RTSguru.com seems to me to be a good place for ZK to be listed, because it will attract experienced RTS gamers and the reviewers should understand ZK depth of gameplay. The site has a list of games http://www.rtsguru.com/games/in which ZeroK could be included. Submission requirement from: http://www.rtsguru.com/faq/6/I-think-there-is-a-game-that-needs-to-be-added-to-your-list.-How-do-I-submit-this.html -A visual representation of the game -A transparent .psd of your game's logo -A textual overview of your game -A professional website, name of publisher, name of developer, press contact information. The visual representation is a few screenshots and our best videos that showcase the game. The site's front page also lists news articles which could allow periodic publicity for ZK. The first news submission should be a 1000 word introduction to the game. We could also release an article a few weeks later on the game mechanics, and another on a featured tournament and its results. For example of an intro news article, 0AD (another oss game) had a Q&A with the developers. http://www.rtsguru.com/game/254/article/2191/QA-With-the-Team-Behind-Open-Source-RTS-0-A.D..htmlI think anything we submit should draw attention to the depth of strategy/tactics especially in team play, rather than to less polished aspects (single play/tutorials), so the reviewers know where the game's strength is.
+5 / -0
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Not sure RTSguru guys are good at recognizing mechanical depth, they thought Petroglyph's End of Nations have great mechanics, which I strongly disagree with.
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Hi RTSguru! Us guys and girls at Zero-K wanted to submit the game to the site (detail below). Zero-K is a Total Annihilation inspired RTS based on the Spring engine. We believe it's got some of the best strategy gameplay around, especially for an open source project, thanks to the fine-tuning of our passionate community of devs and players. We hope you give it a try and enjoy it as much as we do! If you need to get in contact our project manager is Licho (licho at licho dot eu). We'll be in contact soon with a introductory 1000 word dev journal. Thanks again! Regards, The Zero-K community Details: Zero-K Zero-K is a FREE, multiplatform, open-source RTS game. It is dynamic, action-packed and hassle-free, full of clever strategies and constantly moving combat. Built on the Total Annihilation inspired Spring Engine, Zero-K is a world of giant warring robots that provides wickedly complex strategic gameplay within action-packed multiplayer battlefields. Its developers focus on finely tuning each of the hundreds of units to create to an environment where every move has a counter-move, and every unit a purpose. -Giant battles with hundreds or thousands of units -Realistic physics, deformable terrain and terraforming -Planet Wars: an ongoing online campaign mode -Unique abilities: jump-jets, gravity turrets, mobile shields, burning napalm, air drops, unit morphs -Streamlined Economy: Scalable resources for increasingly epic battles, combining a simple interface with the complexity to allow a skilled player to make a daring comeback. Web site : zero-k.info Developer : Open source community. Screenshots : http://zero-k.info/Wiki/Media#Screenshots   Videos : Cinematic trailer Gameplay trailer Logo: 
+3 / -0
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Now we just need "A transparent .psd of your game's logo". Could a dev arrange that and post it via a link here? Edit - I just added a png for now After that I can email it, or even better a dev could (less confusion of email addys)? EMAIL HERE bill at rtsguru.com - Managing editor, RTSguru LATER EMAIL THE 1000W INTRO HERE news at rtsguru.com - For news articles later on
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Tell me when its ready so i give like
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quote:
A professional website |
Wtf? I don't want ZK to be listed on such a shitsite.
+0 / -2
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I don't think we should try to get reviews until we have dealt with all the smurf-trolls, exploits, and other problems that have come up over the previous weeks. Also, I feel like that letter is too full of buzzwords and us trying to appeal to the same audience of casual players that people flame so much on the forums about. We need to decide on an identity for the game and stick to it. Either we need to call it as a competetive game and wipe out things like "hassle-free" and "FREE" from our advertising text, kill bigteams and get some of Shadowfury's or Floris' casts up instead of that "cinematic trailer" which makes the game look like some slow terrible one. This is my preferred choice. Or, we need to decide that it will be a casual game, which it seems like is what the devs want. Clean up the forums, make more and better tutorials, fork a branch balanced for 1v1? and still stop trying to please distinct groups at the same time. Either way, I think we should clarify the "hassle-free" to something more descriptive, change "FREE" to something like "free and open-source", and lighten up on the buzzwords like "action-packed". "Dynamic" is fine though, IMO, because while overused it actually means just what we want it to here.
+0 / -1
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None of those goals are mutually exclusive. Scalable playability is a core ZK design goal, so optimizing purely for 1v1 is not an option. The reason 1v1 takes precedence in balance impact and casting priority is due to much higher competitiveness (and spectator value) of such mode.
