The taint of *A

[AF]

Then quit discussing it, besides this phpbb forum is wider than its container, go look at the control panel. I dont see why we'd have a 900px wide input for text either, the sites 760px wide and the input's 499px atm. Moving to 960px would make it 6512px assuming it was not modified ( which it would be )

[Forboding Angel]

Dude, Shut up. You made your point 3 posts ago. Stop shitting up the thread.

[Mr. Bob]

Or you could just advertise.

With a decent cinematic and/or a very good gameplay trailer that isn't a montage and isn't a music video, you'd be well on your way.

Also, another problem is that spring by itself is not the most accessible of applications. The majority of the advertisement spring puts out is to the old TA playerbase. Its only natural that the majority of games played are TA related. If gundam rts was a standalone application not tied to the current lobby, you would be able to advertise it better, without being restricted to people who already know how to use spring.

The initial playerbase foundation has nothing to do with how good the gameplay is. The gameplay only sustains the playerbase. In order to get a good start up you need advertising. In other words, people won't magically flock to the game because they have "good gameplay senses". Eyecandy is important. Not just on the graphics side.

[scifi]

Currently there are around 27 people playing from monday to friday at european day time (greenwitch (0) (+1) e.t.c...)

That isnt playerbase.

And enough of this online people thing, there are around 150 people online including bots. This doesnt relate to people that actualy play.

most times there are 30 people playing, and the few that join only see BA hosts it equals triple fail.

Ok lets make an experience, what IF when we click login on TAS or SL, an icon apears what mod you want to play, click on it and it acts like a filter (TAS filter code that exists already works fine). And only autohosts/hosts of that mod apear.

And pls dont tell me of ZK lobby, i dislike the click and play buton, it isnt the necessary choice of lobby imo, you must see the diferent hosts, the maps being played, the number of people on them, mutch like an FPS game lobby witch owns imo.

With this new people can join and wait for games to start for the specific mod they want.

And it doesnt split the comunity at all, since we can all go back and click (choose diferent mod), BA and thats it.

No need for diferent servers, no need to spend money and coding time making diferent lobbys e.t.c.... it works........................................



For example:

BA baracus joins gundam lobby he finds carpenter and keijj0 in the waiting room

theres 3 people for me play with, and each one of us who is present knows that theres is a possibility of a game.

In a mental state we know that a game can be played.

you can say this is similar to the channel stuff we have "CA/ZK" channel "NOTA" channel, but channels dont work anymore for gathering people around.

Making mandatory to choose the game before you see the list of available game is optimal and a good choice. I could code a lobby of mine sure, but since when people would use it, it must come from SL and TAS or even ZK (witch are the most used lobbys for spring).

[CarRepairer]

And pls dont tell me of ZK lobby, i dislike the click and play buton, it isnt the necessary choice of lobby imo, you must see the diferent hosts, the maps being played, the number of people on them, mutch like an FPS game lobby witch owns imo.

You can see all that in ZKL also.

[knorke]

And it doesnt split the comunity at all, since we can all go back and click (choose diferent mod), BA and thats it.

and everybody clicked BA and thats it.

channels dont work anymore for gathering people around.

yea, fail. with #ct you knew if somebody was in there, he was interessted. now it seems to be autojoined (by zkl?) and they all idle..

[scifi]

And pls dont tell me of ZK lobby, i dislike the click and play buton, it isnt the necessary choice of lobby imo, you must see the diferent hosts, the maps being played, the number of people on them, mutch like an FPS game lobby witch owns imo.

You can see all that in ZKL also.

the sole purpose of zk is click and play, ofc it suplys the original person with the choice.

im talking about forcing the people that installs the lobby to look at mods.

Zk does that all good, it shows the list of the games, it shows everything else, but im talking about something else, taking the regular TAS SL lobby, and just add a inicial panel to choose mods.

like show the window, then show the rest.

Meaning the first choice you made after login is that, you cant do anything else, you must choose, you cant acess download section, gaming section, or lobby section e.t.c...............

Ofc people would choose BA, (the ordinay casual player that plays spring these days). And ofc people would have like 5 lobbys opened.

But surely not new people. New people would certainly join the mod they wanted to play.

[Mr. Bob]

Thus, advertise.

:D

[scifi]

Thus, advertise.

:D

true

but advertise where and with what, and advertise with the engine or with just instalers.

what kind of lobbys.

