Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Finding Stars-players
Finding Stars-players |
Mon, 20 November 2017 11:48 |
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The player community has certainly shrinked quite a bit.
The question arises how to find enough players to get games going and best, if the experience level is not too different.
One of the advantages of the Home World Forum and autohost: We still have a functioning forum and an excellent interface to automate turn generation.
1) News list
In another thread I have already mentioned to also use the old news list for announcements:
# https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.games.computer.s tars
Best done with also always including a link to the announcement in this forums but it certainly needs a form and topic which clearly distinguishes those announcement from all the spam there.
2) Player communities of other language areas
Another thing where might still lure quite some isolated Stars-players...
Due to the language barriers and also just because there were enough players and it was more convenient for them, there used to be completly independent player communities in:
# France and French speaking areas
# Poland?
# Russia
# Germany
# other?
All languages I can sadly not write and read (except the last one). But I noticed (or rather guess) that in the last years those player communities have more or less fallen apart and lost their forums and websites. I've gotten also the impression that over the years some players form those communities have found their way to "us" here... also because English has become more common.
Have we got any players from those areas or with the approbiate language skills? Who know which places and websites still exist? With whom we could connect to pool players together to get more games going?
3) Direct invitation emails
Experienced hosts with a few games under their belt should/could also directly invite players of former games via email. In my experience this is never seen as spam but highly welcome (and if only to remember the great times they had with Stars).
[Updated on: Mon, 20 November 2017 12:48] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Finding Stars-players: beginner-game |
Mon, 20 November 2017 12:48 |
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Right now we have a beginner game looking for players:
# Beginner Rematch
and I am sure there would be also quite some players happy to see true games dedicated to intermediate and/or experienced players.
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Mon, 20 November 2017 13:39 |
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While thinking about new players, and right after trying in another thread to answere some questions about "How to get going with Stars" to a new player, I realized that today it is quite a steep step to "get going":
1) Finding and hearing about Stars
2) Finding this forum
3) Getting Stars to run on a modern computer
4) Which Stars version?
5) Obtaining a unique serial number
Once those steps are done, we have then a huge wealth of articles and utilities to get as in depth as one wants to become with the finer parts of Stars but those first steps aren't really easy at the moment.
Some of the above steps I can easily write together myself but with the more technical stuff I am rather one of the forum members the least competent (no wonder with the concentration of Stars-players being programers of one or the other kind what I am certainly not).
We do have lots of very helpful and competent people in here willing to lead new players step by step how to set up their computer to get Stars running and several threads about it:
# Back after 3 years, Windows 10?
# Windows 7 compatibility issues? Look no further!
But a 34 post thread about it might come a bit overwhelming for the new player.
So it would be great if one of the knowledgable (not me! *grin* as proud as I am that i got the virtual box running) could perhaps summarize it into a single post we could make sticky and use instead of the already existing ones? Quite some work is, I think, already done but, as I said, hidden within quite many posts.
So in general I think it would be a great idea to have a sticky very well sorted and linked thread where a new player can find everything he or she needs to play Stars and to take part in a multiplayer game for the first time. And great if one of the Mods (looking to ccmaster) could maintain and edit the first posts in such a thread to hopefully stop it from becoming too big and confusing.
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Mon, 01 January 2018 15:59 |
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talkingbologna | | Senior Chief Petty Officer | Messages: 86
Registered: November 2016 Location: 1947 | |
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On top of the given suggestions, what about a new area? Like a small business, we need to get our name out there. Stars! has fallen into general obscurity in the wider world. If I hadn't fiddled with it when I was a kid and thus tried to find it again, I don't think I'd ever have found it while looking for interesting games I'd never played before. In the effort of advertisement we could...
Start a social media page (or three) like FaceBook, Twitter, or a Yahoo group or a blog. Add screenshots and some juicy game stories.
Contact websites with lists of old computer games and 4x and/or strategy games and see if they don't have and would add Stars! (anyone remember Jumbo. com?)
Stir interest on sites frequented by programmers or other professions/hobbies with target audiences who would play.
See if news media like magazines with such target audiences allow blog sections or would do a piece on us (I don't know how that all works, actually, but maybe).
