Spring RTS Engine

Its a good thing to avoid speaking to people then you are feeling some kind of pain or only partially conscient :)

If I avoided posting unless I'd had a full night's sleep and wasn't incredibly stressed out, I would never get to post. That said, I've been really extra-specially terrible today, I should have just gone to bed after Work

Warlord you don't have to just 'think' your right, you are right, there's been a tonne of research into this and its been proven users mentally filter out banners and adverts automatically, and it has a big impact on the perceived quality of a website. This can lead to suers filtering things out that aren't adverts or look similar or are located close to adverts.

Argh wrote: If I avoided posting unless I'd had a full night's sleep and wasn't incredibly stressed out, I would never get to post. That said, I've been really extra-specially terrible today, I should have just gone to bed after Work

Sounds like you NEED more free time :)

Forboding Angel wrote:

SwiftSpear wrote:... but the reality is, until the modding scene can produce a mod that stands on it's own ...

You are so full of shit.

I'm sorry I spent the 2 minutes it took the skim this thread. What swift said above is a mental ploy that causes people to think that the OC Games lying around are so unfinished that they aren't worth playing. It's a load of shit. The funny thing is that all of them have more features than BA.

I'm not talking about quality, I'm talking about community. CA has far surpassed features and what not vs BA, the only thing that it probably can't be argued that it does better is running on low end machines. Simply put, it's still hasn't been adapted en-large in the community. There are MANY mods for spring that are VERY solid, but solidity isn't the criteria here. The player base has to be migrated, and that means alot more than just "the game is better". There's alot of fucking good comercial games out there that haven't sold really all that well at all, and there's alot of mediocre and crappy games that have. Fuck, I bet the last red alert game outsold war in conflict.

The reality remains, the mods need to stand on their own, and no one else is going to make that happen for the mod teams.

Well, the point of my requests was to allow mods to have the chance to both benefit from a combined community, without being thrown in the deep end when they do finally release and want to establish a community.

You've stated that it doesn't matter how well we make our game, it is not going to have a direct impact on the surviveability of our mod. But really, that's what we mod-makers are here for. To make good mods. What else do you suggest we do? What I am asking for is for the lobby to make it a little easier on nascent communities to forge themselves into strong self-perpetuating ones rather then throwing us immediately in with the big fish that have got huge followings that will have the tendency to strangle out smaller, newer communities. ("I can't find any games of IW. What's this BA everyone is playing?" or, in #main "hi guys, how do I get a game of IW going?" "play CA! Downloader here!")

Warlord Zsinj wrote:...You've stated that it doesn't matter how well we make our game, it is not going to have a direct impact on the surviveability of our mod. But really, that's what we mod-makers are here for. To make good mods. What else do you suggest we do?...

In my years of political activity I have learned that quality doesn't matter if you can't get it promoted. Marketing is very important. As a friend said: "You might have won the Nobelprize but it won't help you get a big market share."

Marketing is for obtaining market share; quality is for retaining it.

I have not read the thread, these things go round and round. Odds are I support whatever warlord has been posting.

Imho Spring is potentially the best RTS. It's qualities are its modability and its wtfpwnrtswithfpsdidimentiondeformingterrain engine. Now we need more players :)

More ontopic:
BA will only be succeeded by a superior and foremost better advertized mod.

Sabutai wrote:Imho Spring is potentially the best RTS. It's qualities are its modability and its wtfpwnrtswithfpsdidimentiondeformingterrain engine. Now we need more players :)

More ontopic:
BA will only be succeeded by a superior and foremost better advertized mod.

Many superior mods have come and gone - the fact is that evolutionary game-theory comes in here, since the most important attribute for the success of a multiplayer-only game is the availability of players. As such, we get a massive positive-feedback loop that keeps pushing the system back into the stable state of having one (and only one) mod.

The only way a game can get players would be to go outside of the community to get them, and those players quickly convert to BA when they see none of the game they came to play in the lobby.

Actually, my problem with BA is not its dominance, or its gameplay, or its TA-content, but its incompleteness. It's been around for so long and still has no way to actually make the learning curve pleasant for new players - documentation is sparse to non-existent, there is no tutorial or single-player mode, and minimal in-game documentation. Despite being the dominant mod, it lacks the kind of development that you see happen with less-played mods.

pxtl, we do what we can for documentation and guides because so many people here have assumptions that X trick will work in Z7.82 Game and since most of the games played are the *A ta mods we get a lot of goofy assumptions and people making the mistake of thinking our projects are BA with a different skin.

It does suck that it is hard to find a game but what makes that hard for players starting is not finding a player. It is the player being able to host. Many people start games of gundam and want to play it but they cannot host easily, they then get frustrated and eventually just move to BA where they can join. Most of the people coming to play gundam get brickwalled by not being able to play the game with others.

Pxtl wrote:The only way a game can get players would be to go outside of the community to get them, and those players quickly convert to BA when they see none of the game they came to play in the lobby.

Need even moar marketing.

it does no good as the average user cannot host a game to get people to play with.

Why can't people host? O.o

My first gundam experience was horrific, I hosted a 3 person game to see what it was like. Chose the map as river dale (I think), we started and suddenly this huge thing was just sitting there fighting some other huge thing. I was confused, died, then the third player brought along his huge wtfthing and killed the other guy.

Then we played again on a bigger map.

Imperium wrote:Why can't people host? O.o

Router configs are arcane magic to most people and some don't even have access to that.

