Project 10 in 2010 - 1,000 players by the end of 2010

[el_matarife]

I know we keep having this damn discussion, in fact I personally feel like I have written a novel about it over the last few years. The fact is, Spring really isn't growing its player base and it is causing a whole host of problems. It is causing mod projects to fail. It is causing community stagnation as we all play the same people day in and day out. It is keeping Spring's "Bus factor" at ~5 people. Most importantly, it is keeping us from having fun. We've gotten to the point where there can be a 30 minute wait to start a game. We're literally spending more time in the lobby desperately scraping for players than we are actually playing Spring.

I know we've had the advertising discussion many times, and that it inevitably sparks a discussion about Spring's quality and retaining newbies and all that, so instead of having this discusssion I'm going to start a new direction: Let's build a roadmap for building Spring to 1,000 players by the end of 2010, complete with a good list of objectives and goals and a plan for reaching them.

I'm going to split this roadmap into several areas:
1. Release quality - This is all about achieving a level of release quality so that people aren't turned off by any bugs in Spring and have no reason to complain about Spring's quality.
2. Look / feel / polish - This is about making Spring's release newbie friendly and easy to use for people. Right now, people generally need their hands held to get all this installed and setup and that shouldn't be the case. This is going to take some user testing so that we can get a good idea of what the current pitfalls are, figure out what's confusing and unintuitive, and get it all fixed.
3. Infrastructure improvements - This is about several things, mainly to do with the "back end" of everything Spring related. One of the main components is the lobby clients and server. These need to be rock solid stable and amazingly polished. The other component is the website. We're going to need to really get the wiki and documentation perfect. We also need a Mac lobby client released and ready.
4. Platform building - This encompasses several aspects, mainly what kind of releases we have. I think the consensus is pretty solid that Spring needs to be bundled with mods and maps and "sold" to people as a standalone game. This means we're going to need a BA installer, a CA installer, and installers for all the other mods. It also means we need to bring Spring to OSX. The goal here is to have a bunch of "Stand alone games" that work across every major platform we can promote and release through a lot of outlets that don't pay any attention to us now.
5. Advertising / outreach / evangelizing - This is probably the last step, since if we do any heavy promotion before we're ready we will just keep turning people off of Spring.

This roadmap should essentially become a giant "To do" list for the Spring community. We should break down all these areas into a bunch of smaller, concrete goals we can aim for, and people can "take ownership of" and shepherd to success. Here's the part where I ask for your help: I want you to list a bunch of small easy goals we should accomplish, like "Fix this bug here" or "This dialog is confusing please fix it" and classify them in the areas I've listed. I'm hoping we can define a lot of the problems that are keeping Spring from growing, and then fix them. I also welcome "big ideas" that might help us achieve the 2010 goal, but they should go into the brainstorming thread I'm going to create in a few minutes. I'll probably make another thread for "2010 Item Tracking" since items you're going to list will probably disappear in the mass debate that's sure to follow in this thread.

[Jazcash]

Spring already has 1000 players. I'd guess 10000 including smurfs.

Is Spring still in Beta stage? I've heard no mention that we've left Beta yet.

Spring is never going to take off until all the major bugs are fixed and people who aren't super geeks can play the game.

I've introduced a couple of my friends to this game. Most of them play console games and use the computer every now and then. I always end up having to help them install and run it through TeamView.

There's tons of information it's just scattered all over the place. The Wiki is pretty much hidden from view hiding in the "Help" page...

Somebody should make a complete "How to install and run Spring" guide for newbs.

[Wombat]

well, problem is number of active players... i lately see like 3 full autohosts in the middle of the day + like 3-5 1v1 and 2v2 servers + 3-4 human games... that not much tbh :/

[Hoi]

Somebody should make a complete "How to install and run Spring" guide for newbs.

No, it should just work. The only thing a player should need to do it click on install.exe and then everything is done for him. Maybe some sort of tutorial should be opened or whatever, but it should work. As it is now, if you want to play spring you need to fix 20 problems first. Maybe spring doesn't work on your computer at all, or x widget lags a lot. Maybe you don't have a map/mod and the torrent system doesn't work. Maybe you don't know how to join a battle or you join one which is actually one of the 300 empty autohosts. bla bla bla ect ect ect

Everyone should be able to just get started with spring, even someone who has never touched a computer before. Until the bugs are fixed and spring has been made user friendly there will never be 1000 players.

