Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: mjn.mixael on November 22, 2012, 08:21:26 pm
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Ultimately, by far the best thing you could possibly do to help get mods out faster is learn to FRED and help out an existing team. No question about it.
Yup.
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Nah, you just need to set your objectives lower, and new people coming in (preferably newbies) to keep the wheel rolling.
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Ultimately, by far the best thing you could possibly do to help get mods out faster is learn to FRED and help out an existing team. No question about it.
Yup.
unless of course you are an antisocial psychopath who doesn't get along well with others :D
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What you are seeing is old projects that were dead for years finally rolling over into their graves. A grave lack of new motivated modders joining and existing modders getting demotivated on continueing on whatever it is they are working on.
The communities expectations have soared over the years and consequently, the production cycles on new campaigns has become incredibly long to meet these quality demands. And its hard to remain motivated when it all seems to start to look like *work*. It's also hard to stay motivated when your hard work gets sort of ignored or doesn't get any replies with any kind of substance. Rough gems like The Antagonist seem to be mostly ignored or forgotten (it isnt even listed on the wiki campaign list?) and the technical (and hilarious) masterpiece that is JAD2.21 has a mere 4 pages worth of posts. (I know its hard to have a sensible discussion about the JAD universe and all but come on...)
Motivation comes from many things but I've noticed that HLP is actually a pretty strong place to get demotivated from. Admins and SCP coders that seemingly can't be bothered to get involved in any of the mods. Old members that stopped playing but refuse to move onto the great beyond. And all those things that is funest for a continued healthy modding&player community.
HLP is definitely losing steam, it may not be on the brink of having a cardiac arrest yet but its not exactly looking up right now. Mods in general are slowly becoming a thing of the past, with all the time and effort you need to put into a mod to make yourself stand out, you might as well go indie now a days.
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Rough gems like The Antagonist seem to be mostly ignored or forgotten (it isnt even listed on the wiki campaign list?) and the technical (and hilarious) masterpiece that is JAD2.21 has a mere 4 pages worth of posts. (I know its hard to have a sensible discussion about the JAD universe and all but come on...)
Why are you using irrelevant parameters to judge of the popularity of a campaign ?
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Because posts is the only measure of epeen.
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Rough gems like The Antagonist seem to be mostly ignored or forgotten (it isnt even listed on the wiki campaign list?) and the technical (and hilarious) masterpiece that is JAD2.21 has a mere 4 pages worth of posts. (I know its hard to have a sensible discussion about the JAD universe and all but come on...)
Why are you using irrelevant parameters to judge of the popularity of a campaign ?
You are taking it out of context if you remove this line:
It's also hard to stay motivated when your hard work gets sort of ignored or doesn't get any replies with any kind of substance.
It's not about popularity but about motivation.
Seeing your work getting discussed in the finer details or reading a well written review about it, is motivating.
Watching tumbleweeds pass by in a ghost thread is not.
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Yeah, I agree, something's wrong.
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I think modding may have seemed to have slowed down in general, but the style might be changing somewhat.
If you ask, "how many big mods are still active?" the answer will be low. But if you asked "how many people are working on personal projects that may or may no get released?" I think the answer would be a lot higher.
HLP can also have a negative vibe. I see some of the things aimed at Spoon regarding WOD and it pis$es me off? And for what? Because he built a great mod by himself that must have took hundreds of hours, and put it on the internet for free? Aggro like that can put people off releasing what are potentially good mods.
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HLP can also have a negative vibe. I see some of the things aimed at Spoon regarding WOD and it pis$es me off? And for what? Because he built a great mod by himself that must have took hundreds of hours, and put it on the internet for free? Aggro like that can put people off releasing what are potentially good mods.
Indeed, please tell spoon we all love WOD and not to give up on it.
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HLP can also have a negative vibe. I see some of the things aimed at Spoon regarding WOD and it pis$es me off? And for what? Because he built a great mod by himself that must have took hundreds of hours, and put it on the internet for free? Aggro like that can put people off releasing what are potentially good mods.
Indeed, please tell spoon we all love WOD and not to give up on it.
Preferably in a non-creepy fashion, if at all possible. :P
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Like you're one to talk about creepy, Little Miss Crippled Orphan Loli. :P
(No, you're not supposed to know what I'm talking about. :P)
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HLP is definitely losing steam, it may not be on the brink of having a cardiac arrest yet but its not exactly looking up right now. Mods in general are slowly becoming a thing of the past, with all the time and effort you need to put into a mod to make yourself stand out, you might as well go indie now a days.
See, I don't really think this is necessarily the case. There's been an absolute ****load of new content released over the past year or two, most of which I sadly haven't even managed to play yet. I mean, we've had two huge long-term TCs based on established universes drop within a few months of each other. Add to that the few complete projects and add-ons of original universes, plus the handful of FS-related stuff, and people have been pretty damn busy recently. There have been a few older projects that have thrown in the towel during that time, but as you noted, most of those were already dead for all intents and purposes long before the final announcement was made. All things considered, I think we're doing okay.
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Why did this turn into a 'Cheer Spoon on' thread? :p
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Because why not.
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Why did this turn into a 'Cheer Spoon on' thread? :p
Hey, it's a good use of the time.
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Why did this turn into a 'Cheer Spoon on' thread? :p
Sorry, mostly my fault :D
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HLP is definitely losing steam, it may not be on the brink of having a cardiac arrest yet but its not exactly looking up right now. Mods in general are slowly becoming a thing of the past, with all the time and effort you need to put into a mod to make yourself stand out, you might as well go indie now a days.
See, I don't really think this is necessarily the case. There's been an absolute ****load of new content released over the past year or two, most of which I sadly haven't even managed to play yet. I mean, we've had two huge long-term TCs based on established universes drop within a few months of each other. Add to that the few complete projects and add-ons of original universes, plus the handful of FS-related stuff, and people have been pretty damn busy recently. There have been a few older projects that have thrown in the towel during that time, but as you noted, most of those were already dead for all intents and purposes long before the final announcement was made. All things considered, I think we're doing okay.
I'd like to believe this but a lot of the big content creators who've been around forever do not agree.
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HLP is definitely losing steam, it may not be on the brink of having a cardiac arrest yet but its not exactly looking up right now. Mods in general are slowly becoming a thing of the past, with all the time and effort you need to put into a mod to make yourself stand out, you might as well go indie now a days.
See, I don't really think this is necessarily the case. There's been an absolute ****load of new content released over the past year or two, most of which I sadly haven't even managed to play yet. I mean, we've had two huge long-term TCs based on established universes drop within a few months of each other. Add to that the few complete projects and add-ons of original universes, plus the handful of FS-related stuff, and people have been pretty damn busy recently. There have been a few older projects that have thrown in the towel during that time, but as you noted, most of those were already dead for all intents and purposes long before the final announcement was made. All things considered, I think we're doing okay.
I'd like to believe this but a lot of the big content creators who've been around forever do not agree.
It's the rising standards and the exponentially increasing time/effort required to meet them.
I mean higher quality stuff is a good thing.
But everything else about it isn't.
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On the other hand, I've been hearing about how the community is dying for as long as I've been here.
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HLP is definitely losing steam, it may not be on the brink of having a cardiac arrest yet but its not exactly looking up right now. Mods in general are slowly becoming a thing of the past, with all the time and effort you need to put into a mod to make yourself stand out, you might as well go indie now a days.
See, I don't really think this is necessarily the case. There's been an absolute ****load of new content released over the past year or two, most of which I sadly haven't even managed to play yet. I mean, we've had two huge long-term TCs based on established universes drop within a few months of each other. Add to that the few complete projects and add-ons of original universes, plus the handful of FS-related stuff, and people have been pretty damn busy recently. There have been a few older projects that have thrown in the towel during that time, but as you noted, most of those were already dead for all intents and purposes long before the final announcement was made. All things considered, I think we're doing okay.
I'd like to believe this but a lot of the big content creators who've been around forever do not agree.
What part of that is actually being disagreed with, though? Quality can always be debated, but in terms of sheer release quantity, that's just a matter of counting. If you're talking more along the lines of certain projects being dropped, I think that's more of a function of the "content creators who've been around forever" that you mentioned. Interests and motivations wane with time, and for someone who's sunk the better part of a decade into an unfinished project or two, it's certainly natural that they might decide to finally call it quits. However, it isn't as though we haven't seen some fairly new members working on their own projects recently, either. I haven't seen any sort of real fundamental shift in the way the community's been operating.
