Official Soldat Forums
Soldat Talk => Game Improvements / Suggestions => Topic started by: Kenix on December 23, 2012, 08:36:30 pm
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I firstly wrote this only for Betatesters/developers but I decided to make it public now so everyone could discuss it.
-- PLEASE READ THE WHOLE POST IF YOU ARE INTERESTED INTO THE FUTURE OF SOLDAT --
Dear Developers,
This is something I have been carrying around in my head for quite some time now, I even had a short conversation with zakath about it already. Since the on-going decrease of Soldat's playerbase, especially in the competitive scene, I have been asking myself how we could stop it. Excuse me, if I start off with this thread with a little bit of criticism at the beginning, but I feel some kind of neccessity to do so.
Right now I have got the feeling that there's some kind of dissonance between the competitive scene, the public scene and the developers. There's too much black and white from both the competitive scene and the developers. Since I'd consider myself quite an experienced person out of the competitive scene, not talking Soldat-wise but in terms of knowing the scene quite good, I can safely say that many people feel unheard when it comes to their ideas and maybe their criticism, as long as it is constructive, by sides of the developers. I do believe that the opinion of the competitive scene is to be valued highly, maybe a bit higher than it is nowadays, because these people are the ones that keep the most interesting part of Soldat alive, these people are the ones that value and notice the work of you devs and partly us betatesters the most. This is not meant to be an offense or anything, but take the helping hand some of them offer you, even if it is in a sometimes trashy forum as SCTFL's.
Yet I do also believe into the importance of taking care for the public scene of Soldat. While public players can't really give any input on the actual game itself they're still the ones who are "responsible" for the future of Soldat, as only public will bring new players. These new players will be the ones who will appreciate the work of us in the future. This is what a big part of the competitive scene lacks to understand. And that is what you developers fortunately do understand and what you are trying to take care for. Now it is just a question of combining both scenes and make something good for both. That is where I'd like to leave the realm of nice words and get a bit more specific on the actual content of my ideas.
What needs to be done at first? Improve the communication between the developers and the competitive scene at first. Maybe some of you could write their opinion on a thread like this (http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42492.0) in a more sensible way than skoskav did by saying that you developers do not care for it. Explain your opinions in a factual way of speaking.
As next I would offer to post your dev logs in the SCTFL forum as well if noone of you wants to do that. This would make people from the competitive scene pay more attention to both your work and this forum. So much for the communication between the developers and the competitive scene.
Another thing that is very very very very very important for the whole game, but especially for the competitive scene, is a new anti-cheat. You should really really focus on this. It will give people new hope, motivation and much more. Trust me, I can assure you that this is probably one of the most important points of your development right now, at least in the eyes of the community.
But what could be done for the communication of the competitive and the public scene? Well, at first our goal should be to get more public players, to advertise Soldat. As the game is pretty old as it is right now, we'd have some trouble to advertise it. But what if a new Soldat, a Soldat 2.0 would pop up? A Soldat with enhanced graphics, smoother game experience, less eats and all that stuff. Maybe even a Soldat that could be brought to Steam Greenlight (http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight)? I am pretty sure that you devs could tell me more about what a game needs to be revived, especially from the technical side, nevertheless I try to share my ideas here. But even if it's not a part of Steam or similiar gaming clouds, it still could be advertised as the new Soldat (like: "Do you remember the fun times you had with Soldat, back than 5 or 6 years ago? Guess what, it's still alive, it's still being developed and just recently a completely new version with a lot of changes has been released! Try it out and experience even better times!"). If that would happen it could bring us a lot of new players. Games as Minecraft, Ace of Spaces and Realm of the mad god have shown that there is still interest in games with rather trashy graphics. But a new look is a must for Soldat, as it looks way too old, even for fans of trashy games. Restructuring the menu would help as well.
And that is where I will come to my final point. It offers, in my eyes, a very good solution to the communication difficulties between the public and the competitive scene. I got to admit, it's kind of stolen from other games, nevertheless it's a good way to ensure more interest from the public towards the competitive scene. I imagine some sort of starting menu for the new Soldat. Let's say you start Soldat. If the nowadays structure of a horizontal navigation bar is being kept, we have the start box at one side and on the other side there's an new box: The News Box. I am not sure if someone of you has played CS:GO, but if you did you might have noticed such a news box as well. In this News Box there will be news about the competitive scene of Soldat, things like the current status of a league, maybe even hotlinks to streams/league sites and of course information, information and information about how to get a part of this scene. People that play the game on a public level would get in touch with the scene a lot easier, maybe some of them feel interested into the matches of the "pro" clans, etc. Of course this idea would require a bunch of motivated news writers.
What do we need else? A good and easy understandable tutorial on how to make the first few steps. Right now it's just downloading the game and then you join a server. Noone helps you, noone gives you hints on how to play the game. Maybe we could even show hints and tips where people get told a better way on how to approach certain things in the game as aiming or movement. I imagine those at the bottom of the game, changing everytime you close the game and reopen it at some point later on.
Maybe we could even encourage some pro's to do little tutorials for public players, which are interested in learning a more competitive and serious style of playing Soldat. In CS:GO there's the Pro Tips Series, hosted on youtube by Valve, showing pros who give tips for other players. I am sure we could also find such players in the Soldat competitive community, for example ginn and HasTe have done something into this direction.
My very last idea is some sort of matchmaking system in Soldat. Once again I stole it from CS:GO/LoL, but it's still a pretty brilliant idea. Of course I don't really know how difficult this is, but as I imagine it, there's a program that gathers all the players that are currently searching for a match and if it has 6 players it will just connect all these players to one server, so they could play 3on3/or any other game mode. Maybe zakath could host a few servers for this use? By this matchmaking system or "in-game gather" pub players would have a better chance to learn how to play 3v3 and I could imagine people that are already in touch with the competitive scene to attend these gathers quite frequently.
