And the most popular spring game of 2012 is:

[smoth]

I don't understand how you can call anything a developer community when the whole point would appear to be getting people to play your games

Because that is what goes on here. We are here to develop projects and get shit done. That is a big part of getting where we HAVE a game. Now as far as the whole point? nah, some of us do what we do because we enjoy it. Lately there has been a great deal of discussion about pulling new players in. That has only been over the past 2 years as several projects have reached a fairly mature state. Such discussion is not a simple academic exercise, for several developers it is part of a new phase.

for me anyways I've watched the game empty out over the past 5 years it could have been a lot more.

yes, BA has become less popular.

I'll stop, I'm not contributing anything, I'm just a player that loves the game. I dunno what made me think my opinion had any value in it, the feedback of players should not reach the devs, I keep forgetting that...

Oh your "feedback," if it could be called that has been heard but it is largely useless as it ignores the numeric facts at present. Your opinion has little in the way of fact to back it up and your past demeanor has been confrontational and crude at best.

this is not sarcastic post or pun or anything I just don't give a shit anymore and this (^^ last post by smoth) is why

You do care otherwise you would not have clicked the post button.


I get it you have an opinion, you feel that if things were done your way BA would have more players. That's cool I have my own opinions of how the ba community could have endured better as well but they were rejected by devs and I accepted it. I understand you feel your behavior should be tollerated and others condemned for similar. I understand you largely see yourself as a victim.

what I see is a thread where it is clear that ZK has done well. They did so by adding features no other spring game has(planetwars) and persistent dillegence in the pursuit of excellence. Yes, the BA community has dwindled and try as you may that is not ZK's fault. There are many reasons people left BA but don't blame ZK. The decline in player count is a natural part of a game becoming dated(IMO) and BA is terribly dated. Most of the guys who have fond memories of TA are OLD GUYS now and we might not be into RTS games any more? maybe they left to participate in a larger community like starcraft where ladder play can be better executed. It doesn't reallly matter.

What BA is doing right now is quietly developing into something new and exciting. Something that doesn't have to ride on the COATTAILS of TA. I applaud them! There are new gamers coming online EVERY day, there is no finite group of players, players are ever emerging with new desires and wants. BA is starting to evolve to better please new gamers.

In time BA may see a revival but it will not be the BA you knew. It cannot be if it is to survive.

[luckywaldo7]

I don't understand how you can call anything a developer community when the whole point would appear to be getting people to play your games

Players just don't want to be part of the development process. They don't want to test and improve things themselves; they simply want them to be good. They don't want to be testers; they want to be critics.

That's why it makes so much sense for games to build their own communities. The game is what players see and feel, the engine is just what happens underneath.

[knorke]

ooooooh people are wrong on the internet!

The transition between ba and ca LOL. I cannot recall if CA came before or after BA.

AA BA CA zero-K

If you make a game which follows the AA-BA-CA naming scheme it is hard to deny who is the audience.
Describing the game as "BA, but better" was sure to get some interesst from BA players.

In that part the BA CA step is comperable to the AA BA step, that was previously done: "A new TA based mod, better than the previous one."
The difference:
When BA was introduced, AA become unsupported and all players switched over. The step was not that big.

On the other hand when CA was introduced, BA (unlike AA) was not given up and continued to be supported and played. The step was also bigger:
Some players did not like new balance or artstyle or were unable to play because of various problems. For others the changes were attractive enough to at least give it a try.
Imo it can be said at this point a fragmention of the community did indeed happen. "Fragmention" sounds so negative, maybe better to say "two groups formed" and there was more "diversity."


Is this diversity good?
To be honest, I do not know. Today there are four TA based games: BA, zK, XTA, NOTA. Quite many for the playernumbers online in lobby.
Each player might have his personal favorite for whatever reasons. For example mine is XTA. Still if I was given the chance to teleport into a parellel universe where the effort spent on those games was combined into one "TA-Spring" game with 4x times the awesomeness: I would do it.

[smoth]

thanks for the clarification Knorke, I wasn't sure when CA started.

clarification on AA->BA, Caydr sabotaged AA for some unknown reason. Was a big dramasposion. Essentially someone manned up and made BA. People including myself spent time in main telling people that BA is the replacement of AA.

