Soldat's goals for the future

[Clawbug]

From a suggestion by Shoozza in another thread, I thereby open this new thread.

What goals should Soldat try to meet in future to attract new players and get some old players back? What should be done in order to kill the phrase "Soldat is dead!"?

As I suggested in the Greenlight thread, I see that there are a few major problems holding Soldat back from being seen as an attractive game for new players(in no particular order):

- Soldat looks dated! 640x480 default resolution is absolutely unacceptable in an era of Full HD widescreen displays.

- Soldat's GUI is ancient, unintuitive and confusing. For example the "Join game" tab could really benefit from higher resolution an redesign.

- Soldat is seen as "dead"/"dying", because of infrequent release cycles. These days people are used to monthly, if not weekly "patches" with many other online games. Past release cycle of 18-24 months alongside with buggy releases has really pissed some people off. Similarly lack of players for most servers indicates death for the game. For example many countries don't have their own servers where the people could gather and play together.

- Tons of small annoyances and glitches. For example, the jumping animation is bugged - the player swings his weapon upwards almost to 90 degree angle for a single animation frame - firing during this frame will shot the bullet almost straight upwards. Very annoying with Barrett or M79. And this has been happening at least since 1.1.5.

- Soldat is old. People are excited about new games, not about games which are over a decade old! This is something that can't be changed though, but it can be remedied in many ways, for example by refreshing the game's visuals and making it as "modern" as possible(while being sensible of course. No achievements, no vehiculz, no classes, ... you get it. )

Of course other people see the major problems differently, but these are the five problems I would argue are the worst when it comes to being attractive for new players.

So what could be done? What should be done!? I'll throw the ball for the rest of the people to give their feedback, I'll voice out my suggestions later on though.

[CheeSeMan.]

I think one of the major problems is just all the little bugs that can cause any new player a major headache when they install for the first time, most people will not go browsing the forum and search through the FAQ to fix it: they will just uninstall. They will not look through the config.exe(Or even find it for that matter...) Without fixing these things Soldat will never be able to "expand" again. Then like you have stated a revamp of the GUI even the whole graphics(especially of the old textures) to make the game look better in high resolution, I think then Soldat could attract more players(with a promise of the netcode being fixed shortly har har har...)

[Adam]

it needs way more players and AMERICAN servers ffs (public)

[Shoozza]

it needs way more players and AMERICAN servers ffs (public)

Ehm this is thread is about finding the goals Soldat should try meet to attract new players... With more players come more. Stay on topic please.

- Soldat looks dated! 640x480 default resolution is absolutely unacceptable in an era of Full HD widescreen displays.

While we have widescreen support in Soldat the gfx are behind the time. I'm not sure how HD gfx should look like (abstract but non blurry or detailed).
Currently low res is the best looking option. It shouldn't be though. The limitation for non registered players sure is annoying but you can bet they will be lifted soon.

- Soldat's GUI is ancient, unintuitive and confusing. For example the "Join game" tab could really benefit from higher resolution an redesign.

While there will be small some changes in the next version there is a thread about this:
http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=39691.0

There is a need to redo the whole GUI because (you guessed it) the compiler switch requires it.
I want to keep it look Soldat like but make is simpler (less stuff the causal user should have to worry about should be visible).
I probably should talk with L[0ne]R to get the mockups in the right direction.

- Soldat is seen as "dead"/"dying", because of infrequent release cycles. These days people are used to monthly, if not weekly "patches" with many other online games. Past release cycle of 18-24 months alongside with buggy releases has really pissed some people off. Similarly lack of players for most servers indicates death for the game. For example many countries don't have their own servers where the people could gather and play together.

KAG like updates should solve this problem. They are on the Roadmap for the next release.

- Tons of small annoyances and glitches. For example, the jumping animation is bugged - the player swings his weapon upwards almost to 90 degree angle for a single animation frame - firing during this frame will shot the bullet almost straight upwards. Very annoying with Barrett or M79. And this has been happening at least since 1.1.5.

I assume they are all in the bugtracker. The issue is that we have no way to see which ones need our attention the most. Any idea how to resolve this?

- Soldat is old. People are excited about new games, not about games which are over a decade old! This is something that can't be changed though, but it can be remedied in many ways, for example by refreshing the game's visuals and making it as "modern" as possible(while being sensible of course. No achievements, no vehiculz, no classes, ... you get it. )

I'm not gfx person if someone can make good mockups for how soldat should look like (see second quotes for details) go ahead. I'm not aware of a thread for Soldat HD yet


- Simpler more appealing website (that's the first thing people see)

In order to get more new players this could work:
- Make Soldat run on OSX and GNU/Linux
- Make Soldat open source

For faster releases this would be necessary:
- Clean up the code base

[Clawbug]

What I would be suggesting would be a complete recreation of Soldat's graphics and increasing the "native"/default resolution to somethig like 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. I frankly can't see any valid reasons against this - the only thing I can think of is horribad codebase with hardcoded coordinates and scale factors for the rendering part of the code. Needless to say, it would require lots of (yet unknown) changes and rewriting, but I see graphics as the most important thing people look at when they are introduced to a new game - after all, it's the first ever thing they actually perceive about the game. The first step towards this would be the GUI refresh.