So much about my ideas. I am very well aware that this does not only consider a very high amount of technical knowledge and work, but also a lot of organization. Fortunately I am german and we germans love to organize and structure things so I would definitely offer the devs a helping hand for all the publicity work, for gathering people that are interested into writing news, into helping out and what else is neccessary. Given that Soldat 2.0 is launched at a point not too far in the future, building up a circle of information about the competitive scene might eventually bring more public players into the scene. I didn't give up this game yet and I still believe that it could be a big success. I do believe though that the points that I have mentioned here are key things to be improved/done (at least most of them).
It would be very cool if anyone that reads it could give his thought and ideas on this as well, as I have put a lot of work and thinking into this whole thing.
Let's make it happen! Together!
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Sounds good, but wouldn't the level of change that you call for (in just graphics alone) require a reworking of the entire game code/engine? The graphics primarily stem from the way maps are made. Then that would truly be Soldat 2.0.
Additionally, my suggestion towards enhancing popularity is that all symmetrical HTF maps be scrapped, big DM maps (like Bigfalls) be adjusted (in terms of waypoints and spawn locations) for HTF, and everyone should play HTF. No one realizes that it's actually the greatest game mode ever, just with terrible maps. I do believe HTF could make Soldat really stick out, as all popular shooters just conglomerate towards CTF. Boooooring.
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HTF is camp/flee based, CTF is attack/defense based.
Anyway, I think it's a bit too late for soldat to revive, there'd have to be a new game with somewhat same principles and maybe more fancy stuff. Possibly just releasing this version to then start on a soldat 2 might be the way to go. With eats being fixed a bit the game becomes playable, so it'll live for another year or so.
I really don't see how new kids would get into soldat, since it doesn't really have anything to compete with those shitty f2p games.
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Nice.
I dun for 3 years and mean to play again when i finidh my MA, but theres shit i wanna hard:
1- gather og the world unite, ya haz nutin to lose but ur chains
This is the main shit that must be done, defrag the irc scene in one big multi-server-admins-gamemode-gather
2- irc interface like eC made one upon the time
Mandatory. Also possibility to !add by pub server, like Leos pub. This stuff comes with lots of complexity shit that mus be think b4 hand, so call the germans.
3- when i started off playing after few of idleness in 2006 i notice strange shit happenin. After sum time i understand shit was not right. Most hakin ppl start on overdose playing cuz its so gascinatin to be gud wo effort. But after sumtime shit stop being gud and ppl just leave in massive exodus to never cum back again. Thats not the case with old fellas or simple normal non cheaters players, thwy luv to improve shit over time and a new trick learned is always exciting, so they always come back even if life sux. So... anticheat is the first and foremost thing needed as pointed out.
These are the primary that must be focused, the gather association by the community bosses and AC by devs, me are not think they can improve estetic shit in time when no1 plays no more. But, iif they can make pro player happy, they woyld, since they are the main palyers.
for me i would like 2 features:
A) possibility to watch the player cursor both spec and demos, aand if possible the keys pressed to, so it would be much easier to teach how to muv and shot like a pro.
b) since i play with 80 sensy for barret ruger, 130 for autos, 180 m79 and 200 deagle, it sux to pick a wep droped and play with another sensy. So, i would like a possibility to edit the configs and set a specific sensy for wich one, as like those complex quake configs.
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Nah... Soldat will die anyway , it will have its fan-base for very long but it has no future , and its impossible that soldat will have so great chances. The only way of saving the spirit of soldat is making a never game based on it " soldat 2 " That will have all the things a newer game has More weapons better graphics , and bigger soldiers what is main point of soldat aint being that popular
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@Vucgy92: Are you stupid? We have an active team of developers who put their heart into developing this gem of a game. How can Soldat die when it is subject to change? All the features which are on the way help increasing the timeliness while keeping the unique and original flair that no other game has. It is true that Soldat has grown less popular over the years, but how would it not? Soldat has been popular for longer than most other games last and will make it through more time than you can imagine. If you really like Soldat, why do you try to demotivate those who try to make it better? Don't call it being a realist if you have not even thoroughly thought about it.
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Nah... Soldat will die anyway , it will have its fan-base for very long but it has no future , and its impossible that soldat will have so great chances. The only way of saving the spirit of soldat is making a never game based on it " soldat 2 " That will have all the things a newer game has More weapons better graphics , and bigger soldiers what is main point of soldat aint being that popular
There's still an active community/fanbase surrounding Quake 1 and Wolf3d (and derived clones/mods) and other old/stagnant games. Even though soldat is closed source, the Soldat community will continue to thrive/linger for a very long time, especially since it's still under active development.
@Vucgy92: Are you stupid?
I'm more inclined to believe he's lusting for attention, being cynical, or some careless combination.
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active
(http://th03.deviantart.net/fs70/150/f/2011/236/d/d/retard_17_by_supersonicfan23-d47qaq7.jpg)
Anyway, the current build of Soldat seems to be so fucked that I actually don't think the idea is bad at all, I've been thinking about it by myself too. OpenSoldat would have come a long way by now if it wasn't ditched.
Lack of truly devoted developers seems to be a huge problem though and it would probably be the same case with a completely new game.
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Wow wow don't get crazy ladies calm down , I'm just realistic It has a Developer team but it wont help stopping it from dying totally , I play Soldat for over 7years and I love it but I'm not crazy to see what's going on and a team of developer wont help , you guys are maybe some hysterical soldat lovers but I'm just telling the truth and your bitching around that i'm stupid and that I'm searching for attention doesnt need a reply I won't start a flame war here I will just say what I have so live with it or kill yourself cause I was "rude" .
I would love that its like back when there were full servers cool game-modes but soldat is just getting old and its loosing players every day and it wont get any newer ones really. The developers are fixing bugs what really isn't ( From my point) a priority when the game is near totally dead , just look at this fu*king forum they are like 10 maybe max 20 active users and you telling me its okey and that I'm searing for Attention?
And I think the developers wont help stop soldat from falling , In my eyes waiting like half year for a update that brings some bug fixes is just Stupid and its Totally unrealistic expecting that it will change things to better. Now cry a bit more if you cant have a good response to my arguments.
