A public letter to Z-man.

General Stuff about Armagetron, That doesn't belong anywhere else...
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Lucifer
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Lucifer »

Word wrote:May I suggest you actually ask Disney for money (or an actual job that includes developing Arma and nurturing the Tron franchise's fanbase) in return for saying into a camera how thankful we are or some other concessions of the kind you'd be willing to make? They could then present themselves as a more selfless corporation that helps/has a close relationship with/gives back to its longtime fans, empowers the open-source/e-sport community etc. :P
Um, Disney, selfless? They weren't even that when Walt ran the company.

And I know, they spun off Panda3d and all, and they've been playing nice with the open source community. They've also aggressively pursued a lot of projects, while, for some reason, leaving TRON clones alone (it's like an informal peace treaty, I think).
I just think you'd have to sell that idea in a clever way. Sure, they could clone the game at any point and have enough programmers of their own, but given Arma's long history in the open source community it would cause a scandal if they claim sole credit for it. Armagetron is still way better than almost every Tron-themed game they ever put out. Call it paid fan art if you want.
How about YOU make the pitch, and let them sue you if they like the pitch, but want to insist on ownership?

That's the rub here. I could make the pitch, and I'm a clever person, I figure I could find a way, but what if they're just not open to it at all? What if all it does is bring their attention to us, and they decide to make examples of us? Whoever makes the pitch is hanging out in the wind.

Well, since I'm both depressed, borderline suicidal, and really want to make something happen, I guess I could make the pitch. What have I got to lose? I'm like Marvin, but with an actual life, heh.

I'm open to suggestions.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Monkey »

Sorry to hear about the divorce Lucifer. I hope that things improve for you.
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sinewav
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by sinewav »

:( Yikes man, I hope this storm passes quickly.
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Lucifer
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Lucifer »

I stumbled across Tidelift, which is sorta promising. Obviously the name comes from the phrase "a rising tide lifts all ships". The idea is that people using open source software pay tidelift some money every month, and then tidelift distributes that money to all the software being used by its subscribers. It's targeted at commercial enterprises that would be paying for middleware like Apache and Python and stuff like that, but I don't see a specific reason a game can't use it. The real issue there is that open source games typically have small audiences, so while it would be good if the system also distributes money to the libraries we use, it wouldn't give us much in the way of money.

So, for us to take advantage of it, we'd have to develop code other people would find useful as sort of a side effect of our work.

Anyway, go check it out and see what you find, eh?
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Word »

Let us/me know if you want to talk to someone or if it's getting better.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by 2020 »

I went bankrupt this summer in my attempt to create an economic platform. Raised £125,000, two versions were crapola, and the third is sleek, efficient, but just misses minimum UX to enable virality. Bah.

One of the plans was to operate a tournament using it, based on the ladle format. Come to think of it, Arma may have been instrumental in the formation of the economic system, obliquely at least. The original idea for the Tronic Ladle etc was £1 entry, and if we scaled sufficiently, prize money distributed accordingly -- it's on this prezi though I can't seem to point to slide 33 -- http://prezi.com/7ekkcnygptkk/?utm_camp ... c=ex0share

I came back to the game because the kid I introduced it to when he was 5 or 6 I think, invited me to play again, he's now 13. We loved it. And he's addicted to Fortnite. It's got the same level of zing. Nah, Arma is better.

The problem has always been how we organise ourselves. We solved tournament organisations for Tronic. It's still way better than any commercially managed egame. And we tried to expand the community without money, but our teamwork was gack. Honestly, worrying about Disney is the least of our worries, like an ant worrying that a human being will stand on it, when quite frankly they don't give a rat's arse.

Don't have much to contribute. I'm going on with the economic platform, but it is glacial development now. I would love to have thrown £10k at this, through the platform, to instigate an egame tournament. The game is good enough, we all know that. Good enough to pull in 1 million players for sure. The tournament structure robust *enough* perhaps.

I appreciate Compugene's efforts and suggestions, sorry to hear about your hard times Lucifer, glad you are sticking to principles. Seriously good game, Z-man, and the team, and fortress still a classic.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by bilbo baggins »

can't chime in anything productive, but i'm currently recovering from a knee repair so have lots of spare time on my hands atm... Popped back into arma and the forums to see how everyones doing and the game seems very down on player base. I know you guys are trying to think long term for survival and growth, but maybe we need a bit more emphasis on upping player numbers at the moment. Hope your all doing well and thanks Z-man and all the devs for creating a timeless, deep, and immersive experience for the few who get to play it. <3
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by sinewav »

Nice to see you again!
2020 wrote:And we tried to expand the community without money, but our teamwork was gack.
I think the problem there was we were chasing a moving target. Look at how the game industry changed over the last 10 years. Two years ago I backed a Kickstarter for a game I wanted to see developed. Probably spent like $80 on the KS and they raised hundreds of thousands. Their small team of about 6 expert developers (20+ years in game design) launched an amazing game two years later on PC/Console/Steam/GOG ... the works. Lot's of good promotion and high ratings / reviews. Guess what? Their multiplayer servers are less busy than Arma's were a few years ago. Compared to most games Armagetron is an outstanding success even though it did not become a household name.

