Spring RTS Engine

Personally, I'd like us to just have a much better preview and mod-browser built into the Spring Client, preferably with some halfway-decent tools for mod promotion.

Like, say, a mandatory "what's new" screen that shows players an "advertisement" for the newest Spring releases when the client starts- allowing players to see a small-bandwidth chunk of eye-candy and get the feeling that yes, there are other things out there. Plus a way for modders to have their mods shown in the list, just like maps are- and modders could simply change that link to always point towards the newest update of their mod. Just give us better ways to promote our games, and find an audience. Don't worry about making some uber-download that's really large and may/may not include whatever Today's Hot Mod is.

The main thing standing between new mods and an audience is player ignorance! Most Spring players do not come to these Forums, or rarely come here. Most do not visit the Mods subforum! Most do not ever read the Front Page of this website, except when a new Spring release comes out! But EVERYBODY sees the client!

Steam's creators got it right. They figured out how to constantly, constructively, and with minimal nuisance ... deliver advertisements to their gamers. I've seen Steam adverts for all of their releases, and you know what? I've even bought some, based on the nice screens I can see right from that game browser. As an advertising and promotional tool, it's almost perfect- you have a captive audience, they're gamers... and all you need is a good game, a decent pitch, and some eye-candy.

GIVE US THAT. That's what we need, not an uber-download, or a better-organized update schema.

So... for what it's worth... Caydr, you get +10 coolness points for offering to do this. But I don't think it's the right direction to go in- in the long run, it'd either become some huge, unwieldy Mega-Collection... or it'd fossilize into Spring's Greatest Hits, and new mods would be in the same position they are now- marginalized. For this situation to change... we need an advertising platform that will help us build new releases of our work and present it to players when they play.

That is a very good point. A big shiny screen advertising Gundam or something when you log into the client would do wonders.

Actually, gundam is probably one of the, if not the best, looking mods out there.

The models are quite awesome, so is the way the units are set up.

Yeah I had a really fun game of it yesterday.

That is a very good point. A big shiny screen advertising Gundam or something when you log into the client would do wonders.

Wonders of annoying people.

FizWizz wrote: Who was that directed at? I did not think I would have had to spell it out, but what I meant was "Gundam is an anime." I was just guessing (and was probably on the mark) as to why Theotherguy said it was Japanese.

It was just an area of affect attack. I wanted to say that.

Agreed with Argh. Perhaps when you log in just a small popup (a dirty word, I know) that shows information/screens on whatever the newest release is, or information on the update to the mod. If there are no updates/releases that day, it could just rotate between a list of mods - assorted screens, tips, info, whatever on them.

This could double as a way to bring more people into the forum community by displaying community news and such, with links to the wiki or forum.

Popups would make me uninstall spring... no joke. I like the idea, but it needs to be a button I click to make it show up, and never show up uninvited.

That said, replacing the "more maps" and "more mods" buttons with a nicer, more streamlined tool as many of you have described would be cool. Also, something to "check for update" on a given mod would be nice.

But don't force us to download packages w/ multiple mods. Some of us still use modems.

(And no, I can't get DSL, I don't live close enough to a station. And no, I can't get cable. It costs too much.)

Maybe we should pester Valve into letting us use Steam...

Min3mat wrote:

That is a very good point. A big shiny screen advertising Gundam or something when you log into the client would do wonders.

Wonders of annoying people.

This is true, but how else would you recomend encouraging people to play mods other than AA?

maybe just add a button on the main client...

"mod browser*

It could show a few shots along with a BRIEF description (~500 characters?). That would give players a chance to see all the mods. And read a little about them without being too intrusive.

smoth wrote:

Theotherguy wrote:gundam annihilation is just....too...japanese?

I'd love hear this explanation. You didn't even try it.

