Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

What do you want to see in Armagetron soon? Any new feature ideas? Let's ponder these ground breaking ideas...
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aP|Nelg
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP|Nelg »

kyle wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 1:11 am
Z-Man wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:09 pm What do you care where the newbies are coming from? Be nice to all of them! :moustache:
an instance where I'd have just reacted to your post with a thumbs up
👍

EDIT: Yikes, what a page break...
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Galaxip »

lolz im always nice especially to new players

was just interested, does the steam client have a new ID ? i can check with /players
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP|Nelg »

Galaxip wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 1:30 am lolz im always nice especially to new players

was just interested, does the steam client have a new ID ? i can check with /players
Retrocycles is based on 0.2.9 instead of 0.2.8.3, but that won't necessarily be Steam-specific.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Titanoboa »

aP|Nelg wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:23 am
kyle wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 1:11 am
Z-Man wrote: Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:09 pm What do you care where the newbies are coming from? Be nice to all of them! :moustache:
an instance where I'd have just reacted to your post with a thumbs up
👍
+1
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Z-Man »

Thanks to all for hepling so far! Time for some stats.

Impressions, visits and above all installations are not overwhelming, but well above the threshold where I consider the whole thing worthwhile. So far, about a week in, we had
489000 Impressions (that's how often people in principle had the chance to see and click on the game)
24000 Visits (number of times people actually clicked and saw the store page)
3000 Installations

I guess the main thing working against us here is the lack of a proper game genre to put this in; right now, it's racing+action+sports. Should we as a test drop sports and racing?

And they're not all peaked around launch, there is a bit of a baseline. What's going down is the number of visits from the discovery queue. But Steam treats games younger than a month a little better, so we have some time in moderate sunshine left. And that special treatment can be repeated on important updates; the release of 0.4 would be such an occasion for us.

Compare that to the about 400 downloads we usually get. Not bad!

But there is also some depressing data. The play stats. Just two numbers for you:
Median play time: 7 minutes. That means 50% of people who actually started the game made it past 7 minutes.
Percentage playing one hour or longer: 8%. I'd wager a big chunk of them are veterans.
If I were a Valve Algorithm designed to keep Steam users happy (just so they come back and spend more money), I'd bury Retrocycles. It's probably fortunate for us that Valve Algorithms aren't very good :)

The main influence on these play stats is the game itself (Server ecosystem and players matter, too; you're discussing that in the other thread). Fact is, random players today don't like it very much. Who can blame them? We're competing with Fortnite and Star Wars and all we have is some hacked together OpenGL immediate mode almost content-less blob. That doesn't mean you're wrong for liking it or us devs are wrong for caring about it. But it's valuable information.

I restate my intention to get 0.4 out. That one has some actual single player content! Maybe that can be expanded in the future. And/Or it all could be merged with sty+ct+ap. The new easier to extend networking of 0.4 isn't going to be of any use if 90% of the servers are stuck on a diverging path.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by kyle »

Z-Man wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:53 pmI restate my intention to get 0.4 out.
I agree, What will it take to get 0.4 out? I think that would be a good step forward. At least it would still work with 0.2.[8/9] sty servers, where most of the advantages to sty are. And it has super useful tutorials.

I have not said this before, but I'm not a complete fan of the way we handle the server explorer with required skills for different servers. I think it would be better if the server owners could set some flag on the server for required skill level. I would like to spin up a CTWF (noob welcoming) and a more competitive one. Because ultimately I do think throwing someone into the exact some maps to practice, is far better than just telling them to stay away.

I know if zones v2 is something to be included in 0.4 there were still some off issues with the CTF hack that I worked on a while back, Something would cause issues when flags were picked up and dropped and lead to some random crashes. The thing I wanted to add was bouncing zones in V2, but getting a shaped zone that spinning to properly bounce off an object at the right time, and handle updating spin and whatnot was something I was thinking a lot about, but never could figure out a clean was to update the existing logic for that. That's basically when I got busy and have not had the time to work on this game that much, still hoping to be able to focus a little more of my time starting sometime in September.

So really what feature set do we want in 0.4 and what could get kicked to a latter version or 0.4 or maybe 0.6?
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Titanoboa »

Z-Man wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:53 pmMedian play time: 7 minutes. That means 50% of people who actually started the game made it past 7 minutes.
I can't say I'm too surprised. I wanted an "authentic noob experience" when I got the steam client, and it put me in a local game 1v1 with a bot. Using z and x as turn keys, arrows to glance, and the smart cam, I struggled... After 2-3 rounds I thought "f this, I give up", but I kept playing for the sake of it. I didn't win the match, even though I tried (somewhat casually)-
If I were to guess, most who stayed for 3-10 minutes got stuck in that first game and, disheartened, gave up.