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I assume you mean q1 is alive because of speed runners? That is very different from having a semi-competitive game.
Soldat will "live" for some years, but it'll be pretty pathetically small in a year. Trying to fix the current soldat is kind of a waste, because it's completely broken and beyond repair... unless you rewrite half the game.
Telling people, especially developers, that the game is screwed is not attention seeking. The game is screwed and any work done on it is going to be wasted (except this next version), it'd be much better to work on soldat 2 instead. I think martta is working on a soldat clone, which could maybe become a soldat 2, though probably needing to change graphics and some game play mechanics.
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All you guys say is that all the effort put into Soldat is wasted but do not give any constructive feedback. I can accept if you say "In my opinion Soldat will die, because bla bla bla..", but you leave the real-talk out and just rant about Soldat being too old and unpopular. There are a lot of people who care about Soldat and help making it better, including myself. Others are devoted programmers, artists or server hosters. As long as there is a single person caring about Soldat, it ain't dead, and all the trash you put forth is not underlining your point in any way. I don't know how you can be so negative about it, but there is one thing I do know for sure: Soldat needs none of your kind.
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i remain fairly confident in the devs being able to turn the boat around by just carrying on with what they are doing. while it might take its time, the rest of the community can do a crapload of stuff to help. there's advertising, there's just plain idealizing, hell we could just start being more cohesive as a community. as a matter of fact, i might even address a lot of the player base shrinkage to have happen merely due to the community, especially sctfl, being so hostile. i have been a gather admin for like 8 years now and the amount of flame we get to face on a daily basis can be just ridiculous.
i don't really think that soldat can die. afterall we got some many dedicated people working around the community, although scattered, waiting to be brought together
related to that i tend to toy around with a lot ideas in my head, and i'm sure that a lot of others do as well and by getting these people to work with each other we should eventually be able to come up with simpler solutions to a bunch of issues regarding the isolation of the public and the communication gap between the competitive community and the devs. last night i did some chattering with a few people and thought that what might help is a irc channel where these hard-working people of the community would be able to get to know each other better and tinker with stuff. a place where a handful of people from every corner of the community would be invited just discuss stuff and then hopefully inspire the decision makers into cooperation
what the community needs right now is to cease tearing itself apart. people might know me as a troll on the sctfl boards but i don't have a problem giving up something i don't need
a while back i held a couple polls regarding what the community would enhance
do what? http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42319.0
and to what extent? http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42253.0
by now i do realize the complications regarding just raw enhancement of the netcode, improvement of the graphics or having someone to maintain a reliable anti-cheat engine. that leaves us with plain advertising that anyone can do.
back on sctfl.net as a matter of fact, they were trying to set up a basic video displaying just the basic gameplay of soldat, something very simple without gimmicky editing tricks that could be spread around the internet and that would focus on the gameplay instead of any kind of cool tricks. i guess the idea was scrapped due to lack of organization.
stuff like this go very much hand in hand. we would need someone or somebody motivated and capable to organize something like this. be it a proper video or a collection of a coin to work on the future of the game. i would imagine that it wouldn't even need to be very extensive; if we had a proper demo of the game we could just link to various forums and sites on the internet i'm sure people would be a lot more motivated to spread the word around when they'd have something concrete to show and not just start describing the game in random locations
i'll write more later my head's gonna explode
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as a matter of fact, i might even address a lot of the player base shrinkage to have happen merely due to the community, especially sctfl, being so hostile.
Couldn't agree more, I've said this earlier somewhere but the community is so full of hatred it makes me feel bad. I haven't played many gathers in the past six months or so but whenever I have the chance I play a couple. Many of those gathers have been absolutely horrible, not because of the game being buggy but cause of the people benig so full of themselves. Sadly the amount of nice people is going downhill much faster than the amount of "fuck everyone else but me and my gang" type of people. I do think though that every gaming community has this same issue, however Soldat has it pretty bad.
Also DC telling people they're stupid and asking them to leave just cause you don't share their opinion is not exactly what this game needs. It's not trash talk, it's individual opinions.
I don't believe Soldat is going to become much more popular than it is now no matter what we did. The game is outdated and not really on par with modern, solid (indie) games. The upcoming version seems rather good and putting the most effort on a whole new game doesn't rule out smaller improvements for the older. Eventually we'd have a base for a game that has a lot more potential than Soldat has now or will ever have. You can keep comparing Soldat to other nearly dead games but you should not forget Quake has had a huge player base. The biggest problem of the whole Quake argument is undeniably the fact that instead of sticking to Q1 (like Soldat), Quake 2 was made and so on.
What is there to lose really? We keep trying to breath new life into the current Soldat and it will most likely just slow down the process of people leaving OR we could start all over while still having both a good release of the current game and a game that has an actual future ahead.
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Difference now and 10 years ago is how games are being sold. When soldat was popular, most games were p2p or b2p, very few free games. Because of this soldat managed to become popular, because it's a good game (compared to other free games) and is free.
Nowadays there are so many f2p games, not only mmos but normal FPS (with leveling and buying weapons) games are free to play, this makes the market sooo much tougher. They're even dropping the "pay to win" thing now, trying to mostly make money from cosmetics and convenience things.
Why would anyone play a 480* 2d sidescroll shooter that is buggy and unoptimized as fuck? Their highschool friends will most certainly not be playing that game, probably either CoD or some f2p game.
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What is there to lose really? We keep trying to breath new life into the current Soldat and it will most likely just slow down the process of people leaving OR we could start all over while still having both a good release of the current game and a game that has an actual future ahead.
the thing is that the current dev team has basically put all their effort into fixing the smaller bugs and issues with the game for now. what keeps me going personally is the hope that they'll go much further when they run out of smaller things to do. and i still believe they will. sure the biggest and most basic problems with soldat are structural but how much will we ever lose if we let the engineers to work for what they can. i mean soldat may never change again, the community may never change again but then again, the people we have are already pretty much experienced enough with the game that they have chosen what they prefer when it comes to gaming personally and that way we will, ideally, always have a proper base to keep building this community on. things won't happen on their own, of course, but at the current pace of increasing self-awareness i'm pretty sure that we still got many many good years left
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"Games as Minecraft, Ace of Spaces and Realm of the mad god have shown that there is still interest in games with rather trashy graphics."
