Continuing the discussion from On the merits and deficiencies of the old ways of Tremulous:
This topic addresses the question:
sigh, it’s not the genetic fallacy lol. i didn’t say something being “old” made it better… or else i would pick up wrinkly cancer patients instead of dating cute boys
the fact that trem is still around but gpp and exploding dretch mods died is EVIDENCE they messed up. the fact that plurality voting is such a common and tried and true method is EVIDENCE we have a pretty good system now. kind of embarrassing to have 3 threads open without seeing this very simple difference.
(in fact the gpp fork is the main explanation for the “drastic decline” you apparently didn’t witness lol.)
but it strikes me as idk the arrogance fallacy to believe after all the games that ppl have come up with, that the voting UI in a free open source online game somehow an important issue and needs a paradigm shift that u just happen to have the answer to lol.
Even though at the moment the one highly active server is essentially a slacker’s qvm, that doesn’t mean that slacker’s qvm doesn’t have faults that did not help sustain the player base numbers. At one point Tremulous had 8,000 active regular players, now it has about 500 active regular players. Why isn’t there more than one slacker’s qvm server that is regularly active? I’m not saying that the voting system is the sole problem, but I’m saying that there are definite faults even in a 1.1 Tremulous vanilla server.
There used to.
There are a lot of different qvms around there, and slacker’s is a very good one imho. I’m pretty sure this issue is more related to the game being 10 years old than the choice of a server’s qvm (unless it’s absolute shit or heavily modded or both).
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this qvm is bad. i cant use some huds. lamer shit
If by “this qvm” you are referring to multiprotocol slacker’s qvm, the problem of not all HUDs working on that qvm at the moment is probably related to the multiprotocol aspect.
Do you see any other problems with slacker’s qvm (not just the multiprotocol version), and/or problems with Tremulous servers in general, Tremulous clients in general, and/or problems with any other aspects of Tremulous and/or the Tremulous community overall?
An important and recurring problem with the Tremulous community are people that neglect the very things that made Tremulous possible in the first place - collaboration and openness. So many modders and server owners kept their source code hidden and refused to improve the game by collaborating with others, promising an eventual release for months or even years. Rotacak did it, Yalt did it, and now GrangerHub, sadly, is doing exactly the same thing. You will not help Tremulous thrive if you’re not willing to work on solving this problem.
Also, it’s a fucking 10+ year old game based off OLDER code with terrible graphics and no community.
If you really want to know what Tremulous did wrong, the devs released the 1.2 gameplay preview (GPP). That was what killed Trem, an already fairly old game (by video game standards) at the time (4-5 years after going standalone). That split the community, which led to both having a smaller community, which led to both dying out.
People don’t just pick up a 10 year old game with no community and no competition. Only a few games as old as Tremulous are still played, and among those are games like AoE2 and SSBM, both of which have thriving competitive scenes and massive communities. Tremulous has neither, and is simply continuing to dwindle. The only reason new players start playing is if convinced directly by a friend. Point in case, NoS:Styx was convinced to try Tremulous by his H1Z1 buddy Cerkitz. Without that, Styx never would have tried Tremulous and almost definitely would not have remained interested in it.
Tremulous has a massive learning curve, and is VERY harsh to new players. There is no guide, no tutorial, and the only manual is a hard to find page on the also-dead tremulous.net website that I bet most of you didn’t even know exists. Console commands are unexplained, the competition is ridiculously hard to face without understanding the game mechanics, and aliens are impossible for a new player at first, with humans being only marginally easier.
The point is, beyond the GPP split and the devs abandoning the project, Tremulous has done in particular wrong, it just went the natural course of any old, outdated, FPS game.
That is a valid criticism. However, as GrangerHub is getting closer to being ready for its initial release, we are including the community in the development discussions and testing a lot more. Also there are a lot of collaboration tools/resources we have been preparing for open use by the community that will be available when we officially launch the website (which is planned to coincide with the initial release of the next version of Tremulous).
In addition, besides the code that is included with the released binaries in the distributed pk3 files, the code for the Tremulous launcher/updater is openly available and openly developed. The launcher/updater is a vital milestone for initial release, and any contributions towards its development by the community is welcome and would help GrangerHub get closer to its initial release of the next version of Tremulous (including the new client binaries and code, the new server binaries and code).