[el_matarife]

Spring has 100-150 players in the offpeak hours, and 300-400 at peak. I'm talking about hitting 1,000 peak players on a regular basis, and maybe 300 on offpeak hours.

I understand Spring is pretty newbie unfriendly which is why I'm asking everyone to define tasks we can do to make Spring newbie friendly and polished.

From your post I'm getting two task items:
1. Restore the wiki to the front page
2. Revamp the help page with a good newbie guide including installation and configuration

[Wombat]

I understand Spring is pretty newbie unfriendly which is why I'm asking everyone to define tasks we can do to make Spring newbie friendly and polished.

ban sefidel, flashfire etc. first

maybe more servers with max rank limit ? and servers like these shold be always in first place on the list in newbs channel (smth like topics on forum)

[Licho]

Winter project already works on first points. If you want help and can code, you can join.

Sorry to say that but PLANS AND IDEAS FOR OTHER PEOPLE ARE USELESS!! Roadmaps are worthless since you cannot make sure anyone follows them..

All people work on voluntary basis here, you cannot tell them what they should do or how they should do it. Only way to have something done is to do it yourself..

So if you really care only way to help with these steps is to actually start working on them. We are working on 1-4 atm, but only need coders possibly visual artists or people capable of creating installer.


Same about other stuff - want wiki fixed - do it!
Dont ask others to do it.

[el_matarife]

The problem is that right now we've got 30 different people doing 30 different things, and not all aiming at the same goal. We keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, which is a pretty common definition of insanity. I'm not trying to tell people what to do, I'm trying to get people to give me a list of what needs to be done. It would be a lot easier to get people to help if we've got a list of our needs.

[Licho]

Ok, need pro level coders for winter project.

Winter aims to resolve first problems outlined here - its simple multiplatform lobby with main aims simplicity of user interface and reliability. You should never need to download something manually or ask people in #newbies for help getting into single or multi player game.
All features there should work 100% of times and be important for newbies, or they wont be there.
Winter aims to serve as a starting point - be able to download more advanced lobby or tools. It will also allow greater mod-lobby integration.

Target platform is .NET/mono. If you are interested contact quantum or me.

[koshi]

re 4: In the process of doing an installer for S44 I've actually created a installer framework that you can plug in your mod/mapfiles into, set some infos in a text file and hit "build". I think I've mentioned that somewhere some time ago and even published the git repo, but no one seemed interested. If anyone is now, I'll cleanup the repo, maybe write a short HOWTO.

[Otherside]

The problem with Spring atm (and not trying to bash BA here)

if you dont like BA you are screwed.

Ofc BA isnt to blame for this, spring started as taspring and the majority of players who play spring atm just want TA in 3D. New players will only get guaranteed games of BA at all times of the day no other mod atm can do that. Basically new players will be put off if they dont like BA, and again im not trying to flame but BA is not everyones cup of tea and unless you have patience and dont mind waiting around for another game/mod, if you dont like BA you will probably quit spring.

Its up to other mods to advertise outside spring. I have seen very few mods try (CA doesnt because it needs to get IP Free first). So content devs have partially themselves to blame but tbh they have a point when some content devs dont want to spring there players into the same lobby. So a seperate lobby could be a good thing

Then most of the other alternatives that are also played are also *A mods(so more patience or quit spring).

I believe for springs playerbase to increase we need a stable engine version(or multi engine version support on a per mod basis?) A nice lobby/front end i know this is not the engine developers job and is probably up to content and lobby dev's. But we dont have a professional looking mod/game that covers these area's (in b4 argh says PURE).

Single Player and decent AI's would help player retention aswell as attract new people.

Some further optimisations + proper multicore support in the main spring build (not having to download a seperate exe).

The point above also reflects springs user friendliness which is its biggest drawback. I find setting up spring on any computer and getting it to run fine quite easy though only because ive been around for ages and know how to tinker with settings to get optimal performance.