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before i knew HLP existed, i DID see the death of freespace as i hung out in the retail only sector, coming in right at the last gasp of teamwars, the failed fleetwars, the last big squad burning to death in an epic flame war, and not long after the loss of PXO. after losing the teamwars board for some reason or other, when it came back up only like 10 people or so re-registered. my old squad's board is probably still floating in cyberspace, and about 3 years after it had been forgotton one of the admins found it again and sent out a message. myself and one other showed up to post one last time.
so to me, this place is vibrant, overcrowded, and moving all ahead flank.
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Respectfully, but I don't think any of you have been involved in the FS community as long as I have. I think the change of late is most apparent in the total death of Gen FS.
e: talking to mongoose and kara
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I didn't know Gen FS was producing mods. The only thing a lack of activity in Gen FS means is that after 13 years we've run out of stuff to say about retail FS2. Sounds like about right to me.
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And theres no doubt been a rise in traffic to the BP forums and such. If Gen FS is dead it's because there's nothing interesting left to say about at 12 year old game. People's attention will go to the active mods with their own universes.
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Respectfully, but I don't think any of you have been involved in the FS community as long as I have. I think the change of late is most apparent in the total death of Gen FS.
e: talking to mongoose and kara
I'm not quite sure I follow you, I've been here for bloody ages! :p And I was pretty involved in the FS community even before I joined HLP.
I'll agree that Gen FS is quieter than it used to be, but I still don't think that's a sign the community is on the way out. As the others are saying, the discussion has simply moved to the mods, cause there is something new to say about those.
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The arguments over who gets what split of the cash would be pretty legendary too.
Dekker likes this :yes: +1
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I can imagine Kara being an old man in the corner of HLP on a rocking chair with a big beard, and all the kids sitting by his feet:
"Tell us a a story about HLP pappa Kara"
"Well kids, a long time ago there was this mod.."
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I can imagine Kara being an old man in the corner of HLP on a rocking chair with a big beard, and all the kids sitting by his feet:
"Tell us a a story about HLP pappa Kara"
"Well kids, a long time ago there was this mod.."
I was postin back on the VBB :colbert:
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Active FS2 projects:
BP
BtA
Inferno (sorta FS2)
JAD (sorta FS2)
Active non-FS2 projects:
Dimensional Eclipse (Not sure what kind of future plans Droid has, but I assume he has them)
Fringespace? (No real clue actually)
WoD
Fate of the galaxy (At least I think its not dead)
Diaspora
Dead projects:
Everything in the Hosted Projects - Work In Progress board that wasn't mentioned above. (The Apocalypse Project, Casualties of War, Earth Defence, The Scroll of Atankharzim, Stellar Assault, Syrk)
The Unification War
Alcibiades' Gamble
The 158th Banshee Squadron
Homeworld: Blue Planet
Ancient shivan war
Orph3u5 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=82832.0)
Star fox
New projects:
I guess BtA can sort of count as semi new?
SHMUPSpace maybe?
Eos: The Coward's Blade with the disclaimer that "I may never finish this."
SHADOW GENESIS
I can imagine Kara being an old man in the corner of HLP on a rocking chair with a big beard, and all the kids sitting by his feet:
"Tell us a a story about HLP pappa Kara"
"Well kids, a long time ago there was this mod.."
I more like imagine Karajorma as a hermit.
See, I don't really think this is necessarily the case. There's been an absolute ****load of new content released over the past year or two, most of which I sadly haven't even managed to play yet.
You mean there were several big releases in 2010. Then not a whole lot in 2011 and only very recently there were some new releases in 2012. There used to be a time where the highlight bar would move at such a rapid speed that it was knocking off new releases only weeks after. Now a highlight will stay on there for months.
I mean, we've had two huge long-term TCs based on established universes drop within a few months of each other.
Diaspora has long term future potential. Wing commander saga has nothing for the future.
Add to that the few complete projects and add-ons of original universes, plus the handful of FS-related stuff, and people have been pretty damn busy recently. There have been a few older projects that have thrown in the towel during that time, but as you noted, most of those were already dead for all intents and purposes long before the final announcement was made. All things considered, I think we're doing okay.
It only seems that way to you because from your perspective you still have like two years worth of releases to catch up with. It sure looks like a ****load when its all piled up infront of you! But for those that have been keeping up with releases, there are months worth of drought inbetween each little oasis.
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I was postin back on the VBB :colbert:
Me too, and it was a bloody long time ago. And that, right there, is the critical problem. It's a numbers game, pure and simple. Consider - I was 13 when FS1 came out - in the prime of my sci-fi obsession years - old enough to get immensely excited about blowing up spaceships, but young enough that I could devote hours to said spaceships - at first blowing them up, then messing around in FRED - without the distractions of heavy study, girls, drinkingm whatever. Freespace got into my head in my formative years and became a mild obsession. That's why I'm still here. And I suspect that that story is probably pretty similar for the majority of the community - I don't have the data, of course, but I'd be willing to bet good money that the bell curve of the FS community's age centres somewhere around mid-twenties (since those are the generation in their prime obsession genberating years when the games came out), but, for the really talented, productive members of the community, I'd say that that bell curve skews more towards late twenties, simply because those of us who've been here longer have had longer to learn the skills. Sure, new people have been joining since then - FS maintains a stellar reputation, and the work we've done as a community has added to that - but, obviously, we're never again going to see the kind of community growth that happened in the first few years.
The problem then, is simply demographic. That initial bulge of people have gotten older, and now most of us have left uni, started full time careers, some have families, relationships, responsibilities - I know that, for my part, as much as I'd like to, I can't put in even half the time I could have done a few years ago, it's just not possible. Combine that with the already mentioned increase in quality expectations and resultant increase in the amount of work required per mod/mission/campaign, and it's no wonder that we're slowing down.
I wish I had a solution, but honestly, I don't think there is one. Eventually, we are going to wind up here, it's just inevitable. Nothing lasts forever. But I don't think we're there yet, I don't think we're even close yet. FS Modding has always gone in peaks and troughs, and it will probably continue to do so. Right now, we're in a trough, but there will be a next peak. It might not be as high as the last one, or as soon, but it'll be along. And in the meantime, I'm sticking around. I think a lot of other people are too. So, why exactly are we so down in the dumps about it all of late?
[EDIT]Felt like I should say here - I know that there is still a lot of activity going on in at least some quarters, because, if absolutely nothing else, I know that I'm still active. Today alone I passed a major mission hurdle, setting it up for finalisation in the next few days (well, once I get back from work next week), modelled a new subobject for the modular kit, completed the modelling work on a microcarrier and got in a good two or three hours of texturing on said microcarrier. And I know I'm not the only active person on the forum. **** is happening, whether it's immediately obvious or not.
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Oh, and I wanted to put this in as a second post rather than letting it get lost in the wall of text up there:
Does anyone have any ideas about what we can do about this? If not, then the doom and gloom posting seems rather... well, counter-productive, if nothing else. If we're stuck on the Titanic anyway, we might as well dance to the band rather than worrying about the icebergs.
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so long as the fs2 codebase keeps evolving there is still life left. when it slows down (and not like it did during the 3.6.14 rc phase, that was due to not doing proper code freezes and not because lack of progress, at least as far as i understood it) mods are soon to follow and then finally the players will leave due to lack of new content. you can also gauge the community activities by the number of new modders/coders/etc that join up. so i dont think its dead. far from it.
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nvm, don't feel like it anymore.
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I was postin back on the VBB :colbert:
And?
It's not like I wasn't. :p
I wouldn't say I am one of the oldest members of the community since there are guys who have been here longer than me. But I've been a member for long enough to remember the VBB and I've seen any number of people predict the end of HLP. It was always nonsense back then and so far no one has presented anything that doesn't make me think it's nonsense now.
Quite frankly, about the only thing I see doing any serious damage to the FS community is Chris Robert's new project. And that's only a danger if it's better!
You mean there were several big releases in 2010. Then not a whole lot in 2011 and only very recently there were some new releases in 2012. There used to be a time where the highlight bar would move at such a rapid speed that it was knocking off new releases only weeks after. Now a highlight will stay on there for months.
Nonsense.
Take a look at the Highlight forum. For me I get 7 pages of highlights each covering a period of roughly one year each (+- a month or two). The only ones that don't are page 2 (which is closer to 6 months starting at the start of 2011 - bizarrely enough the time you claimed HLP wasn't busy) and page 3 (6 months till the end of 2010 - almost entirely made up of releases).
The main reason the speed of highlights appears to have slowed down is because now we only really highlight mod releases as opposed to before when plenty of other things made the highlights. Even with this change, the first page of the highlights forum still only covers a 1 year 3-4 month period. Not really that different to before. The highlights forum stretches back to 2006 and with the exception of mid 2010 until mid 2011 it was never much busier than it is now, so I have to ask exactly when this golden age of modding was?
