Installer Woes

[AF]

So I'm at my friends house and he's quite pissed that TA Kingdoms cant see the other computer on the network, so I show him spring running on my computer, and he wants it. So we go on and download spring at 30kbps on his mobile tinternets dongle while eh crosses his fingers that he doesn't go over the bandwidth limit.

The website itself weighs in at 200kb every single page. Then 15MB of downloading, and its done, so we start installing, and it starts downloading springlobby and spring settings and his face is just 'omgwtfareyoudoingffs', then we have to go downloads mods and maps which Id warned him about.

So of all things I'd ask for, bundle springlobby or spring settings with the installer. The user should never have to download things through the installer. What if he'd downloaded it at work and brought it home and couldnt install it because it was trying to download files?

Bundling things in the installer should mean actually bundling them. There's no excuse for it, especially when we're using nsis. No reason why the installer cant be rebuilt in a cron task or some other automated mechanism once springsettings or springlobby change.

[Gnomre]

http://s44.koshi.homelinux.net/files/Sp ... taller.exe

http://jobjol.nl/1683

http://evolutionrts.info/evolutionpatch ... SSetup.exe

etc

[AF]

From an end users perspective:

If its not on the download page it mustnt be downloadable

Besides, he wanted to play a TA based game because he'd played kingdoms

[lurker]

You make an okay point, but I'm going to completely ignore it to suggest that you could have just copied most of your spring folder instead of getting the installer.

[AF]

My spring folder at the time was 2.4 miles away, what I had on my machine was not a windows binary

edit:: nor was it upto date so a download was inevitable

[SinbadEV]

Blah Blah Blah, installer should support the ability to be "bundled" with content if it's in the same directory as the installer, then we could like burn a CD/DVD of content and make offline installers for lan parties.

[el_matarife]

Blah Blah Blah, installer should support the ability to be "bundled" with content if it's in the same directory as the installer, then we could like burn a CD/DVD of content and make offline installers for lan parties.

It would be pretty neat to release an ISO of Spring plus a bunch of GPL maps and mods then seed it on a few torrent sites. It would be a good way to get Spring in front of a lot of new users quickly. We could also get it on Fileshack and the other big "Game download sites".

[AF]

tbh while this is a good idea, I think you should take the word spring in your post and replace ti with an arbitrary game or mods name. Doing a BA iso and a CA iso etc will get you far more downlaods and publicity then a pick n mix 'spring' iso that'll confuse the people who try to figure out what it is theyre downloading

[koshi]

Blah Blah Blah, installer should support the ability to be "bundled" with content if it's in the same directory as the installer, then we could like burn a CD/DVD of content and make offline installers for lan parties.

Code: Select all

git clone git://springlobby.info/git/koshi/installer.git

change into installer/installer dir, put stuff in example.mod/game/{maps,mods} change graphics and such in example.mod/installer, change infos in example.mod/installer/defines.nsh, run build script, done
build script is bash

there's a subdir that has the basics for buntu packages too
all of this stems from what i've done for s44

[zwzsg]

It would be pretty neat to release an ISO of Spring plus a bunch of GPL maps and mods then seed it on a few torrent sites.

And then have outdated version of spring stay there for years, and countless people being put off Spring because "it doesn't work" as the wholly outdated Spring sure wouldn't synch nor log into lobby.

[hoijui]

that is the case for all games that are played online and that update/change from time to time. that can not be a reason to not release an installer, as others do that too.

[Auswaschbar]

0.79 will include springsettings.exe + springlibby as default lobby.
So there should be no download needed when sticking with the default configuration (except for maps and mods).

Also, like stated in the other thread, I plan to release a portable zip-version of spring. Its so easy even you could add maps and mods to it

[zwzsg]

From an end users perspective:

If its not on the download page it mustnt be downloadable

Now that's an idea! Let's put KP, S44, Evo, Pure, etc.. installers in download link page. Uh... is it wiki? Oh, it is indeed. So all I need, is Tobi consent.

[AF]

What we need is a bit on the download page telling the user in a max 2 lines that you can download the engine here, but you can download actual games by going here (link to the games page) then we need people to actually use the games page as was intended, and link to their project pages and add pictures.

Right now its a wall of text, only NOTA has a picture.

[AF]

hmmm I like how P.U.R.E and gundam are strategically at the top of that page, and somebody made all of *A mods of EE

[el_matarife]

And then have outdated version of spring stay there for years, and countless people being put off Spring because "it doesn't work" as the wholly outdated Spring sure wouldn't synch nor log into lobby.

Obviously we'd have to include auto-update and make sure we release new ISO files onto the same sites every time we do a new version. The description could also include a link to our website like springrts.com/currentversion which would always list the MD5 / SHA1 hashes and file size and name of the ISO of our current version to prevent tampering.