Also a playerbase of 250+ at peak is pretty much standard atm for every non blizzard RTS bar a few special exceptions so spring isnt doing to bad compared to the commercial market the main difference being with commercial games with such a playerbase is that alot of people are playing singleplayer so the playerbases are infact bigger and so is activity.

also we need SWIW release

but this has all been said b4

[Jazcash]

Tbh, I personally don't think we're going to get even 500 players by the end of 2015.

[Licho]

And then again problem is you cannot tell people what to do :)
For example atm spring does not work 1/2 of times in windowed mode on windows. Unitsync does not work from p/invoke on 64bit windows platforms. Spring installation is screwed if you dont turn UAC off on vista etc..

All these things are spread across the project and you cannot force someone to fix it for you. You cannot control development :)
You can nicely ask and wait, thats all..

Probably good beta testing would help, but pleas for players on test server always failed. If you cant get even bunch of players to playtest reliably, any sorts of large scale coordination is doomed.

[zerver]

maybe more servers with max rank limit ?

Or more non-clan servers. Newbs may end up playing in stacked games. Possibly a bad start causing them to give up on Spring entirely. I have heard quite some whining about cheats too. Some introduction 'for dummies' to how Spring works might help.

[Forboding Angel]

Perhaps spring should organize a foundation/orginization (non-profit) like the mozilla foundation. The problem with that is, where would the revenue come from?

[el_matarife]

I've got three ideas on the newbie front, one is more rank limited servers, one is some sort of matchmaking system to pair up newbies so they don't get slaughtered badly on their first few games, and the final idea is pairing up newbies with veterans as mentors. More documentation and a Lua based in game tutorial could be pretty helpful too.

The problem with Spring atm if you dont like BA you are screwed.

Blaming BA for Spring's paltry growth is wrong. Just because they're dominating now in a limited player base doesn't mean they will always do so, and if we get more players there will be plenty of players for every mod. We had several other successful mods that got decent amounts of playtime like E&E in 2006, but they all died as the community just stopped growing.

Perhaps spring should organize a foundation/orginization (non-profit) like the mozilla foundation. The problem with that is, where would the revenue come from?

Advertising on the website, selling merchandise like t-shirts, or who knows. I bet we could raise a few hundred dollars a month on Google ads on this website alone.

Those of you with "big ideas" to help meet our goals, please write them up in the brainstorming thread.

[knorke]

1000 players is a very huge number, even most fps projects fail to reach.
how many players do other (free) online rts have?

For example there is http://www.netpanzer.org which imo is very polished and gameplay wise is somewhat similiar to kernelpanic. Very noobfriendly even if you have never played an rts before, just drive your units into an outpost and it will produce more tanks for you. Oh, and you can join a game anytime even after start.
Still, there are hardly more than ~20 players online. A little more when it was more popular.
I think 1000+ players is an amount only reached by the blizzard games and the c&c series when there is a new release.

Also, many gamers just suck at rts and most spring games are quite complex. At a 10 player lan maybe 2 can pick up and play a new unknown rts, the rest will just build bulldozers until they run out of money. How is such a player suppossed to find out the little grey dirtpatches on the ground can create money? Starcraft at least has huge fancy crystals.
Need noobmod.

[el_matarife]

1000 players is a very huge number, even most fps projects fail to reach.
how many players do other (free) online rts have?

I have no idea, but some recent commercial RTS are pulling several thousand users. In theory, Spring should have even more players because it doesn't cost anything to get started. I'm not sure what the numbers look like in terms of Spring downloads versus active lobby players, but Koshi tells me S1944 gets several hundred to several thousand downloads a month but almost no playtime on the lobby which indicates to me there's a huge untapped market out there.

Also, many gamers just suck at rts and most spring games are quite complex.

Spring's learning curve is like running into a brick wall. There's not many RTS that have 200+ units, and that definitely confuses people, but I'm hoping in game Lua tutorials or unit guides can help a lot.

[Licho]

Spring's or BA's? I dont think its hard to learn to play say KP.

[el_matarife]

Spring's or BA's? I dont think its hard to learn to play say KP.

BA, CA, NOTA, pretty much everything but Kernel Panic and a few simpler mods. I don't know what the unit count and tech tree of all the mods look like offhand, but I can't name many commercial RTS with the amount many Spring mods have.