The Spring Roadmap (near term)

[Dragon45]

Financially, its unclear how long the current growth rate is sustainable. Basically, Nexus is paying for most downloads out of his own pocket with very little in remuneration (ads alone arent going to pay for many gigs of bandwidth) on the mod/map download end and Fnordia IIRC is paying for a lot of the server's bandwidth.

It's scary to think what might happen if Nexus suddenly has some sort of Real Life crisis and simply can't keep the services he offers currently afloat. Same with Fnordia.

IMHo, although they are amazing (*hugs Nexus*), the survival of a community should not have to rely solely on the generosity of one or two individuals.

I think one way to alleviate a lot of the burden in terms of BW (on Nexus' end anyway) is to make everything downloaded via BitTorrent as the only possible download option (with the FU server itself being a permanent seed for everything).

The lobby server isn't taking up a whole lot of bandiwdth (long streams of text? easy) but again, the question here is long term sustainability.
I know its a bit of a kooky suggestion (and has been every time it has been offered) but a p2p matchmaking service with supernodes might be the best way to go about this in the far future if Spring lobby ever goes beyond, say, 900-person mark.

Alternatively, we could just make it *very very* easy for people to host their own matchmaking servers.

Summary
Achieve gradual decentralization in terms of resource usage to maintain long-term sustainability by

• Permitting current lobby/matchmaking services to be offered by more individuals (easy-install matchmaking server etc)
  
  Moving all content downloads to a BitTorrent or other distributed transfer method

Again, IMHO, the best way *is* gradual decentralization, to reach a greater level of redundancy.

[Dragon45]

I think a second point that needs to be made is focusing on content vs focusing on services- the game engine offers a service that allows modders to offer their content.

I think I agree with Argh in saying that interest is largely driven by content. For example, no major game reporting site or magazine actually devotes more than a few paragraphs to the game engine, choosing instead to focus on what content is delivered by the engine's service.

Modders are interested in services- players are interested in content.


Additionally, because there is such a ratio of modders vs engine coders, the modding community ends up doing more 'stuff' in a given span of time- this 'stuff' makes news, which shows progress- and progress generates interest.

Since we're trying to generate interest here, i think its entirely reasonable if the mod-news area and the engine-news area were either switched or merged. Again, if you look at major publishing/game dev house communities, etc, its largely split up into two areas-

news sites that deliver latest modding updates
the actual game dev's site that delivers major engine updates/patches

It might not be totally unreasonable to register an entirely new TLD to house the spring modding news site, even if they did in fact poitn to the same server/forums etc- as long as that site was focused on headlining modding news, as TAUniverse, Annihilated, and PlanetAnnihilation did back in Total Annihilation's heyday.

Right now, there is this perception that TASpring is "a cool engine with some content". This attracts coders predominantly.

The perception *needs* to be that TASpring is "a lot of content driven by a cool engine". This attracts everyone else- players, modders, everything.


Summary

Change perception of TASpring to be content-driven, not engine-driven by

• Creating a greater distinction between the content and the engine
  Creating and maintaining a new TLD
  Having this TLD ooze mod, maps, and unit content from every pixel.

[/list]

[Tim Blokdijk]

In reply to Argh,

I'm running Spring on Linux, Spring on Linux it's not fully functional as under Windows.
One of the lacking things is mod support, with some experimenting I got Xect v/s Mynn to load. (you have to rename the mod to XTAPE.sd7)
But there is no multiplayer, lobby or even side selection.
So things like AA, never seen it.
All I know is that it makes heavy use of TA content and that Caydr forked it of UberHack and of course that it is the most popular mod.
I'm just mostly ignorant of the mods that have been made.

All I know is that for Spring to make it in the Linux world mods need to be released under an Open Source license. (maps to btw)
I will include your mod in the roadmap as a mod that (with some work) can be freely used.
Alright, so far about me lacking knowledge of mods.

About more mod exposure, I simply agree that mods need more exposure.
I can throw http://www.springrts.com and http://www.springrts.org in the mix.
But I don't have time to make and maintain a web portal.
Someone needs to make a design document (make a plan) for a new web portal.
It could be possible to finish a new web portal within the timeframe of the near term roadmap. (within 4 months)
If we start a Spring foundation I can transfer the rights for the domains to it.

And about the hand-but remark, it is fine you meant no harm as they say.
And moderator I would rather still had his remark around.

[patmo98]

I think one way to alleviate a lot of the burden in terms of BW (on Nexus' end anyway) is to make everything downloaded via BitTorrent as the only possible download option (with the FU server itself being a permanent seed for everything).

What about putting the 25 most commonly used maps in a torrent. That way people can easally download the most common maps in one shot, and reduse the bandwidth.

[Dragon45]

Tim- There are a ton of people around this community who have time/would want to maintain this portal- i mean to start all we need is PHPNuke etc and too many web devs around for someone NOT to have time/skillz to make something work. All that is needed is to get initial bits running then have newsposters/mods/admins do rest of work.

again this is a large enoug community it shouldnt be had to find people...

BTW tim- i <3 you. :)

[Maelstrom]

I would be happy to code and maintain the web portal, as long as someone is willing to design the layout for me. Contact me via PM/Email/MSN if you want to talk.

I think that the Xect vs Mynn mod is totally GPL now, as of the last release. Just read the Xect vs Mynn thread in the mods forum.

[Tim Blokdijk]

Well peoples, make a plan, get feedback, change plan, get support and commitment, do it.

It generally works the same as with this roadmap.