we sux

[Wombat]

Notch sold 500,000 Minecrafts (multiply it by 10 euro --___--)

we got ownd by the game with 20x20 text models

---------------



one of the minecraft players. sad halloween is not popular here, i would make peewee costume

[Jazcash]

I shall repeat this until something gets done about it. Spring is in a league of its own in terms of gameplay, player flexibility and community driven content.

The reason we're still so low down in the food chain is due to a few simple primary factors:

• Still no (viable) Single Player mode
• Steep learning curve and harsh playerbase
• Little co-operation to get things done between all Spring projects, be this games, lobbies or the engine.
• No marketing plan, whatsoever.

Now, the first three points have been discussed to the point of ragequit but the last, marketing, I've never even seen any serious conversations about.

Any game, and I do mean any game, be it good, bad, or god damn terrible, can be a top seller if it has decent marketing. Spring, has zero marketing.

Currently, I feel we should not have any marketing, as Spring is still no where near version one and its games may suffer now or will suffer in the future when certain dynamics of Spring get changed and games have to adapt to those changes. There are still many bugs to fix and features to implement and until we are squeaky clean for Spring Engine version 1.

Until that day comes, I do not believe we should advertise Spring in any official form at all as there's nothing worse than promoting a buggy game, then having potential players put off due to its unfinishedness.

But when that day does come, and I hope it does, marketing could be done in several ways. I find referrals a nice way but you could always take the original internet ads route as well. Anyway, I have dozens of points I want to express but really don't see the point until we're ready for it, I'm not going to bang on about anything ... yet. For now, I'll just state a few of my own personal opinions.

Successful games are self-sustaining games. Games which make so much money they pay off the costs it took to make it and give enough profit to expand the game and make yet even more profit, allowing many other games to be branched off it and so on and so on. At the moment, all Spring's financial needs are paid for by a handful of people in the community, kind enough to donate their own savings toward the project and its sub-projects. This isn't a biggie though as things like labour costs aren't needed, nor is marketing or producing or anything really. Just mainly server costs and small things. If Spring is to be a popular game throughout the world, it needs to be self-sustainable.

Another point I may add is premium accounts. A lot of games like us, free online games, also have premium subscriptions for players who take the game seriously and want more. As has been said in the past by a lot of people who play Spring, including myself, I don't mind paying to play Spring seeing as I get so much out of it. Seriously, I would've quite happily have paid £100 a year to play Spring if I knew how much I was going to play it from day one. Obviously, costs like that are ridiculous and I'd be surprised if anybody else would want to pay that kind of money. But there's still money to be made, and with money, Spring grows! I would certainly consider premium accounts in the distant future if I was considering expanding a game like this.

Anyway, I feel like I'm babbling so I'll shutup now

[luckywaldo7]

EEMMMM TEEEEEE



ARRRRRRRRRRR

[Wombat]

ugh, didnt want to start any serious thread, but, oh well lets continue a bit. recently i found another small issie with our 'marketing' (ya it doesnt exist rly, but i mean friends etc) - i got strange feeling we chosed wrong target-group. like, lets be honest, its a pc game, we should tell about it to like 15-18 y olds (ya ya, i know what r u thinking), but in the end, we got bunch of old devs and old casual players who dont have rly time to play. kinda, meh...

btw, i bought MC myself, but im still loyal ! blame kaiser, he told me to buy it!

[Teutooni]

At one point I was going to donate 100Ôé¼ to spring but neither paypal nor some other transfer method I tried accepted my debit card, so I thought fuck it.

[Wombat]

coz u cant do this with this kind of card

[KaiserJ]

I do not believe we should advertise Spring in any official form at all as there's nothing worse than promoting a buggy game, then having potential players put off due to its unfinishedness.

+1... there aren't any non-atari ip projects in a finished stage. except KP... which would probably do well to have its own server, same with next vers of gundam; same for zero-k.

any advertisment that directs people to the current main server i think would be futile

[Wombat]

small suggestion for devs, our current potential target-group = world - ATI users. *cough*

aww why so serious, lets bring smile on our nerdy faces, someone got any pics of his halloween costume so we can laugh and troll him ?

[Forboding Angel]

One of the problems is that all the *nix folks are scared of spring because of *A, and many legitimate publications have refused to feature spring for the same reason. *A may have helped get this shindig off the ground, but it's rapidly becoming an anchor.

[Otherside]

I said move all *A content off the site a long while ago. And move *A to a seperate server.

BA and the rest of the *A mods have run their course and are currently gimping spring apart from other issues.

But on a sidenote Spring will never compare to minecraft because even though minecraft has very little content atm it has a ton of possibilities for the user. When that game has more depth it will be crazy.

[Google_Frog]

There are more people who want to play a collaborative voxel editor than people who want to play RTS. They like the creativity.

