New dev lead + STEAM release this year!

[Michal Marcinkowski]

Hey everyone,
I need to officially announce this. For a long time my number one priority for Soldat was to get it on Steam. Because the attention of gamers is on Steam. We will get new players from there easily and keep Soldat alive and happy. But... It's been too long and I see nothing will come out from waiting.

I talked with Shoozza over the past weeks and he agrees with my intentions. We also see that the current dev team is going nowhere, despite their best efforts.

We decided that we want to ship Soldat 1.7.1 (with some fixes as Soldat 1.7.2) on Steam for FREE (Windows only first).

The release date has been decided to be 21st December 2017. So it's also the date were Soldat will become 100% free both on soldat.pl and Steam (YES it will still work without Steam). So thank you, everyone that has registered and supported me and the Soldat infrastructure and people involved. We wouldn't have made it without you. But it is time to retire registrations and give something back to the community. By making it free we bring it back to where its place is.

This is the best option I see for keeping Soldat alive. So there will be no new things, no new gui's, no money involved. This is just for the community and for the people that want to have some fun with the game again.  I hope this will work out and what is best for the community. We should see a steady income of players next year. After that, we can continue developing whatever plans are currently on the to-do lists (including new GUI, multiplatform support, ...) that the current dev team is developing. As for now, Shoozza will take the official lead to bring Soldat to Steam by the end of the year. Wish us luck

Cheers,
MM

[Michal Marcinkowski]

helloer: It seems like you have personal issues with Shoozza which shouldn't be a decision factor here. We've gone through this, that's why we had a new dev team. But that went nowhere too.
(I addressed the open source issue in the petition thread).

It will work out now because we have a solid plan. We're not doing anything new. Just polishing things up and releasing what is already here (Soldat 1.7.1).

[Nedi]

Why can't we just get open source Soldat with an official fork with Shoozza as a maintainer? Everyone will be happy.

[soldat-game]

I'm behind the release of the source

[Bonecrusher]

oooooh shit thats something this community has been asking for years. Let's see what will happen

Also i have to say im fully behind helloer being the main force of the new dev team(if he wishes to come back)

[Brainz]

Huiiii
nice action^^

[jrgp]

Good job guys + good luck to Shoozza. I'm moving this to "News" so it shows on the forum frontpage.

[hardpenguin]

Wow! This truly could make Soldat userbase thrive! Really hyped for Steam release and for multiplatform support (namely the Linux version, of course!).

Regarding opensourcing the game... I don't think it goes against releasing it on Steam in any way? The game still remains the property of MM, of course, and the project branch used for Steam release would have to be maintained strictly. However, there are some opensource games that were released on Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380840/Teeworlds/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/578870/MegaGlest/

[homerofgods]

YES! Thank you MM! 

Shoozza! <3  (I trust you completely)

Helloer I'm sure you mean well for the future of soldat but you need to think about what you are saying and how it affects the observing community. The slow progress of soldat is not to be blamed on one person. I'm having a hard time believing you due to the lack of objectiveness in your criticism

We all need to act as a team and help each other achieve greatness instead of shooting each other to pieces, reserve that for ingame please

[Slasher]

YES! Thank you MM! 

Shoozza! <3  (I trust you completely)

Helloer I'm sure you mean well for the future of soldat but you need to think about what you are saying and how it affects the observing community. The slow progress of soldat is not to be blamed on one person. I'm having a hard time believing you due to the lack of objectiveness in your criticism

We all need to act as a team and help each other achieve greatness instead of shooting each other to pieces, reserve that for ingame please

You're right homerofgods, this will erode team communication, a team is much more effective when its members are united.

[Slasher]

For a long time this idea has given me joy, I am really hopeful of this soldier's "new era"! I intend to help in what is possible for the soldat not to die

[Shoozza]

Thanks MM for trusting me with soldat 1.7.2. I hope I can give the community hope again. And restore trust in the dev team.
I also hope I can do a better job at keeping you up to date. It's been a long time since I was able to see the development from outside and it is a different perspective if you are waiting for something without much info to calm you down.

I wrote about the open sourcing in another thread, I'd like to get some stability in the development process and build a plan for how to move forward.
This isn't exactly easy with all the open source arguing distracting from the development process. It's been quite a turbulent few days i must admit.

As to not adding anything new. I'd like to add some smaller things to the release as well, if you have suggestions post in the other thread i created.
If you have important bugs you should definitely post about them.

[daaw]

Damn... one way or another... Shoozza still stays best dev team leader of soldat we have...

Kinda disappointed that Falcon team felt apart,... I had much faith.

[Slasher]

The soldat depends on Shoozza, a lot of responsibility for him, I think they should try to find some more people for help

[L[0ne]R]

Got very mixed feelings about all this.

Happy because Steam release, yay.

Sad because 1.7.2 and not 1.8. If both MM and Shoozza have come back to bring it to Steam AND make the game completely free - then things must be truly bad on the development front. It's a real shame because even unfinished v1.8 already has some really neat features already implemented (like new map and mod packaging). Any chance some of those features could still be integrated into 1.7.2?


