Spring RTS Engine

Hi

i have a wish for the next version. I want that in the next version, there shall be all bigger mods included like AA, FF and if bugfree and balanced EE too.
The reason is very simple:
atm the ppl play only AA or XTA and are to lazy to try other mods. Its nearly impossible for me to find enough good players who are playing FF and when i ask ppl, they say me that they dont want another mod on their PC or they are to lazy to download it. I can understand them in one way because they see that all play AA so they think that FF is a bad mod.
But most ppl who really tried the mod like it. On the other hand there are so few ppl who tried it, that if the ppl who like it want to play a game, they cant find enough players. So its a doom loop:

few ppl try it -> few ppl play it -> few ppl try it ...

if the mods would be installed by installing spring, i bet my pants that a lot more ppl would try and play other mods and it would be much more interesting in the lobby.
Sure you want me to say now, that its just 3 or 4 clicks to install a new mod, but thats only the theory. Ask the people in the lobby and you will see, that these 4 clicks are to much for them.
So help the not so often played mods to become more popular.

Heh. AA doesn't seem to have this problem, and its not included anywhere. Besides, how would you convince these lazy players to download balance fixes once they find something broken.

Not to mention that this would nearly double the size of the spring download.

It's the investment of time. TA units are very opaque - you have to get upclose and personal with each unit in game before even getting the vaguest idea of how to use it, and there's a tonne of units to get familiar with, and that's even before you have to get used to all the emerging strategy. Depending on how significantly different the mod is from OTA, it can take two or ten games before you get comfortable with it. That's multiple man-days of gameplay before you stop sucking... and there's no guarantee that the mod is worth that effort.

AA at least has a goal of feeling familiar to OTA and Uberhack fans. With EE or NanoBlobs you don't even have that - you're starting from scratch.

Not all of us are students with tons of time on our hands. Is it any wonder that a lot of us are skittish about trying new mods?

I have to disagree with on point. In SOME mods the units are very well defined (Like FF and EE). In FF there is a usefull "Battleship hunter" or "Assult craft" tag lines.

And also how much of a tacticean do you need to be to understand that a Light artillery tank go's in the back and a Medium Battle Tank go's in the front? I mean the unit names in EE are pretty simplistic ("battle tank" or "Plasma Mech" or something like that). Now in XTA you get Flashes, Lugers, Bulldogs ext...

Err... most units are named to Zoombie. As in "Peewee: Infantry K-bot"
or "Penetrator: Mobile **** **** **"

Really? Then I havent noticed it.

We need bigger fonts!

It's also a matter of download size. Personally, I think that the best way to solve this issue is by allowing modders better ways to promote their mods through the Lobby. But I've already gone into this at huge length elsewhere, so I'll just stop here.

A mod downloder, like the map downloder, would be really really cool.

mod downloader has been suggested before.
And could be made if all mods are to be found in the same place (FU like the maps).
Altaclient has an automatic (more or less) mod downloader, but since AA is found on source forge, it doesn't work for it.

Alll mods are on FU

Ppl only have to click the more mods button FFS. it really only takes a few seconds to get a mod download started, but indeed ppl are lazy! but hey blame them :)

we need a bigger more mods button

seriously though it'd be better if it was out of the battleroom since you cant even join a game if you dont have the mod.

There should be some unified process between mod creators and client programmers so that you can add favorite mods to taclient and taclient keeps the mod always up-to-date by checking version and does automatic download/installation. Sure this would need some defined infrastructure the taclient can use.

Don't forget S.W.S. and G.A.!

I agree that major mods should be included with Spring. The filesize doesn't seem an issue to me, as mods are usually very small.

Clicking the "more mod" button to get mod may seem easy, but trust me, for the average player, having the mod already installed and ready or having to wade throught the process of installing the mod by himself makes all the difference. Some people just can't find the right mod on FU, other get confused and get older outdate versions of the mod, other don't know mods go in the /mods/ folder, other don't know the lobby has to be quit and relaunch, some don't have the 5min to spare to download, other are too scared to lose their seat in the battlerroom, some are afraid of installing files from strangers, ...

However, mods update is an issue. If the Spring install comes with outdated mod, then it becomes to much a mess for the average user. The best would be for mod maker to agree to hold off their updates until new Spring versions. And for engine developper and mod maker to communicate well so they get the always "last stable" mod version included with Spring install.

I don't really think it is a good idea to include more mods in the default install, as they're all of doubtfull legality.

IMHO it's a better idea (legal-wise and maintenance-wise) to split mods of from spring engine entirely: have a bare-bones installer which installs just spring, lobby, etc. and a content installer containing a bunch of mods.

This way the content installer can be maintained and released separately from the engine, so less maintenance burden on the devs . Additionally, the "content manager" could provide regular, predictable updates, e.g. once every month or so and communicate with modders to not release patches in between, to avoid any confusion of new users (as zwzsg suggests).

Obviously you'd provide the links next to each other on the download page. Also, a community supplied installer installing both spring and the content, would be cool too, but I oppose to "officialy" releasing spring with even more doubtfull-legality content.

The problem with this is that once there are more mods, which mods do we include? As Spring gets bigger, more and more mods will appear. We already have quite a few, which would make a decent download size as is, and if we have to many more the filesize will just get to big to handle. I know that 'everyone has broadband', and that 'filesize doesnt matter', but a big download would scare people off, certainly as they are likely to play about 3 of the 10 mods they download. What is really needed is an integrated mod downloader like there is for maps. If all mod devs agreed to release their mods on FU, this would simpliyfy things alot.

Packaging mods with Spring is a bad idea, but an integrated mod downloader would do wonders.

You could base it upon popularity, but that brings us back to the viscious (sp?) circle the OP mentionned.

E: or a poll and taking the top-5 or so, but that just measures popularity indirectly

I agree with what Argh said, there need to be better ways for modders to promote their mod, not simply including a lot of them in the installer. Besides, what happens with the particular mod that didn't get installed?

That and I don't feel like getting all the mods properly in the installer, it takes enough time already.

Maybe the installer could allow the user to add mods in spring.
Like a package system. The installer loads the list of mods and allows the user to select the mods he/she wants to have installed.
The installer then downloads the mods from FU and installs them properly.

(like Cygwin's installer)

the idea of a real autoinstaller by joining a game sounds good to me too. But this installer should do 100% alone means, you only have to click on a game than there should be the message "you dont have the right mod, you wanna install it now?" and when you click "yes", the mod will be loaded and installed into the right folder.
So there is only ONE click for the players to install a mod and not choosing the install path, extracting and clicking on the link somewhere on FU.

Optimus Prime wrote:the idea of a real autoinstaller by joining a game sounds good to me too. But this installer should do 100% alone means, you only have to click on a game than there should be the message "you dont have the right mod, you wanna install it now?" and when you click "yes", the mod will be loaded and installed into the right folder.
So there is only ONE click for the players to install a mod and not choosing the install path, extracting and clicking on the link somewhere on FU.

Altaclient has the first half of it.
He directs you to FU when you try to enter a game without having the correct mod.