FreeGameDev

How can we expand this community? The game's been around in a fairly complete state for over a year now, but the community is still tiny (mostly limited to this forum, the IRC, and a few extraneous clans, e.g. Frogteam, Wazu, FD. Feedback from people who have actually tried the game is generally positive, but the trick is getting people to download the game itself. Suggestions?

I think this community, like any other community, is like a flower. It takes a while to sprout as long as there is someone taking care of it. I think Quin "waters" this community pretty well but I do think spreading the word would help just as much, similar to the roots of a tree stretching out. Posting things on public sites like Facbook and Youtube and Tumblr works for me (although Youtube's my main site :P). If you're like me and have friends who play mostly console or main stream games, you can always shoot them a message about a free FPS on PC called Red Eclipse. I had one of my Playstation buddies ask me about that last month. And if someone is just starting out on PC, I for one think this is one of the best games to start out on, mostly because it's free but also because we are so close to the developer which makes us different from the larger games in this genre. I believe we will grow, in time.

fawstoar {l Wrote}:How can we expand this community? The game's been around in a fairly complete state for over a year now, but the community is still tiny (mostly limited to this forum, the IRC, and a few extraneous clans, e.g. Frogteam, Wazu, FD. Feedback from people who have actually tried the game is generally positive, but the trick is getting people to download the game itself. Suggestions?

Here's food for thought: why do we want a larger community? I've been actively involved in games with much larger communities, but I haven't often felt that the size of the RE community has made the game less enjoyable. Though, I too would like to see the community expand. It would be great to see it happen overnight, but that's unrealistic. We're competing with many many games in this genre. Worse yet some of them are produced by large companies with huge budgets and resources that we'll never have. Of course, I believe that there is a place for RE in all of this madness. You can always count on the old fashioned way: bugfixes, regular releases, and patience. With enough time, good games get attention.

This being said, I think a lot of people don't bother playing new games under the assumption that either:

1. The player base is too small to be enjoyable
2. Development will be abandoned in 6 months
3. The game is too buggy for serious play

Of course, none of those assumptions hold true here. Wouldn't it be nice to have a way to track the size of the community? Perhaps I'll add that to the master server listing once I'm on winter break

Edit: All of this aside, what about advertising? Like Google Adwords or something? Surely everybody here could pitch in a few dollars a month? My understanding is that you can prepay for a certain number of clicks, which is pretty cool.

Edit x2: There are lots of other little things too. For example, RE should really be here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_op ... ideo_games

Does anyone on the forum have any professional experience with advertising?

How about an advertisement contest. you get a point for posting about RE on a gaming fourm, having a new member comment u got them in the game. 2 points for making a video for the game. 5 points for getting RE mentioned on a popular website.

If no one wants to play that game perhaps like an advertisement sunday where dedicated members spend 30 min every sunday posting about RE on the net. Just some thoughts on ways to spread the game.

orbitaldecay {l Wrote}:RE should really be here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_op ... ideo_games

I dunno, but the Wikipedia Article itself could use cleaning up by someone who knows what the hell they're talking about too (we don't provide commercial support, dot3 labs provides it for the Cube Engine (eg. Cube and Sauerbraten)). I avoid editing these articles because the lack of notability means they often get deleted, and I obviously don't have a Neutral Point of View.

https://joindiaspora.com/tags/red-eclipse
One proud follower \o/

Expanding the community would help because it can be hard to find decent games a lot of the time. Having tried to get other people I know to play Red Eclipse, the most common complaint is that the weapons don't feel real enough. I think this is partly caused by the slow moving projectiles of the smg, plasma, and shotgun giving a rather disconnected feel to their use, and partly the slightly tacky looking firing effects of the shotgun and smg secondary modes.

4rson {l Wrote}:slow moving projectiles of the smg, plasma, and shotgun

I have to agree here. I don't really feel that the bullets for just about any of the weaponry is fast enough. For those that have played with the weapon vars, or who have a decent sense of feel for the rifle would notice that the non-scoped shot is far slower than the scoped shot. This may not seem like much close range, but at longer distances, this gets rather noticeable. In regular, non-insta matches, this doesn't really matter, as the rifle has it's large splash anyway, but in actual insta games, where targets can be far off, or maneuvering fairly quickly, that slow speed can cause a miss by micrometers, when it shouldn't happen, IMO.

The SMG bullets are really slow. On top of needing fairly good aim to use it effectively, you have to lead your shot a little more than is necessary, due to their slow bullet speed. Pistol bullets are a bit slow too. I feel that all of the projectiles from all weapons (minus rocket and grenade, and most secondary fires) are just a tad slow.