Is this all dependant on content devs and not engine devs, or engine devs must advertise as well.

The awnsers arent clear, but advertise is one of the most important parts ofc

[PicassoCT]

How about a good singleplayer, with story cliffhangers, that make people come back, checking for new episodes, and that keep that wish to "stay in that universe" alive, that gets them into there first multiplayer hours.

But wait... thats work, man, lets just bitch another side long about how Good Old TA rendered us impotent. Your mother, Dr. Freud!

[oksnoop2]

yea, fail. with #ct you knew if somebody was in there, he was interessted. now it seems to be autojoined (by zkl?) and they all idle..

Yeah makes me sad.

[AF]

I wonder how many people have ZK auto start and join yet have completely forgotten they ever installed spring to begin with.....

[zwzsg]

I already do the filter & only join mod channel, hiding other mods, in my KP & GRTS installers. Not sure how effective it is though.

[Forboding Angel]

If you're planning to be taken seriously, the current lobbies aren't going to cut it. Tbh, what you really desperately need is an ingame lua lobby.

Atm, the lobbies are one size fits all solutions, which makes them horrible marketing tools and instead of "Hey our matchmaking is spot on" (promoting it), it's one of the things you hide and try to draw as little attention to as possible.

The current lobbies are only really good for people who download the engine. They are more or less inadequate for being shipped with an installer.

[scifi]

If you're planning to be taken seriously, the current lobbies aren't going to cut it. Tbh, what you really desperately need is an ingame lua lobby.

Atm, the lobbies are one size fits all solutions, which makes them horrible marketing tools and instead of "Hey our matchmaking is spot on" (promoting it), it's one of the things you hide and try to draw as little attention to as possible.

The current lobbies are only really good for people who download the engine. They are more or less inadequate for being shipped with an installer.

got to agree with this, not trying to diminish the work that has been put to these lobbys, but they need to be polished.

It seams that TAS SL and ZK all have advantages, but all are diferent solutions to the same problem.

TAS is easy and straigthfoward to understand same as SL, while ZK takes a while to get used to but has a lot more features, TAS shows it all in one window, Sl trys to organize itself into seperate easy to understand "zones".

Zk trys to add click and play, but lack of players is killing this system, and the need to download updates all the time not to mention maps, required a downloader to be instaled, witch is good but adds to mutch unecessary information and windows.

TAS adds automatic download links, and a ZK similar system, it works but its a bit buggy, and doesnt work all the time, it isnt as good, its in development though.

its like all 3 are moving in the rigth direction, but something more finished is required, something for spring and not for a mod.

Ive posted a bit against ZK, but its not because its a bad or a worse lobby than the others, its just cause its a dedicated MOD lobby, that is advertised as a way to play all mods, its weird.

I have nothing against a specific mod lobby, but it isnt the ideal lobby for spring, since it represents a mod, and not the overall conjuntion of mods.

So the question is made

shalll we make a lobby for each mod, or a generalistic lobby for content dev creators to post theyr creations, and allow people to play/use the engine.


you can say to me, "go code your self a lobby "

i could try, but what would be the point there are enough lobbys around to start a new fresh project, altering and getting the current ones polished would be a good start.

btw what would be this ingame lua lobby??

[Gota]

Well i aint using zero-k lobby until it either gets renamed back into Spring lobby or i start enjoying zero-k.
Tasclient is problematic when it comes to stuff related to "user to user" interactions like making group of friends or ringing to someone who you are friends with etc etc...

[Wombat]

Well i aint using zero-k lobby until it either gets renamed back into Spring lobby

what?

[knorke]

Tbh, what you really desperately need is an ingame lua lobby.

nah, cant alt tab an ingame lobby while waiting for games. and waiting for games is and will be reality. only use i see for such lobby would be on a lan.
also the playerbase would not survive a server-per-game or lobby-per-game systen and the "small" games would suffer most from it.

Also this "taint of *A", dunno if it is there. Some games have webpages that do not even mention TA. ie gundam,CT,KP, zeroK

If a random websurfer comes along these webpages and reads SpringRTS he will not think "oh, that's TAspring the fail engine with all the fail mods."
Few people have tried Spring before and they do not know what it is or about its TA roots, most who join the lobby are not "tainted."
When somebody joins the lobby to play XY but ends up playing BA that is not because he was brainwashed into Spring=BA but just because there is probally an open BA game and no game of XY and nobody in #xy responds.

