Building a Community

[Buster's Uncle]

Happy Beard King has started his DAR here.  Check it out.

All contributions to the AC community are welcome and appreciated.  Every little bit helps.

[Green1]

Detailed AARs are very good bringers of the lurkers.

I was told somewhere only 10 to 20 percent of a game's players actually do forums. But when they do, they are generally looking for these 2 things:

[[T:AAR]]s.: Now Youtube has LPs, too. Grimthr and Quill are the guys that do those. But these videos are LONG. Games of SMAX can last days sometimes. A person can read forums from his phone at a boring job or out and about faster than watching 50 part epic videos. Forum based AARs get tons more views than Youtube LPs for this reason. Don't believe me? CFC's AAR threads for Civ 4/5 have awesome view counts. Does not bring posters, but brings traffic if it is detailed because lurkers love to read strategy. I do.

mods: BUT only certain types. Most lurkers are very much purists. Mods do not usually do well for ANY TBS. But, the wildly successful ones fill a need.
-The best mods are bug fixes and enhancer mods that do not change things up. Examples: Brutix's Civ Patches. Upatch 1.4 for Age of Wonders, Scient and Kyrub's patches for SMAC and SMAX.
 
-Followed by graphics packs. Examples: Blue Marble for Civ 4.
 
-The least played would be TCMs. Someone on another forum said TCMs are like poetry. Everyone writes them but no one reads them. HOWEVER, I would like to add Green1's corallaries to that rule.

corallary one:
TCM WILL be played if complete a genre that is not represented that the player base clamors for! Examples would be Civ 4 Fall from Heaven (popular genre with no competition - even commercial) and Warcraft 3 DotA. DotA is the only reason people still played WC3 till LoL. However, this is rare and a mod maker's wet dream.

corallary two-
It is MORE acceptable for TCM add content and not change core things. ie: an "unoficial expasion!" if it can not follow by corallary one. Examples: Multiple mods over many 4x games that extend tech tree and other modular things. Too many to mention. Players love this too. But, it must agree with the other points of corallary one.

[Buster's Uncle]

It was custom factions for me.

I tried SMAniaC, and the SE changes didn't do it for me, but the new factions did - I got to digging around for more, most of what I found was really old and needed fixing or had no/default/Hive graphics, I started fixing those a little, got to looking around for how-to information, ended up making a webpage of my work, wanted to share - and a lot of art and slap-fights later, here I am.  A good deal of my activities for the AC community are actually supplying what I was looking for as a lurker.

[NewAgeOfPower]

I can vouch for this. BU is one of the top crack dealers suppliers of custom factions and custom faction graphics.

As for my avatar- its what was available, and I find IA the most critical early game tech possible. IA lets you 'win' the food game- makes it possible to win on Transcend.

No lie, I don't think I'd win even 10% of my Transcend games without Crawlers.

[Buster's Uncle]

 I AM the top supplier of graphics.  Me.  I've done about a million faction graphics.  I am great. 

I made that Beardy Grinning Space King avatar - and as a matter of fact, the supply of pre-installed, free SMAC avatars just got a LOT bigger a couple of days ago...

[Green1]

I AM the top supplier of graphics.  Me.  I've done about a million faction graphics.  I am great. 

I made that Beardy Grinning Space King avatar - and as a matter of fact, the supply of pre-installed, free SMAC avatars just got a LOT bigger a couple of days ago...

Yeah.. not trying to kiss up or anything, but your artwork is pretty damn good. I have seen examples of your art for years lurking. That avatar is the male Miriam I take it from a previous project of yours to try to give different pics when you change gender of a faction leader?

If the community was ever to do a Upatch or open source SMAX, we would be set for the art department. Coding, though would remain elusive.

Custom factions --- I guess that fits in with corallary 2. I forgot to add that. Only thing that hurts that with this game is that (and I beat the dead horse AGAIN) that durn 7 faction max bug! (Yes, Virginia, it is a bug in my world view)

[Buster's Uncle]

It's something scient has talked about looking into someday - room for 14 factions on a huge map sounds pretty sweet, don't it?

Yeah, when I first signed up here, sisko had some of my custom faction avatars already installed - Brother Manuel is the protagonist of the best AC fan-fiction I've written, and looks a bit like my late dad, to boot.

[Green1]

Actually, I think that should be priority #1, since it is the worst bug with the most severe amount of coding needed to correct it.

Balance tweaks would be next with the much needed ability to change terrain tilesets for a Blue Marble update.

I have other ideas, but since I am no coder and there is nothing worse than an armchair game designer, I keep my mouth shut. (Although I think some of my dreams would not make mad the purists and actually add even more depth, but this thread is not the place for me to bore folks with wild speculation)

New factions... hmm. Always been a purist. But it does seem all the cool kids have at least a few of them, even the few Youtube LPers out there. Hard to balance for MP, but for a private sandbox, I can see the allure. Maybe one day I should sit down and try to make one.

[Davyboy]

Brother Manuel is the protagonist of the best AC fan-fiction I've written, and looks a bit like my late dad, to boot.

BU
No dis intended to your late dad, but yr icon evokes images of Brother Duke Nukem with me.

[Davyboy]

@Green1

Balance tweaks would be next with the much needed ability to change terrain tilesets for a Blue Marble update.

Do you have a copy of this handy? The most recent accomplishee in tileset rebranding is probably Kilkakon for his LE rewrite although I have difficulty seeing what's happening with the beige on tan on buff colouring.

[Green1]

Blue marble was a famous mod for Civ 4 made by folks at NASA that totally redid the terrains of that game. It was so beautiful that almost all packaged mods for Civ 4 just had to include it.

When I refer to a 'Blue Marble" type mod, I refer to a possible simular mod for SMAX.

[Green1]

Oh my... you mean Kilkakon has actually changed the tiles? That shows promise at least on that front of solving the main things with AC.

If that could be accomplished without fundamentally changing gameplay, you would recieve 2k+ downloads or more as per scient/kyrub. Particularly if it is modular.

EDIT...

BUT, it would have to be DAMN good and a vast improvement. Blue Marble was based on NASA sattelite photos.

[Buster's Uncle]

Bro Manuel is actually from a photo of Texas rockabilly figure Rev. Horton Heath playing the guitar.  And yes, Daddy was Duke Nukem.  I' on the other hand, actually look more like this:

[Buster's Uncle]

Blue Marble?  Try the Zookeeper scenario; I did an earth terrain for that.  I think the attached files are them.

[Green1]

lol. Nah, BU.

Duke Nukem had a punkish "sticking up straight" haircut.

Brother Manuel is a Real Christian™ and would NEVER go for those shennanigans or even a beard. Even if Jesus wore a beard. Plus Manuel is a red head.

Oh yeah, I guess I will have to DL mods and actually see what yall have that is possible so I can discuss from a more informed viewpoint. I am just used to the way more modern mod makers handle it.