How to make that game more popular?

[Phytotron]

authentification

Pssst, -fi (or -if).

Which is kinda weird because

de-authenticated

[epsy]

As promised, http://www.reddit.com/r/armagetronad/. Make what you like out of it.

[þsy]

authentification

Pssst, -fi (or -if).

Which is kinda weird because

de-authenticated

That is odd, and good to note, although a PM would have been preffered

The SP server is down, but will be up soon, so maybe we should encourage using that so that newbies are able to play

[matchbox53]

Alright seems like i have thoughts about it and my answer is the following i am going to disable authentication for sometime but before i do that i am going to ask everyone who wants vote for disabling it should do because its a public server and i want everyone who plays opinion .

Here it is
http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtop ... =1&t=22021


The problem is we will face after disabling authentication will be the acceptance of newbies among other players and how they treat them and that is the biggest problem imo because even though a newbie can join but will they be treated good ? or will they be bashed like what we faced with authentication turned on, surely its not the same cause the newbies werent that much

[Z-Man]

Check out the latest snapshot:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/armage ... pha_z1655/
The 'about' menu item has been moved into the new 'Help' submenu, which also contains items that open:
- the included (outdated, that's next on the list) html documentation
- the main wiki page
- a web interface to our IRC channel
- the user data directory
- the system data and configuration directories (nifty especially when running from zeroinstall or other app bundles, then they'd be hard to find otherwise)

Improvement suggestions welcome. Yeah, that\s the quick and dirty approach and no replacement for help screens directly in the game or tutorials.

It's not on the PPA yet, the doc move broke it.

If you want to make video tutorials, stick them on to the wiki. We can then link to them on the main page. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of video tutorials myself. For starters, you can't skim them, you can't search them for the information you really want, you can't copy-paste from them and switching between the tutorial and actually doing things is cumbersome. Keeping them short helps a bit, so I'd limit myself to explaining one thing per video.
(On top of those unavoidable shortcomings, many use text instructions or no video editing at all or are otherwise poorly done. So do a clear voiceover and cut out waiting time.)

[Word]

maybe you could make a menu point that allows players to move the var/screenshots folders or just to see where they are located.

[Z-Man]

The var folder is always right there in the user data folder, like the user config folder. Screenshots.. yeah, forgot about those. They may be somewhere else.

[Mecca]

It would be pretty neat if there was a tool that came along with the Armagetron download that would allow users to browse for the files for a moviepack, preview what it would look like, have all their chosen files renamed to the appropriate names, and moved to the appropriate folder, ready to use as a moviepack.

If I had the time I could probably make this tool myself, but I figured I would put it on the table.

Also, I remember TR2N Origins allowed users to switch moviepacks while the game was still running. How difficult would it be to implement that on Armagetron?

[Z-Man]

It would be pretty neat if there was a tool that came along with the Armagetron download that would allow users to browse for the files for a moviepack, preview what it would look like, have all their chosen files renamed to the appropriate names, and moved to the appropriate folder, ready to use as a moviepack.

Well, it's a good idea and would certainly be useful, but I don't think the lack of ease of content creation is costing us too many players.

Also, I remember TR2N Origins allowed users to switch moviepacks while the game was still running. How difficult would it be to implement that on Armagetron?

Their selection method was a huge hack and will not be repeated here. What we need is a proper mod selection system with priorities and server determined mods and all that, and for that we first need proper flexible content loading. I already started work on libcroco integration, but that stalled pretty early on. It's a CSS library, which basically means it can be used to set/replace values in xml nodes depending on context. How cycles look like would then be an attribute of the spawn entry in the map, for example, and a CSS mod would be able to alter the look of the cycles.

[Lucifer]

I remember Lucifer talking a few years ago about how he was going to move to development on single-player exclusively, but I don't know anything beyond that.

Real life. Heh. All I was seriously talking about was continuing the resource system to a point where single-player mode would become a more serious game mode. As a resource system, allowing linking maps to each other when successfully played (under various conditions) and allowing arbitrary content to be loaded in a variety of ways, it should be possible for our extensive community of third-party content contributors to create single player campaigns that we can pick the most interesting and fun and bundle with the game. Also, a tutorial game would be a use case for such a resource system.

The barrier to new players is higher now than it ever has been, and I think it has to do with people being snobbish and rude, quite frankly.

Fortress: GRIND ASSHOLE!
FFA: DON'T SEAL! ASSHOLE!
High Rubber: ASSHOLE!

Etc.

We used to have community standards that basically dictated being polite and having fun, when did that stop?

[Mecca]

Also, I remember TR2N Origins allowed users to switch moviepacks while the game was still running. How difficult would it be to implement that on Armagetron?

Their selection method was a huge hack and will not be repeated here. What we need is a proper mod selection system with priorities and server determined mods and all that, and for that we first need proper flexible content loading. I already started work on libcroco integration, but that stalled pretty early on. It's a CSS library, which basically means it can be used to set/replace values in xml nodes depending on context. How cycles look like would then be an attribute of the spawn entry in the map, for example, and a CSS mod would be able to alter the look of the cycles.

o.o

I see. So basically CSS is "styling" the cycle when it is spawned.

This leads me to another question. I assume the floor (and possibly the walls?) are created differently than the cycle and cycle walls since I can change the color of the floor during the round, right?

Fortress: GRIND ASSHOLE!
FFA: DON'T SEAL! ASSHOLE!
High Rubber: ASSHOLE!

We used to have community standards that basically dictated being polite and having fun, when did that stop?

Love it.

I noticed the politeness started to decline when high rubber became popular, and it really went off the deep end when people started dogfighting.

*Random Tron match*
TaZ: mecca, df?
*15 seconds later*
mecca core dumped TaZ for 1 point!
TaZ: omg wtf n00b!!!

Back in goshdarn, we only complained when people would just ride the rim, and usually that complaining didn't last long as the offender would be first blood the following round. o.o

[Z-Man]

This leads me to another question. I assume the floor (and possibly the walls?) are created differently than the cycle and cycle walls since I can change the color of the floor during the round, right?

Cycle and rim walls share a common base class handling the bulk work of collision detection, but yeah, the rendering code is completely different.

[Mecca]

Thanks for the info, Zman.

[Phytotron]

We used to have community standards that basically dictated being polite and having fun, when did that stop?

Yep, you sorta answered your own question. "Open/DF/loose/whatever" and the special game modes, combined with the demographic shift to mostly teenagers.

[sinewav]

...combined with the demographic shift to mostly teenagers.

Can we imagine this is partially because kids are playing in computer classes at school and turning their friends on? Personally, I'd like to see more growth in the single woman aged 35-40 demographic, if only I knew how to advertise for it, haha.