ET: More players?

by PokemonJohn • 17 Aug 2011, 16:23 • Journals

After yesterdays journal about what ET needs, I put forward an idea for a client which I feel would be good for ET.

My post from yesterday

QuoteET needs something which is a cross between steam, xfire and quake live. A program which is downloaded with the installation files which makes it easy for public players to switch over to competition.

For example, you run the program then select competition or public. If they select Competition, then they have options such as;

- Search for "Clan war" (opens irc channel with the browser built into the program)

- Search for Clan (#clanless-et opens same as above)

- Choice of AC (game is executed through program similar to how SLAC/TZAC and Steam work)

...etc

The Public option will open up the server list like other programs do.

Also, with the inbuilt browser the default webpage would be crossfire, and the "adverts" on the program would advertise upcoming cups, leagues etc.

If this is plausable, I think it would make competition a lot more user friendly, and bring a lot of new players to the scene.

QUICK PAINT MOCK UP

image: 286wgg0

I think it would work well to make people switch over from Jaymod and ETPub as it can be confusing for people who aren't well versed in using computers. There has been many people who are intrigued about ET, and when I tell them to download it, they simply get lost and/or give it before they have even managed to get it working.

tl;dr - Thoughts on a program which implements TZAC, IRC, Crossfire & CB/Leagues into one program to make ET more "user friendly"

Get someone to code it for free.

Sounds useless.

for me, crossfire and irc works like a charm tbh

The idea is fairly bright, though i do not see anyone doing this for free/for fun/etc.

ask hannes!

et wont have any new players,
if u want "new" players in etpro tho,
go to jaymod/NQ/etpub/nitmod communities (yes they exsist) and tell em:
1.how to download etpro and all shit
2.what crossfire is
3.what irc is and how to search to get a scrim.
edit:
4.and show them gamestv.org ofc

then u might have some new players added to the community, otherwise ...i dont see why would any1 in 2011 download et if has never ever played it or never heard of it...very hard .

"how to download etpro" lol

Parent

? how many times i seen ppl asking in crossfire where to download etpro +all maps, configs etc...

Parent

u join an etpro server

Parent

http://cdn3.knowyourmeme.com/i/000/093/298/original/Ronnie8230-COME-AT-ME-BRO.jpeg

Parent

He is right, getting your stuff ready really isn't as easy as you think it is, especially now wolfmap is gone.

Parent

don't show them what crossfire is, otherwise they get frightened :s

Parent

Most public players are just casual gamers and a lot don't have great knowledge of computers. ET was the first PC I played properly, and I learnt a lot about computers because of ET but it took me a long while. Things such as IRC, mods, downloading certain things for certain mods, anitcheat, how to join a clan etc and these can take a long time to explain especially to people who aren't very computer literate, this program would take the hassle out of it all and make it as easy a clicking a button. I was unaware of competitive gaming and had no idea of crossfire and I believe most public players today still don't have an idea about it.

Parent

Carrying on from my last post at the bottom of here.... updated GUI... all working

image: etttooool1

but since the community were cunts, I stopped it... it even worked with hooking into the game... sucks hey... it will NEVER be released.

Parent

That sucks man, it looks proper sweet.

Parent

OH WOW UR ARE SUCH A GREAT CODER OMG OLOLOL

Parent

Nope, an OK one at best. I'm sure you can do better! Please go ahead and make this happen. I have no time or motivation to carry it out. I will however if asked nicely by the coder give SOME of my source code towards the project.

Server query
Remote admin
Game hooking
Hooked music player
Chat system, no matter what server you're on. Will allow you to private type to a group of 10 max.
Friends system
Clan system
Built in war finder. Works with I managed to get it working (roughly). You type /find med,no server... it then posts to IRC (which is in the client I made), once you have a PM with /connect IP; password PASS it will auto connect when message is received.
Hardware detection
File integrity check
PB update feature
Pure files checker
etc...

Parent

.net gui builder :D

Parent

Correct :) C#. I designed it myself, and I am shit as fuck at designing anything lol.

Parent

1) cl_allowdownload 1 + cl_wwwdownload 1

???

Parent

ET is not user friendly because of all the mods, installation needs to be easy and joining servers needs to be quicker and hassle free.

Integrating all the apps into 1 won't help, it will probably only end up in making it even more complicated. Look at iTunes. iTunes is an application where several services have been integrated in 1 application. If apple would've made a separate application for every service then the app would perform better and it would be much easier to use.

Then there is another problem, as a software developer myself I don't see why anyone would want to do this for free. Implementing IRC won't be that hard, as you can use a third party library to implement it, but you still need to create the front end and that takes time.

And the great thing about crossfire ( and any other site for that matter obviously ) is that it can be accessed from any application or platform. Creating an application you speak of would only make it less easy to access for people, unless you write a client for every platform. Making the total effort needed a lot heavier again.

On a side note, I am currently working on a new website for the etpro community, but I am not done with it yet, will announce it as soon as I have something to display -- its not something completely new and really has been done before, but then before the what I'd like to call the ET community 1.0

True, but what about competitive stuff integrated into one thing? ET, ETPro, maps, TZAC, link to cf/cb/esl.

Parent

Yeah making it easier to access for people ( like a great installer ) would make it much more attractive for new players.. a good beginners guide / video ought to be created.

e: someone gave me a link to some ET installer a few days ago, which installed all the mods and some maps, though I don't know which maps and what versions of mods etc.. it still is cool. Getting TZAC to work for people that are not that crafty with computers wasn't easy either, had to help him through team viewer ( chaplja, that is your fault, wtf really why do we have to recover our pw? Come up with a decent system next time -> or make upgrading easier for the non-computer nerd. There was no mention of you having to recover your password when you try logging in with the client and you can't expect people to read everything on your site, because they just do not do that. Have seen it so many times with stuff I created, even letters that are bigger than your screen won't get noticed. ).