Soldat is worst than these games and I'm talking about the flow. There's not just bad graphics. There's resolution problems, stretched images, the feeling that you're moving a fat player when running the Soldat with a NASA computer (just kidding, but any new computer), old maps (early versions of MM)...
The game need to be rewrite and limit the gamemodes. 5000 players and 3 gamemodes = ok, 5000 players and 931313232248972308408 gamemodes = 300 different servers, 300 different communities etc. I'm here since the end of 2002 and I saw the decrease over the community interaction, championships etc after HTF and custom gamemodes. Yeah, I think that 3 or 4 (max. of the max.) it's the right. You could work good with casual players and a strong competitive scene.
Did you saw The Showdown Effect(http://theshowdowneffect.com)? A really nice game but without some movements that we have in Soldat and not too fast.
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@duz: Like everyone else, you are exaggerating. 5000 players and 934238493284932 gamemodes? You have to be kidding me. How many gamemodes are there that are active? There is CTF, DM, HTF, INF, Climb and some others that are most popular. The rest gets ignored. Your point about bad graphics is invalid, because the graphics are mostly based on the maps which is the community's duty. I for my part help by remaking old maps. The dev team takes care of the rest.
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A good thing would be to make the maps look nicer. Just like this http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=42494.0;topicseen
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You do realize that I put an emphasis on remaking maps to better the graphics?
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You do realize that I put an emphasis on remaking maps to better the graphics?
yes... and?
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I just tried to point out that you just repeated what I already said twice.
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I just tried to point out that you just repeated what I already said twice.
Okey you pointed it out ... Congrats
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@duz: Like everyone else, you are exaggerating. 5000 players and 934238493284932 gamemodes? You have to be kidding me. How many gamemodes are there that are active? There is CTF, DM, HTF, INF, Climb and some others that are most popular. The rest gets ignored. Your point about bad graphics is invalid, because the graphics are mostly based on the maps which is the community's duty. I for my part help by remaking old maps. The dev team takes care of the rest.
I'm not talking about today. Soldat is dead or almost there. Some years ago I could see at least 7 gamemodes being played (+tw, tm, hns, conquer bla bla bla etc).
My point about bad graphics is invalid? A AMD K62 and an old 15" CRT monitor could run Soldat better than any new hardware, doesn't matter the map. You do a good job man but it's not your fault. It's not about the maps.
I think that the devs spend much time over fixing bugs and other things. Ok, nice. But this don't changed our lives. Soldat has the same problem since old times. What changed from 2006? Nothing (don't be superficial). We can play on the competitive scene as always we did.
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@duz: Like everyone else, you are exaggerating. 5000 players and 934238493284932 gamemodes? You have to be kidding me. How many gamemodes are there that are active? There is CTF, DM, HTF, INF, Climb and some others that are most popular. The rest gets ignored. Your point about bad graphics is invalid, because the graphics are mostly based on the maps which is the community's duty. I for my part help by remaking old maps. The dev team takes care of the rest.
I'm not talking about today. Soldat is dead or almost there. Some years ago I could see at least 7 gamemodes being played (+tw, tm, hns, conquer bla bla bla etc).
My point about bad graphics is invalid? A AMD K62 and an old 15" CRT monitor could run Soldat better than any new hardware, doesn't matter the map. You do a good job man but it's not your fault. It's not about the maps.
I think that the devs spend much time over fixing bugs and other things. Ok, nice. But this don't changed our lives. Soldat has the same problem since old times. What changed from 2006? Nothing (don't be superficial). We can play on the competitive scene as always we did.
what makes me sick is that people like you apparently know everything about every single issue with the game, complain about it non stop and then stick around no matter what, and then complain a little more. seriously, no one needs your attitude, we don't need you to point out how old a computer you can use to run a game that has been running for more than 10 years with the same graphics. you can always leave if the game sickens you so
besides, the soldat community as a whole has been 99% ctf-based for the past 10 years, some years ago was no different than right now. you can't point out the community to be dying based on a loose observation about the amount of useless game modes solely based on your personal opinion
if the game will die then it shall. if you want that to change, stop preaching about your set-in-stone opinion like a catholic priest on viagra and help us figure out a way to prevent it from happening
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From my point of view and info I've gathered what soldat needs most is proper anti cheat system, followed by releases every couple of months(not years). Also less offtopic in this thread and more actual ideas.
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From my point of view and info I've gathered what soldat needs most is proper anti cheat system, followed by releases every couple of months(not years). Also less offtopic in this thread and more actual ideas.
That is to maintain a dying community. It won't really help the game to grow, though it's still a requirement if a game wants to grow.
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Let's be honest here, soldat doesnt have the potiential to attract new players. We need to focus on current playerbase.
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people get older so it's not possible to mantain the current playerbase in the same shape over the years. Surprisingly, i can still see new players coming to soldat, i can't say what are the statistics but if it's possible to get any new players then i guess it's possible to get even more, with the right decisions and moves. I wouldn't say it's possible to stop the decrease in playerbase but i'd say it's possible to slow it down by getting new players, even if less players come than go.
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What I wanted to point out is that new players make up maybe 5-8% of the whole playerbase if not less. Majority of the players have been playing for years and thats the player group we need to target.
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Let's be honest here, soldat doesnt have the potiential to attract new players. We need to focus on current playerbase.
i got like 12 of my hardcore COD friends to play soldat and they all found it enjoyable they didn't even criticize the graphics because the gameplay was so unique,competitive and fun so yeah...also i'm in highschool...
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I am with Ymies on this, duz. If there was one person who really cared about Soldat for everyone with such a negative attitude, we would make far better development. Saying stuff like "whatever you do, it will not help" is a pure exaggeration. There is no need to go on in this discussion. I am tired of repeating myself, and I feel as if my words are wasted on people who share your opinion, so I will just leave this discussion until you have anything productive to say or do not repeat the same phrases over and over again.