How much is it to secure advertising time on some mainstream TV channel or in a keyword ad on a search engine? Maybe if enough people saw it we'd get a few people through here. And with enough people through here, maybe a few would stick around long enough to play. It's probably a considerable amount more than I'd be able to put into it, but I'm considering all options.
I will continue my search for methods of marketing stuff I'm not actually selling, but this is what I can think of, so far.
Edit: Pay-per-click, billboards, skywriting!!!
[Updated on: Mon, 01 January 2018 16:23] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Fri, 13 April 2018 08:00 |
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mrvan | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 220
Registered: May 2014 | |
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So, I just played the first 30-odd years in the new beginner's game. It was my first game online, played a lot of PvE and hotseat stars! back in the nineties.
I really dislike the slow pace of things here, especially in getting started with games and communicating. The newbeg game was announced in May 2017, and started in January. So, it took 6 months to get going, and then was abandoned after a month of play.
I withdrew from an earlier game (ARNLT) because it was taking forever to get started (also around 6 months) and I wasn't sure about my schedule anymore.
I would love to play more games, but surely we should be able to find a way to actually get games started within a week or so? Or, if we want to testbed races for specific conditions, at least have the roster and deadlines setup quickly?
Maybe I should just care less, but for me it's just frustrating how glacial everything is. I can understand that games take long, especially comms games, but does it really need to take half a year to get a game going...?
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Fri, 13 April 2018 17:45 |
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ManicLurch | | Lt. Junior Grade | Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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Another thing that could speed up starting of games is automating the game creation. Right now a person has to manually get all the race files, check them to make sure they pass the rules, gen the game and universe. In some instances they have to move planets, or do multiple gens to make sure starting positions are fair, etc. Depending on how busy the host is, this can take a week or two. If we had some scripts to do this, it could happen the same day all racefiles were in. I don't think this is an easy task though to build this.
(Edit) Well I just looked at the forum and someone is working on automating this:
https://starsautohost.org/sahforum2/index.php?t=msg&th=5 173&start=0&rid=1316
[Updated on: Fri, 13 April 2018 18:11] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Fri, 13 April 2018 20:18 |
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ricks03 | | | Messages: 222
Registered: January 2012 Location: NC | |
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ManicLurch wrote on Fri, 13 April 2018 17:45Another thing that could speed up starting of games is automating the game creation. Right now a person has to manually get all the race files, check them to make sure they pass the rules, gen the game and universe. In some instances they have to move planets, or do multiple gens to make sure starting positions are fair, etc. Depending on how busy the host is, this can take a week or two. If we had some scripts to do this, it could happen the same day all racefiles were in. I don't think this is an easy task though to build this.
The Totalhost websige I wrote includes game creation. It's fairly trivial to add the ability to upload manually created games (in case there were custom conditions) were there ever interest. http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
Then again, Autohost should be able to meet that specific "custom game" need now.
With .def files, scripting game creation is easy unless you have to pay attention to input validation.
[Updated on: Fri, 13 April 2018 20:34]
https://www.irelandbybicycle.com
http://totalhost.sinister.net:999
https://github.com/ricks03/TotalHostReport message to a moderator
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Re: Finding Stars-players |
Sat, 14 April 2018 03:06 |
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mrvan wrote on Fri, 13 April 2018 14:00I really dislike the slow pace of things here, especially in getting started with games and communicating. The newbeg game was announced in May 2017, and started in January. So, it took 6 months to get going, and then was abandoned after a month of play.
Well, 7-8 month until a game starts is a bit excessive.
Out of curiousity I've just checked the last 4 games I hosted. As a preparation I emailed players from games before, sent the announcement via the news-list and made the central subscibing post here. From announcement to start of the game it took between 9-18 days with 6-9 players in each game taking part. 9 days from announcement to start is quite wild, though, I doubt I haven't seen that again. But it took only 3 days until 9 players had gathered and then I gave them another 6 days to get their race files tested and done. That was a few years ago, though. Mmmh, as a matter of fact perhaps a few years too long ago. Thinking about it... I would like to host a game again... well, perhaps, when the present newbie game will be finished.
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