Make Kernel Panic the official showcase game?

[zwzsg]

Completely missed my point. I'm saying, if we use KP as the 'flagship', new people will join and have nobody to play with, because KP isn't played. It'll be an even rougher ride to get into their first game than it already is.

1) Nobody except all the other new people?
2) Actually, you can play KP with nobody. It's called single player!
3) Try hosting a KP game once. It's hard to get the first joiner, but after it's a rush!

[Machete234]

I dont think kernel panic shows the engines full potential and people would think that the spring engine is kind of low tec.

[Das Bruce]

We're not using the TA engine. That's the difference.

Oh, duh, I don't know what I was thinking, turned my brain off.

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but in case it is. HL2 mods use HL2 assets to make mods for HL2, that causes it to look like a good game to have and causes more people to buy HL2.
We use OTA assets to make mods for Spring which makes Spring look like a good game to have and causes nobody to buy OTA.

Also who was the first person to say flagship? The idea was never a flagship it was just a showcase, something to have with it so spring doesn't look like such a god aweful mess.

[Petah]

I don't see why we don't just put BA on there. Nobody is coming after us.

Too right, BA is by far the most popular game. They are not coming after us (and I have emailed Atari corporate repeativly asking about the matter), and they wont be in any time soon. If they do, say, "woops sorry, Ill remove your content now", and copyright issues will never be enforacable(1).

And kernel panic is like a retro game from the 80's it will never survive as a project. You need attractive marketing, a good business plan, and a future strategy. And thats all on top of the decent game play, graphics, and functionality that spring already provides.

Also,

the engine != the game, and we should not have a default because it limits us

1: the engine is only as good as the games made for it
2: New comers expect a game, of good value(2)
3: The game needs to be packages as a whole. One game, one installer, one map downloader, one multiplayer client, one etc etc etc.


(1) Because why would they spend so much money going after the litle people when the game would survive with out them.

(2) Other 'engines' (Half Life, etc) first created a good game, and then later found that other players got interested enough to go past what the game offered and add to it.





There will be the day to I am able to fully occupy my time to improving Spring. I have big plans instore for this project but they will not come to fruition any time soon. Until then its up to my meaningless comments, and YOU.

[SirArtturi]

[...]

Although you have point there, you can't apply marketing and business strategies to something that is open source and free. Theres different laws in that scene...

Well, KP could be a good flagship game for the engine since its stable and complete package with a singleplayer etc...

But still it really just no suit as an engine showcase game because It's represnting something that especially in visual sense is outdated and boring.

No matter how elegent and cool the concept is. It's just outdated...

[luckywaldo7]

Atari has not sued Spring thus far. Therefore, they will not sue Spring.

[AF]

We aren't selling TA, we are pirating TA assets.

Atari knows about this, but has chosen to play the dangerous game of turning a blind eye, either to avoid the base legal costs and effort, or because our community is empowering a growing number of purchases of Original TA from impulse and Amazon

This doesn't mean we are off the hook, and however much we reason with ourselves over the years, the rest of the Internet, the parts that matter, fear the wrath of Atari

I'm fine though because I have a legal copy of TA on my shelf.

I'm also tired of the chicken egg problem arguments. where did you think springs player base came from before AA got ported? Or what about the original TA player base? Do you think it magically appeared one day when a mods player base came along to act as a seed? But wait! The game had only just been released, nobody knew how to make mods!

[Licho]

I vote for CA obviously :)

It's 1faciton has no stolen content, it's open source game with open and democratic development, it's second most played game and looks nicer than BA.

[hoijui]

is there some rule, that when you made an official request for assets, and it is not being answered in.. say.. a year or so, they loose some rights?
so we could write a formal letter, let it be inspected by a lawyer or whatever it needs, and ...
guess no such rule/law exists :/

[AF]

no but should they ever launch a lawsuit there is a very real danger that the judge would say that they knew and did nothing and that they're just profiteering when they choose, in the past companies have had their IP claims thrown out of court because they didn't make any effort to protect their IP despite knowing it was being stolen.

However this all assumes that the spring engine community can muster up the huge financial burden, in the event we are sued by Atari, court arguments are irrelevant as we are unlikely to have the funds to even reach the court level

[KDR_11k]

No, of course such a law doesn't exist due to the potential for abuse. You could bring Laches as a defense in court if sued but nobody here would even be in a position to go to court with Atari.

I don't expect people to stay on the included KP game, it's just so people can hit install and already have something they can play right away, especially since many want to play singleplayer matches before going online. It's a simple bunch of content given to a player as a way of making him consider the engine usable and make him more tolerant of grabbing other mods later because he'll have seen the engine running and working. Obviously people would install BA anyway but we can't ship that with the engine (makes people wary of mirroring it). A player who doesn't get a game right away or cannot play it singleplayer would likely leave before looking at the mod scene.

Spring Downloader would only be a solution if it's installed and ready when a user installs Spring and SD starts up as the main program (the name has to change for that, a downloader is not a lobby!). I believe it's not cross-platform like Spring itself so it wouldn't be a complete solution anyway.