Hi SMoth, GUNDAM classic is always a niche today (Most anime fans know Evangelion macross and most Gundam fans only knows Wing crap, lighthearted story, kiddish story, i dont believe it is work of Tomino )
so U should be proactive, promoting ur mod PLUS how to install stuff in some gundam fansite will work I believe...
But be careful 'promoting' at Gundam official website, it could end up with either Bandai purchase ur project (Good) or sue you for breaking copyrighty stuff
But I remember long time ago there is a Gundam mod of starcraft, that is even popular in my nation (quite rare for a mod ) the creator now became pro game designer... maybe u can trace him and ask an advice on promoting ur mod

Yep. Remember what happened to Bid For Power? THey had to rip out all the Dragonball content (which was then released into a seperate game). BFP was a very cool (but not actually much fun) Dragonball mod for Quake 3.

Pxtl wrote:Yep. Remember what happened to Bid For Power? THey had to rip out all the Dragonball content (which was then released into a seperate game). BFP was a very cool (but not actually much fun) Dragonball mod for Quake 3.

Funimation are assholes and yeah I had the real bid for power mod. It sucked anyway. Either way, there are countless unfinished an shity gundam mods who have gotten much more publicity and they are still around I ain't skeered.

maestro wrote:so U should be proactive, promoting ur mod PLUS how to install stuff in some gundam fansite will work I believe...
But be careful 'promoting' at Gundam official website, it could end up with either Bandai purchase ur project (Good) or sue you for breaking copyrighty stuff

Maestro, as far as gundam fans go I do not want them to see it yet. Not untill I have uvmapped everything. When that is done, I will contact Bandai and tell them about it.

It will never be for sale unless Bandai wishes it but as I have always said this is a gift to the fans of first and it's follow ups(which is why I struggle so much for accuracy). I whole heartedly intend on the mod helping promote gundam.

Right now the mod is not for gundam fans but for people to play. My hope is that people will say it is a good mod first then say it is gundam after that. I am so damn tired of bad gundam mods and I wanted to make a good mod that happens to be gundam. However, most of the american idiot fans fucked the community for me.

Again, it is a mod.. that happens to be gundam. Not Gundam that happens to be a mod.

Soulless1 wrote:you're trying to say that AA doesn't have gameplay?

ahem...'I respectfully decline the request to join you in your delusional reality'

Not really, we're suggesting that innovative gameplay isn't what average springers are interested in right now. They don't care if something new plays different then AA, they just want to play TA with better graphics, and AA has bonus fatty units.

Deathblane wrote:

Min3mat wrote:

That is a very good point. A big shiny screen advertising Gundam or something when you log into the client would do wonders.

Wonders of annoying people.

This is true, but how else would you recomend encouraging people to play mods other than AA?

I would encourage people not to try their personal social engineering projects by changing the lobby.

If you want someone to play a different mod, ask them to download it and play you.

If they don't want to, that's their decision. You have no right to turn the lobby into adware because you think they should be playing some stupid anime/Earth somethingorother ripoff/just another WW2 mod. (parody of what they would think, not my personal opinions there.)

how you do a quick beta update?

A mega mod pack.. would weight lots.. and not all mods are updated as frequently.

many many reasons why that would be hard to get going.





im not mad at aa because of ppl playing aa instead of other mod.

Its like being mad to ppl playing speedmetal.

stages and tastes.

It hurts a bit some of the good players of xta (when it was the only mod aviable) do not like it any more, but i can be mad to them, not the mod :D

Actually, i like aa big units, but i dont like its TA balance.

I know I've suggested something like this before for maps... but hey... whatever...

First of all what I'm looking for is an automatically syncing torrent system for compressed files.

Basically a mod is a list of files in specific structures, zipped up. (cobs, models, fbis etc etc etc.)

This custom torrent engine would:
- Automatically check with some site (propbably FU, mirrored on clan-sy and sourceforge or whatever) for a list of available mod archives name/checksum pairs.
- You will be presented, when starting the updater, a list of available mods which you can "subscribe" to, simple checkbox interface.
- If there is a newer/changed version of a mod you are subscribed to you will be prompted to update it, it will extract the files to a temperary folder, download any files from an official seed or another active client that are different, and then pack it back up with the ne appropriate filename, then you would be prompted to keep or remove the lagacy mod archive.
- The program would monitor the activity of the spring executable and pause when a game starts.

I'd love that implementation.