Spring RTS Engine

Starcraft isnt spring its a commercially developed game.

And tbh starcraft suffers the same issue but because tis so big the effect has little to no impact on it. We're not big like starcraft. We got no gigantic korean fanbase and BA/AA TV channels and shelves full of BA/AA guides sold in shops.

Whatsmore this isnt content thats a year or two old, this is almost as old as starcraft, 10 years of TA and counting.

People get tired of BA and AA and XTA. I've seen it happen so many times in the lobby people leaving because its all the same.

Just admit that you're wrong for once...

Actually don't, this is entertaining me during a particularly tedious class.

So you're saying that people look for different things when they are obtaining commercially produced games than when they are obtaining privately produced games? Somehow that doesn't compute.

I find your insinuation that Koreans are lesser gamers because they don't demand new content every two weeks like you somehow think real gamers do very disturbing.

People probably are leaving because they don't like *A, they are frustrated at all of the *A choices, the number of units in *A is huge, they can't figure out hosting/joining games because of some problem, or they are tired of the douchebaggery and spam in #main. I challenge you to produce examples for your rather strange assertion that what Spring really needs is for all-new content to be released every two weeks.

Your just trolling now.

Actually, Felix does make some solid points.

Maybe it would actually be a good idea to start selling AA/BA guides in shops

high learning curve
obsolete website
obsolete faqs randomly placed around
small download

all this combines to new people opening up the lobby, not being able to play, then deleting

hunterw wrote:high learning curve
obsolete website
obsolete faqs randomly placed around
small download

all this combines to new people opening up the lobby, not being able to play, then deleting

yeah.

GETTING TO PLAY SPRING;
first downloading the engine, then the games, then the maps, then the lua addons and then learning how to play by losing 30 games compared to;

GETTING TO PLAY WC3;
installing wc3, downloading automatic updates, and going into battlenet automated matchmaking to play games against people of your skill level(roughly ~~)

ofc the other one is free and the other one costs real-life-monies ;///

felix, people use soap, people have used soap for a long time, therefore BA will be used for a long time. People do not get tired of soap, therefore people do not get tired of BA. BA has no fanbois because soap does not have rabid fanbois. BA is bubbly because soap makes bubbles when wet.

Please don't make assumptions, especially when comparing with something like star craft, they're just not the same.

I think this soap analogy sucks ass.

AF, People used VHS, people have used VHS for a long time, therefore VHS will be used for a long time.

Or not? We are using DVD and other better formats now

I don't think trademark gets the point at all.

If were as simple as felix said and what i had said had no truth in it (not the soap) then we should have hundreds of users mroe than when we started, but our lobby has never broken past the 500 barrier and the average peak fo 300 has dropped back to a cosnitsent 200 verging on a lowly 150.

Considering that we have new people coming in, and our averages are dropping not rising this means people are leaving.The circumstances don't fit.

TBH I think including the same content is one of the minor reasons, if it is a reason at all .. website, singleplayer, not being able to find game weigh much heavier if you ask me.

(IOW the fact that # of players is getting lower, does not necessarily prove you are right...)

well I know many people personally who have simply gotten tired of TA.

That may be the case, but if they had easier access to other mods and news about them from this website, and it would have been easier for them to find games, then possibly they wouldn't have left.

I think stuff like that has a much bigger impact then just putting a different mod in the installer every release.

(not that I'm fundamentally against it; I just don't think it'd help much (if any) without other improvements/changes)

well rotating the mod used should send out a clear message we're spring not ta spring, and act to highlight the full range of content.

That and its unfair that any 1 mod should have an unfair advantage by being bundled with the on engine every single release.

AF wrote:well rotating the mod used should send out a clear message we're spring not ta spring, and act to highlight the full range of content.

That and its unfair that any 1 mod should have an unfair advantage by being bundled with the on engine every single release.

Oh boo hoo, it's so unfair, let's all go be emo now.

Rotating the mod each release would be:
-Confusing.
-Misleading.
-Annoying.
-Potentially fraught with licensing issues.
-Unfair to those mod creators who choose not to GPL their mods. (You're the one who brought up the unfair argument.)

Also, how is my analogy with Starcraft flawed?
Both are RTSs, both are primarily played in online multiplayer. The only argument I've seen against the analogy is "OLOL KOREANS", as if Koreans are some different species who look for something in games that normal people don't, or something.

Your soap analogy shows that you don't understand the basic premise of an analogy, which requires the two subjects being analogied to have similarities which would cause them to have the same behavior or attributes under the same conditions. What do soap and Spring have in common? Umm... they're both nouns? That's about it.

solution is easy: do not bundle anything. after installation, send users directly to UF's spring mods section.

Automatic lobby mod download would eliminate this "problem".

And regarding reasons we are loosing player base:

- every game bores after some time, some people will get too bored and eventually leave

- some people are attracted to newer similar games (supcom etc..)

- to "fix" this we need constant supply of new players. Best way to achieve it is making spring/lobby/infrastructure easier to use. Mods dont have to be easier, nobody expects to own in multiplayer game during first attempt. But we must assure people wont leave before even playing one game and before learning what is spring and it's mods all about.
Promotion is also needed but I don't expect many new people to be as patient as current players at trying hard to play game which looks (look at some screenshots/website) like from the past century.

- note that no game survives forever :) There has to be some development and upgrades and eventually major "new" release (CE) to maintain significant player base in the long term.

this is why i want to expand uf, to do that i need a better uf, after the better uf is ready i want to add lots more games.

the goal is to make other stuff the main hit-generator then backends like this will be completely fine as i wont actually need the ad-revenu.

I've been talking about the whole Lobby as the primary point-of-contact with new players, and the best single way for new games to get advertised, for well over a year now. We need something like Steam, where people can find out what's new without leaving the Lobby. Trying to get new players to come to the Forums to discover Spring's various games is a null object, and simply hasn't worked very well. I'm glad that opinion seems to be finally heading in that direction, it'll cure a lot of the problems with new games not seeing any play.

The other giant thing we need is some sort of way to build single-player missions. I was hoping that Smoth was going to get his idea for a interactive LUA tool for placing Units on a Map done, but it's been back-burnered, probably at least until TD is done, maybe forever. Just being able to place Units and then assign them to an AI or to a given Player, then having some sort of way to hook them into a single-player experience, would be a major step forwards, even if it lacked all of the bells and whistles of a commercial title.