How to make that game more popular?

[Lackadaisical]

How about we change up the title screen a bit to give the bare basics of the game mechanics?

I agree with the sentiment that we do really need popular (with, as z-man pointed out, 'good' gameplay) FFA servers if we really want to convert people who download the game to active online players.

[Word]

Just an idea I had from this post:
when you start Arma for the first time you're asked to choose your language. Wouldn't it make sense to be asked what keys you want to use to play next?

[Z-Man]

Now i see your objection regarding the authentication in servers and you think that could restrict but nonetheless authentication in servers have been put for a good reasons that i am not going over them because it could be seen in many different point of views.

I'd be interested in hearing these reasons. Development wise, authentication was intended to give players the option to prove their identity. The play restriction is there so tournaments can run more smoothly. It was never meant as an erty barrier (we have the PLAY_TIME settings for that).

Is it possible to add a Help option in the Arma client where people can enter there and they will find few links that link them to youtube which some of us will work on using Embed ?

You mean, video display streamed from the internet rendered in the client? Umm, I think playable tutorials are easier. Now, doing functionally the same with Theora files, that would be doable. My main concern there would be the file size.

Phyto: now that's a very useful post. Have you tried one of the recent snapshots? (Same to the rest of you posting suggestions: try the snapshots first.) Some of the problems are already addressed there. The hamfisted tutorial should probably better be moved into the 'play' menu, be expanded into several stages and hover on top of it until it has been completed. The help files are a bit problematic. They are there, just hard to find on the Mac (maybe not even included, I honestly don't know) and Linux and there's no way around that, and they're outdated. Proper help files need to be accessible from the game client. And you know what? We already have a layout language for them, the cockpit files A 'long flowing text' widget may be needed, but otherwise, they should do just fine.

Regarding how developers spend their time, they can largely pick their own projects. The only obvious restriction is that bugfixing goes first, so as long as some code you committed a month ago isn't working properly, you can't just start a new project and expect everyone to be OK with it. We don't give out 'tasks' to developers. So I can only tell you how I chose to spend my time: the Fortress and Sumo zone stuff is actually pretty smal and it itself was quickly done; it also had that 'oh cool, this even works with old clients somewhat' effect. Maybe you're not underestimating the amout of work a proper tutorial would take, but you're certainly overestimating the time this 'gimmick' took to get working. Most of my time actually is spent hunting bugs and in the past years and making the general multiplayer experience better. Team management, authentication, more versatile admin interfaces, the new (much needed) protbuf network stuff all are to the benefit of all game modes. Yeah, there are some things that in practice are only used in zone modes (most notably and specifically the rubber tail shrink), but they'd be just as useful on a Team Deathmatch Tournament server. Multiple axes... well OK, that was a waste of time, but the engine already supported them and it was just a matter of getting rid of some bugs and it prevented a fork. It was one of those things you get forced to do.

I like the attract screen idea, and it wouldn't be too much coding work. I don't really see how it helps the perceived issue here, but never mind that. I see a bot game running in the background (plain old deathmatch with respawning), with random camera focus and mode changes, Armagetron written in Heavy Metal Cover Font on the top (perspectively slanted, made from bones and on fire/struck by lightning), maybe just "ATAD" if that's prettier, "Insert Coin" blinking at the bottom. Press a key and it goes to the menu, the game continuing in the background just like it does in the ingame menu.

I'm not too hot about traditonal or innovative promotion efforts. As I said, download numbers are just fine, enough people are finding the game already, and I'd say that almost everyone with a passing interest in the possibility of multiplayer lightcycle action is going to stumble upon it sooner or later. All promotion can do is make that sooner rather than later, which yeah, may give short bursts of players but no long term gain. I'm not stopping anyone from doing anything in that direction if you feel it's worthwile and it's your thing, mind you, just don't expect help.

About directing players: Well, take a look at the stats. Imagine what could be done automatically if it was recorded which server players visit. We could see that of 100 players entering server X on their very first session, only 2 are seen ever again, while it's 50 of the visitors on server Y. New players could then be directed to server Y. Different metrics could be used for veteran players (the client tracks player game time already) Team Fortress does something like that, measuring average play session length of servers. Of course, there's privacy concerns, it's not possible to collect the required data without doing things with player IP addresses. It should be possible to wipe out tracable information before the data enters the database, though.

[apparition]

<tutorial mockup>

That graphic is friggin awesome! Yeah, why not just have a few page tutorial like that? It could culminate with customization options (alternate keyboard configs, how to get good fps by fixing up settings, how to change the tail/cycle colors, the Armagetron language, then a page on some of the different popular server types like fort, ctf, ctwf, lms, sumo, etc.)...

I'd like to help write that if it would be worthwhile

[compguygene]

The development of some decent FFA servers is something we should discuss. Of course, for it to work, these servers need to attract an audience that actually plays them. I could easily setup in Kansas, Virginia, and Germany, a user and server(s) that could be worked on by the community. Perhaps if we collaborate, here on these forums, and working on the actual servers, we could come up with settings that will work for new people to the game, but still be fun enough for us all to enjoy playing in them.

[matchbox53]

Now i see your objection regarding the authentication in servers and you think that could restrict but nonetheless authentication in servers have been put for a good reasons that i am not going over them because it could be seen in many different point of views.

I'd be interested in hearing these reasons. Development wise, authentication was intended to give players the option to prove their identity. The play restriction is there so tournaments can run more smoothly. It was never meant as an erty barrier (we have the PLAY_TIME settings for that).

Well it also helps to keep the bots away from playing and especially in a game team mode like fortress it wont ruin the team grinding to say the least.

Is it possible to add a Help option in the Arma client where people can enter there and they will find few links that link them to youtube which some of us will work on using Embed ?