I won't deny that perhaps we had a few more actual releases in the past, but so what? I suspect the issue is more quantity vs quality than anything else. Mod teams tend to be larger now and people make fewer individual projects.
Diaspora has long term future potential. Wing commander saga has nothing for the future.
Except for at least two large and ambitious mods. Hell, in terms of 3rd party modding, they're actually doing better than Diaspora. Probably because the WCS team have decided to go out on a high and turn it over to the fans, while Diaspora continues to recruit anyone promising.
Way to go on the support for the guys modding WCS :yes: I'm sure saying that their hard work basically amounts to nothing is the kick in the teeth pants people need to start modding.
Sorry but I'm simply not buying the argument that the community is dying. I've heard this tune far too many times in the past. That said, it doesn't mean there aren't things we could do to get more attention. But getting people to stay in a community full of people complaining about how it's dying is certainly going to be harder than getting them to come to one full of people who can see it does have a future.
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I wouldn't be worried about people complaining in general, but I am worried about the specific people complaining - the creators now rather than the consumers.
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I was postin back on the VBB :colbert:
And me :LOA--JK47:
:nervous:
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VBB fo lyfe *hides from zylonbane*
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Quite frankly, about the only thing I see doing any serious damage to the FS community is Chris Robert's new project. And that's only a danger if it's better!
Unless they manage to pull a FRED off their ass, FSO will remain superior in storytelling aspects to SC. For all the optimism I have in SC (and I have a lot), I don't see it replace FSO unless they do even more than all the stuff they promised.
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Dead projects:
Everything in the Hosted Projects - Work In Progress board that wasn't mentioned above. (The Apocalypse Project, Casualties of War, Earth Defence, The Scroll of Atankharzim, Stellar Assault, Syrk)
The majority of those are very much alive, albeit not necessarily externally active. CoW, ED, SoA, and Stellar Assault have all had at least some general indications of progress. Pece's trying to track down some new staff for TAP, but he hasn't thrown in the towel yet. You're also not counting a few other active projects. Kara has said himself that he was planning on putting some work into MindGames after Diaspora R1 got out the door. And I'd imagine the stuff Black Wolf said he's been working on is for Twisted Infinities.
Not to belabor disagreeing with Battman or anything, but most of the content creators who have spoken up in here seem to be expressing the exact opposite of the original sentiment. Are there some other prominent opinions out there that haven't been shared in here?
(And just to clarify, the WCS thing Kara quoted was Spoon, not me. :p)
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Yes, there are. They are people I am 100% certain you would be very sad to see go.
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Sounds like the community is having a midlife crisis here, maybe it's time to buy a sexy new spaceship?
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I think the change of late is most apparent in the total death of Gen FS.
The death of Gen FS was at least partially mandated, however. Moderation at the time got mad about seeing the same topics discussed and made it known. Gen FS proceeded to die off over the next few months.
I have no idea whether we'd still want to talk about FreeSpace or not, it's been dead a long time, but it probably died at least some before it was ready to.
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I wouldn't be worried about people complaining in general, but I am worried about the specific people complaining - the creators now rather than the consumers.
Sounds like a bunch of them have formed a sewing circle and decided that the game is on the way out despite all evidence to the contrary to me. :p
Once there is a perceived feeling amongst a group that something is on its way out then its pretty easy to find arguments to justify that belief. Especially if they talk amongst themselves and reinforce that belief. You of all people should understand that! :D
Simple fact is that I haven't seen the slightest bit of proof that HLP is in a worse state than when UT went off about a similar issue years and years ago. Funnily enough, we're still here and occasionally, so is he.
So instead of whining and complaining about how HLP is dying (which it isn't at all) we should be working on how to get ourselves more attention and more new users. Chris Roberts new game looks exciting but it won't be out for another 2 years. We have content now we should be figuring out ways to pull those people into the community now.
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So in other words, we need to shamelessly whore ourselves out to those Kickstarter supporters. :D
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Absolutely.
I'll go get the mini-skirt and stiletto heels. :p
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What the **** happened to my last post? :wtf:
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well anyway here it is again
I wouldn't be worried about people complaining in general, but I am worried about the specific people complaining - the creators now rather than the consumers.
Sounds like a bunch of them have formed a sewing circle and decided that the game is on the way out despite all evidence to the contrary to me. :p
You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.
Once there is a perceived feeling amongst a group that something is on its way out then its pretty easy to find arguments to justify that belief. Especially if they talk amongst themselves and reinforce that belief. You of all people should understand that! :D
Of course I understand that, please don't think I haven't given it consideration.
I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.
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You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.
So come out and explain. Right now all I'm hearing about is about a shadowy they who from the sounds of it are self-reinforcing this idea that HLP is on its way out.
And this isn't new. I've been hearing this particular story for years. From content creators. And it's always been proved false.
I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.
I don't think anyone is expendable. But people come and go, that's 100% natural on a board like this. People have always predicted the end of HLP when they noticed that many of the old guard had left. That's just the way of things.
Is HLP poorer without those members? Of course. I don't want anyone leaving this community and it's always sad when someone stops coming, especially someone who creates stuff for the community. But will new people replace them, in the way that people replaced Blaise Russel and Venom, etc? I see no reason not to believe it. There are plenty of up and coming modders and FREDders.
So for that reason I don't see much point in trying to persuade someone to stay who has already made up their mind to go. Either the fire is there, or it isn't. There's been plenty of times I've been tempted to leave, I've always come back because I still enjoy what I do. If someone isn't enjoying what they're doing, I can't see anything we can do to change that. Best thing to do seems to be to leave them to it, and hope they come back.
And if there is something I can do, how about telling me what it is.
TL;DR HLP isn't dying, and if you feel it is, why not talk about why?
The death of Gen FS was at least partially mandated, however. Moderation at the time got mad about seeing the same topics discussed and made it known. Gen FS proceeded to die off over the next few months.
When did this happen?
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You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.
Err.. if we don't know who has the issue, or what their specific issues are, how can we engage with them? The only comment which I feel I could somewhat address would have been from Spoon:
Motivation comes from many things but I've noticed that HLP is actually a pretty strong place to get demotivated from. Admins and SCP coders that seemingly can't be bothered to get involved in any of the mods. Old members that stopped playing but refuse to move onto the great beyond. And all those things that is funest for a continued healthy modding&player community.
From my viewpoint, as an SCP coder who isn't involved in any mods (i.e. I don't have a mod badge), I feel that I don't have the time to spread myself thin. I'd like to be able to fix bugs in the codebase, and help make sure that FSO continues to run well on Linux. I feel that if I devoted myself to a mod as well, then I'd not have the time to get much done either for the mod, or for the SCP in general. I'm at a stage in my life where I don't get heaps of free time, I have two young kids, a day job with oncall, etc.
I have played a fair bit of the recently released material, I've got through (looking at the 1st page of the highlights forum) The Antagonist, Wing Commander, WoD, Fall of Epsilon Pegasi, Burning Heaven, BtA Demo & Vassago's Dirge (which isn't on the 1st highlights page but totally blew me away). I'm still in the process of completing Diaspora, LCW & the early JADs (which I'd like to finish before moving onto 2.2/2.21/etc). I've liked all these releases (even if Spoon managed to indue a rage-quit on me in the last mission of WoD :p - my crappy old joystick and sub-par situational awareness were to blame though!) and I appreciate all the effort that the creators have gone to however I haven't commented on the release threads because I don't feel that I have anything insightful to say. I don't tend to analyse my gaming that much, it's simply a like/dislike without wondering too much about the why. If you want some critical literacy/feedback, then ask my wife, she's the one of the two of us that's good at that :) (and I fear that I turned her off flightsims years ago in a disastrous experiment with X-Wing Alliance...)
So.. umm...I think I'm rambling and I don't know if that's going to help the problem here, but maybe it gives a bit of insight into how I feel about one of the issues that was raised in this thread...
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I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.
I don't want it to seem like I'm being totally closed-minded about this or anything. Like, I completely agree that this is a discussion worth having. But the thing is, it's kind of hard to actually get down and discuss this when all we have to go on is your statements about a mysterious "them." Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why you're not naming names, because I wouldn't want to try putting words in other people's mouths myself. But do you think it would be feasible to request that some of these content creators (beyond Spoon, obviously) post their own thoughts in their own words here? That way, we can get all our opinions laid out and examine them on their own merits.
Come to think of it, I wonder if I should split this whole thing out starting with Spoon's initial post, or at least change the title to make it jump out more.
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I don't really feel comfortable sticking other people out here to roast. I'll let this be, I don't think I'm going to contribute anything useful.
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me and my scrotched earth policy and i dont even see this community dieing any time soon. the fact that this thread is still here allowing pretentious community members to sling poo at eachother is proof enough of an indication to me that the community is good and well. :D
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jfc
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The miscommunication here has been pretty dreadful, which I think comes from one side arguing basically against itself.