I didn't voice this sooner because (a) I should've been involved long before the release if I wanted a say, bit late to complain now and (b) I'm not sure what to do instead.

Saw you changed the default camera to custom, that's a big step in the right direction.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the game telling you to use this key for that and so on (even after changing the keys yourself). Those notices get kinda in your face. Wouldn't it be more dignifying to the player if it just told them "Go to Player 1 Settings > Input Configuration to view your controls" or something? More efficient too (as in fewer messages). And perhaps some smart way to turn them off once the message has reached the player.


Overall though, very happy with the steam client and the release as a whole. It's very refreshing to finally see new players regularly.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by assaindan »

In regards to attracting more new coming members; is there a way we could theoretically align our marketing with the movie story through idk pictures Gifs on steam or on YouTube idk if anyone ever watched those movies but then they have a back story I guess just food for thought didn’t get to read all these comments quite busy at the cultivation center
everyone wants their medicine
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by assaindan »

Z-Man wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:53 pm Thanks to all for hepling so far! Time for some stats.

Impressions, visits and above all installations are not overwhelming, but well above the threshold where I consider the whole thing worthwhile. So far, about a week in, we had
489000 Impressions (that's how often people in principle had the chance to see and click on the game)
24000 Visits (number of times people actually clicked and saw the store page)
3000 Installations

I guess the main thing working against us here is the lack of a proper game genre to put this in; right now, it's racing+action+sports. Should we as a test drop sports and racing?


Good ideas z , but I would leave racing- definitely get rid of action.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by Z-Man »

kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 am
Z-Man wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:53 pmI restate my intention to get 0.4 out.
I agree, What will it take to get 0.4 out?
My personal pain points:
- Sound needs improvement, mostly the mixing. And for me there is a really big delay between a turn and the 'cik' sound. Could be the sound effect or too much buffering.
- Console output and cockpit overlap.
- The default cockpit is a good demo cockpit, but not actually a good default. It's way too busy.
Those are the big ones.
kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 amI have not said this before, but I'm not a complete fan of the way we handle the server explorer with required skills for different servers. I think it would be better if the server owners could set some flag on the server for required skill level. I would like to spin up a CTWF (noob welcoming) and a more competitive one. Because ultimately I do think throwing someone into the exact some maps to practice, is far better than just telling them to stay away.
Good idea. Added it. Trust the server owners to do the right thing.
kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 amI know if zones v2 is something to be included in 0.4 there were still some off issues with the CTF hack that I worked on a while back, Something would cause issues when flags were picked up and dropped and lead to some random crashes.
Do you mean the 0.4 client crashed when connected to a CTF server? Or the attempted CTF port for zones 2.0 crashed?

The conflict between zones v2 and all your hacks is my biggest future worry. And... I haven't seen a single compelling reason why zones v2 are worthwhile. Now, of course, I haven't actually tried to grok them myself, so that's my fault. But I haven't seen anyone use the logic systems they provide, and visually, they're still just geometric shapes. That's cool. But what your forks have been doing, while probably hacky (there, too, I haven't really dug into it much), is cool too, and we've seen tons of applications.
kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 am So really what feature set do we want in 0.4 and what could get kicked to a latter version or 0.4 or maybe 0.6?
The feature I'm missing is a resource/cockpit/map selector menu. But I would not rate that as critical.
Also, I don't think we'll continue with the even=stable odd=development version logic. 0.4 is in the unfinished state it is in because we tolerated incomplete code on the main branch. We should rather get to a point where we can always create a beta branch from trunk that's almost release ready, then stay there.

Titanoboa: For 0.2.9.1, we already reduced the tutorial tooltip spam, and entering the keyboard layout configuration disables them completely. And if you don't do what the tooltips say three times, they start telling you about that :) Also, Tank made some improvement suggestions to the initial game settings. It's all already in the alpha builds.
How did you end up with the zx input configuration? The default uses cursor keys, you have to go all the way over to "Traditional" to get zx.

And yeah. While it's better to raise issues earlier, later is better than never. Thanks, all!
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by kyle »

Z-Man wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:41 pm
kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 amI know if zones v2 is something to be included in 0.4 there were still some off issues with the CTF hack that I worked on a while back, Something would cause issues when flags were picked up and dropped and lead to some random crashes.
Do you mean the 0.4 client crashed when connected to a CTF server? Or the attempted CTF port for zones 2.0 crashed?
I actually don't remember much detail with it, I am pretty sure it was the server that had an issue when using the the zonesv2 sty branch. I am thinking that flag might have stopped working
Z-Man wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:41 pm The conflict between zones v2 and all your hacks is my biggest future worry. And... I haven't seen a single compelling reason why zones v2 are worthwhile. Now, of course, I haven't actually tried to grok them myself, so that's my fault. But I haven't seen anyone use the logic systems they provide, and visually, they're still just geometric shapes. That's cool. But what your forks have been doing, while probably hacky (there, too, I haven't really dug into it much), is cool too, and we've seen tons of applications.
I like the concept of zones v2, there are a lot of cool things that can be done with them. But yes merging the sty+CT's hacks in with them will be quite a bit of a pain. The problem for me was zones v2 required an 0.3+ build and most players were still using 0.2.8/0.2.9 so it was hard to build the future maps / servers, when there was not many users. Saying that along with thinking 0.2.8 servers can still be used by 0.4 now makes me think, it's probably worthwhile to leave zones v2 in and get the other client facing items fixed, and the worry about getting the server side stuff into it.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by sinewav »

