sourceforge 'downloads' advertising

[dimm]

I have used sourcforge's downloads sorter to find new games to play and i think alot of other people do too. Springrts has 2k weekly dls while wesnoth for example gets 16k. Several games much worse than wesnoth get approximately the same downloads and spring is obviously better than, or at least required more work than, wesnoth. Why is this and how can it be fixed?

Absolute annihilation used to be dld alot from sourceforge and at about the same time there were always at least 3 full dsd games on the server. Which is the cause and which the effect i don't know.

[Das Bruce]

Spring is an engine?

[Hobo Joe]

The games for spring all need to be advertised individually and come with their own installers that just install that specific game, and the engine.

i.e *A mods should focus on how it's improved OTA gameplay on a new and improved engine, with more stuff and flashy features, while non-TA mods could focus on originality and free-ness on a flashy RTS engine.


If you talk about an engine it bores most people, but if you talk about games and then mention that they're on a nice engine it sounds much better.


Seriously though, all the mods need an installer for things like this. It would take a lot of the pain out of getting a new player set up. They could even come with a lobby of their choice.

[zwzsg]

No.

It takes more effort than you think to maintain an installer. Making it once is one thing. Remaking it every time a new version of the engine is released, the updated all links to it, is another.

We already have trouble with Linux distributions using outdated Spring versions. Do you really want to multiply that issue by the number of game?

Few spring games are big enough to stand on their own feet. Alone, they are weak. United, they are stronger. Advertising works by the power of repetition. If I hear about 1944 once, I forget about it. If I hear about Complete Annihilation once, I forget it. If I hear about PURE once, I forget it. If I hear about GRTS once, I forget it. etc.. But if I hear about Spring RTS five times, then the fifth time I would recognize the name and decide it's time to check it out.

[Pxtl]

I think the "engine" thing might be part of the problem. That makes it sound like middleware to prospective players - I know I ignored Cube for a long time back when it was new because it was advertised as an engine and not an FPS. If Spring were advertised as a suite of games, it might go better.

[hoijui]

if the advertisement features a video or screen-shots of spring games, it will matter little if there is "Spring Engine" or "Spring Games Suite" in the title, no?

[Satirik]

spring is for 1337 !!finding and installing it is part of the game !

edit: check the screenshots on sourceforge ... those are really old and ugly ...

[Hobo Joe]

if the advertisement features a video or screen-shots of spring games, it will matter little if there is "Spring Engine" or "Spring Games Suite" in the title, no?

Well maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but an ad for an engine is far less interesting to me than an ad for a game, even if the screenshots look decent(the sourceforge screenshots are especially ugly imo), because it gives the impression that the focus isn't on making a game with good, balanced gameplay, but rather on just making a good engine, and of course a good engine without good games isn't worth much to a player.

I was introduced to Spring as a TA remake, but if I had been introduced to it as an engine without the knowledge of it being a TA remake, there is a much smaller chance I would have downloaded it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't advertise it as what it is - a great OSS RTS engine, but there should be more focus on advertising it as a catalog of games.

[Pxtl]

By advertising as an engine, people see ads for it and they may think of it as something like CrystalSpace - for the longest time, if you went to the Crystal Space homepage it was absolutely bereft of any links to any actual _games_ implemented using the engine.

[MidKnight]

By advertising as an engine, people see ads for it and they may think of it as something like CrystalSpace - for the longest time, if you went to the Crystal Space homepage it was absolutely bereft of any links to any actual _games_ implemented using the engine.

Wait a second. There's a game other than that weird WoW clone that actually uses Crystal space?

[dimm]

OK B.A. needs to be downloadable from sourceforge. That will give the same numbers as the engine. Somebody needs to tell the BA developers.

[KaiserJ]

BA has cavedog stuff, is technically illegal to distribute, so sauceforge probably doesn't want it.

welcome to the circle of shame and obscurity

[zwzsg]

BA has cavedog stuff, is technically illegal to distribute, so sauceforge probably doesn't want it.

BA is just a fixed up AA (the spring mod). AA (the spring mod) is just a repacking of AA (the TA mod). AA (the TA mod) was hosted on sourceforge.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ta-aa/

I don't understand either.

[Pxtl]

Same situation as Spring itself - too small to care. Sourceforge didn't go after Caydr because they didn't _notice_ him.

[CarRepairer]

Same situation as Spring itself - too small to care. Sourceforge didn't go after Caydr because they didn't _notice_ him.

No it's not. Put the pieces together.

The AA mod of TA required that you own TA to play it. It modified existing units and added new ones. The AA mod for Spring is not the same case, so it's illegal to distribute it.

[AF]

I don't think source forge paid much attention to the AA project afteralll why should they, so what was a TA mod was okay, but then it became a spring mod and the legality was brought into question but source forge didn't know this and I doubt they're aware of it even now, afteralll what are the chances considering the thousands upon thousands of projects on there?

A new project fir BA would probably be successful in getting on there too despite failing their policy checks and violating their agreements simply because it's an automated system. Of course as soon as they get a cease and desist order or a complaint by a disgruntled rival modder/Atari/raging Blizard lawyers, the whole project would go down in an instant before any questions are asked about the true nature of it's legality or even it's relevance to the reason at hand

[Pxtl]

Same situation as Spring itself - too small to care. Sourceforge didn't go after Caydr because they didn't _notice_ him.

No it's not. Put the pieces together.

The AA mod of TA required that you own TA to play it. It modified existing units and added new ones. The AA mod for Spring is not the same case, so it's illegal to distribute it.

I'm pretty sure Caydr dind't start using SF until after AASpring came out, and at that point *A Spring mods become redistribution of pirated Cavedog content. But I could be wrong.

[AF]

Well the original AA for spring was made by AA players from TA not caydr himself

[CarRepairer]

Does AA for TA contain a model of a flashtank or just a file that says "double the speed of flashtanks" ? There's a big difference there. The former is a Spring mod (post OTA content) the latter is just a simple file that contains no intellectual property.

[Pxtl]

Idunno about the Flash, but at the very least I know that the rescaled models are in the AA package as actual models. That oversized Krogoth had to be included as the oversized Krogoth 3do model.

I'm guessing the only thing not included in AA's files were the textures.