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i got like 12 of my hardcore COD friends to play soldat and they all found it enjoyable they didn't even criticize the graphics because the gameplay was so unique,competitive and fun so yeah...also i'm in highschool...
Do they play actively or perhaps they tried soldat few times and moved back to cod?
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What I wanted to point out is that new players make up maybe 5-8% of the whole playerbase if not less. Majority of the players have been playing for years and thats the player group we need to target.
you're not entirely correct. by just maintaining the current playerbase it's less likely for the playerbase to grow, and that's the major problem here, at least imo. i'm not saying that the playerbase should be ignored it's just that if it won't start growing soon it might as well be more difficult in the future
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i got like 12 of my hardcore COD friends to play soldat and they all found it enjoyable they didn't even criticize the graphics because the gameplay was so unique,competitive and fun so yeah...also i'm in highschool...
Do they play actively or perhaps they tried soldat few times and moved back to cod?
i can't say for all but the few i've talked to played like twice a week
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I am with Ymies on this, duz. If there was one person who really cared about Soldat for everyone with such a negative attitude, we would make far better development. Saying stuff like "whatever you do, it will not help" is a pure exaggeration. There is no need to go on in this discussion. I am tired of repeating myself, and I feel as if my words are wasted on people who share your opinion, so I will just leave this discussion until you have anything productive to say or do not repeat the same phrases over and over again.
Ok. I said that the point about gamemodes was/are part of the entire problem, not the problem at all. He said "the soldat community as a whole has been 99% ctf-based for the past 10 years". Ok, keep lookin to SCTFL only. Forget that we had huge communities playing other gamemodes (as here in Brazil). I think that was a part of the problem, just it.
Ymies last phrase is so contradictory to me. But ok, i'll sit here and shake my head agreeing with palliative acts.
I respect all the opinions. I come from the opposite side, this should be good to find a way to keep Soldat alive.
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I've seen allot of good points coming allong but i've not seen anyone besides Kenix mentioning something about more advertisement :|
However I dont think i've the same idea about advertisement as he does, I think the game is great for a big amount of gamers, it doesnt need that much updating/improvement/fixing or whatever.
I honestly think myself that this game just needs more advertising, I dont know how most people get into this game, probably because a friend of them told them.
I happened to see some guys playing it at school a very long time ago and I just tried searching for the game at home.
my point... Why not advertise more? I'm sure there are loads of people here that know the right places for advertisements, or is it financiel problems that prevent this from happening?
PS: Sorry if I missed anything out, i've not been reading EVERYTHING since there is allot to go over which I simply dont want to spend to much time into, i've read some replies and part of replies allong with Kenix's topic
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If we really want to look into advertising we have to get a sponsor. I really don't see soldat community paying thousands of euro for adverts on popular sites, cause its the only way we get to huge number of people. All we can do for free is tell our friends, which I believe most of us already did.
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like i pointed out, a properly edited video depicting actual gameplay with some hooks here and there would be ideal for spreading on the social media and random gaming forums. i'd get to work myself if i knew shit about crap. gathering material for one shouldn't be too hard either
cooperation toward producing such a feat failed on sctfl.net but perhaps there's some like-minded people here?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sWwCe7jisk
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i was rather referring to videos that display actual game play instead of focusing on random trickshots that have nothing to do with what soldat really is
this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsl5KLtoi4&feature=plcp) is a great example. although raw, still a thousand times more entertaining than one of those thirteen-in-a-dozen casual random luckshot compilations. props to evilhomer
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I've recently bumped into this thread and i have to admit , great ideas , Kenix. Especially with news box. Could you imagine a better way to show all players a handful of the most important information , events , where they could really find a competitive scene , leagues and all the similar things related to rivalry ? I find that publics are pretty crowded by players nowodays but it seems that they'r just randomly fooling around. 2/3 of them don't even realise that there is something more than public servers.
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I started with this shit when a e-notsomuch-friend from tibia/gunbound showed me that and teach me how to play and stuff, years later i tried to show my RL and most of them jsut said wtf are tiny shit flying around...
prolly i would think the same but it seems ima quite necrophian to just luv this game. I used to appreciate all those stuff ppl around the world try to help soldat in their free time, thats alot of shit and thats what kept soldat around, who cares for public, they do not stick with the game for long or if so they jsut cheat, the newcomers are always dumb fat kinds.
what ppl must focus is to unite the communities that already exist, like:
gather should let the possibilty to watch on spec the games if ya are a pubber so u can discovery new shit. Imo they should congregate in one big fraking gather and put it on the interface, but anyway...
also about the graphics, i had to play on crt to get that pixelated things i luv on thw lower reso, scalation is just very bad in this game, its not abou the art rly, lke the mechanics, so that shall not chnage soon, aka never.
the gamemodes are not too spread, but they are rather uncompetitive or lacking hard teamwork like ctf. I do not dislike any mode, but most of them are limited in this stage of soldat live, ppl should focus on competitve only since its what keep shits alive.
i myself just dream a day MM will release a new soldat 9999.0 and burst the world, until there most efforts are quite useless without a absolute anticheat and the massive rewrite of broken shit by the devs, anyway i keep the dream, i think the community will still be there when i wanna play and have sum rage.
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here we go .. what we need (what SOLDAT needs)
the game is currently to different for the new generation of gamers. If they start Soldat for the first time they simply don´t know what to do.
So the game must be easier to play or at least to understand. I think a new GUI : http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=39691.0 topic about it. there are some really great examples.
ALSO... there hasn´t been any "advertisement" for years. So how should someone play a game who doesn´t even know its existing.
there is not an official trailer made for it and so on.
By simply contacting some game magazines it could be achieved that they´d report about the game or even put it on their CD/DVD.
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Since this is "my thread" I kinda feel responsible for it. Unfortunately I have been gone over the weekend which is why I didn't give an answer yet. I'd like to mention at first that I am very happy with you guys digging this thread out. I have invested quite a few hours to think about these ideas and to write them down and I already gave up any hopes that my effort wasn't wasted. The fact I wasn't right gives me new hope for Soldat and especially for Soldat's still active but dwindling competitive community.
