Abandon 0.75, Update to 0.76

[danhezee]

Merged the move to 0.76 thread with the other move to 0.76 thread that the current move to 0.76 referenced.

[Major Darkstar]

Switch to 0.76
Don't play much 0.75 anymore.

[Marshall]

I agree, the big problem is the lack of players in 0.76, the only players that actually there are of league matches. I think it's time to GMs removes the 0.75 to plan a large migration to 0.76.

[fatty]

Only my second post here, but this thread should have been stickied :-)

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing that there's a problem getting a large enough number of server hosts together "in the same room" on this matter and hence the lack of momentum moving to .76 via this forum.

Tbh, I'd like to see the forum owners to say f**k it! and remove the .75 d/l link and serverlist altogether rather than worrying about numbers. It's a great game and the user-base won't abandon it. Just lead by example and the grunts will follow I reckon...

Best of all... you'll suddenly find a forum full of new members complaining... about a game they love...

just a thought

[i'm only playing 75 because there's more of it right now. Push forwards before it's too late?]

[GreaseMonkey]

fatty, you could always do what I did and delete 0.75 and only play 0.76. There ARE enough players to do that, although you really only get fun stuff happening when the hallway server disappears from the master list.

[Battlefire]

First off why is there a .75 download link in this site?

Second off, get rid of the server list for .75 and add the .76 servers. This will make people want to download .76.

The only way to get huge amount of people into .76 is get people to join this community and get rid of the .75 server list.

[fatty]

Aye, this is true indeed GreaseMonkey but the lack of players and a choice of maps keeps me away from 76 I'm afraid. - well, that and i'm a 48 year old geezer with slow reflexes who likes to play a certain way.. there's a more balanced game for me when there's hordes of different players with a wider range of skill iyswim.

I'd be happy if I could get the Build and Shoot Launcher to play nice but it only gets as far as the map loader with 76 before borking :(

BTW, Iceball looked promising when I played a, probably, 0.0.x version a while back. Who knows what the future holds there... :)

[GreaseMonkey]

Well if you have slow reflexes, the average 0.76 player is really easy to kill right now :)

[Simon Freeman]

As some of you might have noticed, the 0.76 servers are mostly empty even though a majority of the veteran players consider this version to be superior to 0.75. Therefore I'd suggest removing the 0.75 server list and making 0.76 the only playable and downloadable version of Ace of Spades.
The master server list shouldn't be updated immediately; there should be a countdown of a few weeks so server hosters would be able to prepare for the update.


What I dislike about the current state:

- Obviously, 0.76 is the better version. Why would we support an old and inferior version of this game when there is an overall
better version available?
- Currently the players in 0.76 are either pros who practice for the league or just enjoy playing in 0.76 or total noobs who
downloaded the latest version of this game and have no idea how this game works. Now imagine: You are one of these
noobs, you download the game, join your first server and play against members of Lines, SPQR and FF on goonassault...
I honestly don't think anyone would like to continue playing this game after getting raped like that.
- There are already some endangered gamemodes in 0.75 like infiltration. Right now there is only one infiltration server
which is mostly full during the time from 17:00 to 23:00. Now if there was a migration towards 0.76 there would be less
people playing 0.75 obviously. Gamemodes like infliltration require +20 players to be fun, but this won't be possible anymore
if we have 300 players in 0.76 and 300 players in 0.75 instead of 600 in 0.75. The infiltration player base would split up and
eventually die. Ctf/tdm servers with maps like hallway won't have this problem because there is only a small amount of
players required to get some good, fast-paced gameplay. I really don't hate maps like hallway but it certainly isn't what the
common gameplay of Ace of spades should be like.
- It is simply annoying that you have to switch between these two Versions. I can't play in 0.76 because there are no players so
I play in 0.75 instead. But as events and league matches take place in 0.76, I have to switch to 0.76 again. I am not sure if
anyone else feels like this, but I just can't handle the recoil in 0.76 after playing for weeks in 0.75. Also the interval
between shots with the rifle feels unusual and even the spade range seems to be different.


Some reasons to move on to 0.76:

- Better weapon balance, better graphics, etc.
- There are no hacks available in public for 0.76 and I don't think there are many players left who would be able to update
the hacks from 0.75 / willing to release them.
- We would get rid of completely unmoderated servers like nitrado.net or jestservers for some time. Servers like minit, shams
or aloha would gain more popularity as there won't be as many “noob servers” which only have hallway and anticbridge in
their rotation in the first few weeks.
- All the scripts which exist for 0.75 also work for 0.76 or will work with some minor changes, so there won't lose anything we've worked on in 0,75
- I am sure that more than 75% of the players never tried 0.76. An “update” to 0.76 would make the game more interesting
for them and may even attract new players.

This is a topic for discussion, so I'd like to hear everyone's opinion!
(sorry for my bad english >.<)

i agree with the 0.76 thing but i think instead of this being the ONLY version we add 1 other (other than 0.75) and that version would be 0.52 or something you know for people who remember AOS. (i played on AOS website from when it was 0.52 until it was gone) so we should keep 0.76 (in 0.75 im sick of the rifle not being 100 percent accurate) and add 0.52. just a suggestion.

[GreaseMonkey]

0.52 would be good as it's got pyspades support.
I guess someone could work on backporting what we have currently to the 0.52 protocol, though, as relying on pyspades as per 0.52... well, it still has that Hex Rays decompiled C file used for the compression/decompression crap, instead of using ENet as per later versions.

But what's most important is that 0.76 is promoted as the main version before the almost impossibility of the BnS launcher being "ready enough".

[CreeperKingz]

I really don't care which one stays up. I just want to to play with more then 2 people. Go green!

[fatty]

This is more than frustrating to be honest.