Anyway, fingers crossed, hoping the patient will live.

EDIT: If you need another person doing some graphic work - let me know.

EDIT 2: Are you sure December 21st is a good idea? Activity will probably drop rapidly after Christmas with people buying and playing new games, so Soldat will probably get quickly forgotten and buried under the Christmas presents.

[Akinaro]

Somehow its really amusing... After all those years of watching people saying obvious things... You finally all woke up and say... exactly the same thing what those people where saying....
And of course you have, quote: "Solid Plan". Probably the same solid plan as for past 10 years, and probably also so solid like Falcon experience in running dev team, who know maybe so solid like Shoozza qoute: "Today I am leaving Soldat and also resign as Soldat dev team lead."

It so solid that you choose worst date of releasing game, as Loner mentioned, because if you would really have solid plan, you would know that putting Soldat on steam in that time is like putting one m&m's in the middle of Christmas Table filled with cakes and cookies(read: all Christmas promotions and sellouts).

Not to mention that you seriously lack of any market sense. Time of simple 2D indie games pass out last year, now market is going again toward open massively multiplayer online games. Without proper marketing that you dont have for Soldat you will get the same results as with recent release of 1.7 version: You will get initial hype, some older players will show up, some new players will try, and after about two weeks everything will slowdown and you get maybe 50 new solid players that will play it.

Steam is not magic box that will give you 1000 new players just because you are there. Steam is platform where most of players are young people with particular needs, that soldat dont have. You will not get proper respond just by advertising game as "old school 2D shooter". If your advertising plan look like soldat development now, you can just skip that release. Because its look like even MM who have some experience with that, dont really take it seriously, and whole plan is to just move it from his desk because its annoying.

Soldat have huge potential but it lack proper features that are needed to gather proper audience. Market is saturated with 2D games after those years of indie games boom. If you really care about Soldat and really want to keep it alive you need proper look of game, basic statistic system for players, proper advertising methods and background support for players and ideas/features.
You seriously need to look at market you aiming for, Steam is demanding and if you plan is to just get it on steam and wait for miracle because "its Steam", you may as well just give a break.

Last thing is that you really messed up for all those years power of community. Simple donation system would be enough to at least pay for proper advertising, And right now, with aiming for steam, you would need that support, even 8-10$ a month is enough to get good results that will keep game on top of any lists, making sure that it show people that game is live.
And advertising is just one thing that you could do. But its not only about money, for all those years Soldat had great community that where ready to make shit for free, all what you had to do is... ask. Then you would just need to pick what you liked and put it in game... Now of course it dont make sense because you lost good 90% of people, but if developers, like eg, Falcon stop being so full of them self and stop acting like they know what they doing, you still can get small help of people.
You dont need separate group of developers, If you dont want to open source game, open development, and put official list of what is needed, starting from such simple things like advertising banners and videos, ending in actual game graphic, sounds and other components that you need. If people here would stop being so cocky you would right now have few WM versions that would be on public servers to test, and on forum you would discuss all of them. No closed Irc channels or PMs between just few people. If remaining community is so mature as they say, it would be done already.

Basically if you really think about changing Soldat to proper game, not some annoying weekend project for few friends start thinking about it as game, and take in to the account market and people. Free work or not, if people accepted to help developing game, they should put 100% in it as often as possible. With proper strategy and plan, you can even make money from it without making game paid. There are lots of ways, especially using steam and donations  to make game work and keep players and devs happy.

[duz]

Unfortunately most people wont give a chance after seeing the first screen.
Idk, you could atleast add a warning message saying that those things gonna change soon.

I was against Shoozza all these years cuz he was fixing minor things instead of fixing things that would catch or not new players.
I really hope he changed a bit and taked notice about his mistakes, to do something better now.

gj MM

[darDar]

kinda ironic how this is been sold as good news..
because this steam release will be the official end of Soldat.

1.8 was our only hope to attract new players with its new features, gui, visuals, map remakes and multi platform.

delay steam release until you got a decent game to present. a game which will not be uninstalled after literally 3 seconds. this goes nowhere and it makes me sick.

[dolgov_artem]

I think it's good news I've been waiting for this for ten years.

Unfortunately most people wont give a chance after seeing the first screen.
Idk, you could atleast add a warning message saying that those things gonna change soon.

1.8 was our only hope to attract new players with its new features, gui, visuals, map remakes and multi platform.

delay steam release until you got a decent game to present. a game which will not be uninstalled after literally 3 seconds. this goes nowhere and it makes me sick.

Maybe Steam Early Access is the solution for v1.7.1, untill v1.8 will be released?

[Raged`]

kinda ironic how this is been sold as good news..
because this steam release will be the official end of Soldat.

1.8 was our only hope to attract new players with its new features, gui, visuals, map remakes and multi platform.

delay steam release until you got a decent game to present. a game which will not be uninstalled after literally 3 seconds. this goes nowhere and it makes me sick.

Dont worry no one could do damage  as you do  to  this game :')