There is still a chance to change tack and to get started with an all-embracing community effort to get the game back up on it's feet. I'd like to undermine my unlimited gratitude and trust into the current dev team. Most of my ideas are quite obvious for people, who are more experienced in developing games. Yet I wanted to share them not only with the community, but also with the devs.
Before I start giving answers to some points you guys have mentioned, I'd like to hint at something: Don't get mad at each others, just because they might share a point which is not only different to yours but also quite understandable out of your point of view. Yes, we have quite a few pessimists around here - which might even be legit to some extent. I doubt their pessimism is caused by them being trolls, rather by them being frustrated. Invariably anyone who still feels emotionally attached enough to comment in this thread loves Soldat. Why would we use our frustration to fight each other, when such a thread like this might be a chance to unite? Thanks to ymmees, this thread] (http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42709.0) has been shared on the official SCTFL forum. I would love to see this thread growing into a movement, full of motivated people that make up their minds about Soldat. Do not fight or verbally attack each other, just because one's opinion differs from yours. This is neither the right time nor place for flaming and whining at each other. Let's try to turn this thread into a pit, full of constructive ideas and feedback for those who really develop the game: Our developers.
I already tried to point it out in my post which started this topic: The efforts which are neccessary to get Soldat into a better shape in terms of activity and publicity are far more than one-sided. The general problem is that the devs have to make improvements in more than one area: The competitive scene is desperately waiting for an anti-cheat, but as the years pass by, we will be losing more and more players, simply because everyone gets older and eventually loses time and interest for Soldat. Focusing only on the competitive scene would eventually cause the death of Soldat. That's why we have to invest a lot of effort and time into connecting the competitive scene with the public scene. Ideas for doing it can be found in my first post.
And how could everybody who's interested help?
I'd like to seize ymmees' idea of making some sort of an IRC channel where everyone who's somehow involved in the development, may it be in terms of technical aspects or rather community affairs, of Soldat, is in. I'll think about this a bit and post my ideas about it.
Finally I'd like to say: Yes, Soldat lacks advertisement. But the problem is that we don't have a sponsor nor is the game new enough to be put into dozens of gaming magazines. That has happened when the game was quite young. Hence I proposed to work on a Soldat 2, with updated graphics and such.
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is anyone here familiar with www.d2jsp.org? it's probably one of the biggest gaming forums around offering platforms for a wide variety of games, although it's generally focused on mmo and rpg trading. i used to play diablo 2 back in the day and still have an account, might as well try kicking off some discussion thread and keep it active by arranging a handful of people to post every now and then and see if we can gather any interest
(and why not other forums as well)
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Maybe i will not add anything what can suprise u guys but i have to. Every single game i played i met ppl that know what Soldat is. I met them in SWTOR, WoW (in a few guilds), LoL, C9, Allods Online, AION and much more. Polish gamers know what Soldat is, the new version can interest them to look how it changed. Also im a member of Anime-Shinden community. There are ~10 ppl who play soldat cassually. I'm sure of that if Soldat will be more developing and if u guys will change the most frustrating bugs in this game they will make a clan. I was in a big shock of that i met ex soldat gamers on the university that im studying, there are 4 of them. I know that a number of ppl that i'm writting here isn't attractive for devs. But think that there is still 300-400 active players and each one can meet 20-30 ex soldat players. This is a potential that we are fighting for.
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wow that sounds odd to me, every game I ever played I did not met any people who ever heard of soldat...and i've been a very dedicated gamer myself aswell on different games.
As I mentioned earlier in this topic, it's just an unknown game due to it's low advertisement.
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i was rather referring to videos that display actual game play instead of focusing on random trickshots that have nothing to do with what soldat really is
this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsl5KLtoi4&feature=plcp) is a great example. although raw, still a thousand times more entertaining than one of those thirteen-in-a-dozen casual random luckshot compilations. props to evilhomer
This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWKRGli3ECc) one has some nice moments too. Would be great to see a short movie that shows how much fun Soldat can be rather than trickshot videos.
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It took me a while to finally read the whole topic, but I read it thoroughly. I'd like to express my opinion about a few things since I have played soldat for a really long time.
Personally I don't think the problem is that we lack ideas, nor that the devs lack opinions from competative players. #Soldat.devs is the place for anyone who cares. If you want to ask the devs anything or suggest changes, there will be people there to discuss with.
The problem is that it takes too long to get ideas into reality.
Don't get me wrong, the devs are doing an amazing work, for free even. It's just not enough compared to soldats potential.
I know we need it, but the problem with Anti-Cheat is that it constantly takes time to maintain when we need to work on the actual game. Some changes in spectating and recording might do the trick.
So what can we do?
I can think of 2 things that the comunity could do without having to rely on devs.
- Make beautiful maps. We need a list of criteria for a map to make default.
- Make soldat movies. If you guys want to cooperate on a movie I'm in.
I'm not saying that's enough to stop people from slowly leaving soldat, but it certainly won't harm.
Soldat 2
Even if we intensify development of the current soldat, it will not be enough to compete with newer games.
I have recently started playing League of Legends and Counter Strike GO, and both games offer solutions to matchmaking, newb-friendlyness, account system with stats and friend-adding, report system against idiots, and much more. If we really expect soldat to somewhat compete with theese games we have no choice but to make Soldat 2.
I think the Soldat 2 title and everything around that is reserved for MM. Therefor I will ask him on his facebook page what his thoughts are about soldat 2.
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I have recently started playing League of Legends and Counter Strike GO, and both games offer solutions to matchmaking, newb-friendlyness, account system with stats and friend-adding, report system against idiots, and much more. If we really expect soldat to somewhat compete with theese games we have no choice but to make Soldat 2.
I think the Soldat 2 title and everything around that is reserved for MM. Therefor I will ask him on his facebook page what his thoughts are about soldat 2.
a little off-topic but
there is simply no way for soldat to compete against games like LoL or WoW..these games are indeed very newb-friendly but that's also what destroys the game for the elites (atleast on WoW).