It's just my opinion, but I feel like RE could be boosted if projectiles were just a little bit faster all around. Cases of exclusion I can think of are the shotgun's secondary, the plasma secondary, flamer, etc. It's really just bullets and lasers I'm talking about.

ZeroKnight {l Wrote}:

4rson {l Wrote}:slow moving projectiles of the smg, plasma, and shotgun

I have to agree here. I don't really feel that the bullets for just about any of the weaponry is fast enough. For those that have played with the weapon vars, or who have a decent sense of feel for the rifle would notice that the non-scoped shot is far slower than the scoped shot. This may not seem like much close range, but at longer distances, this gets rather noticeable. In regular, non-insta matches, this doesn't really matter, as the rifle has it's large splash anyway, but in actual insta games, where targets can be far off, or maneuvering fairly quickly, that slow speed can cause a miss by micrometers, when it shouldn't happen, IMO.

The SMG bullets are really slow. On top of needing fairly good aim to use it effectively, you have to lead your shot a little more than is necessary, due to their slow bullet speed. Pistol bullets are a bit slow too. I feel that all of the projectiles from all weapons (minus rocket and grenade, and most secondary fires) are just a tad slow.

It's just my opinion, but I feel like RE could be boosted if projectiles were just a little bit faster all around. Cases of exclusion I can think of are the shotgun's secondary, the plasma secondary, flamer, etc. It's really just bullets and lasers I'm talking about.

Agreed, RE's weapons do feel very lightweight, but in comparison to pretty much the exact opposite in Xonotic (from what I've played, I'm not really a fan of that game), they're fine. Xonotic has these sack-of-bricks weapons that are clanky and recoil-y and generally hard to stomach in my opinion. It seems like a case of a shooter trying to intensify the experience by basically just turning up all the things, if that makes any sense. The sound, the shiny effects, the punchiness of the weapons are all blown out of proportion if you ask me. Then again, that's a different play style than RE, which feels a little slower and more precise. I'm trying not to criticize Xonotic here, but I don't necessarily want RE to receive the same treatment and lose its feeling of precision.

I hope that mini rant makes sense to someone. I like the current way that RE plays. The things I would like to see are some graphical changes - better lighting, textures, anti-aliasing, etc. - that could help draw in more players who feel that the current RE is a little ugly in comparison to other shooters out there at the moment.

That wasn't a very well formulated argument, but I think I got my point across.

EDIT: Some more thoughts. I think that in order to get more players, we need to find the proper target audience. Sure, the Sauerbraten folks are a good place to start, since its their engine we're running on, but what about fans of older "twitch" shooters like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament... maybe even Tribes? I don't know anything about the state of the communities for those games, but if they still existed, that would be an excellent place to spread the word about RE. Also consider other forums for open-source FPS like Urban Terror or AssaultCube. Anyone else have some suggestions? What has made games like AssaultCube popular? How can we emulate that?

And as orbitaldecay said, do we want a larger community? RE will probably have a long lifespan, even with a small one, but it could increase exponentially with an exponentially larger playerbase. Maybe it's time to ditch the FreeGameDev forums and start our own. Maybe a more complete game is desired? RE is relatively refined, but could still use improvements and additions, e.g. new maps, weapon models, graphical updates. It would be nice to get to a point when there are always 2 or 3 servers with 16 or more people playing. That would be really, really great, and I think most here will agree.

Sorry that this has turned into a lengthy post, but I've been thinking about this pretty much ever since I started playing and enjoying the game. It's already very enjoyable, as everyone I've introduced it to says upon learning the basics. The next update seems like it will result in a very polished little shooter that runs on your 5-year-old PC or netbook, even. At which point we should definitely consider grabbing a few dozen new players

fawstoar {l Wrote}:What has made games like AssaultCube popular?

It would be nice to get to a point when there are always 2 or 3 servers with 16 or more people playing. That would be really, really great, and I think most here will agree.

Assault Cube in my opinion feels more like Counter Strike Source than anyway, and as we should already know, that game is pretty damn popular. So when Assault Cube was released, people spreaded the word of a free game that feels similar to CS:S. I can say that I like that game, I just don't have the time to get good at it but nonetheless, I think it's mostly because the game is dead simple and it feels and plays good (probably because the Cube engine is so easy to get used to :P).

That second bit you mentioned I laughed because I was actually thinking about it earlier today while I was looking at the http://redeclipse.orbitaldecay.com/ page that I have shortcutted at the bottom taskbar (Win7 ftw!). When this game gets popular, or to the point where we can say that people play this game, I'm hoping for to have like servers (maybe like 5 or 6 of them) with at least 4 people playing on each. That'll feel real good because I won't have to either choose between playing with people or playing in an empty server; there will be a number of servers with people playing so I won't have to play alone. But then again this is just a dream but we'll get there.

