Spring RTS Engine

Johannes wrote:

Ultimately, a website which does not meet the satisfaction of Bob and Beherith will not be a website worth having.

And how would a site being made somehow piss them off, unless it somehow was really, really awfully made?

I did not mean to be authorative. However, I think if something falls below the expectations of the person designated to maintain it and its reputation, it may place the future of said object into question. I believe it would be better to be safe than sorry in this case.

The issue is not so much if a site can exist, rather, does its existance serve a worthwhile purpose and will it stand the test of time?

In my opinion a worthwhile purpose is a site which will provide information with regard to BA in the future and be of a good standard. It is also of importance to be curtious with regards to the overarching opinions and goals of the mod's maintainers. This would preferably come in the form of official support, trust or endorsement.

If you make a site without clear and objective support you are going it solo and at such a time, although there is potential for support from higher powers, you can no longer be certain. This may lead to confrontation in future: inevitably or unintentinally, one person's ideas may conflict with another and at this point scenarios similar to those in which AF "got burnt" by in the past by may arise again.

Indeed, also if I were to make it on my own onus, it would be a fansite, I am not in the market for open ended neverending competition

So here's a small list of things I thought would be nice for the site to have:

• Changelog for latest update
• Planned changes for the future
• Upcoming tourneys and old tourneys
• Latest clan battle replays
• Map of the week (Selected by a maintainer and made default map on certain Autohosts for a week?)
• Top BA widgets
• Guides / Tips / Advice
• BA's own Wiki
• Integrated Modinfo page for latest BA build
• Media page (No user submissions of images for the sake of consistency in quality, size and content)
• Bug reporter like Mantis
• BA's own forum with the sections detailed below

Forum:

-News and Announcements
-Balance Discussion (For the players to give feedback on unit balance)
-Widget Discussion (Discussion of BA compatible widgets and which widgets should be default or w/e)
-Suggestions
-General

Or something like that, I haven't thought about it much, that's reserved for if this thing actually goes ahead.
Would be nice to get more support for this, it's nice to know people will use it or even care about it all before you start working on it.

No need for forum I think, can just link to http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=44

And I'm confident that a good site will be used. I don't know if starting with such a big list of "nice to have" stuff is the best approech - get the essentials together first. Other things can come later. Basics like:

short "What is BA?" introduction/FAQ
gallery
download page with simple installer(w/ maps and AI)+instructions
links page

Johannes wrote:No need for forum I think, can just link to http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=44

What a messy listing of topics. Separate categories are definitely needed. You can't just chuck all discussion into a single section. If all the BA players there are atm knew about the board, a lot more discussion would occur.

Jazcash wrote:

Johannes wrote:No need for forum I think, can just link to http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=44

What a messy listing of topics. Separate categories are definitely needed. You can't just chuck all discussion into a single section. If all the BA players there are atm knew about the board, a lot more discussion would occur.

If you have a server with unlimmited processing power and bandwidth and PHP/MySQL, setting up PHPBB3 is trivial... so it would be silly not to set up your own forums if you were doing everything else anyway.

appearently there seems to be the idea that instantly after some magic point advance BA will instantly be slashdotted and the site flooded with players and lots of servers and subforums will be required. Seems unlikely.

Maybe look what "site" BA has right now?
http://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Annihilation
Anything is better then that...

Jazcash wrote:If all the BA players there are atm knew about the board, a lot more discussion would occur.

Doubtful - they'd still be too busy playing the mod!

maybe. but fact how many of them dont know about it is quite sad.

The site wouldn't need to be anything really informative until around 3 weeks before the game is released. Before this time, it should just be a basic one page "trailer site". And, possibly a forum. Keep in mind, the forum would need to be modeled entirely as a hype engine.

faceleg wrote:

Jazcash wrote:If all the BA players there are atm knew about the board, a lot more discussion would occur.

Doubtful - they'd still be too busy playing the mod!

Nonsense, half the fun of the game is discussing it! :D

Thanks for the offer, taken to PM.