I'm not sure 'the community is ****ed' is so much the point of concern. Rather it's 'are we losing people [for whatever value of 'people'] for a good, necessary, or inevitable reason?
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When did this happen?
At least a couple years ago? Maybe longer? You're asking me for a specific time on an event that by nature wasn't fixed to a single point in time. There was more than one blowout and more than one "we've discussed this before shut up" ending to a thread. People *****ed about rehashing arguments a lot and then arguments stopped. It's not like people got banned, it's chilling effect.
The FreeSpace 3 threads through the ages might provide a good barometer, since they usually come from the more enthusiastic and newer converts to the game. They went from an openly hostile response when I arrived to kinda chill for four or five years and they've veered in the direction of "stop being dumb" the last couple years.
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I'm not sure 'the community is ****ed' is so much the point of concern. Rather it's 'are we losing people [for whatever value of 'people'] for a good, necessary, or inevitable reason?
And as I keep asking, what do you want to do about that?
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Or even before that, what do you think the possible reasons could be? I don't intend to roast anyone here, Battuta...if there are people who have a certain view on what's going on in the community, I'd like to at least know what that view is, so that we can talk about it collectively and maybe figure out if there's something practical we can do to change things.
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HLP can't die yet.. I haven't finished the cutscene upgrades.
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Absolutely.
I'll go get the mini-skirt and stiletto heels. :p
Like the last time we went clubbing
Hun xxx
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I know I've done as much advertising to FSO as was practical during and after the SC crowdfunding. There definitely were some people interested. Can't really do a large-scale advertising campaign on my own though.
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Ya know Mongoose, I'm happy for you. I truely am.
I really wish to live in the same land where you are residing, filled with rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. The same land in which you can flatout call me wrong on a project I'm part of. I know Stellar Assault is dead. But its okay man, in your world its not. Since you have preceived some general indication of progress. In this same world, TAP is doing grrrreat too. Since getting capable 'new staff' is super easy. And it will be right on its way to a stellar release once it has aquired this staff.
I'll just be here, sticking my head in the sand. That's what seems to be the popular thing to do around here.
I'm out (again)
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So instead of whining and complaining about how HLP is dying (which it isn't at all) we should be working on how to get ourselves more attention and more new users. Chris Roberts new game looks exciting but it won't be out for another 2 years. We have content now we should be figuring out ways to pull those people into the community now.
Once MediaVPS 14 and deferred lighting with shadows become official, the internet will be flooded with Freespace gorgeous screenshots.
Notice that in GOG FS2 is selling at 10 bucks, up from 6 bucks in the past. I deem that good news, it means that it has been selling okay. And that population is probably lurking these forums or the moddb.com pages for new stuff. And a small percentage of those people will contribute in the future.
About Star Citizen, there's the odd possibility that it may not contribute with a good competition against FRED. And if that's the case, many Star Citizen wannabe modders may want to check FRED out.
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Ya know Mongoose, I'm happy for you. I truely am.
I really wish to live in the same land where you are residing, filled with rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. The same land in which you can flatout call me wrong on a project I'm part of. I know Stellar Assault is dead. But its okay man, in your world its not. Since you have preceived some general indication of progress. In this same world, TAP is doing grrrreat too. Since getting capable 'new staff' is super easy. And it will be right on its way to a stellar release once it has aquired this staff.
I'll just be here, sticking my head in the sand. That's what seems to be the popular thing to do around here.
I'm out (again)
Well this is pretty much the exact opposite of a constructive sentiment. I don't exactly keep track of every single member's badge collection, so I missed that you were a member of the Stellar Assault team. And far be it from me to ever be accused of being optimistic. But I have been around here for a long time now, and by the historical standards of this place, a project whose showrunner posts an active work update just a few months back is pretty much bustling. There's a reason why Duke Nukem Forever has always been held up as a comparison point around here. (Though now I guess we have to switch to Half-Life 3 or something...) I think you're framing that argument in a very limited definition of "alive."
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If I had to guess I'd say the most prominent way of securing future longevity is by nurturing future FREDders. Its good level designs that's important. It's what makes sure the new ships are used, that new features are shown off. If big mods have a open door for new people to learn the ropes and to encourage them, it'll pay back in great FREDders.
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Look okay, if anyone is wondering what's wrong, just look at the first few pages of this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=82618.0). Maybe, just maybe, modders aren't being motivated to finish their projects because nobody is playing them? Or maybe as the community grows older we have more responsibilities and less time to spend on modding. I know that's what happened to some of the old guard before I came around. Yeah, mods have always popped up and died, but would be farcical to say that there hasn't been something amiss lately.
I don't know if I can put a finger on anything concrete - but the general atmosphere and mood has, well, taken a turn deep into the ****-end of the pool. It's not just the people going "We're all doomed!', it's probably partially to do with the people going "No shut up, everything is fine. It as always be- WHAT DID YOU SAY BLAH BLAH I'M NOT LISTENING." Together it just looks totally dysfunctional, and the fact that people want to keep dredging up the topic whenever there's something slightly related sure as hell isn't helping.
Take ASW for example - we shouldn't panic because it died. We should celebrate because it actually got off two whole freaking releases before dying. AG got off a demo which for all intents and purposes can now be treated as a mini-campaign. MT...well that was dead years ago. At the same time, we shouldn't be totally ignoring the fact there may very well be something off with the community. Certainly I can't say that this level of pessimism is normal, and being dismissive of it probably isn't helping. Now certainly, it would help if those who had their gripes would come forward, but at the same time, maybe we could all look at ourselves and ask - what more could we do?
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My big effort to retain talent has been the 'history of HLP campaigns' thread. I wanted to give everybody's work a place in the narrative, a sense of what it contributed and did beautifully, and a positive sense of 'people pay attention, in depth, to what I do'.
I still plan to keep going on it, but damn, I was expecting a little participation.
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What participation ? It's your thread, you're the professional writer and the guy who was there forever here. What do you expect us to add ?
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This thread is getting a little more heated than I would have liked
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What participation ? It's your thread, you're the professional writer and the guy who was there forever here. What do you expect us to add ?
Just the stuff I suggested in the thread :shobon: I haven't played everything!
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I don't recall which campaigns you didn't have in there, but I do think that's definitely a thread that's worth stickying, so that other people can see it and chime in. Do you happen to have the link handy?
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Goob has agreed it's worth stickying once I updated it one more time. Pretty sure it's on, like, the second page though
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Ah, so it is. I couldn't remember if it was in here or Missions, and given how ****ty the built-in search is, I didn't trust that it'd turn up. :p
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Allow me to out myself as a shadowy doom-and-gloom illuminatus that Battuta has been referring to.
Now I don't usually say much, so let me drama queen it up with some meandering observations and burn this all to the ground.
First, I don't think HLP is dying. Sure, projects like Machina Terra and Syrk and TAP are dead or dying. But you also have people like mjn and Spoon with brand new projects, doing really cool stuff. Battuta's only come into the modding world with War in Heaven. These are the faces of new modders, releasing their work after 2010. Could you say in 2008 or 2009 that 2010 would see three high quality campaigns be released within a month of each other, with new mediavps, with a new solid build? Its not even the equivalent of planets aligning, because we can tell when those are going to be well in advance!
Maybe in 2013 or 2014, 3 or 4 or more great projects will release together for another golden time. I think this "era" of Freespace has the greatest potential, and it just going up from there. The tools are easier to use, the game has more features than most modern games. But working on this stuff can be hard. Not difficult, just hard to go forward on a motivational level.
While I typically consider myself to be the target audience of my mods, its wonderful to share and see my works be discussed and be, generally, successful. So I've released quite a number of things, how's my success been (judging by release thread activity)?
Shadows of Kraken: 25 replies
JAD1: 92 replies
JAD2: 92 replies
JAD3: 201 replies
Vassago's Dirge: 328 replies
JAD2.21: 78 replies
Looking at these numbers alone, I'd say that its time to retire. :p It seems ludicrous that I spent over a year working on something that gets less response than the first two installments of JAD. But I know people really liked it, I know people played it. But I can't really tell how many people actually played it and liked it. For every reply, maybe there were 10 that liked it but didn't say anything. Or maybe 50. Or maybe just 1 extra. I can't tell. I tried to gauge better reactions with a poll, but interest died out on that pretty quickly as well, so I ended it well before I originally intended to.
This might just be a problem that I created myself. I try to bring unique missions and gameplay to the table, but its hard to know where the line between "this 5 minute mission is worth spending a month on" and "this 5 minute mission is not worth spending a month on". You can be sure any game developer would not like 5 minutes of gameplay taking a month to do, so I probably need to... not do that.