4rson {l Wrote}:.. the most common complaint is that the weapons don't feel real enough. I think this is partly caused by the slow moving projectiles of the smg, plasma, and shotgun giving a rather disconnected feel to their use ..

You need to realise that their speed is part of the weapon balance (if the shotgun could shoot clear across the map, what benefit would a proper long range weapon have?), if you change these you need to change more than just the speed to rebalance the weapon. I think people expect realism, when in a game like this, that is not the point. The better question is: How many of these people come from CounterStrike/Call of Duty/Battlefield backgrounds, and are just expecting the game to play more like what they're *used* to?

Think of it from a design standpoint too; we don't have maps that span ten-to-a-hundred kilometres, you're in a relatively confined arena most of the time. Could you imagine the mayhem of being in a small enclosed space with SMG bullets ricocheting at a million units per second? Because you don't have the time to even see the projectile, you have no chance of predicting its movement. There's also an aesthetic value to being able to see the path of projectiles, rather than them just being a millisecond blur in your peripheral vision.

This all being said, I'm not opposed to the idea of possibly upping the speed a little on the projectiles; the point is that there is a great divide between good game balance, and realism. I'm not about to just go and increase the speed, because then I'd need to spend the next month tweaking every other weapon variable to rebalance the weapons (and yes, we are near a v1.2 release at this point in time). Perhaps you, as a community, could take this on and play with the variables for each weapon to accomplish this task?

I completely understand where you're coming from, and agree with you that realistic-speed bullets in this game...from these guns...on these maps, would be chaos. I agree that the aesthetic appeal is also nice, because I do enjoy seeing the projectiles, and all the ways they can be changed. (Rainbow Guns script, anyone?)

However, I did mention a tiny increase, and not one as drastic as realistic bullet speeds. Red Eclipse is not realistic. That's the point. BUT, what I was trying to get across was that at times, some of the weapon shot speeds seemed a little slow, like the rifle in instagib, or the SMG at medium range (roughly one end of Echo to the other) produced a noticeable need for more of a lead than would seem necessary.
Perhaps this achieves the goal of what you mentioned earlier to not have realistic speeds, and thus it is fine the way they are, and simply becomes part of the RE learning curve, or maybe they could stand to be increased just a teensy tiny iota.

I was merely throwing out an argument. If even aforementioned tiny increase will break how RE plays, and what it stands for, then I'm not for a speed increase, no matter how slight.

qreeves {l Wrote}:

4rson {l Wrote}:.. the most common complaint is that the weapons don't feel real enough. I think this is partly caused by the slow moving projectiles of the smg, plasma, and shotgun giving a rather disconnected feel to their use ..

You need to realise that their speed is part of the weapon balance (if the shotgun could shoot clear across the map, what benefit would a proper long range weapon have?), if you change these you need to change more than just the speed to rebalance the weapon. I think people expect realism, when in a game like this, that is not the point. The better question is: How many of these people come from CounterStrike/Call of Duty/Battlefield backgrounds, and are just expecting the game to play more like what they're *used* to?

RE is pretty novel in a lot of ways. Will that turn some players off? Of course. Is that O.K.? Depends on your objective. I think the key here is to strike some sort of balance. You can make the world's most esoteric FPS and I'm sure at least a dozen people will hail it as genius. Obviously, we don't want to take it that far. On the other hand, do you want to play another CS clone? I don't.

qreeves {l Wrote}:This all being said, I'm not opposed to the idea of possibly upping the speed a little on the projectiles; the point is that there is a great divide between good game balance, and realism. I'm not about to just go and increase the speed, because then I'd need to spend the next month tweaking every other weapon variable to rebalance the weapons (and yes, we are near a v1.2 release at this point in time). Perhaps you, as a community, could take this on and play with the variables for each weapon to accomplish this task?

That's probably my favorite thing about this game. If you don't like some aspect of the game-play, then change it! The game variables are extremely robust. If anyone wants to play with faster, stronger weapons, they can easily do so. (FYI bring the console down with ~ (tilde) and type "riflespeed1 <#>" and "rifledamage1 <#>"). Example: I've always hated the zoom-lock on the rifle, so I've had it disabled on our instagib server since its conception (thats "zoomlock 0"). Play with the variables. If you think you've hit upon an improvement, then share it with the rest of us

Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the variables than I have could set up a server with some slightly increased weapon speeds for a trial.

I understand the need for balance, and I think the bullet flight time adds a bit of extra skill to the game. However I think it's important to make sure that the game is approachable enough to players of more traditional FPS games so that the community will expand. I have played Assaultcube heavily for the last few years and didn't have too much problem switching to Red Eclipse, but everyone I tried to persuade to come with me just hasn't got into it.

