lobbies, we could get somewhere pretty quick.
Sefidel wrote:2)SPRING.EXE
This application has alot of issues. There are MANY MANY inefficient OPENGL calls, specifically vertices being submitted on an as-is way.
It is much more efficient to submit vertices even 1000 of them, at the same time. There are efficiency issues that are killling us, some of them very specific to LUA integration. Additionally the application degrades poorly on computers that dont have the graphical cards neccassary. This should be top priority since OPENGL can check to see what methods are available, and those methods can be downgrades to a method available.
Erm backward compatibility is not always possible, especially w/o a huge effort, nor does Spring has to support a geforce2 anymore. Also the superficialness of you sentences give the impression that you don't know much about this topic.
Sefidel wrote:3) LUA
A Standard GUI is needed, and it needs to be good. Ive seen some of the lua scripts people use, and some of them look like a 3rd grader wrote it. Loops that dont check themselves out correctly, Calls that are made way more often than neccassary,etc.
smoth wrote:3) No a standard ui is not needed, that is very project specific. Spring already has a sort of half-assed ui that is generic but most projects will eventually have to have our own. I tried to lobby for ICEUI to supplant the current default but meltrax says ICEUI is really slow.
We were working on a new GUI framework, but it is still beta (even when Car is already using it). Short target goal is to get some performance tweaks working, so it really can become a _default_ gui for mods with given flexibility to adjust the design to the mod and user (it's a framework and not a guiwidget!).
Sefidel wrote:I have been developing software for over 10 years now and I believe my input is needed. I will address several issues on this post so read it all
If Spring needs something less than it is a community full of ppl who think they know everything better and blame the devs w/o doing anything for the community themselves.
Last edited by jK on 27 Jul 2009, 16:05, edited 1 time in total.
jk wrote:We were working on a new GUI framework, but it is still beta (even when Car is already using it). Short target goal is to get some performance tweaks working, so it really can become a _default_ gui for mods with given flexibility to adjust the design to the mod and user (it's a framework and not a guiwidget!).
Cool! Please drop a line in the dev forum or something when it's pretty much finished. Thanks...
I have been developing software for over 10 years now and I believe my input is needed. I will address several issues on this post so read it all
1)CLIENTS
It is extremely healthy for us to have multiple clients. I myself have been building a solo project forever, and the first thing we need to remember that these things take ALOT OF TIME. 2010 is a realistic goal for a time frame. Now first thing about clients we need is to standardize the protocol, which at the moment is text and digits, each used for different issues. This may not seem like a big deal but its just plain inefficient. Secondly TASCLIENT is overbuilt, overfeatured, and a real resource hog. We need to eliminate This application from the pool, and the only way to do that is to choose a different client as the primary download. So somebody, myself or other, needs to make a good enough client to replace it.
2)SPRING.EXE
This application has alot of issues. There are MANY MANY inefficient OPENGL calls, specifically vertices being submitted on an as-is way.
It is much more efficient to submit vertices even 1000 of them, at the same time. There are efficiency issues that are killling us, some of them very specific to LUA integration. Additionally the application degrades poorly on computers that dont have the graphical cards neccassary. This should be top priority since OPENGL can check to see what methods are available, and those methods can be downgrades to a method available.
3) LUA
A Standard GUI is needed, and it needs to be good. Ive seen some of the lua scripts people use, and some of them look like a 3rd grader wrote it. Loops that dont check themselves out correctly, Calls that are made way more often than neccassary,etc.
4)ADMINISTRATION
This is a serious issue. The moderators we have now dont do shit but troll. There is no leadership. And they fear new blood. at the very least there should always be at least 1 moderator available, but often times there are none, or they are afk. Most moderators recieved their status long ago and dont actually moderate a god damn thing. In order to move forward we need twice as many mods. Additionally we need a council that can veto a mods decision, so that it is not the final say. This causes people like me cause trouble.
5)ELECTION OF A PRESIDENT
We need an elected official. If we are going to be open source then we still need a "president" elected by our people, and for our people. This president would have broad powers, to override the council, oversee and approve changes to protocol, software, website etc.
This is a neccassary step for a fair system, and for a leadership role to be taken.
6)STOP DEVELOPMENT
For god sake this should be obvious. Mods, Maps, and Applications need to immediately cease development of new features and only work on bugs. We have ENOUGH features and as fun as some of those are, each one that sucks costs us all time and USERS. We need to create a release schedule that only involves bug fixes.