[Pxtl]

I vote for CA obviously :)

It's 1faciton has no stolen content, it's open source game with open and democratic development, it's second most played game and looks nicer than BA.

Let's be realistic - it's also buggy as hell. I love CA because the gameplay is so good that I overlook the bugs, but the bugs are there. For example, the Chickens sounds, or the GUI layout at 1024x768.

[AF]

I get the impression somebody is gouing to complain that 1024x768 is never used and they should upgrade their monitors, despite a growing number of people using netbooks and laptops that have dimensions similar to this, which have the same problems, who cannot upgrade their monitors without taking a hacksaw to their chassis

[KDR_11k]

Isn't 1024x768 also the default resolution that a user would get if he just decides to run Spring and worry about details later?

Speaking of which, if you run Spring.exe with Kernel Panic you get a menu presenting you with game choices, what happens if you do that with something like CA?

[Forboding Angel]

To me this seems like a somewhat volatile topic, so I'll keep my personal opinions out of it and stick to just fact correcting.

Simple fact of the matter is that every week Evo has something shiny and new. For example, 6 of the old models just got replaced with lego models, they have new effects, new sounds and all other kinds of jazz. When alpha/beta builds get released, there will be a weekly "patching" cycle.

Yes Evo is very polished, and is in itself a very full rts game even though it has a single faction (However that single faction has no less than 4 full techs, each with it's own particular flavor) (Reasoning being, I would rather have a single awesome faction, than 2 mediocre factions). The missing elements are only in the form of the gui, however, evo uses metal and energy as well, so using the default redui, lolui, iceui, setups works fine, it's just that we would like to have our own(tm ) gui. There are no bugs of which I am aware. Anyone that knows me and my habits can attest that I do not leave broken code in a repository.

Evo also has a single player menu when launched via spring.exe (thanks to z). The menu isn't quite done being sorted, but it's fully functional and nice looking).
***end of fact fixing***

Ok back to the topic at hand. I don't think that KP would be a good choice for inclusion with the installer. The reason is mainly because of the graphics and effects. Yes, KP achieves it's purpose, and it does it really really well, but that purpose is to look retro. In my mind, engines that release games with them always have that game as a techdemo. I don't think any or the projects in spring approach techdemo status, and if they did I would attest that CA, Evo, and Gundam are the closest you would get atm (I'm speaking more of the gundam dev builds than 1.21 - most of you guys don't see the incredible bout of awesome that smoth has been working on lately).

Moreover, I think even releasing an installer for the engine is a MASSIVE mistake. Allow us gamedevs to stand on our own two feet, and stop circumventing us by releasing an engine installer. Using shared spring folders it's already possible to have multiple games spanning the same content. Let US do the heavy lifting here!

Also, see this thread: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23467

[Pxtl]

@FA, actually that's why I don't think any "Spring Engine Installer With Games" should include _one_ mod. You need at least 2, to show the breadth of the engine's power (unless one of them is a crazy everything-plus-the---------sink game like CA).

[zwzsg]

Including KP into the dev's engine release is a too radical idea, never going to happen, and would annoy many people.


Here's a feasible idea:

1) Have the GamesDownloads be a section of the Downloads page instead of a separate page. So that installers-with-games are listed next to the bare installer.

2) Only allow installer that do install the last official Spring there. So:
- No EvoRTS: it redirects to Downloads wtf that's stupidly circular
- No Spring 1944, till they update their installer
- No Spring Downloader, until it does what its name suggest
- No SpringLobby, wtf is it doing in the GamesDownloads page?

[Forboding Angel]

I haven't updated the evo downloads page because of the simple fact that we have no idea what is going to happen upon next release. If an engine installer is released, I have to make an evo installer or point to the barebones engine install. If an engine installer is released I have to release an evo installer.

It's all hinged upon what happens in the next spring release.

Moreover, evo's download page explains what you need to do on windows and linux to get the game. Not stupid.

[zwzsg]

Evo page is not stupid itself. What is stupid is that following the links leads me to:
p1 -> p2 -> p3 -> p1

[forest_devil]

my 2 pence.

everything below is an opinion. do NOT try to correct facts that im not stating

this site is purely for the engine. you download the engine if
1)you are a current spring user
2)you wish to develop A) the engine B) your own mod C) and AI or w/e

new users shouldnt even land on this site EVER if they only intend to play a game. each game for this engine should have an independant place from which to distribute there game this means full installer NOT a link to an .sd7 and a link to the engine.

thats the simple of it. it wont happen because your all moaning silly people that seem to hate development of new features and better ideas.

on a completely different note but in some ways relevant. naming of certain projects causes confusion i.e
springlobby - name implies this is the official lobby fully supported but the springengine devs
TASclient - new users dont know wtf TAS means or what is meant by client
SpringDownloader - same as springlobby combined with a semi correct name.
springfiles.com - same as number 1


see what im saying? infact i find it hilarious that the one game people need to pay for on this engine is probably the most played. when was the last time you got a newbie in here asking for help with P.U.R.E. steal the good ideas for goodness sake :D