[SUGGESTION] Steam and Xon promotion.

@ divVerent: Is it really that bad if ppl would ask why there is no Steamworks integration? Why not simply put a line like "This project is licensed under the GPL. Unfortunally this license is incompatible with the current Steamworks license. However you can find statistics under stats.xonotic.org". I'm sure most ppl would understand that.

There are other distribution platforms that can be used. For example, why not put it on the Ubuntu Software Center?

About the youtube videos: Of course a bunch of videos will not automatically attract new users. However it will also not scare them away. Unless we have a big youtuber in our userbase, one central channel will be our best shot. Atleast it won't have negative consequences on the number of users, I think.
So I think, let's try it and hope it helps.

Right now I think it would be smart to wait for a few changes to happen to the game before the developers think about getting it on Steam. I remember reading that there were some changes being made to the core weapons and the way the ammo is divided up among them awhile back, not only that I think if someone got a chance then it would be a good idea to polish up the large scale map and vehicular side of things (need maps that support them, need them balanced a bit better, honestly I think some copy/paste from Tribes with recharging jetpacks would be a good idea). After that, then it would probably be a good idea to try to get it on Steam.

Right now I think it would be smart to wait for a few changes to happen to the game before the developers think about getting it on Steam. I remember reading that there were some changes being made to the core weapons and the way the ammo is divided up among them awhile back, not only that I think if someone got a chance then it would be a good idea to polish up the large scale map and vehicular side of things (need maps that support them, need them balanced a bit better, honestly I think some copy/paste from Tribes with recharging jetpacks would be a good idea). After that, then it would probably be a good idea to try to get it on Steam.

Well doesn't matter now as DivVerent explained it but either way somthing needs to be done to attract new players, now if they are not sticking around past a few dyas thats another story. Give it 6-12 months and only the hardcore set will be left.

This brings me to another possible improvement. I find it hard to actually inform myself about xonotic developement. There are probably (somewhat) regular developer meetings. I also assume that there are short protocols about these meeting. Maybe just put them on the blog just like blender foundation does. This would already improve the appearence in the internet a lot.

This brings me to another possible improvement. I find it hard to actually inform myself about xonotic developement. There are probably (somewhat) regular developer meetings. I also assume that there are short protocols about these meeting. Maybe just put them on the blog just like blender foundation does. This would already improve the appearence in the internet a lot.

Nope, there are no such meetings. Or if they are, I haven't been invited :X

We have a polling system though, where finished polls are made public: http://46.4.83.5:27500/polls I agree that this is somewhat "insider" information though, having no proper domain name etc.

CuBe0wL and Antibody put a lot of effort in pushing development-related content to the front page, but it was a big undertaking and real life took over. Anything beyond the activity log (which contains bug discussion and every change made to the source code with short description) would be considered "too much work" as it stands.

I think that rather than posting developments on the website with no real consequence for players, perhaps we should try to release more often (with accompanying release notes). But that's not an easy decision to take and to stick to.

EDIT: Also, thanks for your input divVerent. And to PinkRobot too; I'll add this: I doubt that the automated demo capture system that Ari is proposing will produce quality content that people will want to watch. A single unedited, poorly timed interval, with intro and no music / generic music, doesn't sound appealing to me at all. In packer's automated videos, it's a good documentation resource for players who wish to know how records were made, but to the outside world I doubt there is much interest in this.

Let's not forget about this: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4993 the map repository is already done thanks to end user, what we need now is more promotion, xonotic has a lot of great resources, but most of them without much promotion, it would be great having maps.xonotic.org or something like that as a mirror or it's map repository http://killer.xxx/

For example: CTS/Defrag is one of the more popular sides of Xonotic, and Packer's server automatically converts record times from demo to video and uploads it to YouTube. It's great for anoraks like me to watch a record they did, but other than that they hardly have any viewers :p

EDIT: Also, thanks for your input divVerent. And to PinkRobot too; I'll add this: I doubt that the automated demo capture system that Ari is proposing will produce quality content that people will want to watch. A single unedited, poorly timed interval, with intro and no music / generic music, doesn't sound appealing to me at all. In packer's automated videos, it's a good documentation resource for players who wish to know how records were made, but to the outside world I doubt there is much interest in this.