But hey, no feedback is probably worse than negative feedback. At least people will tell you what you've done right and wrong. With no feedback, you've only got yourself to go "why didn't they post", and if you're in a foul mood, you won't get any good answers.
So Axem, you've whined and complained enough. What do you expect us to do? We're busy, we're taking breaks from FS, we've got exams, we've got kids. I think we need new people, new creators, new players to replace the ones leaving. And we need to make them aware of whats here. Diaspora was a great thing for the community, brought plenty of new people in and hopefully peripherally exposes them to FreeSpace. But we can't depend on new battlestar fans to sustain us all the time. Maybe we need to take a slightly more aggressive approach to displaying the talents of this community to attract people. Half life mods get game site coverage all the time. New minecraft mod release threads can go at a rate of like a page an hour! What do they have that we don't?
Once we've got them here, we need to show them what's actually here. I've seen many posts going "never herd of wings of down" or "whats antagaonist" from people who have been here for years. Battuta's guide to campaigns is a great start, but that's a history lesson. Getting that blasted installer working right is great too, but how do we know what we should actually be playing, or what we should be looking forward to? We need current events! Yes, NEWS. Make site news much more prominent, like the highlights! Get dedicated people to trawl topics, see new and neat stuff, grab pics, and previews for news articles. Gather up information in threads and summarize it for people who don't want to go through a 400 post thread. Maybe every month or two, an article for what's been released, and what's coming up. Years in review! Ships, campaigns, everything. We need to increase our internal visibility to ourselves. And it needs to be consistently updated, weekly at the very minimum.
Semi-related to that: I think we need better showcases of our released content. The wiki is great, but some of it seems too encyclopedic. Custom ships has come a long way recently, but the campaigns are still pretty bare and uninteresting.
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Silent_Threat:_Reborn <- This is a released 18 mission voice acted campaign
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Between_the_Ashes <- This is for an unreleased campaign with a 2 mission demo
With zero knowledge of FreeSpace and HLP, which to you looks more interesting? You have 5 seconds to decide before your interest makes you close the tab.
Of course we can't depend on people finding the wiki first:
"I liked that freespace game, i wonder if there are any mods! i will search teh googles for freespace mods...aha a hit. what new map packs do they have???"
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.863
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.24
First one has nothing that would make me download it. Second line looks pretty bad too. No pics, a 1 star review. Better not play that either!
You go to a place like Moddb and you've got pictures everywhere.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/vassagos-dirge
http://www.moddb.com/mods/luyten-civil-war
This stuff is more flashier and with all those pictures and videos, its easier to catch and draw people in with. Perhaps we need to more aggressively put our stuff on Moddb or come up with a system of our own or revamp the campaign pages. Those veteran comment boxes on ships and weapons could probably be a lot more useful for campaigns.
so tl;dr Axem thinks HLP is dying because the Illuminati have stopped putting candy bars in the machine.
(That's what you get for skipping my :words: )
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You were joking about retiring right? Please don't retire! I loved every single one of your campaigns :)
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Axem's retiring? I was looking forwards to JAD 2.22 with the return of disco, now freshly arrived from Japan. :(
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He didn't say that, but hopefully people will take Axem at good faith and not run him off as some sort of cabalistic has-been whiner.
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Allow me to out myself as a shadowy doom-and-gloom illuminatus that Battuta has been referring to.
After all the disco music, I'd always expected Axem outing himself to go..........differently. :p
So I've released quite a number of things, how's my success been (judging by release thread activity)?
Shadows of Kraken: 25 replies
JAD1: 92 replies
JAD2: 92 replies
JAD3: 201 replies
Vassago's Dirge: 328 replies
JAD2.21: 78 replies
Looking at these numbers alone, I'd say that its time to retire. :p It seems ludicrous that I spent over a year working on something that gets less response than the first two installments of JAD. But I know people really liked it, I know people played it. But I can't really tell how many people actually played it and liked it. For every reply, maybe there were 10 that liked it but didn't say anything. Or maybe 50. Or maybe just 1 extra. I can't tell. I tried to gauge better reactions with a poll, but interest died out on that pretty quickly as well, so I ended it well before I originally intended to.
And herein lies one of the biggest problems in motivating the community. There is no easy way to simply say you like a campaign unless you are a member of HLP. Perhaps we should just give up and add facebook like buttons. :D
It's the same with Diaspora (although to a lesser degree). I get the feeling we were really loved on release but the Diaspora release thread has only 384 replies. So maybe you should use that as your comparison, Vassago's Dirge was almost as popular as Diaspora!
Hell, given that many of the posters on the release thread are one-time posters, it's probably more popular amongst HLP members!
So instead of being all gloomy about the issue, let's see if we can come up with some ways to make it easier to get the feedback we want.
This might just be a problem that I created myself. I try to bring unique missions and gameplay to the table, but its hard to know where the line between "this 5 minute mission is worth spending a month on" and "this 5 minute mission is not worth spending a month on". You can be sure any game developer would not like 5 minutes of gameplay taking a month to do, so I probably need to... not do that.
Oh come on, you know you love the challenge about as much as I do. :D
Maybe we need to take a slightly more aggressive approach to displaying the talents of this community to attract people. Half life mods get game site coverage all the time. New minecraft mod release threads can go at a rate of like a page an hour! What do they have that we don't?
I think the issue is we're perceived as something of a niche market. We need to make sure that we ride Star Citizens popularity to prove we're not. As for the rest of your points, I pretty much agree wholeheartedly. :yes:
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Oh **** - I was hoping Battuta wasn't referring to Axem...
Just some small comments on your post, the post counts on something like Minecraft/HalfLife vs ours? Freespace / Flightsim style games are a niche market. I've tried over the years to get my friends/acquaintances/random people at LAN parties interested in playing them with very little success. So I think that comparing us with something like Minecraft that has "mainstream" appeal is not a good idea. I doubt there's anything we could do to achieve "success" if this is our standard for comparison.
I like your news idea, but I think we're going to have to communicate more to make it work. I've setup my forum profile to watch 90%+ of the released projects boards, and slightly less than 50% of the WIP boards, and my feeling is that there isn't a lot of news coming from most of these (with some exceptions obviously). The content creators would need to generate more news / updates in order for someone else to be able to collate & publish it. Perhaps harvesting interesting screenshots from the "Celebration of Freespace" thread would also work, there's certainly been some interesting stuff posted there (e.g. Blueplanet almost-teasers from MattTheGeek, IIRC, but that's not the only example)
Anyway, if I can take the liberty of writing a summary:
1) update campaigns in the wiki to sell them better (or ModDB pages, etc)
2) regular NEWS
3) better marketing (much as I normally hate this term! :p)
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He didn't say that, but hopefully people will take Axem at good faith and not run him off as some sort of cabalistic has-been whiner.
I think you misunderstood my intention when I referred to a sewing circle. Basically I just meant that by chance the group of people talking to each other were always pointing out the bad side of things. If you don't have anyone to put the good side of things in the group, you've quickly got a downward spiral.
I think that's a lot of what's going on here. It's why we're only hearing complaints now instead of having people suggest ideas to improve things months or years ago.
But either way, I think it's time (and past it) to start asking for ideas on how we can get the content providers their much needed feedback.
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I think Battuta's comment was responding to the hilariously out of context words:
"I'd say that its time to retire"
or they just went for the tl;dr.
I'm not going to leave JAD unfinished like that, so I'm not ready to give up yet. :p I've still got campaigns planned after that too, so lets not get into hysterics.
And I didn't mean to come off completely doom and gloom, just opening a little reality of working in this niche market. Also it can be hard to be excited for new stuff coming out when you're apart of 4 high profile projects. I've been spoiled too much! Mjn, don't let me join BtA!
So I've released quite a number of things, how's my success been (judging by release thread activity)?
Shadows of Kraken: 25 replies
JAD1: 92 replies
JAD2: 92 replies
JAD3: 201 replies
Vassago's Dirge: 328 replies
JAD2.21: 78 replies
Looking at these numbers alone, I'd say that its time to retire. :p It seems ludicrous that I spent over a year working on something that gets less response than the first two installments of JAD. But I know people really liked it, I know people played it. But I can't really tell how many people actually played it and liked it. For every reply, maybe there were 10 that liked it but didn't say anything. Or maybe 50. Or maybe just 1 extra. I can't tell. I tried to gauge better reactions with a poll, but interest died out on that pretty quickly as well, so I ended it well before I originally intended to.
And herein lies one of the biggest problems in motivating the community. There is no easy way to simply say you like a campaign unless you are a member of HLP. Perhaps we should just give up and add facebook like buttons. :D
It's the same with Diaspora (although to a lesser degree). I get the feeling we were really loved on release but the Diaspora release thread has only 384 replies. So maybe you should use that as your comparison, Vassago's Dirge was almost as popular as Diaspora!
