Spring RTS Engine

MetalSucker wrote:not a "real" game reviewer, so your opinions will never get better.

no true scottsman..

I was just giving a man a well deserved dose of one's self.

OT:
-no, people won't bother to join a forum - BUT, you can give them a link with a unique generated token that sends them to said forum and logs them in, while the registration is automagically done in the background, gathering the email is very important, it allows you to ask after they leave, to get them back, IMO not collecting them and not sending regular email (with consent, of course), is a deal-breaker, they kind of expect the whole experience of "belonging", not just downloading, registering and no hand holding

-people don't read, people don't write (well, the vast majority ... ) - I wish this was just my opinion - don't expect them to.

-people watch videos, people play tutorials

-don't look for reason in their leaving, look for emotion, it's what guides them in most things - was is anger, frustration, lack of understanding, lack of satisfaction, fear of being made fun of on their first multiplayer battle, no easy way to train before "going in", being overwhelmed with information and options?

-there has to be a player community for each game, clearly separated, each with its own tribal thing

BlitzTank wrote:...frankly evo is meh...

Coming from someone who likely hasn't actually ever really played it, you'll pardon me for not particularly caring about what you have to say. Play a few games and get back to me.

What are you talking about, I've played 10+ games of it and I already feel like I know all there is to know about it because it's such a minimalistic version of other games on engine. There was a bunch of people who tried it at the same time I did and they all said the same thing - after about 3 games it becomes really boring because it's so dumbed down, you feel like there's nothing more to learn beyond the basics.

BlitzTank wrote:Gajop you only have to look at lobby or interface in game to see that there is a lack of "real" game developers. I won't deny that good games have been made but that is through almost 2 decades evolution process with the majority of the legwork done a long time ago. The same old open-source style half-assed contributions which got the engine/games this far just isn't enough to bring the kind of 'success' that everybody would love to see. I think basically either someone gets off their ass and does a proper job or engine will fade into obscurity. I don't see how anyone can disagree with this tbh.

Despite people starting from scratch once in a while, there is real, measurable progress that can be seen.
The lobby/interface is the least interesting part for most, and the general difficulty and lack of tools to create an ingame lobby is what stopped most developers from creating something decent and simple. I think with matchmaking we'll solve 30% of the issues at least, and measurable progress was done in that regard.

BlitzTank wrote: Also yes this is kind of shit talk from somebody who contributed nothing but it annoys me when people dont acknowledge the truth and make threads like "why isn't this game more popular?" "why are people leaving??" etc. It needs a lot of work and no one wants to do it, it's as simple as that. As long as there is no "real game dev" work then playerbase isn't going to get any better.

I think you're wrong. There are real devs who've been contributing on a steady basis. If someone went, sat down for a month and made a great ingame lobby, that would be only possible thanks to *existing* devs making: chili UI, engine pr-downloader/modarchvie APIs, lua lobby libraries, 3rd party error reporting systems, elo systems, autohost bots, and much more.
This might not be obvious to a non-dev, and you'll probably just cheer for the last guy that assembles something great eventually, but stuff has been going on and it's now only easier to create something thanks to the work from a number of people from the community.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

BlitzTank wrote:What are you talking about, I've played 10+ games of it

When? What version specifically?

Haven't read a lot of this thread, but something that seems missing is to say that many efforts go towards improving the experience for developers, rather than for players. As anyone who has ever developed anything for Spring will confirm, this is a good use of time.

I am Picasso, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a dev not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the player in the lobby , 'it belongs to the fun-thirsty.' 'No,' says the man in the Infrastructure, 'it belongs to rapid.' 'No,' says the man in the engine room, 'it belongs to richard stallman.' I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Spring. A community where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Spring can become your engine as well.

Fun aside.. conditional comebacks would be sweat.

"Please leave a message what you would like to see fixed, and if we fix it, we will inform you via mail of it."

Or ... "Please leave a message complaining about whatever you would like to see fixed and, if you ever fix it, we will get back to you and complain about it". Hmm maybe not

Silentwings wrote:Haven't read a lot of this thread, but something that seems missing is to say that many efforts go towards improving the experience for developers, rather than for players. As anyone who has ever developed anything for Spring will confirm, this is a good use of time.

Lowering the difficulty for starting up for game/engine development is a good way of improve experience for developers. That and well written engine documentation for game/engine devs with tutorials and examples.

Super Mario wrote:Lowering the difficulty for starting up for game/engine development is a good way of improve experience for developers. That and well written engine documentation for game/engine devs with tutorials and examples.

I think engine documentation isn't going to be created by the engine devs at this point, and certainly not all of it. Maybe we should start a new wiki page (category) and fill it with engine development knowledge as we go? For example I'd like to know how multithreading code should be written, in particular how to use shared resources related to mutexes/semaphors (there were some discoveries related to speed differences depending on what method is used to lock variables, so I don't want to just go guessing).

Maybe - a sort of tooltip wiki would be helpfull.. that can be edited and shared on the fly- erasing the need for a special webpage.

Fixing the Doxygen docs is the first/easiest step there afaics. But many non-experts have made pull requests to the engine recently, so I guess the barrier to entry here is already not so high.

Silentwings wrote:Fixing the Doxygen docs is the first/easiest step there afaics. But many non-experts have made pull requests to the engine recently, so I guess the barrier to entry here is already not so high.

It's not that making pull request itself is hard, rather it the "getting started" part.

The problem with any significantly advanced project..

how to help that? offer several guided tours through the code while the engine runs, to show what does what, in one huge step through the debugger?

It's not that making pull request itself is hard, rather it the "getting started" part.

One comes before the other.

Silentwings wrote:

It's not that making pull request itself is hard, rather it the "getting started" part.

One comes before the other.

The other what? Documentation?

As far as I can see your sentence only contains two objects and my reply is unambiguous. If it is still not clear, normal procedure is:
(1) Get started.
<< insert studious and commendable activity here >>
(2) Make pull request.

Could you do a step by step example, silentwings? I still dont understand. From opening www.githybris.com to pull request

Silentwings wrote:As far as I can see your sentence only contains two objects and my reply is unambiguous. If it is still not clear, normal procedure is:
(1) Get started.
<< insert studious and commendable activity here >>
(2) Make pull request.

Technically speaking you don't need to compile the engine in order to edit the files and make a pull request.