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Hopefully not. Tying the continued development of Zero-K to the needs of other game developers (again) would cause delays, conflicts, and drama (again). Bringing the servers back together won't do much to help Zero-K's playerbase growth. We need to grow by a) fixing our new-player-experience problems, and then b) running good PR campaigns to attract new players that have never heard of us before. Our target market is not "people who are already playing other Spring games and might also start playing Zero-K if only we were all on the same server". That's like, what, a hundred people? Our target market is "people who have played other RTS games and enjoy the genre but are interested in trying something different".
+5 / -0
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How do the 'needs of other games' cause 'delays' for zero-K development? quote:
We need to grow by a) fixing our new-player-experience problems, and then b) running good PR campaigns to attract new players that have never heard of us before. Our target market is not "people who are already playing other Spring games and might also start playing Zero-K if only we were all on the same server". |
Sound good in theory. However it is not convincing because the only sucessful advertisement was exactly about that: Pulling in people who were already playing other spring games. Since then all PR has fallen flat. Both spring and zero-K is shadow of former self. One large community could have archived much more than two tiny ones. Maybe still possible, although now it will be harder. When has this little experiement run long enough? Stukas need to begin pulling out of the dive at 1500 feet or they smash into ground. For pilots in a SBD Dauntless that point is at 1000 feet or the plane gets caught by the blast. Kamikaze is not useful. 
+1 / -0
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quote:
the only sucessful advertisement was exactly about that: Pulling in people who were already playing other spring games |
That's because the only people we can appeal to right now are other Spring players. They've already have had to figure out how to deal with the useability nightmare which is the Spring ecosystem. Normal human beings used to playing normal videogames run away in terror and disgust when faced with Zero-K, and we're by far the most user-friendly and accessible of the Spring games as it is. But you know all this already; nobody has been more vocal nor more correct about these numerous issues than you. When we fix the new user problems, we can start profitably recruiting outside of the microscopic community that is Spring. If we don't fix the new user problems, we might as well not bother recruiting from anywhere. If bringing the two server communities back together took even ten minutes of Licho's time, that would be ten minutes far better spent making Zero-K easier for new players to start playing.
+1 / -0
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It'd be nice to have statistics. How many players did ZK get.... - from within Spring ecossystem - from outside (people who never connected to the official spring server at all)
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not to antagonize anyone, and maybe   [2up]knorke have a point. I don't know. just want to ask, what's the point of the merge? or split to that matter. I came to play Zero-k and I don't generally play other Spring game. I assume the same is for their player as well. Merging may make the number bigger but the reality is the same, each plays their own game. the hassle of keeping both games' server is small [for players] I assumed so if players really want they can just keep both. so whether there's a merge or not should have no effect on the number of players each game have. Granted there could be combined effort on Development and Advertising, but with diverse philosophies in each game, is it truly the best way to go about thing. In conclusion, I am ignorance of whether we should merge or not. I just think it won't have much effect.
+0 / -0
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Oh look, it's this thing again. I'd like to point out that far more important than combining the playerbase is having devs work on the same project. There's way too few people contributing on infra code anyway, just look at how little each progressed since the split.
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It should be possible to create some sort of "gateway" where players could join games from the "other side", but lot's of little things have to be solved first. It depends on will on both sides.. In theory ZK could create battle rooms on spring server whose players would join the game on ZK "side". But having full integration - seeing list of players in battle room - is probably impossible without protocol/lobby changes on spring side. And even this simple "join battle" feature would mean ZK would get "unknown players" in it's logs and history - players who don't have ZK account...
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I'm strongly against any attempts of integrating the two protocols and servers. This would cause a very complicated server and client implementation and would require a large amount of work, likely as much if not more than matchmaking. It also makes every future feature unnecessarily more complex. If you have time, please spend it on making any of the respective servers better.
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well some sites have a central login system and new accounts get made on both simultaneously. though in this case that would be extra coding. (potentially users from SpringMS might not realize they've made an account/synchronization issues?) idk
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First I demand change in infrastructure language. e.g. python it is opensource game. More could help... Then coredevs could focus on the game itself and do not need to struggle with infrastructure
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Would you help if it was written in Python? Would you help with the tremendous effort that would be necessary to port the existing infrastructure over to Python?
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If you just want python might as well use uberserver.
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why effort, there is already uberserver? Maybe it needs an exact list what needs to be supported and why this has to be on a extra server?
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So, your answer is "no". Don't guess at what will make other people help. Just go help.
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quote:
First I demand change in infrastructure language.
e.g. python
it is opensource game. More could help... |
Are you implying that less people know C# than Python? Or that C# is not as good of a language for open source projects? I'm quite confused, could you elaborate? quote:
Both spring and zero-K is shadow of former self |
Is that your argument for why there should be a merge? You'd invest resources into "uniting" two small communities that are both declining? I could bring up a thematic metaphor involving planes in rapid descent, but I fear it'd be a bit demoralizing.
+2 / -0
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Just put zero k on steam, slap a f2p tag on it and get some reviewers to review it and watch it grow, also make it more pretty for those with powerful graphics cards.
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quote:
also make it more pretty for those with powerful graphics cards |
Easy to say for someone who doesn't know how game development works at all. I am not sure why would you want 2 communities back together [2up]knorke. People come to zk server to play ZK and people come to Uberserver to play other Spring games. I can't really see any problem with player retention here. The issue the split created was one regarding quality and speed of infrastructure development. However that didn't change anything at all, since the split was made mostly due to Licho and Abma being unable to cooperate with each other. Following this logic we might as well get back to tauniverse.com to "bring back together both communities".
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Why? Having the appearance of more people is not the same as having more people, so I'm not sure why that guy is talking about activity levels like it will make any difference.
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  TheEloIsALie I bet in a opensource community there will be more people who can get in python or had already contact with python. ALso I would see the server cost as an argument. Why you would choose windows over Linux as server when the game is linux compatible...?
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