Z-Man wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:41 pm- The default cockpit is a good demo cockpit, but not actually a good default. It's way too busy.
I could probably help out there, I got really into that cockpit stuff for a while. The problem I kept running into was aspect ratios and scaling. If I recall correctly, epsy never finished the code that would anchor widgets to different areas of the screen (bottom corner, top middle, etc...). Everything get's stretched and squashed which makes the text slide around. I could try and come up with a new, minimal design that attempts to compensate for this. I'm also happy to take sketches and translate them into cockpits. I remember from my research the things people care about most are rubber and brakes, followed by ping, fps, and time, and finally friends/enemies and other.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by aP|Nelg »

kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 am I know if zones v2 is something to be included in 0.4 there were still some off issues with the CTF hack that I worked on a while back, Something would cause issues when flags were picked up and dropped and lead to some random crashes. The thing I wanted to add was bouncing zones in V2, but getting a shaped zone that spinning to properly bounce off an object at the right time, and handle updating spin and whatnot was something I was thinking a lot about, but never could figure out a clean was to update the existing logic for that. That's basically when I got busy and have not had the time to work on this game that much, still hoping to be able to focus a little more of my time starting sometime in September.
I had a play around with v2sty and managed to fix the disappearing flags issue. The blink code had no additional checks to see if the flag still had an owner. I've also made "blinking" behave a lot more like the zonesv1 counterpart: instead of changing the alpha value of color, it changes the scale and growth. As for random server crashes, I have yet to encounter any of those in my admittedly fairly light testing.

In terms of things that definitely should also be added for CTF, the /drop command and the documentation behind the FLAG_ and BASE_ commands. It should probably be fairly easy. However, I'm a little worried about potential future evil merge conflicts, especially when there's talk of merging branches. But maybe I shouldn't be; they can't be that hard to resolve, and depending on the branches, there's probably greater nightmares ahead in that department.

As for other (will be >=0.4-specific most probably) possible candidates for features, it would be nice if the scoreboard could show who all are holding flags. I imagine that should not be too hard to add either, except for the many different possibilities of how to do it and what it should look like.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

Post by kyle »

aP|Nelg wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:33 pmI had a play around with v2sty and managed to fix the disappearing flags issue. The blink code had no additional checks to see if the flag still had an owner. I've also made "blinking" behave a lot more like the zonesv1 counterpart: instead of changing the alpha value of color, it changes the scale and growth. As for random server crashes, I have yet to encounter any of those in my admittedly fairly light testing.
Th flag disappearing issue may have been the only problem. I only remember having one issue and I knew it resolved around the flag. Side note I've kinda been thinking about the cause of the issue, without diving into the code or anything and thought it would probably be something like that what you mentioned that would fix it.

I actually don't think there would be too hard of merge conflicts with that to resolve. If I knew I could commit the time to do it. I would try to start in some of the free time I have now, but I want to wait until I'll have a little more, hopefully in October.
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Re: Armagetron ON Steam (2019) with steam direct

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kyle wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:02 pm Saying that along with thinking 0.2.8 servers can still be used by 0.4 now makes me think, it's probably worthwhile to leave zones v2 in and get the other client facing items fixed, and the worry about getting the server side stuff into it.
That is an excellent plan.

Merge conflicts: Oh, they can be very bad. They're bad enough on the regular 0.2.9 merges to trunk. But... we only have to deal with them once if we get sty+ct+ap+kitchensink back into the main, right? I've been against that for a long time, mainly because I don't like shooting in the game, but I don't have to like everything. And shooting is such a small part. And if it's all unified and you're not forced to hack the server to make it look on an uncooperative client like you're shooting, it could be made better. With a proper fire button, for starters.
sinewav wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:32 pmIf I recall correctly, epsy never finished the code that would anchor widgets to different areas of the screen (bottom corner, top middle, etc...). Everything get's stretched and squashed which makes the text slide around. I could try and come up with a new, minimal design that attempts to compensate for this.
Ah, this would need to be fixed in the code, not compensated for. However, anchoring things to corners is not what is appropriate for ultra widescreen. It's too far to the side. I'll have a look at it.
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