Spring is dead, blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure I've heard this same mantra since the great forum wipe of 2005.
It amazes me that I've been following spring since 2004 (actually before when it was ta demo recorder, but whatever).
PURE and Evo were mentioned in the same sentence, which I find annoying. PURE has headed by argh, a egotistic megalomaniac and general all around asshole (sometimes).
Time for a little history that no one gives a flying crap about...
I started Evo sometimes back in ... shit, 2007? I dunno, I started it when i was still messing around with FunTA and decided that I could make a game that I would actually like to play. One that could cater to pros and newbies alike.
I did some hideous models and made 2 races, 3 times (each iteration was a tiny bit better), and then Kaiser came along and made new models and textures at a pro level for everything. Then lego came along and kaiser kinda disappeared after doing some of the evo units. I went through and finished them myself, added a bunch of new units, completely revamped sounds effects, etc...
All during this time evo wen't through some fairly major renovations in gameplay. I tried so many things that just didn't work. The real breakthrough was when godde spent MONTHs helping me design balance and gameplay. It has since progressed far beyond what it was then, but I learned a lot from our exchanges.
In the meantime I had been trying to get the steam thing, I had already managed desura, but installs were a constant problem. Lobbies sucked, ATI sucked, not enough bodies for troubleshooting, Tiny playerbase, BA and ZK players badmouthing it (this one I found the most irritating, especially considering that while I very much dislike ZK gameplay and find it quite boring, I was intelligent enough to understand that gamers are usually capable of liking more than one game, and would send people who liked evo to check out zk games, but I digress after this long ass run-on sentence) the list goes on and on.
There is a lot more that went on in the background. These are just the highlights. What all happened is actually pretty interesting but I'm pretty sure that no one cares to hear it lol.
The point is, spring isn't dead, it's not going to die. For all it's faults it is a great engine. ZK is the only project that has garnered enough dev bodies to be able to tackle the lobby/tutorial/etc problems head on. The best Evo can do atm is videos and wiki (which has proved to be somewhat successful).
The lobby situation is being sorted out, albiet slowly. Ikinz' reactjs weblobby is relatively bug free at this point (it has some but they aren't critical), and when I direct my new steam people to it they have LOVED it so far, so that's a step in the right direction.
In game tutorials are a bitch because there is not one unified way of doing it. Someone always goes off and does their own thing which is infuriating. Much of the time I feel like I'm on an island by myself being the only person able to look at spring as a whole in an objective manner. I know I'm not the only one, but it seems like I'm the only one that bothers to open my mouth most of the time. My view is not limited in scope. That said, I generally filter out zk from my scope because A, different server, B most of these problems have been addressed at least to some degree.
I can say that smoth is working towards some solutions for a few of these things, but this community only has one smoth, which is unfortunate. Gajop's in game lobby looks promising. ScenED also looks promising, but it's difficult to see it's progress.
The fact of the matter is, anything regarding progress with spring is going to move forward at the speed of a glacier, but it will move forward. Most of us are one man shows. ZK being the largest exception. But no, Spring is in no danger of dying.
I regard the split of zk as a net positive. It avoided a lot of the problems that BA caused as a result. Sure, it sucks that those players aren't on the main server, but by splitting off, it helps keep zk from squashing other projects and allows zk more freedom to spread it's wings and grow in the process. I may not find Zk particularly interesting as a game, but I am very much hopeful that it will be a massive success.
If I had only one critique for zk and my largest dislike of it, it would be that the sound effects in zk are very amateurish (easy to fix!) and the sound track (music) does not fit the gameplay (a little harder, but still simple to fix). The music tracks for zk are the equivalent of listening to smooth jazz while driving an F1. The music for TA fit because the orchestra hit were very pointed and sharp and designed to elicit a specific set of emotions.
If you wanna have some good fun sometime, play an evo ai (shard or survival) while listening to this on repeat (to demonstrate the absurdity of how well it doesn't fit... plus the song is hilarious)... Good times:
Sorry for the epic post out of nowhere.