+1 / -0
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I understand that, but it seems like our current marketing efforts - and therefore playerbase - are largely aimed at people who don't appreciate that and would rather play largeteams, PvE, or small rooms with their IRL friends. That's a perfectly valid thing for them to do, but I feel like going for both them and the "competetive" players is a large reason for all the flaming and anger we have.
+0 / -0
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  Dessardcan u post link to more hardcore gameplay vids u would like included?
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I think all three of these show off the game pretty well.
+1 / -0
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Dessard, there's always going to be excuses. There has been for the last five years. You gotta get over them.
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I think being on RTSguru is a good idea. Dessard what makes you think we want this to be a casual game? Almost all of our content is competitive multiplayer. I wouldn't say "Hassle Free" means non-competitive so this interpretation should be considered for promotional material. To me "Hassle Free" means that we try to reduce the tedious/pointless micromanagement. There is still plenty of other things to do. Can anyone think of a clearer way to phrase that? Balance has always been towards 1v1. Balance can flow from 1v1s to teamgames for all but the most expensive things. Also, what exploits?
+2 / -0
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I don't mean casual as an insult, just as the counterpart to competetive; I don't have any single point pointing to that, it was just the impression I got. Maybe phrase it as "an emphasis on meaningful micromanagement over busy-work" or something to that effect; something showing that there is still intensive player interaction, just not on things that could be automated for no adverse effect like, say, the larva injects of SC2. I'm not saying that balance is not aimed at 1v1, I'm saying that if we want to keep bigteams around, the game will need to be changed to work better there, with smaller scale to accomodate more packed maps and higher weighted units to prevent lag. The idea of a fork aimed at 1v1 was just an offhand comment for what would happen if that change were made. Exploits like the votekick in 1v1, the listmaps thing, and whatever else people are using to make trouble. Basically, we have a split community, and it isn't big enough to support being split. I feel like many people don't realise how many players there are who aren't into competetive 1v1, because they are less active in the forums and chats. Recently the divisions have been really coming up hard with more people on the forums complaining about damn nubs, more new players complaining about those people, and I am afraid that keeping the split community like this will end up wiping out all but the most devoted players like it did to games like Xonotic or Allegiance. My preferred solution is to push the semi-competetive smallgames angle, especially since some are saying people are leaving Starcraft, and we may be able to attract them, but it would also be valid to go the other way. Of course I may be completely wrong, I hardly even play anymore, but this is my interpretation.
+1 / -0
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Also, what exploits? |
Hiding units inside colvols, overshooting with turrets, there's tons of bugs that can be exploited.
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...and if an exploit is actually abused, then the active dev community will take care of it. If it's not abused then what's the point?
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They're both abused. I only mentioned two, but there's more and they are abused too. Most of the time exploits aren't even perceived as such because of how much people memorized them.
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quote:
Basically, we have a split community, and it isn't big enough to support being split. I feel like many people don't realise how many players there are who aren't into competetive 1v1, because they are less active in the forums and chats. Recently the divisions have been really coming up hard with more people on the forums complaining about damn nubs, more new players complaining about those people |
What do you suggest? The only solutions that have been come up with so far are to stop the veterans complaining about the damn nubs (will make the community even smaller), leave them to continuously rage at the damn nubs (loses a lot of players), or remove the motivation to rage at the damn nubs (requires more thought). The last one is the only viable option of the three, but nobody seems to care about that and the only forum activity about it is people screaming about how option 1 is better than option 2 or how option 2 is better than option 1. The semi-competitive small teams thing would be great. There would still be the competitive 1v1 but the 10v10 plague would be eradicated and all of the problems associated with it would be gone.
+1 / -0
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My solution would be to cap bigteams at 12, make a medium-teams room at 8, and a small-teams room at 4 or 6, and keep 1v1 around. People could still make huge games on their own servers, even probably just host one permanently if they wanted, but all the official ones would be smaller. Of course, there would be drama, and I can understand why they haven't done this yet, but I think it would be our best option. Even if all 22% of our playerbase who said they prefer 8v8 and up were to up and leave, we would get a lot more new player retention due to not having all the skill-levels crammed into one room, being able to get into a game easier. Plus, having games where people could play people at their own skill level would just make everything more relaxed, and increase the skill level overall because people would understand more the consequences of their actions. This would also make more people come to the pubs rather than playing alone or with their clans in a locked room, because they would not be stomped in any available game.
+1 / -0
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