On a slightly separate point, most insta games that I play at the moment seem to descend into a frenzied kick-fest. I'm not really sure what should be done about this one.

Bullet flight time is very well balanced in all but one weapon: the rifle. This is a gripe I've had for a while now. The primary fire is just-ever-so-slightly less than hitscan. This means aiming at a moving target from moderate to far distances in instagib - when the laser doesn't explode on contact with the ground - is difficult for the wrong reasons. Or perhaps, the wrong kind of difficulty. I like the idea in principle of the laser not hitting the target instantly, but it needs to be either much slower than it currently is, or hitscan. Where it currently resides is an awkward balance that makes you aim for the target because you will usually hit them by aiming directly at them, but sometimes miss because your target is moving and barely evades the bullet. Because players are so mobile, it is typically impossible to predict - and there is too small of a margin for error - when the shot will hit the player and when it won't so you can adjust your aim accordingly. Of course, this could be in part because I lack the skill to actually predict a target's movement before firing, but I think the skill ceiling - AND FLOOR - is too high if that's the point of this variable.

There are two possible ways to change the rifle's primary fire that I can think of. We could have a completely hitscan weapon (set the speed to the highest it will go), like Sauerbraten's rifle. This makes secondary fire mostly useless save for the zoom. Is the ability to zoom alone enough for a weapon mode? I personally think not, that the laser should also be separate.

The other possiblity, that I'm slightly more inclined towards, is make the rifle's primary fire much like that of a spinfusor. *CUE CONTROVERSY* http://youtu.be/-qY8s7X-f30 <--Example

And maybe we want to keep the rifle how it is. I don't know, just throwing out an old idea I've had.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

I agree with orbitaldecay about the problems a new game must face. Under this point of view every new release adds quality but also credibility, because the game becomes better and developers show they're committed so people who discover the game are more inclined to give it a try.

IMHO new good quality maps might also attract new players though Red Eclipse has the advantage that it can use Sauerbraten's maps so actually there are already many maps to play. However there are never too many maps!

Attempted to change the basic settings: http://camper.narod.ru/download/re_assault.zip

Is this forum the only RE community?

Catalanoic {l Wrote}:Is this forum the only RE community?

We also have the IRC and the players that don't actually talk on the forum or IRC. Besides that, we have a few people on Desura but besides that, that seems to be most if not all.

Having a bigger community is always better, and RE will need work before it will be eligible. Honestly, RE plays very well as a game, but it's really ugly. Like, in lots of ways. I think RE has to be a lot prettier, it doesn't have to have cryengine 3 graphics, but it could use prettier models, maps, and engine effects and features (breakable glass, openable doors, destroyable objects would be cool). It's not very special yet: Assaultcube is the greatest real looking fps that can work on ancient computers (school!) and urt is kinda pretty, and is the best realistic open source looking one. I mean, no offence or anything, I know these are not easy problems to fix and I'm giving vague insults without any way to fix them, it's just that I don't think RE can expand much without major improvements.

I wouldn't say that Assaultcube is better looking than RE, and I do love that game, but I agree that some of the maps are a bit ugly and aren't really making the most of the engine's capabilities. On the other hand, Luckystrike's maps and some of the recent community maps like isolation are very nice looking with good texturing and lighting.

fawstoar {l Wrote}:How can we expand this community? The game's been around in a fairly complete state for over a year now, but the community is still tiny (mostly limited to this forum, the IRC, and a few extraneous clans, e.g. Frogteam, Wazu, FD. Feedback from people who have actually tried the game is generally positive, but the trick is getting people to download the game itself. Suggestions?

I think that the clans you mentioned are not extraneous at all. The clans themselves make Red Eclipse (in general every FPS) much more interesting. If there were more players, there would be more clans of course (only if Wazu does not recruit everybody instead )

We all can be glad that there are some clans in RE raising the excitement of the game.

BruceW {l Wrote}: (only if Wazu does not recruit everybody instead

Ha! That is funny! BUT you do strike a point tho. i opposed new clan making back when wazu was like 12 people, but it seems like it is imperative that we do promote new clans to be created. That way, new players have a new way of getting involved, feeling like they're part of the game, and meeting new people. Not to mention, tournaments?

I've added Red Eclipse to FreewareFiles.com, see the page: http://www.freewarefiles.com/Red-Eclipse_program_73363.html

It has almost 1000 downloads already

shnbwmn {l Wrote}:I've added Red Eclipse to FreewareFiles.com, see the page: http://www.freewarefiles.com/Red-Eclipse_program_73363.html

It has almost 1000 downloads already

Do we want it on Cnet, FileHippo, Softpedia, and ubuntu official repos too?