Then another thing, how are we going to promote something like this? The way I got into etpro was through people I knew on xfire, the normal gamer on jay mod might be interested in becoming an etpro player but that doesn't mean they know about the mod nor the community behind it.

Parent

Crossfire would be the source for it. Add some extra column for it with step-by-step info. I am aware of the ETUI, it is good but for the competitive community (crossfire) we would need a seperate one with only et, etpro, maps, tzac.

Parent

then creating a nice introductory video ( e.g. teaching some basics ).. however, my computer is not fast enough to generate a decent fps while recording the screen. As you can see here: http://video.xfire.com/4beefb.mp4 -> 20fps, for a nice looking ( and therefore attractive to new players ) 30fps is a minimum, though recording some nice vids really isn't my thing..

Parent

QuoteAnd the great thing about crossfire ( and any other site for that matter obviously ) is that it can be accessed from any application or platform. Creating an application you speak of would only make it less easy to access for people

How?

Parent

Because the app won't run on every platform like crossfire ( a website ) does. Then they can't access it anywhere they want to.
What if you are not at home but still would like to check crossfire? You could go to the site, rendering the whole application useless from the beginning. Look above your comment what edgar suggested makes some more sense.

Parent

I didn't mean turning crossfire into an app, I mean making the program have ie/firefox inbuilt which has the homepage as crossfire.

Parent

And that would change what? I don't see how that would help new players and you could also just integrate the link to crossfire in some documentation or introductory video.

You know what would be great? A crossfire API, allowing third party developers to create stuff

Parent

a) It would more or less force them to look into the competitive scene.
b) If the tool provides a stream-esque download function, one would bemore tempted to browse crossfire instead of browsing through your own generic, repetitive bookmarks, which I know for certain, we all do.
c) What do you mean with the crossfire-related API?

Parent

Like the twitter API, or the stack overflow API

Parent

Yeah, that would help indeed.

Parent

it wouldn't need crossfire, it would just need some 'news' section like every MMORPG has that mentions tournaments and such.

Parent

only tards have probs install ET and his mods

Parent

"Look at me, I'm a patronizing know-it-all and you can all suck my tits because I'm so hip I've known how to install the game before anyone else yadda yadda yadda"

Parent

next low for my ignore list

Parent

low?

Parent

ive thought some sort of thorough promo-video could be nice

pay me and ill make 1

Parent

:D We got a jokester here.

Parent

ontopic; looks cool but who can make it and who is willing to pay for that?

offtopic:
4on4 new 5on5 :D:D

New players don't need anything else than ET.exe

column or gtfo

better don't show / tell "potential new players" (about) this beloved community site.

pretty much the same as I wrote in my collumn about 3/4th year ago..

] Crossfire Central
Seeing as crossfire has become THE place to be, wouldnt it be nice if there were some dedicated people who are willing to break down the barrier that ETpro has at this moment? ETultimate installer was a really good tool new players to get into the etpro scene. Now with SLAC being taken in by CB there should be a tool somewhere on crossfire that will get u all the programs u need to play. Besides all the ET files this includes SLAC + mIRC(nn?) + a small guide for IRC/CB/ESL signups and how ET works in general.

edit: http://www.crossfire.nu/?x=column&mode=item&id=557

Nice read, I agree on the leagues idea and I think the et-Merc idea sounds sweet.

Parent

to all haters, fuck you

such a client would really help.
some weeks ago i reinstalled et again and it was a fucking hustle to get everything working.
1.finding et, finding patches, finding etpro & patch, finding maps
(yes i knew there was some complete package of everything, but i didnt know the exact name so i couldnt find anything at all (xfire search is fucked up anyway))
2.installing everything
3.starting et -> pb kick
4.trying to solve pb issues -> still pb kick
5.searching for pb updater -> still pb kick
6.deleting every pb folder in etmain/etpro whatever
7.using pb updater again -> success

if i didnt know what i had to do, i would have probably quitted already after the first pb kick.
still to get everything working it took me about 2 hours

Agree 100% mate, my mate picked up ET yesterday after about 4 years of not playing, he knows fuck all about computers so I had to try and explain to him how to do it over the phone. It was near impossible, so many things which I forgot about and I found myself confued on what was going wrong, so in the end we just left it.

Parent

I did create such a client....

old old images, I updated it a lot!
image: 4324234234234

Also hardware updating tool for most FPS and updated drivers.

image: sys

more soon...

Knew you did something regarding coding but I haven't seen you active so assumed it stopped. How difficult would it be to implement the things in my original post into this?

Parent

Would take a coder with a little bit of knowledge around 1-2 weeks to finish, from scratch.

Parent

Are you using qstat for the server querying? Have written an extension for qstat that gets rid of the nasty quake color codes and generates XML output rather than something that was meant to be read on the command line.

Parent

I can't recall what I used to query the Master Server, but I did remove the colour codes in the last version I did. I just filtered them out by replacing anything with ^followed by a letter or number to "". Worked rather well tbh. The server data I was getting was a load of garbage in raw format for some reason. I can't remember how I got it to actually work lol.

Parent

as i told you
we dont need an alternative for crossfire and irc

no, WE dont need it because WE know how it works and thats why WE (the community) is going to die.
try to introduce somebody new into this game and see how fucking confusing it is

Parent

so we are trying to get new players :P? thats never gonna work but if u really want to start something
give them ultimate installer and xfire

im not waiting for lows to join and spam the warchannels and gamestv with their low matches