I wouldn’t say that we have no community, it’s a very small community, but is still larger than what is commonly thought. Our community can grow with the sufficient improvements to the game and to community support/resources.
Still today there are very very few other games with similar game play to Tremulous, even in abstract consideration (first person shooter, real time strategy, team based, and asymmetric game play combined). In addition, newer games tend to not be designed for older/lower-end hardware. Tremulous can still potentially be enjoyed by a decent sized niche player base. There are core aspects of Tremulous that make Trem pretty unique and awesome even today.
Very good point. The OpenGL2 renderer available in the latest version of the ioquake3 engine, and in the latest public Tremulous code (as well as in the latest code GrangerHub is working on that hasn’t been released yet), has much higher quality graphics than the older OpenGL renderer that is still not taxing on performance. But I believe that game play, good performance on even lower end machines, and ease of use are still essentially more important than graphics.
The latest code GrangerHub is developing isn’t overly difficult to work with, and there is still virtually an infinite number amount possibilities that can result from developing that code.
You’re partly correct. I don’t believe the release of gpp was wrong in itself, but that the problem was that it was released and the developers did not follow through on “completing” 1.2. This left Tremulous in a transitional limbo. I would say that the most devastating overall problems Tremulous had was abandonment of mainstream development of the game, and neglect of the community (both of which GrangerHub is working on addressing as its primary objectives) .
Word of mouth is always an essential component of promotion, but other means can be done especially when some major improvements are in place for Tremulous so that there is something more exceptional to advertise.
This is a very good point as well.
This can be addressed with a new comprehensive and easily accessible wiki, and a good basic in-game manual. The UI can also be improved to make the game play more intuitive to new players as well.
Really the UI should be designed in a way that the console is not needed at all (not to say that the console shouldn’t still be available for optional use).
I disagree here. I believe that Tremulous still has a lot of potential and can still be very competitive with other current games, provided sufficient improvements are put in place. Like with any other open source project, Tremulous will continue to live for as long as there is any willingness to develop and use Tremulous.
i agree with ‘splitting community by introducing GPP’ i’m also afraid it may happen again with the when you guys release the new version because you don’t do (as far as i know) any kind of A/B testing to check witch one is preferred by the community
also the step curve argument is valid. in the past there were servers with noob mode that didn’t allow better performing players use better weapons/alien classes
but i think the biggest problem is lack of marketing. even if you have best product in the world, no one will buy it if no one knows about it
and i disagree with the ‘old graphic’ argument. trem is unique in other ways. i think ppl don’t play it for graphics. therefore better graphics won’t change anything (it’s the same situation as with first versions of civilisation). and here again, i’m afraid of the new version, you guys are developing: better graphics won’t help but lots of other subtle things may be missing. also balancing new game may be hard
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The new cleint (like the new servers) is multiprotocol, meaning that you can use the new client to still play on old 1.1 and old gpp servers besides the new servers. The 1.1, gpp, and new servers all appear in the same server browser in the new client.
when gpp came out, the gpp servers did not allow 1.1 clients to connect, and the gpp client could not connect to 1.1 servers, this meant that players essentially had to choose between two Tremulous games.
Regarding if the new game play we are developing is preferable over 1.1 vanilla, the game play as a whole isn’t in a condition to be properly compared yet, it is still very much a work in progress. However, it is important to get feedback from the community while we are in development, and discuss with the community the development and various ideas, suggestions, and constructive criticisms from the community which is one of the primary purposes of these forums and the development games.
Also, when the new version is released, interested modders could customize/change the new servers as they wish. It would not be a big deal to even port 1.1 vanilla game play, considering that when we are the new game play is ready, most of the changes for 1.1 vanilla game play would be completed.
I thing that is one of the biggest problems. One of the important purposes of the new main GrangerHub website will be to promote the game. The Tremulous.net website was not great in regards to promoting the game, even the summary of the game sucked on Tremulous.net.
I agree that better graphics isn’t essential to tremulous, although it would be a bonus. The ioquake3 engine (the game engine Tremulous uses) has already been updated to include the OpenGL2 renderer by the developers of that engine, and subsequently the new Tremulous code includes that update. So that work was already done, and makes even the older servers with the old assets look much better.
It would be nice if new maps and other new assets were made to take full advantage of the new renderer’s features, but that is for the community to work on, and not a task currently assigned to the GrangerHub development team.
Nerds.
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