Hell, given that many of the posters on the release thread are one-time posters, it's probably more popular amongst HLP members!
Two and a half small counterpoints
First, Diaspora has an entire forum dedicated to it. Some well-wishers and other discussion won't end up in the main release forum, but in the threads around it. Vassago has all of its correspondence in the single thread.
Second, the point I was trying to make is more the contrast between the visible reactions from Vassago to JAD2.21. If you tried to plot out a graph of expected replies before JAD's release, you'd maybe expect it to go over, but it... didn't.
But that's not to say I'm disappointed with Vassago's release. I was utterly thrilled with it, getting very brief mentions on other websites with it even! (More a consequence of posting it on ModDB mind you!) It's just, you know, I wanted more of that warm baskingness. :p
This might just be a problem that I created myself. I try to bring unique missions and gameplay to the table, but its hard to know where the line between "this 5 minute mission is worth spending a month on" and "this 5 minute mission is not worth spending a month on". You can be sure any game developer would not like 5 minutes of gameplay taking a month to do, so I probably need to... not do that.
Oh come on, you know you love the challenge about as much as I do. :D
I do indeed love the challenge! But I spent a few weeks and around 200kb of a mission to something that the player can storm through in 10 seconds. There's got to be some limit where you need to go "hey, stop clowning around" and release something this decade.
In any case, more random ideas to move to an upbeat tone:
Extend HLP to be a general space simmer modding community (grabbing ahold of old Freelancers, new Star Citizens etc). But extending out tends to not work out without a base ready to move. (But we've got a HW Mod, a Soase mod (maybe), a MechCommander mod so far...)
Create It/Play It Months
Months where we're all greatly encouraged to take a little time out and create a mission (maybe based on a common theme) or model (its Civ Transport month!) and just post something at the end of the month, get a participation badge or something. Like the FREDding contest... just no eternal judging.
Likewise, a month where we're all greatly encouraged to play a campaign. Old, new, just something that's not yours. Maybe encourage posting LPs on places like youtube.
More FSWiki drives, these are great to get categories of pages up to date and looking great.
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i think everyones just getting old. i know when i made the bulk of the nukemod content prior to 2006. when i finished something, i was like yea, thats awesome. fast forward to a few months ago when i was rolling out a ****ty ksp mod, it felt more like, yay its done! i can finally go do something else and forget about this ****. somewhere down the line mods stopped feeling like a hobby and just started feeling like work. something to be avoided like the plague.
now this may sound like im taking an old dieing cat out back and shooting it. but i can always go get some new kittens. and by that analogy i mean new modders. i still see that every now and again when i scan through the modding board occasionally someone asks a really stupid question, but then i come to the realization that its new blood looking to mod this fine game, and hopefully they will be as enthusiastic as i used to be about modding.
obligatory will finish nukemod when i find a meth dealer.
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Create It/Play It Months
Months where we're all greatly encouraged to take a little time out and create a mission (maybe based on a common theme) or model (its Civ Transport month!) and just post something at the end of the month, get a participation badge or something. Like the FREDding contest... just no eternal judging.
Likewise, a month where we're all greatly encouraged to play a campaign. Old, new, just something that's not yours. Maybe encourage posting LPs on places like youtube.
More FSWiki drives, these are great to get categories of pages up to date and looking great.
I really like these ideas.
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I really want to get more involved with this thread, but I don't have the time right now. That said, more wiki drives are definitely possible, I think we had reasonable success with the WoD drive, and the recent additions to the User-Made Ships page (neither of these are complete, but they're a hell of a lot better than they were, thanks to collaborative effort).
A drive to update the pages of released campaigns could be something tot think about.
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http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Silent_Threat:_Reborn <- This is a released 18 mission voice acted campaign
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Between_the_Ashes <- This is for an unreleased campaign with a 2 mission demo
With zero knowledge of FreeSpace and HLP, which to you looks more interesting? You have 5 seconds to decide before your interest makes you close the tab.
Well poo. Clearly I need a better publicist. :nervous:
Actually, this is not far off the mark. Back in days of yore Setekh was really involved in this sort of thing. He was always popping into hosted project forums, asking how things were going, asking if people needed renders or hosted stuff. He was really good at fostering community spirit and promoting members' work. And he did all those project-specific board themes. (Maybe we should try bringing those back.)
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Extend HLP to be a general space simmer modding community (grabbing ahold of old Freelancers, new Star Citizens etc). But extending out tends to not work out without a base ready to move. (But we've got a HW Mod, a Soase mod (maybe), a MechCommander mod so far...)
I've been saying that we need to expand beyond being a Freespace community and become a Freespace Engine community for ages. Freespace is a great game, but we've outgrown it slightly and it's become a barrier to entry. I'm not saying we should ignore it, or forget about it, but I think we should stop acting like it's the main entry point to the community. Let's rope people in with our stand alone stuff and then once they're hooked start pointing them at Freespace.
There's a reason why Diaspora starts with mentions of the SCP and Hard Light Productions. Those are the brands we should be marketing, not Freespace. Trying to grab people with a "This is a great game. But if you want to play it you need to pay $10 to GOG first" is the wrong way to drag people in.
Likewise, a month where we're all greatly encouraged to play a campaign. Old, new, just something that's not yours. Maybe encourage posting LPs on places like youtube.
Absolutely, I mentioned doing much the same thing on IRC. This one is especially good as there is no reason people can't start doing this right now.
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While I typically consider myself to be the target audience of my mods, its wonderful to share and see my works be discussed and be, generally, successful. So I've released quite a number of things, how's my success been (judging by release thread activity)?
Shadows of Kraken: 25 replies
JAD1: 92 replies
JAD2: 92 replies
JAD3: 201 replies
Vassago's Dirge: 328 replies
JAD2.21: 78 replies
I still think thread activity is an utterly irrelevant factor. Probably one of the less relevant of all. For example, I've played almost everything that was released since I joined the community plus nearly everything I could find on the wiki. Did I make review posts for them ? Hell no, I'm no native English speaker and most of the time one awesome reviewer like Spoon already said what I would have said long before I do and much better than I would have. There's a point where there's no need to repeat what's been said. If you start demanding that each guy playing your mod go post in a thread, you're gonna have a bad time.
If you want more relevant numbers, you'd want downloads numbers. I need to bug achtung to see if there's a way to track DL numbers on FSMods...
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I think it already does actually.
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what about more standalone content? standalone mini-mods and standalone multiplayer arena type mods might draw in a lot of people. your campaign need not be epic to be stand alone. im thinking some kind of team fortress in space kinda game, no plot, just epic arena play. graphics would be optimized for speed rather than for pretties. i actually thought about this kinda thing for nukemod on and off over the last decade, but didnt think the community would find it interesting at all.
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It would certainly give me something to use when testing the multiplayer code that was easier to work with than any of the existing games. It would also go a long way towards reviving the multiplayer side of the game.
If anyone is interested in slapping together something quickly, you've got my support when it comes to coding stuff (and maybe even a little light FREDding).
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My big effort to retain talent has been the 'history of HLP campaigns' thread. I wanted to give everybody's work a place in the narrative, a sense of what it contributed and did beautifully, and a positive sense of 'people pay attention, in depth, to what I do'.
I still plan to keep going on it, but damn, I was expecting a little participation.
Well, in this case, I never even noticed that you had asked for help. Maybe this is a situation where we can make use of the wiki? It's ideal for collaborative writing, and not everything on it has to be permanant. Maybe post what you have into a temporary page, create a new thread in the wiki forum or GenFS askng people to contribute and see what we get. The wiki is a great tool that I often think we underutilize.
We need current events! Yes, NEWS. Make site news much more prominent, like the highlights! Get dedicated people to trawl topics, see new and neat stuff, grab pics, and previews for news articles. Gather up information in threads and summarize it for people who don't want to go through a 400 post thread. Maybe every month or two, an article for what's been released, and what's coming up. Years in review! Ships, campaigns, everything. We need to increase our internal visibility to ourselves. And it needs to be consistently updated, weekly at the very minimum.
This is a good idea. I think it's easy to forget that HLP is, for a lot of non-community people, a website with a forum. For a lot of us - certainly for me - it's a forum that happens to have a website too. I had entirely forgotton that I could post website news from the announcements board - this has made me remeber, so that's a good thing. I think a lot of cool stuff - ship releases, single missions, new tuts, that sort of stuff - doesn't neccesarily get noticed because it doesn't justify a highlight. But a post to the announcements board, and, by extension, the main page, will give some degree of exposure to less prominent achievements and show off the activity levels to casual browsers.