Simply said, it's a game made for profit and nothing else, i've been a very dedicated gamer on WoW.
Not even to mention these games have millions of money towards purposes any game would dream of.
And then here comes Soldat, if you're new here you barelly have any friendlyness speaking of specific servers where new players might be able to play or players that are willing to explain a little or help a hand.
So what I'm trying to say is, don't start/try changing something that wouldn't have any or barelly an effect.
People who play soldat nowadays pretty much like it as it is, it's slowly getting better and improved in many ways aswell
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As far as I know there have been many topics/threads about the future of soldat regarding suggestions/ideas development etc..
The point is they never lead to anything except discussions.
My idea for soldat is to start getting real. Everyone already basically knows the answers to what should happen..
Make a team get a bank account, accomplish something.
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Just "doing something" is wrong. If you have no plan, you might land somewhere even more far away than when you only discuss things. But there is a team. There has to be a bank account, and things are being done. Don't pretend noone's doing anything but discuss.
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Just "doing something" is wrong. If you have no plan, you might land somewhere even more far away than when you only discuss things. But there is a team. There has to be a bank account, and things are being done. Don't pretend noone's doing anything but discuss.
.. did you read my post at all..
yes you start with a team gj
yes you get a bank account yes gj
yes then things get done gj
Afaik theres no such team yet, and there's only discussions so far.
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Just "doing something" is wrong. If you have no plan, you might land somewhere even more far away than when you only discuss things. But there is a team. There has to be a bank account, and things are being done. Don't pretend noone's doing anything but discuss.
.. did you read my post at all..
yes you start with a team gj
yes you get a bank account yes gj
yes then things get done gj
Afaik theres no such team yet, and there's only discussions so far.
so what doesn't the development team do that is stated here?
They just have limited cash, that's it.
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It's not developed by a studio, it's developed by individuals doing this for free. Cash isn't an issue.
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It's not developed by a studio, it's developed by individuals doing this for free. Cash isn't an issue.
Exactly.
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If they try to Soldat was available on Steam? Why not Soldat 2.0 with graphics look like Trine, that is 2D in 3d. I know it's far vision, but I think that it is not possible :D dreams...
P.S Screenshot od Trine:
(http://gamesareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/trine1.jpg)
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Side view doesn't mean it's 2D and nobody's going to want confusing and unreadable 3D environments to Soldat.
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So maybe something like that:
(http://www.gry-online.pl/galeria/html/wiadomosci/bigphotos/515216890.jpg)
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What about vector style (nice for scaling)?
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It looks much better than the current bitmap and gives more opportunities.
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What about vector style (nice for scaling)?
It is the logical way to go. So that everyone gets the same vision of field whichever resolution they use. It's also future-proof.
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Whatever it is Soldat should have a coherent style throughout the game. Currently the game is jus an incoherent mess graphic-wise.
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http://store.steampowered.com/app/27920/?snr=1_7_15__13
that is how soldat should look like.
But we don't have the power to do so I think.
The last few weeks there have been zero to none activities as to how to make this game a better game.
Soldat is not really going anywhere atm besides having an bug-free update every now and- then.
What I was and still am trying to say here is that we need a group of people who have the abilities to recruit people and to make this game better graphic wise and user-friendly wise. This certain group of people have to be active and voted by the current devs/community.
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i would go for a stylish Non-PhotoRealistic look for soldat i think it will fit better with the game
realistic = boring as hell
actually i think soldat can look good because it support png wich is an awesome format
and i've tried making maps and stuff and looks ok but i had problems with the resolution so things looks a little blurry
and i think thats the why soldat looks like crap... is way to low res
also this:
Whatever it is Soldat should have a coherent style throughout the game. Currently the game is jus an incoherent mess graphic-wise.
thats another big reason for why soldat looks like crap.
a game-look should be consistent
so to make this game look at least decent the devs should put the resolution higher and revamp al the graphics with a solid and consistent style.. i think
(sorry if i had bad english :)
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i would go for a stylish Non-PhotoRealistic look for soldat i think it will fit better with the game
realistic = boring as hell
so to make this game look at least decent the devs should put the resolution higher and revamp al the graphics with a solid and consistent style.. i think
I agree with this. And I think that's the plan. Remaking graphics vector style will enable high res on hd monitors.
It's also IMO essential that this is done in a way that enables high performances ( high fps ) on old hardware.
Vector graphics should be thought and made with low resolution users in mind. Making it look nice even for low resolutions such as 640x480 or 800x600. And ofc all the way up to 1440p users and beyond. As ultra HD will be the new standard for the enthusiast gamers in a few years.
Another standard that is coming gradually is high frame rate monitors. 120Hz monitors are being more and more adopted by gamers.
Given that, it might be interesting to consider upgrading animations to 120hz.
And changing soldat 1/60s ticks to 1/120s.
Other things to consider are graphic special effects: Lightning, Shadows, HDR, BLOOM, ...
If used wisely and subtlety, special effects have the potential of raising the overall graphic quality of a game.
Sound effects are important as well. Current Vanilla sound effects are pretty poor.
They could be replaced with higher quality ones.
Furthermore, the geometry of the maps could be used to modulate the sound effects in real time, using reverberation and delay for example.
Just my 2cents.
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PP effects really improve the graphics a lot but you need to choose carefully because overloading the game with postprocesing effects will destroy game performance and put the look back in the crappy level
also add some nice gfx's to the game would be pretty sweet, what comes to my mind is some stylish looking dusts and particles but taking care of not overloading anything too (think of some Newgrounds flash games that looks awesome)
also the sound part in a game is almost important as the visual
so in this matter soldat has a giant room of improvement to explore
a nice example of this is the old Doom 3 wich is the sound that makes the game experience pretty cool (for the age)
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Update all the maps. There are great looking maps and there are maps that simply look like shit. That's something the community can do. The developers should show more interest, though.
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to embellish the maps will be a good start.
There are already some maps which are pretty well looking.