So would it be better if that person just closes the lobby and never comes back thinking there are no players?
Or is it be better if that person plays some BA while waiting for a game of XY?
Just by seeing the ugly BA units a player does not forget your nice units he saw on the screenshots and in singleplayer...

[scifi]

Tbh, what you really desperately need is an ingame lua lobby.

nah, cant alt tab an ingame lobby while waiting for games. and waiting for games is and will be reality. only use i see for such lobby would be on a lan.
also the playerbase would not survive a server-per-game or lobby-per-game systen and the "small" games would suffer most from it.

Also this "taint of *A", dunno if it is there. Some games have webpages that do not even mention TA. ie gundam,CT,KP, zeroK

If a random websurfer comes along these webpages and reads SpringRTS he will not think "oh, that's TAspring the fail engine with all the fail mods."
Few people have tried Spring before and they do not know what it is or about its TA roots, most who join the lobby are not "tainted."
When somebody joins the lobby to play XY but ends up playing BA that is not because he was brainwashed into Spring=BA but just because there is probally an open BA game and no game of XY and nobody in #xy responds.

So would it be better if that person just closes the lobby and never comes back thinking there are no players?
Or is it be better if that person plays some BA while waiting for a game of XY?
Just by seeing the ugly BA units a player does not forget your nice units he saw on the screenshots and in singleplayer...

dunno about ingame lobby.

about your post, i agree that a player that looks for gundam, will download gundam, and try at best play single player with it, even post in the forums e.t.c..

But he will eventualy leave after a while.
Ofc its better if people play BA while waiting for other mods, but then again they arent in a waiting room for gundam, and other people that would be waiting as well, are playing BA as well XD.

The solution isnt a easy one, but maybe getting instalers within the spring package wouldnt be bad at all(like abma posted in the other thread).

Still id prefer if links to Moddb or indiedb were posted within the instalers, as links to show off the mods themselves, rather than instalers since they easily get outdated.

I agreed with forbodin when he said all lobbys arent suited, but still mutch indie lobbys out there arent as good as the ones we have, so in the loong run they must be improved, but in the short term they are good to sustain a indie playerbase.

still i got to say if we got specific game instalers published in Impulse or steam the game migth get more atention, like easy play-install executable.

but then again the BA taint would apear as the most played mod is BA, it all sums up to if you want to have one filtered lobby, or independant servers/lobbys, i prefer filtered lobby, as it is the one that doesnt split the comunity that we have.

Another solution would be create tournaments like 3 per 5 days,
first doesnt get atention, second will, third will, but requires someone to do the work, i migth think in doing that, for mods rather than BA.

KP has a tournament it didnt got that mutch atention sure, but if 2 days later another would be made, and 2 days after another, and another and another, maybe something would change.
anyway its just an opinion, dunno what should be done or what, but the tournament, and spicing competition between people and clans could also be a positive way to get atention to other mods.

[smoth]

Or you could just advertise.

So you are saying lack of exposure is why people think spring = all projects look like *A?

With a decent cinematic and/or a very good gameplay trailer that isn't a montage and isn't a music video, you'd be well on your way.

Have some examples you can link me man?

If gundam rts was a standalone application not tied to the current lobby, you would be able to advertise it better, without being restricted to people who already know how to use spring.

Zwzsg added single player for me man :)

About: ZK lobby.
I asked to not be a part of it, not out of disrespect for the work just that I didn't want people auto-filed into #gundam.
About: LUA lobby. I need more support for it, the devs still have more work, I made a thread here requesting someone help with part of what they need. Until then I just have to wait. .

How about a good singleplayer, with story cliffhangers, that make people come back, checking for new episodes, and that keep that wish to "stay in that universe" alive, that gets them into there first multiplayer hours.

Cart before the horse. You act as though gundam is done already.

But wait... thats work, man, lets just bitch another side long about how Good Old TA rendered us impotent. Your mother, Dr. Freud!

As if all the economy, models uiwork maps etc all the shit I do isn't work? C'mon picasso, I am a pretty busy guy.

As far as lobby, I use springlobby, I prefer it. However, that does not mean it should be required. Maybe a player does want to just play gundam, I want to do a Bnet style deal where they can just stay in spring.exe and read up on units etc while idling in #gundam. Sure they could use the lobby if desired but I want them to be able to sit in spring.exe if they want to.