7)BUNDLE PACKAGE
A bulk download is completely neccassary, it will probably be in the form of an autodownloader, but with no options. options cause diversity and thats bad in our case. It should come with standard maps and mods, etc This MUST BE STANDARDIZED.
STOP TROLLING
This forum, and the chat rooms on spring are troll central. This is the immediate social cancer of spring and needs to be stopped. I personally am a troll, and i can tell you its just to damn easy.
9)MARKETING/FACEBOOK
Lets face it(no pun intended), facebook is where the people are. If we want users then thats how its going to have to be. We need a Spring facebook group that works, and even possibly a facebook app for spring. Millions of users, we have like 1000. the 60000 estimate is crazy, half of those are just me with proxies anyways. Plus many users have dynamic IP. Or play from work and home etc. We neeed facebook integration ASAP.
SpikedHelmet wrote:Spring also desperately needs a front-end shell.
I really feel that most lobbies have missed the boat as they already are a front-end shell, they just don't expose the functionality in a way that most users expect.
satirik why isn't that the default *facepalm* looks so good its making me cry.
anyone who's interested in making a campaign with me (i'd like to work on something for CA or BA, i have a feeling someone already is working on one for CA) shoot me a PM or /j #bogans in the lobby;
i'll also be releasing a map-pack in the next month or so (dragged my feet on this one) of 5 or so maps for campaign applications that i WONT be using. most of these maps are set up as a "grind" sort of mission; try to climb the hill / cross the bridge / ford the river and fight against impossible odds sort of layout. someone already called dibs for firsties but then i'll be releasing them once he's finished having his way with them for sloppy seconds.
IMO, having a strong "campaign" is probably one of the most noticibly absent about any game for spring; i know there are missions but there (as far as i know) isn't anything with a storyline involving multiple maps and battles; i think that having this available, even for one mod, would make all of the difference.
Last edited by KaiserJ on 27 Jul 2009, 20:00, edited 1 time in total.
The latest version of the Spring front-end is a huge improvement over the version I started on (summer 2007), and the game feels more like a commercial release. I'm impressed with the work you guys have done.
I agree that the game needs a tutorial covering basic controls, gameplay, and multiplayer functions: I got kicked from a game last night because I couldn't figure out how to 'give' to teammates... it was embarrassing (I had to launch a skirmish and experiment to figure it out). If the wiki had instructions w/ a screenshot, that would have been helpful.
Once there's a tutorial in place, campaigns are needed. Anybody up for recreating the TA campaign? It's probably more work than I imagine.
I can't program, but perhaps I should make some additions and improvements to the wiki..? Also, the wiki needs to be more accessible (I just type the URL when I need it because there's no obvious links)
I'm in considerable pain and have been unable to sit up at length for days, so I apologize if I am both sharp and brief.
We've already met this unique player goal, I estimate roughly 1400 different actual people play each month. I think analysis of new account registration will reveal that our player base continues to grow monthly, with between ten and twenty people actually sticking around for repeat play - I suspect the areas with greatest growth are Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States, but there have been recent gains in the Fertile Crescent and Coastal Asia.
The development side of Spring is a matter of merit and time-availability, not a matter of popularity. Our project lead is our project lead because he is first supremely capable and second available. He happens to also be affable and intelligent, so much the better for us. The election of a figurehead is first unnecessary and second unproductive - we have senior moderator administrators and senior administrator developers who represent the community and do it well. We have leaders - Licho, Aegis, Tobi, SwiftSpear, LordMatt. I understand that SwiftSpear and LordMatt are less active than they once were, but while a number of people have asked me to take on their informal responsibilities, as yet there are no plans to change this casual leadership.
Far be it from me to say our moderation is flawless, but it is not as misguided and ineffective as some of the participants in this thread seem to believe. I am available as a moderator roughly six to fourteen hours a day normally, covering a number of undermoderated timezones, though one day I hope to scale that down to three to seven. Few people have complained about my performance, nor would many complain of others such as Quantum and Lion_Heart. While some of our moderators who have served us well have stepped down, and others have scaled back their activity, I am currently working with Tobi/Quantum/Aegis and others on some reforms to streamline our present moderation process. I am also reviewing possible candidates to fill our less moderated time zones, and I implore anybody who has a candidate for moderator or an idea for moderation to bring it up with me in a private message on this forum. I will not be able to respond to many of them but I do promise to read them all.