I'm watching another beautiful thing die before my eyes due to the inaction of people who are in a position to actually keep something alive. Dyed in the wool wankers every single time :(

Please. Whilst other projects such as Iceball are actually being worked on, move the servers to .76 to keep people interested (and actually asking whether there's going to be a 77, 78, 79...????). This game is dying. Piss people off while you have people playing the game! Take the plunge or be blamed in hindsight. Really. You've seen it happen before unless you're a seven year old bubble dweller.

[GreaseMonkey]

Minor nitpick: Iceball hasn't been touched in a few weeks - there's a LOT more happening in the OpenSpades camp right now.
With that aside, I feel that this once again completely fucking futile rant should sum up how I feel.

-----

I'm not willing to accept anything less than promoting 0.76 to the main version and leaving 0.75 as a second-class citizen at the very best. It's essentially a cop-out from moving onto a community-controlled clone. Copping out on moving to 0.76 is a cop-out of a cop-out, and this double-indirection is total bullshit and you should stop encouraging anything less.

Seriously, Ben obsoleted old versions of AoS as soon as new versions came out. And BnS is scared that "this would fragment the playerbase"‽ It's already fragmented by you promoting an old piece of shit that many people refuse to play anymore!

Now, I'd be happy if we could get OpenSpades to become its own community-controlled thing and promote that instead. That would be even better than promoting 0.76. (At this point, I really don't give two shits if it becomes more popular than Iceball. It probably already is.)

-----

If you're waiting until your launcher is ready... Fuck your launcher. That can wait.

The delay-o-meter has almost reached 2 months. It took Jagex, gee, 8 months before they "released" a map editor. You've given us the heads up that you'd rather wait until your launcher is ready, where it fucking won't be. Where's the "new" GBL? We still don't have it. At least Stack had the sense to reopen the interface for the "old" one for I'm not sure how long.

We've been wanting this for ages. Do it now. Oh wait. I told you that several rants ago. What the fuck are you doing, then‽

Oh, and the point about "ready". Iceball has come a long way since iceballfornoobs-004. (The code for that version probably still works on 0.1.2-4.) It was released in a state a lot of you wouldn't call "ready", but you played it anyway. Why wait until it's "ready", then? If you don't have account support properly tested yet, then just dont include it.

But I think the words of Jesus would be most fitting here: "You cannot serve two masters. You will love one and hate the other." (paraphrased, because my memory is a bit hazy)

And relying on this launcher to autodetect stuff will keep the community fragmented, and it will continue to die.

-----

And now for the latest scoop on the player count.

It's a bit hard to say really. At the moment the midweek player counts appear to be dropping off. It might have more to do with school holidays, though.

There's really not much to say here other than it's a bit inconclusive.

-----

You've yet to become worse than what Jagex was. But Jagex have improved, probably because they need their version to be successful. So how do you compare with Jagex now?

Build and Shoot, not being a large company, has the advantage that it doesn't have to deal with internal politics and much ass-covering. It can do stuff at the drop of a hat.

Decisions in Jagexland, on the other hand, need an awful lot of processing before they are attempted, and stuff tends to stay behind closed doors for a long time. They are doing a pretty good job these days, though. Rumour has it MrCrispy is opinionated enough to actually start driving stuff in the right direction.

Anyhow, I think I can make a direct comparison.

Jagex then:
Users: Hey, we should get a map editor
Jagex: That's not economical. Ooh look, snow guns!

BnS now:
Users: Hey, we should move to 0.76
BnS: But we'll lose EV-ER-Y-ONE. Ooh look, badges!

BnS now (case #2):
Users: Hey, the 0.76 headshots are shit, we have the power to fix it, let's patch this upstream
BnS: No. This is an intended design feature. Let's completely ignore the fact that when you die while throwing a grenade, you're supposed to throw that grenade, even though pyspades has never implemented that.

(topo then went and applied the patch on Minit Assault anyway, because he's not a fan of bullshit)

Jagex now:
Users: Hey, we should get a server
Jagex: We're looking into it.

I've ignored the "wield ye banhammer haphazardly" stuff, which Jagex cut some time between the 1.0 forums release and now, where the "Jagex then" sort of stuff was still happening.

There. I said it. Jagex is doing a better job than you.

-----

I get the feeling that once Jagex release another 1.0 build, their "curent player count" will rise, even if they don't put it on sale. And I have reason to believe that it will be out before you move to 0.76.

Have fun being left in the dirt.

[Eimis]

Grease, I couldn't agree more with you.

Now my breakdown:

JUST UPDATE TO 0.76 ALREADY, I (and probably most people on the forums) DON'T GIVE A SINGLE FUCK IF THE BRAZILIANS AND POLAKS (the ignorant ones in-game) LEAVE BECAUSE OF THE VERSION CHANGE! In fact, when 0.70 updated to 0.75 there was no activity drop. Everyone who played kept playing and no one complained about it. Except for the fact that 0.75 was worse than 0.70.

Why are we waiting? If everyone wants this change, then why the hell isn't anything happening? Come on, dan, izzy, all you other admins, just do this already, we have been waiting long enough. How hard it is update the version download link and the server list? The server admins will just update their servers, the players will re-install AoS and everyone will be happy.

[danhezee]

0.52 would be good as it's got pyspades support.
I guess someone could work on backporting what we have currently to the 0.52 protocol, though, as relying on pyspades as per 0.52... well, it still has that Hex Rays decompiled C file used for the compression/decompression crap, instead of using ENet as per later versions.

But what's most important is that 0.76 is promoted as the main version before the almost impossibility of the BnS launcher being "ready enough".

How time consuming would it be be backport? Pretty much anything that works in 75 works in 76, it would be nice if the same were true for 0.52.