Imperium wrote:Why can't people host? O.o

because they were on router or something. I have fucking clue about why people cannot connect, I don't know what kind of craptastic setup they have. To most players their network connection happens via a series of little pixies who run their data packets through a 4th dimensional gate

The point is that it is not easy to host for everyone.

Imperium wrote:My first gundam experience was horrific, I hosted a 3 person game to see what it was like. Chose the map as river dale (I think), we started and suddenly this huge thing was just sitting there fighting some other huge thing. I was confused, died, then the third player brought along his huge wtfthing and killed the other guy.

smoth wrote: we do what we can for documentation and guides because so many people here have assumptions that X trick will work in Z7.82 Game and since most of the games played are the *A ta mods we get a lot of goofy assumptions and people making the mistake of thinking our projects are BA with a different skin.

So you guys expected TA with giant robots? That map is fairly large, so you must have started EXTREMELY close which is the only reason you would start right on each other. That commander's range is not very far so you had to be very close with your start positions. Then got upset because the game has a different commander than what you were used to and forever condemned it?

This is the attitude I am talking about. Players expect TA get something else and rather than learn what is happening they give up. We document what we can and get no feedback on shit like this. I cannot however, predict player assumptions that will hurt the project. This particular case kinda helps the point made by the thread.

As much as i hate to admit it, it appears that within the community the ta mentality hurting other projects is true.

Imperium wrote:Then we played again on a bigger map.

and...?


However, this is all inner-community stuff.


As I have said before, because people are expecting TA with ITS A GUNDAM this community is not going to welcome gundam rts. What I am looking at it the large amount of gundam fans yet hosting and getting setup are the biggest issue for most players starting out. I don't really plan on recruiting from within this community and frankly the way people act here would drive off most gundam fans... and lets face it you guys do not want animu fans here.

smoth wrote: So you guys expected TA with giant robots? That map is fairly large, so you must have started EXTREMELY close which is the only reason you would start right on each other. That commander's range is not very far so you had to be very close with your start positions. Then got upset because the game has a different commander than what you were used to and forever condemned it?

This is the attitude I am talking about. Players expect TA get something else and rather than learn what is happening they give up. We document what we can and get no feedback on shit like this. I cannot however, predict player assumptions that will hurt the project. This particular case kinda helps the point made by the thread.

As much as i hate to admit it, it appears that within the community the ta mentality hurting other projects is true.

Hah, woah there! To be fair after playing most RTS you don't quite expect a huge robot to appear straight off the bat, nothing TA orientated about it! I've not condemned it, it seemed pretty fun and looked good. We did start close, it was pretty poorly set up by myself to be honest but I never usually host, but I found the experience amusing rather than making me not want to play the game or anything silly like that. Seemed pretty clear to me that I was the one who made the mistake rather than the game! Didn't give up, I said we played again on a bigger map.

smoth wrote:

Imperium wrote:Then we played again on a bigger map.

and...?

See! The second game was quite fun, a bit confusing (like any game is the first time you play it) but I found it to be entertaining overall. Made me a little sad that tanks are pretty much a side issue, since I like tanks, but obv makes sense with regard to it being a game based on an anime that is about mechs.

I'm guessing your hostile reply was caused by my use of the word horrific... I meant it in an amusing way, imagine my surprise kind sir. In general though you are right to look for fans of gundam to populate your game rather than fans of TA... Makes sense really. As a side note I've never played TA before, the reason I turned up was because of Nemo/Hellspawn. >_>

Imperium wrote:Hah, woah there! To be fair after playing most RTS you don't quite expect a huge robot to appear straight off the bat, nothing TA orientated about it!

Not mad at you or anything, just frustrated because it seems to support the primary mod syndrome argument.that and I have had a splitting headache all day .

Imperium wrote:I've not condemned it, it seemed pretty fun and looked good. We did start close, it was pretty poorly set up by myself to be honest but I never usually host, but I found the experience amusing rather than making me not want to play the game or anything silly like that.

That is an odd reaction, people seem to generally just bitch about the giant coms.

Imperium wrote: Made me a little sad that tanks are pretty much a side issue, since I like tanks, but obv makes sense with regard to it being a game based on an anime that is about mechs.

Yeah, the tanks are becoming a bit more important. They are next to free in the next version of gundam making them a cheap late game unit.

Imperium wrote:I'm guessing your hostile reply was caused by my use of the word horrific... I meant it in an amusing way, imagine my surprise kind sir.

Nope, not so much the word, but in part that people do start the game and then go WTF when they have a giant battleship. Many people including myself go AWESOME GIANT UNIT FOR FREE but I also get WTFISTHISSHIT when others see it. So it is most frustrating because people will play the tiny 6X6 or whatever maps with epic coms on thinking that it will work because it does with TA based stuff.

Imperium wrote: In general though you are right to look for fans of gundam to populate your game rather than fans of TA... Makes sense really. As a side note I've never played TA before, the reason I turned up was because of Nemo/Hellspawn. >_>

nemo is a SUPER cool guy. I partly want to keep gundam a bit seperate because I do not want you guys to have to deal with the HEAVY anime nerds who will freak some of the people here out.

Why can't xta be the default mod, it seems to be dying all the time, it never meant to hurt anyone, it never meant to lie, and yet you said "goodbye" and to tell the truth it seemed that because no one ever wanted xta, they actually went and look at more mods besides BA, because BA at first look is very dull compared to xta.