As far as a mega collaboration, it wouldn't have happened. Much of what drives the different teams is/was a drive to create a "better" experience as they saw it. There is no way the team would have stayed together unless it was a job at which point an alpha/leader type would have to emerge.. in a bunch of RTS people... giving up command, not likely.

ba: was trying to stay as conservative as possible. Some of the more radical visual or gameplay suggestions would have been shot down.
ca: was trying to improve, often altering elements of ba that were stale, chief of which was the visuals, which do cost some performance, cue people crying about how they cannot play BA on their shit machines etc.

I think that is an important thing to point out. This diversity drove BA to eventually abandon some of it's more ridiculous conservative holds and very importantly, embracing widgets and acquiring a new official ui. Also let's not forget BA:Chickens. Which would have NEVER come to existence in old ba. It was grown in CA.

So I still maintain the differing projects have produced a better result.

Also the key fracturing point that people cite was NOT when zk was created. It is about 2-3 years ago when people started crying about spring losing players. I dunno maybe you cba to find when it all started being a thing. However, what it really was caused by was the beginning of BA's Decline which people took to mean "spring" had less players.

[luckywaldo7]

The CA trac site disappeared but I think the version of BA that became the base for CA was one of the very first versions of BA. I don't think you can really call CA 'the successor' to BA by any means.

If you make a game which follows the AA-BA-CA naming scheme it is hard to deny who is the audience.
Describing the game as "BA, but better" was sure to get some interesst from BA players.

Trying to steal the playerbase isn't the same as being the successor. :D

[knorke]

I don't think you can really call CA 'the successor' to BA by any means.

We are still talking about the game that calls itself the "the open sourced evolved BA" and "BA after years of improvements" yes?

ca: was trying to improve

Instead of merely improve, should have innovated! Instead of playing it safe with another game based on TA, something completly new could have been created.
What we hail as diversity to an outsider is variations of the same theme. Or if more frustrated, fragmentation?

[BaNa]

CA didn't leap into radically different gameplay for a long time. I have fond memories of playing a CA that was very similar to BA only with nice tweaks like wind making more e the higher it is and stuff.

Then once I came back and it was all different and flat balanced and had the spherebot everywhere and the dick towers omg do you ppl remember those?

[luckywaldo7]

I don't think you can really call CA 'the successor' to BA by any means.

We are still talking about the game that calls itself the "the open sourced evolved BA" and "BA after years of improvements" yes?

Yes, there is a difference between advertising and reality.

ca: was trying to improve

Instead of merely improve, should have innovated! Instead of playing it safe with another game based on TA, something completly new could have been created.
What we hail as diversity to an outsider is variations of the same theme. Or if more frustrated, fragmentation?

Now you are as bad as scrotum. You have your own ideal of a game, and you just wish the CA guys had made it for you.

[smoth]

Now you are as bad as scrotum. .

That isn't very fair waldo.



yeah it would have been neat knorke but they had no dedicated artists. Not a lot of projects around here can just go an start from scratch and not a lot of people around here have the perseverance to stick to 1 project long enough to do all the models and art needed.

[Licho]

I have to say that its very hard to keep things together with many developes. ZK has had tens of contributors and it has always been hard to avoid conflicts, especially in early days when the fundamentals of the game hadn't been decided yet.

Now there is fairly small core group that keeps consistent "tone" but even now it's sometimes hard to reach consensus and new developers often end up being in conflict with core devs, because they diverge from fundamentals agreed long ago. It's also impossible to get new developers doing useful stuff, new people usually do what they want, ignoring the big picture. Only the hardcore developer veterans really do what needs to be done instead and spend countless hours fixing bugs or doing generally unpleasant work..

So I think there is a general limit of how big volunteer game project can be. Larger groups would never reach agreement and would fracture in some way anyway. People won't just "take orders", it's not a paid job and without that you need to reach agreement which is harder and harder as the group size grows.

[PicassoCT]

Inb4 fractal Mutators to ZK, that repeat the whole drama again.

REVERT ALL THE COMITS