Semi-related to that: I think we need better showcases of our released content. The wiki is great, but some of it seems too encyclopedic. Custom ships has come a long way recently, but the campaigns are still pretty bare and uninteresting.
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Silent_Threat:_Reborn <- This is a released 18 mission voice acted campaign
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Between_the_Ashes <- This is for an unreleased campaign with a 2 mission demo
With zero knowledge of FreeSpace and HLP, which to you looks more interesting? You have 5 seconds to decide before your interest makes you close the tab.
Of course we can't depend on people finding the wiki first:
"I liked that freespace game, i wonder if there are any mods! i will search teh googles for freespace mods...aha a hit. what new map packs do they have???"
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.863
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.24
First one has nothing that would make me download it. Second line looks pretty bad too. No pics, a 1 star review. Better not play that either!
Well, while updating FSMods isn't something we can do without the collaboration of their staffers, as I mentioned earlier, updating the campaign pages on the wiki shouldn't be too hard, especially if we get some collaboration from the wiki editors (and we have a few really dedicated iki editors). It doesn't neccesarily have to be up to the campaign staff to maintain them, especially tentpole campaigns like ST:R
Create It/Play It Months
Months where we're all greatly encouraged to take a little time out and create a mission (maybe based on a common theme) or model (its Civ Transport month!) and just post something at the end of the month, get a participation badge or something. Like the FREDding contest... just no eternal judging.
Likewise, a month where we're all greatly encouraged to play a campaign. Old, new, just something that's not yours. Maybe encourage posting LPs on places like youtube.
These are both good ideas, and I would supposrt/participate in both. :nod:
WRT multiplayer stuff, I have to dmit ignorance - I don't play much multiplayer on any game - I prefer to follow an unfolding storyline as part of a single-player campaign than play a multiplayer dogfight. But I do see the alue in something like this. Perhaps we could combine it with one of Axem's ideas and have a month-long "contest" (if that's the right term) for people to design and create multiplayer "arenas" - big bits of geometry - either built from existing ships in FRED or modelled specially - around which to dogfight. Open space is fine, but when I did used to play the occasional MP round, I always had more fun playing the Old School dogfight around the Arcadia than I ever did in open empty space.
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While I typically consider myself to be the target audience of my mods, its wonderful to share and see my works be discussed and be, generally, successful. So I've released quite a number of things, how's my success been (judging by release thread activity)?
Shadows of Kraken: 25 replies
JAD1: 92 replies
JAD2: 92 replies
JAD3: 201 replies
Vassago's Dirge: 328 replies
JAD2.21: 78 replies
I still think thread activity is an utterly irrelevant factor. Probably one of the less relevant of all. For example, I've played almost everything that was released since I joined the community plus nearly everything I could find on the wiki. Did I make review posts for them ? Hell no, I'm no native English speaker and most of the time one awesome reviewer like Spoon already said what I would have said long before I do and much better than I would have. There's a point where there's no need to repeat what's been said. If you start demanding that each guy playing your mod go post in a thread, you're gonna have a bad time.
If you want more relevant numbers, you'd want downloads numbers. I need to bug achtung to see if there's a way to track DL numbers on FSMods...
So why did 300-some people bother to comment on one mini-campaign and just 70-some on another around a year later? A lot of the posts in the Vassago release were all variations of "I loved the campaign". If no one wanted to resay whats been said, there would be nothing past Battuta's first post. Even a simple "played it, loved it, do more" would do a lot to motivate anyone.
And in my paragraph after that, I admitted, yeah more people could have played it. But I can't tell! FSMods does keep raw http logs, but I tend to find them... not an accurate picture of what actually happens. I saw BP's access logs for after WiH was released, the smaller base VP had a much much much less access count of the larger visual VPs. Surely everyone didn't need to retry downloading the visual VP 10 times for every base VP.
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Goddamned vultures, man.
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Okay you know what?
Somebody nominate a campaign I can play and do another Good/Bad/Ugly on it. One I haven't already done. And isn't WiH because I'd like to finish it within the next week and I'd be there for at least eight days with WiH taking notes on everything.
AXEM, THIS IS YOUR CUE.
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I still believe the best thing we can do is foster a culture of pluralistic, heterodox appreciation - in-depth, thoughtful posts even when something didn't really work for you, and a recognition of how the campaign in question advances and speaks to others in the medium. The BP forum thrives on its excellent, thoughtful posters, and I've tried to bring some of that to other campaigns via that one thread. Having someone think in depth about your campaign makes it worth it like nothing else.
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Somebody nominate a campaign I can play and do another Good/Bad/Ugly on it.
Another? How many have you done? Did you do one for ST:R? :nervous:
I can nominate a single mission: "The First Piece of Hell", published in the FS1 days. I think it got ported to FSPort at some point, but I could be wrong.
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Another? How many have you done? Did you do one for ST:R?
Total? I'm not sure. I adopted the format for the campaign where you play escort for the NTC Trinity (which I obviously can't remember the name of) and I think I've used it for every serious campaign review I've posted since where I actually completed the campaign. Campaigns I know I've done off the top of my head are both Wings of Dawn and Stranded (but not AND), Dimensional Eclipse. Anything before the release of WoD is fuzzy.
I know I haven't done it for ST:R because troo faxes, I didn't actually finish it for some reason.
Time to check my Port folder!
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I am actually still eagerly awaiting your GBU on stranded.
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I am actually still eagerly awaiting your GBU on stranded.
Apparently things after the release of WoD are fuzzy too, then.
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If there are no other ideas, I'll bump this up to the admins and we can decide which ideas are feasible right now and which ones can be put into practice later.
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Okay you know what?
Somebody nominate a campaign I can play and do another Good/Bad/Ugly on it. One I haven't already done. And isn't WiH because I'd like to finish it within the next week and I'd be there for at least eight days with WiH taking notes on everything.
AXEM, THIS IS YOUR CUE.
My first campaigns before I upgraded to FSO from retail were a pair of campaigns (one is a sequel to the other) called Incursion and Return to Sol, and I think they're great. Persist past the first few missions. The quality really picks up. 46 missions in total.
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.36
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.37
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Incursion
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Return_to_Sol
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Would it help a bit to move Missions and Campaigns and Multi to right below GenFS on the boards listing? As it is they're getting kinda lost amidst Modding and FRED support that could scare off a ten-second newcomer*.
* probably/possibly. I'm no longer a newcomer, so I'm not sure how much that means coming from me.
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This idea has merit. Thinking about it.. I know I'd probably pay attention to the M&C board more. It's like advertising, placement means a whole lot. Also, those boards are probably the first steps new people should take before FREDing and Modding.. so it makes sense.
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I agree. You could even think about moving it right to the top.
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Personally I'd move all the forums around a little. Here's my suggestion.
Announcements - Unchanged
Freespace
- General Freespace Discussion
- Multiplayer
- Freespace and Freespace Open Support
Freespace Mods
- Missions And Campaigns
- FreeSpace Upgrade Project
- Freespace Campaign Restoration Project
- All Fully/Partially Released Campaigns Go Here.
Full Games - Unchanged
Diaspora - Unchanged
Other Mods - This is where MechCommander OmniTech, etc will go if released.
Modding, Mission Design and Coding
- FS2_Open Mission Design
- FS2_Open Modding
- FS2_Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP)
- FS2_Open Tools (Expand this section so that it becomes an good starting point for newbies to understand how to get all the tools to get into modding. Either using stickies, Wiki links or a mixture of the two).
- FS2_Open Scripting
- Voice Acting
Community
- Interviews (I say we bring these back, they're a good way to encourage community feeling and get the content providers the feedback they're complaining they don't get. A good interview generally leads to more discussion of the game than just the release thread does).
- Fan Fiction and Art
- Freespace Wiki (although maybe this can be in the section above).
Works In Progress, etc - Unchanged
The idea is to set out our stall first, show people all the great stuff we've produced first. Then how we made it and how they can get started. Part of me is tempted to put the Full Games section above Freespace but I suspect that would be too controversial. :D
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I like it. Missions and Campaigns gets the equivalent of a first berth, which is really what I think is one of the more important parts, and there's an entire part of the forum for "NEW CONTENT FOR FREESPACE" which is sorely lacking right now.
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I definitely wouldn't mind that setup!
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What do you think about a second highlights row above the forum? Probably text-only, less height than the regular highlights, and about 6-8 entries wide. There you put minor releases like ships, single missions (of note), major project patches, interviews, wiki drives, etc.
That way all those things get a lot more attention than in the announcements board or in their respective subforums without conflicting with the big highlights for things like campaigns and FSO releases.