Frankly, I don't believe Mac or Linux would bring many players in, but rather work more as a PR stunt("Hey our game is platform independent, yo!"), after all, considering that 1) they represent a fraction of the desktop market 2) Only fraction of Linux users actually care about games when they're on Linux, and if they care, they usuallly boot to Windows to play(such as myself). The amount of effort/time/resources put into making cross-platform Soldat happen, is in my eyes, far too big for the benefit in terms of attracting new players. As a long term goal it sounds humble and even bold, but is it really something you should spend - if not even waste - resources on, when you aim to create growth?

Frankly, now that I actually think of any kind of changes(resolution, netcode, mac/linux port, ...) I feel very disappointed by the fact that there's no way any of that could ever be done "properly" or "correctly". Considering the horror stories I've heard about the source code, any such changes would require not only wiping off huge parts of the codebase, but also to rewrite and make the new parts work. It's a huge task, it's far harder to do that than to create new code.

Then again, the most effective way to create growth is to let people know about Soldat. Nobody as any plans for this?

[NamelessWolf]

About the graphics I'd say much of that problem is caused by bad maps with boring visuals. There are Soldat maps that looks good. It's just that many new players don't get to see them because they play the kind of stuff that comes with the game on installation.

If you're used to high definition 3D graphics, go to Soldat and come in to see something like this: http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/8282/screenshot09100207.png

Then yes, Soldat is ugly. But if the map looked like this:
http://tms.jrgp.org/2010/index.php?overview=1320

It could all be very different.

This is just an example of course and it's not about having more winter themed maps or anything. I simply think there are a lot of custom maps out there which are so much better than the default ones and I think there's a lot to be done just in making the default maps look beautiful.. cause it IS possible to make Soldat look good.
I've seen so many examples of nice textures, shadings and sceneries that I just can't believe some people put up with playing the simplest of the simplest maps a mapmaker could possibly create.

[Overkill]

Graphics are a major issue, but i would be content with the graphics if everything worked optimally, like maybe registering of bullets and bugs like reload bugs (spas) or just minor bugs in general. Not like frame bugs on map but maybe you could do what halo n bungie is doing like a hit indicator or somethin to show where exactly where you have to shoot to hit certain people under lag. But im not a dev but jus minor bugs that soldat being out for so long should be fixed.

[Fede-]

but the old graphics and the simplicity gives rock to soldat

[homerofgods]

I wonder if the grafics really scare off new players, and is it also why old players leave? (It's deffenetly not why i would leave)

I agree with clawbug about Mac or Linux.

To make more people come we should imo fix the most visible and annoying bugs. I don't think many people will come anyway but it's the best way to spend time on soldat since we don't have endless developers.

Soldat on facebook and youtube can also attract some players.

[Clawbug]

Map visuals are not a problem(at least for me, could be for new players), frankly I love the minimalistic visual style of older maps because there's high contrast between polygons, player, bullets, background, objects and scenery. With more visual maps I find it far harder to maneuver and detect polygon edges from scenery, objects and background. The problem is the horrible default resolution of 640x480, which you can't change unless you are registered! Even if you could change it and stretch it, the game would look horrible. Current graphics are just not acceptable for many new players(those who haven't yet even played the game, or play for the first time). Alongside with native(non-stretched) HD resolution, there would be a need for recreation/heavy modification of many(if not all!) scenery graphics, weapon graphics and gostek(needed if increasing the resolution).

One of the reason why players leave is that they think Soldat is dead. They have no faith for the game. There's no excitement. This is very easy to believe, as just by looking at amount of players and servers. Also, take this forum as an example; back 3 years ago(July 2009) this forum had 7144 new posts during the month. Last month(July 2012) we only had 468 new posts. The activity on this forum has droped down to mere 6.5 % of what it used to be some 3 years ago. And even back then "Soldat was dead". To talk more about this particular forum, just look at the moderators of many sub-forums for example. Many of them haven't been active for months, and the active ones are limited to one/two global moderators. What does this tell about the state of the community for new players?

It's hard to find active servers to play on. I can't just pick one of the many CTF servers to play on, because every single one of them happens to be empty. Same goes for other gamestyles too. It seems that the only truly active gamemodes are the sub-gamemodes/customs. There's always someone plaing Knife-only for example, or dodgeball, hide & seek etc. Frankly I personally consider that a disgrace for the game itself.

So what Soldat lacks is growth. I think this could be best achieved through local/country-specific communities for the game. At least for us Finns, it has always been the local gaming forums/communities which have promoted Soldat and even briefly created our own Soldat-specific community(SoldatFinland by Therier and others). I did some light research, and it seems that Soldat hasn't been "buzzing" on any such gaming communities for years in Finland, this is partly the reason why there haven't been many new Finns in the scene or game itself. I suspect this is somewhat the case with people from other countries too. Basically Soldat hasn't been "buzzing" anywhere around the internet for years. No expousure, no outreaches, no publicity - no new players, because nobody finds or knows Soldat!

