could you change the game interface to highlight online gameplay?

we currently have:
Tutorial
Local Game
Network Game

if you could add to that. perhaps make network game into 'play online', add the websites address and otherwise encourage people to get online with it, it could help.

i dont know how many people play offline without ever testing the online version, but i wouldnt be surprised if it was a lot.

have a look at this: http://download.cnet.com/Scorched3D/301 ... ?tag=mncol

i dont know how accurate those stats are, but if theyre anywhere near, youre well over a million downloads for v42.1 by the time you add in sourceforge and linux reps. where are they all and why arent they playing online?

(cnet.com show 472 downloads just in the last week if im reading that right)

you also have to take into account that 1/2 of those 400 downloads a week
are likely Search-spider leechs. Google, Yahoo, and a lot of other sites that
cataloge 'everything', keep pounding away every day in my mod-archives FTP.
They are trying to collect every file i have to offer that has been linked to
from somewhere. This was the down-side of removing the robots.txt from my
web-pages.
We already have them as permanent residents on the Forums. Even busier
now that someone opened the developers threads to the public.. Now every
comment about our game ideas are stored on 4-7 other web-servers in thier
search archives.

i agree that it sounds suspicious. the download link doesnt work for me.

far as hit counts and spiders, it's easy enough to exclude search engine crawlers from hit counters. is it fair to say that the developers of a huge site like cnet might have a few tricks that you dont? i dont trust those numbers either, but i doubt cnet will not have allowed for that.


they shouldnt be downloading the files.

that would be a major problem for a lot of people if search engines did that. skewed hit counts are one thing, but can you imagine what it would do to peoples data transfer and hosting costs if the major search engines downloaded and stored files from every site they indexed?

Yet, there they are, every day..

'crawl-66-249-71-43.googlebot.com' tries at least 4 times a day to
download every posted file from my FTP.. Whether they store them or not,
they still download it and probably post on thier pages whether it's a valid link
or not.

I twit-listed them after the 3rd of them doing it.. but they keep trying.

thats interesting. maybe it has something to do with that dodgy s3m file extension? i do doubt that's cnets problem.

maybe it's accurate! sourceforge is showing about 150,000 downloads

even if it was 1,000. where are all those people and why arent they playing online and visiting the website?!

Good idea, changed the text.

odd but these little things do make an impact. Good call.

Where all those players are, and why they are not here, is a really good question. I have some theories but they are not great.

1. They download and never play.
2. They dl and then open the game play it, but don't like it.
3. They dl they don't like online play

My post from another thread



Might be relevant for game exposure.


Also there are many other ways to increase exposure, maybe time to do some collective thinking how to exploit those?

bazzz has presented many good ideas in these forums and
has demonstrated a sincere and lasting interest in the game.

bazzz is a good egg.

bazzz should be considered for a position where his
ideas can get the consideration that they deserve.

My support is not given freely, it has been earned.

ew?

Sorry, let one rip on accident, had beans.

Perhaps the conversion to ipod will make it even more popular.

Edit** Perhaps we should also ask miniclip to host a server/link?

www.miniclip.com




Kanga

A rather simple way to increase exposure would be some honestly dishonest advertising. Anybody who is anybody - from industry to indie - is on Moddb, and the amount of exposure you can get from a Moddb page is amazing and it takes minimal effort. We could pick up new players and modders by the bucket load.

If my own project on there can pick up nearly four thousand hits and forty-one watchers with just two lazy news posts and some concept art, imagine how well S3D could do. If you timed your updates - current version with screenshots in week one, beta feature with screens in week two, mod spotlights, progress updates, etc - you could probably keep the project on the main page/rotator for a good portion of the month, just as Overgrowth has managed to.

It's worth a shot, isn't it?

Thanks! Added it, awaiting a response.

Looks good; once you get a news post up with some screens (at least three in the post itself in order to get onto the front page, along side the basic grammar requirements) people should be all over it. Moddb doesn't get full games all that often, and that plays in your favor.

Everyone here should head on over to the Scorched3d Moddb Page to load it up with comments and rating. Depending on the settings, you should also be able to add screenshots, too.

Edit: Just noticed that the game itself isn't there for download; might be a good idea to lob it on there.

Been there a while back while exploring the Jedi-Knights games. I'll check it
out again shortly. Since our game isn't a one-time release like Most retail,
perhaps simply a Link to our Download pages would be suitable.