Do I think Arma can be revived? Yes, but it would take massive financial backing and a complete and modern rewrite. The target audience is still there, but there is no way to reach them without full time commitment.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by TWeeTY »

I am a huge fan of open source. Yet, open source doesn't mean free of charge because the time the devs spend is valuable and deserves some kind of compensation. I would be willing to contribute if I knew how. Should we make MAGA hats? Make Armagetron Great Again?

Of course, that is silly .. yet the key to making this game great again is realizing that it is already great (I agree with Monkey). I think the key is awakening the old crew to promote the game by playing it. Yet, some of the newer blood in this game are a rude and tyrannical few. They like to bully and berate. Using racial slurs and ugly obscenities is unfortunate and creates a culture of ugliness. Sure, trolls will always be with us, but this game would be better if players (especially the oldies) would positively encourage the newer players. This means to provide some leadership too. Banning and kicking may be necessary but should be about ugly rudeness and not favored playing styles.

I think the real beauty of this game is already built in to it. It is an absolutely superb piece of work that hasn't got a tenth of the kudos it deserves. It is great as a retro game. Updating it to be like the new shiny multimedia games would be interesting, but maybe it's a better choice to keep it minimal. The new and shiny can also be the glamorous shallow that continually needs more stimulation and stroking. Games like that are a dime a dozen. What about tron just being tron? KISS is the genius of this game. IMO, this is certainly the most skill-based game online. (I am biased too)
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Rnoodles »

I dont understand why putting Tron onto steam isn't priority. The remaining tron community realises the devs are busy and have their own lives so why not try upload tron to steam as it is? Would the devs rather see Armagetron completely die over the next few years and most likely forever or would they rather see a huge influx of new players, new coders and possibly active devs?

For every troll that finds this game on steam I know there will be 20+ genuine players, players that will fall in love with this game like the rest of us. Players that will want to help with tron tournaments, clan sites, bug fixes, servers ect.

I am a gamer, have been all my life. I play all types of games, shooters like halo and cod, strategic games like age of empires and civ 6 or RPG and survival games such as Ark. Armagetron in my opinion has the highest skill ceiling and is the most satisfying game I have ever played. This game would do extremely well on steam. Why not give it a try? why not email the steam direct staff and find out what changes they would like to see made before they accept Armagetron onto steam?
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Titanoboa »

^ this. This is a good idea and deserves to actually be considered.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by delinquent »

I usually consider Steam harmful to developers, but in this case (tron being a free game and all) I suspect it could be more than helpful.

My only concern is that Valve might suppress it if they can't make money from it. It might be a nice idea to start submitting arma to a few different indie sites, plus the likes of GOG and such.

Problem with arma's format is that it's too far away from common platforms at the moment, and those platforms are hard to moderate. The various Discord servers are, as every room is, filled with vitriol, and I suspect I'm probably one of the youngest folks still using IRC - and I'm in my late twenties now. Bringing new players into the community is hard, especially when the generation behind mine seem to care very little for tucked away corners of the internet like this.

It might be an interesting idea to start including a pollable API for the server package. With such an API, things like discord bots and site plugins could very easily grab tourney stats from servers and create their own little communities around them, maybe inspiring some of the play that we used to have.

Oh, and arma doesn't seem to be featured in any of the linux app stores anymore. That's how I found it, but to find it I now have to search the store. Being front & centre was useful.
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by Titanoboa »

delinquent wrote: Tue Jan 28, 2020 2:44 am[...] linux app stores [...] That's how I found it
I think that's how a lot of players found it. Whenever I'm in game now and OS is mentioned, linux seems to be favoured by a majority of players. (Judging by my very limited sample size) the majority of currently active players are on linux! Let that sink in. I'm not bashing linux, and I don't have any statistics available, but I'd bet my pants there are a lot more people on windows than linux out there in the wild (especially casual gamers). What if we tried to reach at least some of them?
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Re: A public letter to Z-man.

Post by 2020 »

sinewav wrote: Sun Nov 04, 2018 3:19 am
Do I think Arma can be revived? Yes, but it would take massive financial backing and a complete and modern rewrite. The target audience is still there, but there is no way to reach them without full time commitment.
Only just got this Sinewav :)

I don't know about re-writing code.

After the rise of chess in 2020, I think there's feasibility for Arma. I'll post separately.
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