Have you seen some of the massive worlds that groups of people have made? There is a ridiculous amount of time spent on pure voxel paint in Minecraft. Add a survival/exploration type game to that and there is a massive potential playerbase.

It is also something in a new genre. Have any big game companies made anything like it?

[PicassoCT]

People will play whatever game it takes if the story is good enough to catch them, keep them catched and never let go. One day will deliver proof :)

Its not all about the mechanics and the libertys within, although those from dev-perspective they are the only reason games exist for.

INB4 Links to GamingNazi-Vids

[knorke]

how many games of any genre are there, that are not FPS or RPG but RTS and still have players online years after release?
-now ignore starcraft 1/2
-now ignore [current version of EA's Command&Conquer] also even this dies after a year or so
-all these are fullprice games and not free.

i think spring is doing okay-ish?

For lolz:
I really think *a are the most polished games on spring right now with no serious bugs etc.
Sadly the talented ca team is trying to pimp out that concept to the limit instead of annoucing something new. Remodel the flash!!!!1

[luckywaldo7]

Well you get a huge advantage when you can steal your assets as opposed to making them all from scratch.

Also when the engine provides all the functionality you need, instead of writing large parts of your gameplay and workarounds for unwanted engine behavior in lua.

No work required = polish!

[Panda]

I tend to like short funny games that allow me to be somewhat creative within an interesting medium, like Plants vs. Zombies. I even got the version of the version of that game that allows you to make your own zombies.

The reason why I like these kinds of games is because I have a very limited amount of time to play games and it's nice to play something amusing when you're lucky enough to have the free time to play it. This kind of game was proclaimed Game of the Year, so it must be fun even though it isn't that complicated of a game. Perhaps Spring developers would find it helpful to get inspiration from games like these.

[knorke]

I think the engine provides enough functionality and everything else can be made in Lua. It is still less work than to make an engine yourself. In that aspect, there is nothing stopping mods being non-*a clones aside from documention and lua skills maybe.
CA does add new things but it is still very near to *a, imo a shame with all the potential of its makers.

@Panda
Its a matter of SP vs MP.
For singleplayer, AirRaid or KP vs CPU actually are quite close to that.
Most MP spring games can be played in 30 minutes or less as well, just the waiting for opponents can take longer. If you are at/near the computer anyway, you can just leave the lobby minimized while waiting for players...

[Johannes]

I think the engine provides enough functionality and everything else can be made in Lua. It is still less work than to make an engine yourself. In that aspect, there is nothing stopping mods being non-*a clones aside from documention and lua skills maybe.
CA does add new things but it is still very near to *a, imo a shame with all the potential of its makers.

Also would be good to have a concept that's better than a well made TA clone. If you just want to make a good polished game, some crazy new hit-or-miss ideas are not necessarily needed.

[Otherside]

If only they released Imperial Winter.

Duke Nukem Forever is going to be out before !!!

[Gota]

Spring is not a game that has any
"play fast" functionality.
I agree with panda that is exactly the allure of those games.

Imagine this:
You install a Spring game by downlaidng a single file instalelr than includes everything you need.
You pres the icon on your desktop which you get after you finished installing and it immediately thrusts you into the game without any menus at all.
You start playing right away.
After you played a bit and quit when you want to play again you press the icon and it immediately loads you into the game to the last save you did.
the game autosaves every 2 minutes and asks if to save or not when you quit.
Of ocurse it autodetecs visual quality either before the game actually start or during the game i.e. a quality fps manager.

You play the entire campaign r set of missions without doing anything in any menu and without downloading anything else.

The game is not complicated as hell ala hundreds of units TA style.
Instead its action packed with simple controls and calm looking pretty visuals(maps/units/effect).

Spring is working in linux mode now...it needs to start working in apple mode,than it will get players.

[scifi]

if imperial winter would be released, i dont think spring would get more people.
Even if a TA remake would be made,with all the things that made TA great, but with a fresh view, people wouldnt come to spring.
The playerbase would stay the same, but still spring has a resilient playerbase though as knorke said.

Spring doesnt lack that many features, and comparing, spring is a lot more complex than minecraft.You have to think a lot more.

Problem of spring, is the lack of marketing and a clear purpose, like jazcash said. Also the age diferencial is a bad concept , spring is for people of all ages, most people that play spring are over 20.

Also premium acounts wouldnt be good, just look at Combat arms, most people play it for free and only a bunch other have premium items.

You cant have that sistem in a RTS.

what must be done, is show spring as an engine to DEV and LEARN, while HAVING FUN!, simple as that.

A good purpose would be to get into google sumer of code, and get that list of things that spring lacked, done!!!!!!!!.


ALSO 1v1s are fast and fun, more fast than a minecraft game
problem is lack of players, single player would be great :)