I find the side notes on GUI in this thread somewhat misguided, and would like to address them as well. We have a highly functional default GUI, we do not need a visually improved default, but rather projects need to take on the task of creating their own custom GUI. It can be done, Star Wars: Imperial Winter has an atmospheric custom GUI, while I am designing a comprehensive GUI for Spring 1944. Even some mods, I refer obliquely to Complete Annihilation, have custom GUI in development. Lua is not a particularly easy tool for creating a GUI, but it does have the power necessary and, given some open examples and documentation, is comparable in resultant function if not wasted time to implementing some unnecessary xml abstraction. GUI is one of the most difficult elements of a modern program, as evidenced by the abundance of obtuse and unattractive GUI in open source as a small world - after years of development, programs like TASClient, The GIMP and Sauerbraten all have substandard GUI.
A bundle package complete with frontend is, once again, the concern of the games and mods, rather than the engine. Spring is an engine, attempting to offer comprehensive downloads of an engine with a variety of games is counterproductive. I suggest game and mod developers look at Spring: 1944 and Kernel Panic for simple bulk installers - we are presently refining our 1944 offering, and I believe zwzsg is looking into porting his frontend to linux. It would be nice to host bulk installers of fully free games on this site as options on the download page, along with the present Lobby + Engine installer.
While I feel it is often wasteful in some ways, I do agree that multiple clients - and to a lesser extent, autohosts - are, in the long-term, good for the community. They foster an environment of competition and thus self-improvement. I presently provide graphical elements for Winter, and am willing to help with other projects that require icons.
I am fading fast, so I will say little on the subject of Marketing and Advertisement. In September I will be able to take on market research and project advertisement once more, though I will not advertise the engine, but rather some games - 1944, Kernel Panic, Gundam RTS. Going out and talking to people remains the most efficient way to develop the community for most. The players hailing from Finland, Great Britain and Italy - all fairly well represented nations - achieved their lasting growth primarily though person to person transmission. If you plan to advertise on a wider scale or through another form of communication, I advise you to advertise particular games on the engine, rather than the engine itself - it is roughly three times as likely to attract somebody into a download. I would also not stress that the product is free - in many developed nations, "free" applied to a product implies a lack of quality, if you only mention the free status as necessary you should pull roughly twice as many people as you would if you opened with "Free RTS Spring". I also request you refer to the engine as Spring, RTS Spring or Spring RTS - this scans better with people and they're about twenty five percent more likely to respond to a post or engage in discussion.
I would like to discuss all of this with you further, but I need to lie down.
Addendum: Tutorials and missions, once again, the responsibility of the game and mod developers. Some projects are working on campaigns but they will be some time in coming. I can help a little KaiserJ, mostly in writing and voice acting, and I recommend poking [XHC]DavetheBrave on lobby - he might be willing to help with a CA campaign. As for the wiki, I'm looking for some people willing to take on that task - I do not wish to over commit myself.
neddiedrow wrote:IWe've already met this unique player goal, I estimate roughly 1400 different actual people play each month. I think analysis of new account registration will reveal that our player base continues to grow monthly, with between ten and twenty people actually sticking around for repeat play - I suspect the areas with greatest growth are Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States, but there have been recent gains in the Fertile Crescent and Coastal Asia.
I really hate to continue arguing these player statistics, but if we're gaining 20 people a month we've got to be losing about as many simply because our peak player count appears stuck in the 300-350 range and our off peak player count is still 110-150 people. 10 in 2010 is all about hitting 1,000 peak players on a daily basis, with 300-500 during offpeak hours. This should mean you can get a game of anything together in five minutes with no problem. That's the real goal here, getting a game together without making anyone miserable waiting. I've basically stopped playing Spring because it is way too hard to get games together after US / Euro primetime and I tend to play late at night when I can't sleep.
Satirik wrote:
Good photos of Spring frontend
This is apparently exactly what people expect when they start Spring for the first time. Also, they apparently want or expect an into movie. Is anyone willing and able to design such a thing? I assume Spring would need some video playback capability for that too, unless someone wants to make one using the engine itself with a Lua "timedemo" type approach.