[/quote]

You mean, video display streamed from the internet rendered in the client? Umm, I think playable tutorials are easier. Now, doing functionally the same with Theora files, that would be doable. My main concern there would be the file size.

The files size might become high so we either find a way to make them less with specific format or my suggestion is an alternative because with youtube linked to the videos its easier to just load them from there it could also open Internet browser and run it through there. and it will not take more size like the playable tutorial this is why i think if we add links into "Help" option would be better .

Another suggestion i was thinking about why not we add a Readme.txt file when you download armagetron client of sourceforge or another sources . With the txt file we probably could add few tips along with the tutorial links to it ?

[þsy]

Now i see your objection regarding the authentication in servers and you think that could restrict but nonetheless authentication in servers have been put for a good reasons that i am not going over them because it could be seen in many different point of views.

I'd be interested in hearing these reasons. Development wise, authentication was intended to give players the option to prove their identity. The play restriction is there so tournaments can run more smoothly. It was never meant as an erty barrier (we have the PLAY_TIME settings for that).

Well it also helps to keep the bots away from playing and especially in a game team mode like fortress it wont ruin the team grinding to say the least.

If that is your only justification for it, then I think the positives (new players participating in fortress) far outweigh the negatives (bots coming in). Further, with so many active players having mod, any bots that do turn up (or newbies who are really killing the game) can be moved to spec. Authentification really gives nothing to fortress other than better gameplay by removing the noobs. And it's those guys that we need more than anything

[þsy]

Taking MB53's video idea a little further - you could very easily create an arma-recording of someone showing the basics. That file could be hosted on the website so that players who don't understand can download it and sit and watch

[matchbox53]

@Psy The thing is bots can join games if there is no authentication with authentication it gets really harder for them they will need to create a forum account and while they try to register things like Captcha or smart questions makes the bot fail at entering a correct answer .

As i mentioned earlier the newbies always get a proper help into how to authenticate and we have helped alot i dont see how its doing any conflicts and also admin/mods are not always on so they cant really be helpful when they are not in the server.

Regarding your second post i was thinking to form a group of players where we could give the essential tips of how to play different tron types and each person will work on 1 or maybe 2 players. But First we need to make sure if Z-man would approve of it.

The candidates would be so far are Ai and Roze and Me and definitely we will have more.

[Z-Man]

Taking MB53's video idea a little further - you could very easily create an arma-recording of someone showing the basics. That file could be hosted on the website so that players who don't understand can download it and sit and watch

That is a rubbish idea for at least three reasons and I'll let you figure out what they are

There are precisely two good places for documentation of all kind: directly on the download page (most people download the game either from there or external mirrors) in a form everyone can read (PDF or HTML) or watch, or directly in the game. I'd advise against plain image files for the latter, they are hard to translate.

matchbox53: sorry, I don't understand your plan or why I need to authorize anything. You can make all the youtube videos you want, at the very least you can link to them on the Wiki. Just make sure you don't use licensed background music, that would turn the videos unwatchable in some regions.

And are bots a real problem? If so, authentication would not stop them. Compared to writing a full featured bot that enters as a player, writing a throwaway authority with infinite accounts is trivial.

[Jip]

By "bots", do you mean this situations when 4 players try out online play with splitscreen and join as "Player 1, Player 2, ..." at once? Those are no bots.

[matchbox53]

Taking MB53's video idea a little further - you could very easily create an arma-recording of someone showing the basics. That file could be hosted on the website so that players who don't understand can download it and sit and watch

That is a rubbish idea for at least three reasons and I'll let you figure out what they are

Well sorry mate i guess i cant figure out what they are

There are precisely two good places for documentation of all kind: directly on the download page (most people download the game either from there or external mirrors) in a form everyone can read (PDF or HTML) or watch, or directly in the game. I'd advise against plain image files for the latter, they are hard to translate.

Can you clarify more please

matchbox53: sorry, I don't understand your plan or why I need to authorize anything. You can make all the youtube videos you want, at the very least you can link to them on the Wiki. Just make sure you don't use licensed background music, that would turn the videos unwatchable in some regions.

Ya we could do the videos but how we can add them to the Arma client without your approval. and even adding them to the wiki i am not really sure that newbies would eventually find about wiki that quick.

Let me try rephrasing what i mean with the following picture : http://armagetron.co.uk/text/images/t2.png

It shows you options "Game" , "player setup" etc my idea is that we could add another option lets call it for example "Tutorial" or "help" and it will have a list of youtube links with a small description of each 1 them that the new player can check what he cant understand and view it.

And are bots a real problem? If so, authentication would not stop them. Compared to writing a full featured bot that enters as a player, writing a throwaway authority with infinite accounts is trivial.

They actually help alot i can hardly see any bots going into the servers. I know its not the perfect option to it but nevertheless it is helping.

[matchbox53]

By "bots", do you mean this situations when 4 players try out online play with splitscreen and join as "Player 1, Player 2, ..." at once? Those are no bots.

No not them.

[þsy]

The number of bots that can't join thanks to authentification is surely less than the number of newbies who can't join and have no help? I've never ever seen a bot

[Word]

Taking MB53's video idea a little further - you could very easily create an arma-recording of someone showing the basics. That file could be hosted on the website so that players who don't understand can download it and sit and watch

That is a rubbish idea for at least three reasons and I'll let you figure out what they are

Well sorry mate i guess i cant figure out what they are

1) A debug recording can only be played by clients with the exact same version as the one which was used to record it. Whenever there's a new client you'd have to tell noobs to use the current one to play it.
2) Debug recordings aren't 'stable', they often crash as soon as you hit some random key.
3) Debug recordings use the settings of the person who recorded it so maybe some people can't even play them because the settings don't work on their machine (improbable but I couldn't think of a better third reason...)