Can i get a link/tutorial/guide of this packer automated videos maker? maybe a github link, a short tutorial or somethink like that? Google and forum search didn't help much on finding info about it

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing i want to do with a smail mod to allow user video submitting

I think i can agree that the demo capture system may not attract a lot of people on its own and maybe some of the demos will not be of the highest quality available but on the other side, it is a low cost timewise and moneywise as i already have a webserver mostly idle except for 5 or 6 small webs that i host and it gives xonotic some visibility

Also i have a friend that has a medium popularity channel (he earns about $400 a month on youtube, has 3million views so far) not related to gaming and he agreed to help me with getting more views, so i guess i'm going to learn a few marketing tricks to grow the audience on youtube, of course that may or may not help xonotic popularity as a game.

But at least having a bunch of videos will not cause any harm to xonotic audience as the worst it could happen is that the videos go unnoticed and may attract some big youtuber, or maybe one of us will make a big youtube channel

Let's not forget about this: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4993 the map repository is already done thanks to end user, what we need now is more promotion, xonotic has a lot of great resources, but most of them without much promotion, it would be great having maps.xonotic.org or something like that as a mirror or it's map repository http://killer.xxx/

Actually I've been thinking of changing the domain name to something different. Something to reflect what the site is say like http://www.lvlworld.com for Quake maps. I'm not sure if xonotic could host some of the maps for copyright reasons plus about 100 of them need to be removed as they are different release versions of the same map. I would prefer a more generic name since the maps can be used by other darkplaces games.

I would prefer a more generic name since the maps can be used by other darkplaces games.

Um, I highly doubt that. Maps aren't very portable across games for compatibility reasons, and that's just for the brushwork. If you want full compatibility you also need to ship the textures (I don't see a games shipping around a gigabyte of textures just for compatibility), premade models, ambient sounds, shaders, possibly music... Compatibility also implies code that understand our entity names.

Basically, you can't just lift a map from Xonotic straight into any game that I'm aware of.

EDIT: In any case, I think hosting maps on a .xxx domain is bad taste, and the "killer" part is generic and cheesy.

I would prefer a more generic name since the maps can be used by other darkplaces games.

Um, I highly doubt that. Maps aren't very portable across games for compatibility reasons, and that's just for the brushwork. If you want full compatibility you also need to ship the textures (I don't see a games shipping around a gigabyte of textures just for compatibility), premade models, ambient sounds, shaders, possibly music... Compatibility also implies code that understand our entity names.

Basically, you can't just lift a map from Xonotic straight into any game that I'm aware of.

EDIT: In any case, I think hosting maps on a .xxx domain is bad taste, and the "killer" part is generic and cheesy.

Well I got quite a few maps from LVL world which are Q3 and they worked fine in Xon. Some where missing textures but the Nex texture package fixed that.

Ah, gotcha. Maps that weren't made for xonotic will work in the game they were made for instead, and other games that are compatible with that first one

Can i get a link/tutorial/guide of this packer automated videos maker? maybe a github link, a short tutorial or somethink like that? Google and forum search didn't help much on finding info about it

The best thing to do is to ask packer directly, he is always willing to share his tools with others. He is on Quakenet IRC as "packer" mostly.

The breakdown of it is this: he has enabled server side demo recording. That means a demo is recorded and stored for every player. When after a game a player has set a first place record that demo is kept and all the others are removed. Then a script of some sort will notice a new demo and convert and upload to youtube. The script also knows how to find the one run that was the fastest and cuts the demo automatically to start right before, and to end right after the run.
I have no idea if this was all hiss own doing, probably not, but it really is very well done.

- Two things are plagueing this system right now. First of all the quality of the resulting video is not as good as it could be. Possibly because the server itself does the capturing. Even in HD it looks a bit drab.