(I also like kara's re-arrangement of forums)
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What do you think about a second highlights row above the forum? Probably text-only, less height than the regular highlights, and about 6-8 entries wide. There you put minor releases like ships, single missions (of note), major project patches, interviews, wiki drives, etc.
This please. :yes:
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I think there should be encouragement for people to make single missions. Full fledged campaigns, let alone the big projects like Wings of Dawn, Wing Commander Saga and Blue Planet take a huge commitment. Someone might not have the time or desire for that, but they might have one or two kickass missions in them.
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What do you think about a second highlights row above the forum? Probably text-only, less height than the regular highlights, and about 6-8 entries wide. There you put minor releases like ships, single missions (of note), major project patches, interviews, wiki drives, etc.
This please. :yes:
Get's my vote too. :yes:
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What do you think about a second highlights row above the forum? Probably text-only, less height than the regular highlights, and about 6-8 entries wide. There you put minor releases like ships, single missions (of note), major project patches, interviews, wiki drives, etc.
:yes: O Gawd, I want this!
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Active FS2 projects:
BP
BtA
Inferno (sorta FS2)
JAD (sorta FS2)
Teeth of the Tiger
Active non-FS2 projects:
Dimensional Eclipse (Not sure what kind of future plans Droid has, but I assume he has them)
Fringespace? (No real clue actually)
WoD
Fate of the galaxy (At least I think its not dead)
Diaspora
Partially fixed. Given the release of something every several weeks, this list is definitely incomplete. Not everyone updates often, not everyone writes about every single thing they do.
TotT currently counts nearly 500 MB, over 30 ships built from scratch, and then more... Much more. :P
Each and every ship and player usable missile comes with its tech description that will give an idea on the background of their users. All this takes lots of time (I needed to write a timeline just to get the descriptions consistent with each other).
I only publish a few interesting things to show the mod is being worked on, but some of the surprises will be released when it's released.
They wouldn't be as surprising when the player runs into them if their screenshots are already floating around...
I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other mods out there that don't get much publicity until release.
Then there's the fact that some people burn out or run out of time for modding and do a single tech description per week (in a good week), only to come back and push things waaay forward when they get the right mood again.
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Shadow Genesis isn't that new :P. First version of the mod was almost as old as Blue Planet and it's on HLP from more than a year. I would rather place Pandemonium in the new projects section.
And... SoA is dead? I've heard about almost complete act I, but they are just working in silence.
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SoA is certainly not dead. It is taking longer than we'd like, but that is really a function of lack of time on my part (and the fact that I'm currently focusing on SCP due to 3.6.14 and 3.6.16). I need to figure out how to work as efficiently as MjnMixael. :nervous:
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I really wanted to reply to this sooner, but I kept having stuff interrupt me every time I tried to sit down and do it. It's a bit late at this point, but thanks for throwing yourself to the proverbial (actual?) wolves, Axem. :yes: You made some very well-founded points in there. That other ****ty thread aside, I can definitely see how a relative lack of feedback on a new release can seem discouraging, especially when it's a FREDder like you throwing all sorts of crazy complicated tricks under the hood. I think the one problem there is that, to the uninitiated like me, it can be extremely hard to tell from the outside that a certain mission took a massive amount of trial-and-error to pull something amazing off. I've always enjoyed reading threads where FREDders/coders go into more detail about specific tricks they've pulled off; stuff like your more advanced tutorials, or Battuta's legendary bughunt threads, help give the rest of us a peek into that side of modding. If there is something that you're not sure was worth the time investment, maybe try making a thread like that, and see if something comes of it. :)
I completely agree with the idea that we're not doing a proper job of making content visible to even our own community, much less outsiders; there's a whole lot that flies under people's radars, even those of us who are fairly involved here. Black Wolf had a great point in that, for the more casual visitor, HLP is primarily a website about FS2 modding, not just the forum that most of us skip directly to. The front page really needs a significantly-higher rate of news posts, to get out there the amount of work that's actually happening. I can't help but think of the few times I've visited the Wing Commander CIC site, which seems to have one or two news postings per day...they can't really be that many times more active than we are, can they? I don't know if the answer is to bring on a few new staff members solely dedicated to making news posts, or for those of us who already can to step it up, or both, but something has to change there. As it stands, if you've created something cool and haven't seen it promoted, please, feel free to bug me or one of the other global mods/admins about it, and we'll get it posted. We usually respond well to prodding. :p
The points about the general user-friendliness of mod pages on the wiki and FSMods is another good one, though that's an issue that's a bit more difficult to resolve. While any of us can edit the wiki, the sort of really comprehensive presentation that'd work best is something that I think is best suited to the mod's original creators. And as far as I know, FSMods changes like that would fall solely on Swantz, which is too much to pile on top of someone who's already doing a ton by running the site in the first place. We could probably use some brainstorming on this part.
I agree that we should try to diversify the site's overall focus somewhat; giving the MechCommander and StarShatter projects/communities a home here sets a great precedent. Obviously not every space-sim-ish/open-source game under the sun is in need of a home, but I'm sure there are enough out there that it'd be worth pursuing. Trying to tap into the excitement over Chris Roberts' new campaign is an opportunity we shouldn't pass up either.
And finally, I'm completely behind a "Campaign of the Month" project; lord knows I have a pretty massive backlog myself. I'm a fairly-active anime viewer, and I've always found that it's easiest to sit down and watch stuff if I'm doing it as part of some external ongoing discussion, so something like this would definitely get me playing on a regular basis again. If someone sets it up, I'm there. :yes:
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Campaign a month would definitely get me to take a break from my many, many projects and play a campaign as long as there actually -is- discussion going on about it. Would that work best as it's own board or something?
Might also serve as a motivator to get older campaigns up to a bare minimum of running on new builds. Whoever runs it could make sure the download includes a mod folder, mod.ini, basic mod image... and perhaps that it will at least load without crashing FSO.
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I have just one suggestion adding to that "Campaign of the Month" idea: don't put Blue Planet, WoD, Vassago's Dirge, etc. on it. Everyone knows those campaigns are excellent. There are others that could definitely use some more exposure, especially to new folks.
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Well I think The Antagonist is probably the first one as pretty much everyone has commented on how underrated it is.
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An idea to tie all of these ideas together... and then some.
The HLP Newsletter
In your face Freespace community action news
In the interests of expanding community visibility to its members, new and old, the HLP newsletter would be a monthly affair to keep everyone up to date with goings on. With a light and fanciful tone to it, it shines a warm glow on anything that people have made or shown off.
With the monthly editions, an archive begins to grow where anyone can read up on past events without having to keep asking "Hey, what's new?"
Categories:
HLP News: Is it Wiki drive time? Donation time? New contests?
Campaign/Mod News: What new campaign releases, announcements, or neat discussions are going on? Are projects looking for help?
Model News: Showing off WIPs and finished goods. Pictures everywhere!
Source Code News: Is there a new feature that was added? Funny bug stories? Did something get changed that modders should know about?
Interview: Find a person or team and interview them. Find out what's going on, what makes them tick, where they hid the bodies.
Fanciful Review: We play a campaign, alternating between new and old stuff, and review it, post thoughts and pose questions about it to encourage discussion about it. Could be announced a head of time so others could play it as well and add their thoughts down.
Screencap Contest: Challenge readers to take a prize winning screencap based on a weekly theme. Winners get... points. Or something. So even if readers have nothing else they can contribute to, they can hop in FreeSpace for half an hour and nab a shot to show off the FreeSpace engine.
And at the end of every year, a Yearly Edition. A scrapbook of released content, highlights and HLPness. Something to reflect on and for people who have been away for quite a while to look at and see all the neat stuff.
This would be a way to get everyone in a participating mood, whether you mod, FRED, play, or just read.
Thoughts?
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*Monthly newsletter*
I'd been thinking much the same way: a monthly newsletter with (obviously) news, and a review of either a newly-released or a vintage mod. From my own experience, I find that newsletters keep me visiting places that I couldn't be arsed to follow up real-time.
Would it be desirable and/or possible to deliver the newsletter to people's mailbox?
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Axem's suggestions are excellent and I think they nip the bud on what we can do to help make the community look more "alive".
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+1 to Axem's idea of the newsletter.
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*Monthly newsletter*
I'd been thinking much the same way: a monthly newsletter with (obviously) news, and a review of either a newly-released or a vintage mod. From my own experience, I find that newsletters keep me visiting places that I couldn't be arsed to follow up real-time.
Would it be desirable and/or possible to deliver the newsletter to people's mailbox?
Probably the best thing to do would be to post a version here for comments, and an email version for the guys and gals who can't always come to HLP.
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So who volunteers to write this newsletter? :)
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I would be interested!
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Could people interview other people and post it in the newsletter, or would we want it simply on the interview forum. I think newsletter would be better.
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Both!