Bringing in some growth would be the first step for Soldat's "revival" I believe. This requires publicity and even possibly local/country-specific Soldat-related communities and such. While I understand that this is a hard task to achieve, I believe there are people who would be willing to put their time, money and effort on the table for this. I know I would, I've had this in mind for several years now(since SoldatFinland died out), but it requires lots of work and effort. I'd suggest people to gather together and possibly plan something like this, after all it's the duty of the community(yes, not the developers) to generate publicity, create the outreach and expose the game for new players.

[homerofgods]

Ok,, I have not been playing soldat for a few months, I played diablo instead since that's what's popular now. I started a soldat game just now to feel what it was like to go from a new game to an old game.
The gui is understandable, but reminds me that soldat is old.
I tried some resolutions, and anything else than the smallest resolution looks bad.
The sfx also sounded rather crappy, when I score it feels like my speakers have a bad day or something. (I still like the sounds, it's just bad quality)
The gameplay itself is allways nice, apart from the bugs that makes my screen lagg unless I got youtube running in the background.

I feel it's a shame that soldat can't live up to it's full potential!

Gameplay: 9/10
Bugs: 3/10
GUI: 4/10
Sound: 5/10

Total valuation: 5/10

[pavliko]

Leave the graphics alone!
Modern graphics are for pussies, soldat was meant to look old & simple...

Soldat was made for men, not pussies that want modern barbey sissy graphics..

Concentrate more on bug fixing, code cleaning and implanting more features
Bug fixing, bug fixing and yet again more bug fixing comrade...

If some of you don't agree, you are the cancer that is killing soldat...

[Clawbug]

I agree, graphics are for pussies. But real men don't play games anyway so all there's left is mere pussies. The future of Soldat is in such pussies.

As I've been saying, the crucial part is the outreach. Soldat simply has to be more modern, even if not anything but for the sake of being practical(for example higher resolution in terms of graphics). People refuse to even try out the game if they learn that the resolution of the game is 640x480. Honestly, how many under 16 year olds have ever even used such resolution before? Why would anyone try out a game which uses such an ancient resolution, when there are other free games e.g. on Steam which support Full HD 3D stuff? Looks matter, they matter alot.

[pavliko]

This game just need a team of lifeless programmers and artists(wannabes) in order to get back on track

[Clawbug]

Do you even bother reading what I've written thus far, or do you just disagree that it's the lack of exposure, outreach and publicity which keeps Soldat from growing - not the bugs or annoyances?

While I agree that development pace could be faster/release cycles could be shorter(even if it meant less changes, because it still indicates lively development), it won't bring in new people - that's what Soldat needs the most. Do you, pavliko, know what caused the huge peak in popularity for Soldat when 1.4 was released in April 2007(check the forum stats for some data for example)?

[Adam]

it won't bring in new people - that's what Soldat needs the most. Do you, pavliko, know what caused the huge peak in popularity for Soldat when 1.4 was released in April 2007(check the forum stats for some data for example)?

the soldat veterans movie o.O?

[pavliko]

Clawbug I have carefully read what was written in this topic and I still insist...

And yeah I too was about to say sv movie

[Adam]

Advertise soldat on MMOHUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or MMOBOMB

[Clawbug]

Soldat Veterans movie was released sometime in 2006, so that does not explain the peak we got here on the forums in April 2007. The reason was that there were actual adverts around the internet about the new and mighty 1.4 release. For example FliesLikeABrick submitted news to Digg.com, and got through to the front page(?). People actually learned about Soldat in 2007, tons(literally!) of new people got into this forum in mid-2007, thanks to the exposure effort of a few community actives. To my understanding, it was a planned move, not a matter of "good release and lots of luck". That is what Soldat needs, it needs to reach out to new players. You don't do that by fixing bugs, posting youtube videos, or making cool maps. You do that by going out to the people and bothering them by telling them what Soldat is about, because none of them know the game!

The major problem Soldat has right now is that the amount of active players has been on a long-term decline and has only accelerated during the past year or two. This decline has to be turned around to growth, in a way or another. What are the ways to make this happen?

[Adam]

Soldat Veterans movie was released sometime in 2006, so that does not explain the peak we got here on the forums in April 2007. The reason was that there were actual adverts around the internet about the new and mighty 1.4 release. For example FliesLikeABrick submitted news to Digg.com, and got through to the front page(?). People actually learned about Soldat in 2007, tons(literally!) of new people got into this forum in mid-2007, thanks to the exposure effort of a few community actives. To my understanding, it was a planned move, not a matter of "good release and lots of luck". That is what Soldat needs, it needs to reach out to new players. You don't do that by fixing bugs, posting youtube videos, or making cool maps. You do that by going out to the people and bothering them by telling them what Soldat is about, because none of them know the game!

The major problem Soldat has right now is that the amount of active players has been on a long-term decline and has only accelerated during the past year or two. This decline has to be turned around to growth, in a way or another. What are the ways to make this happen?

get mmohut or mmobomb to do a first look on soldat