This remake of ctf_Laos for example (http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=36691.0;attach=23149;image) - Why didn´t it replace the old version btw. ? It was in the Beta some years ago.
The thing which is going wrong is that there are mainly being bugs fixed which is good of course but actually the game doesn´t change a lot with that. With the new release we will have a quite stable version in my opinion and it is about time to go ahead and add some other stuff to soldat.
1. Make a new GUI. If a new player comes and start Soldat the current GUI doesn´t really invite him into further playing this game.
Here are some examples how a proper GUI may look like.
I´ve attached some images how a proper GUI may look like. (made by Loner)
2. Change the gfx to something nicer. The current gfx´s hasn´t ever been changed. I would suggest to make the game look like this (http://www.moddb.com/mods/cel-shaded-soldat-mod/downloads/cell-shaded-soldat-mod-v30). By simply having the option to change the graphics to "classic" everyone should be statisfied with it.
3. It´s never too late to make advertisements happen. This might happen via YouTube or sth. else. Since MM´s new game (http://King Arthurs Gold) has a great playerbase and will be released on STEAM soon he has the chance to make an adverstise Soldat there.
4. Update the official website (http://soldat.pl) - It is just totally outdated and messy.
5. EnEsCe made the Soldat Portal back in time before he jumped off. The code wasn´t given to the new devs. The Soldat Portal thing was the greatest and best thing which could have happend to SOLDAT in the past years. Having an account system is just great because people love to see their stats/rankings/achievements/...
Also it prevents hacking. There are some people doing something similiar as far as I know called " (http://sgas.reauq.com/SGAS - Soldat Global Account System)". So you should include their idea into the new version or even let them be a part of the dev team.
6. Parallax Scrolling? as background for the maps
7. Soldat Chat-Mod Integrate this please.
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The code wasn´t given to the new devs.
Yes, it was. The PHP/web side of it was hosted on the official servers run by FLAB and it's likely still sitting there, unused. One of the first things the new devs did was remove all traces of Soldat Portal from the Delphi source, as the majority of everyone came to the conclusion that it was a waste that very little people liked and used.
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The code wasn´t given to the new devs.
Yes, it was. The PHP/web side of it was hosted on the official servers run by FLAB and it's likely still sitting there, unused. One of the first things the new devs did was remove all traces of Soldat Portal from the Delphi source, as the majority of everyone came to the conclusion that it was a waste that very little people liked and used.
We are talking about the same thing right ? Everyone told me that the source has never been given away. Also, how can there be any majority who didn´t like SoldatPortal if it has never been fully released? There is no reason to not like it but ignorance.
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The code wasn´t given to the new devs.
Yes, it was. The PHP/web side of it was hosted on the official servers run by FLAB and it's likely still sitting there, unused. One of the first things the new devs did was remove all traces of Soldat Portal from the Delphi source, as the majority of everyone came to the conclusion that it was a waste that very little people liked and used.
We are talking about the same thing right ? Everyone told me that the source has never been given away. Also, how can there be any majority who didn´t like SoldatPortal if it has never been fully released? There is no reason to not like it but ignorance.
SoldatPortal involves/involved two parts: the code in the Delphi-written game client itself; and several PHP scripts running on the same server that hosted these forums and the other official Soldat sites. The parts in Delphi were removed, and as such the PHP parts were no longer used/accessed. Neither the client side game code nor the PHP scripts were ever given away. If you look at the changelogs the devs have published you'll see entries where they removed the client side parts of soldat portal.
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As far as i can remember the version we got was some beta with portal code and an even older one from the server.
I didn't know if we had the backend code or not - but assumed we didn't.
I removed the portal code because it used Internet Explorer controls for the GUI (limits portability) and I didn't think Soldat was ready for portal.
I think at that time a lot of people were against accounts.
Also if added someday Portal should be optional so people don't have to take yet another step after they figured out how to get it to work in the first place...
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hmm Soldat in Vector Style would be nice.
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The idea is taken from cs. ingame teamspeak.
I think noone has mentioned it earlier but i might be wrong
I do not know if this is possible from a technical point of view but definitely , it would be a cool thing. That kind of communication is better. Sometimes you don't pay attention to what people are texting in game and you may overlook the valuable information , like ' where's the efc ' . Whereas if someone said it through the ingame ts, you would have heard that. If someone does not like to talk , he doesn't even have to. It's push to talk. But it's better to hear the information than look for it in a heap of dialogues. I find this better than the radio thing. Definitely it's faster and it's a facilitation , especially for the newcommers. Also you are learning faster if you are receiving some tips from better players. People can talk with eachother , not just about the current action but generally about everything that is related to Soldat. All this can be made by ingame ts. You start to talk just by pressing one button , for example 'f'. When you don't want to hear all these conversations there should be a disable button too.
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The idea is taken from cs. ingame teamspeak.
I think noone has mentioned it earlier but i might be wrong
I do not know if this is possible from a technical point of view but definitely , it would be a cool thing. That kind of communication is better. Sometimes you don't pay attention to what people are texting in game and you may overlook the valuable information , like ' where's the efc ' . Whereas if someone said it through the ingame ts, you would have heard that. If someone does not like to talk , he doesn't even have to. It's push to talk. But it's better to hear the information than look for it in a heap of dialogues. I find this better than the radio thing. Definitely it's faster and it's a facilitation , especially for the newcommers. Also you are learning faster if you are receiving some tips from better players. People can talk with eachother , not just about the current action but generally about everything that is related to Soldat. All this can be made by ingame ts. You start to talk just by pressing one button , for example 'f'. When you don't want to hear all these conversations there should be a disable button too.
This is just Just a waste of time. The radio / taunt thing works pretty good and there are a lot of tools around to make voicechat.
TeamSpeak integration has been added to Soldat a few releases ago.
Better change the chat behaviour and make it just like Shoozza´s Chat-Mod.
@jrgp: What about the website? soldat.pl
It wouldn´t take long to update this and delete some content.
-update the screenshot/media page
-update the links
-delete the gather page
-delete the chat page
-update the league page