[Finn]

"Keep it simple, stupid"

[Gamer_Z]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kar Hello all, I don't know whether this belongs here or in Everything And Nothing, please move it to the correct forum if this is not. Anyway, I was just thinking & looking at some servers in sa-mp and I keep wondering to myself, why are things to simple? Example look at most TDM / DM modes, they're so boring. I'm sick of just going in servers and all you gotta do is just shoot at each other, where's the mystery? The excitement? The interactive gamemodes? The interactions between players? The 'sparks'? THE FUN. I'm not saying there aren't any fun gamemodes anymore. Their are quite a few unique cnr's, roleplays and different genre gamemodes that I find quite fun (imo) but there's not much left, most of the servers in sa-mp have the same aspect, you spawn, you shoot, you die, you get money, you buy weapons, you level up. Some zombie servers out there are interesting yeah. I also wanna know, when new unique servers appear that would be REALLY fun with more than 5 players online, why does noone play? It really hurts for me to see all the fun wasted. In my case, I love scripting things other scripters say that are hard and what non, especially if it involves physics, anything to do with vehicles and objects are my loves. So I really wonder, why do players tend to storm these simple gamemodes, and do nothing? Instead of playing something unique and stay. Players usually play the servers once then never come back is it complexicity or something? It's too hard to understand / master?

I have a few theses' about this:

• The audience which the sa-mp "scripting" attracts is not the side which wants to have a server, or any of those duties on his/her back. When I ran servers, I was the scripter, the website, forum management, moderation etc was done by other team members. Which was really a good solution.
• The audience which wants a SA-MP server does not study the pawn language or comes with even no-programming-experience
• In my experience most of the servers are aimed at making money from user traffic, including but not limited to selling stuff in-game for real money or ads.
• Most server owners work on their own, but if you want a good an succesful SA-MP server it would really be easier to accomplish by having a experienced team for each task, dividing tasks among a few people reduces the burden and stress on one member, and we know stress can be both a motivation killer and a motivation giver - depends on the amount and type of stress.
• Your team has to be motivated, and not "serious". It has to be fun and serious is everything except fun
• The difference between the audience which plays sa-mp and the ones who develop servers can have a bad impact too (if not a positive or none at all)

Everything you read above is from my own experience.

But if it's "tl;dr" the point is:

scripters don't want to be server owners (ofcourse there are always people who want)
server owners are not motivated enough / experienced enough to be comfortable with the PAWN language, not mentioning C / plugin development.

Also, I have nothing against sa-mp, but alone by the fact that sa-mp officially supports ONLY pawn-based GameModes and FilterScript it keeps the advanced people sometimes away.. I would preffer to write gamemodes in C++, maybe even other languages. PAWN is fine, but sometimes it's just too much "hacking" to achieve what you want. Ofcourse we have GDK.. but after all those years I still don't understand why there is no official support for gamemodes written in C++. I had a lenghty talk with various, well, can I call them "C++ Experienced Users" which program for a living? - and the main reason they wouldn't ever be interested in sa-mp is just because they would need to learn PAWN, yet they preffer LUA or just plain C++. or even C, but not PAWN..
But, this is a murky topic to discuss. I'm not a SA-MP developer so I cannot say why all these ideas are not included in sa-mp.





I remember those days where I could just host a test server for my mode... 4-5 years ago.. and forgot to set announce to 0, and 10-20 players joined within an hour and were having fun, on a test server! Home hosted! That were good times! And sadly said.. those won't come back.

Also, how stupid it may sound, this gamemode used to have 100/100 players on the polish scene (my old game mode), and it can handle more players easily, even with the "bad" coding!
:
https://gpb.******code.com/files/LVDM3010_server.rar

90% of that code was created from scratch, by me :P

and I will tell you a "secret" (but not a real secret):
I didn't look "how" I code things, I just made sure I code things which represent the ideas everyone wants, and made sure they work. I seriously didn't bother to optimize anything back then.

[RVRP]

Simplicity does not inherently mean boring or lacking creativity in my book. Instead, simplicity is scripting which is efficient, user-friendly, and non-restrictive. I find that the most boring gamemodes are the ones that are so bogged down by unimportant features and details that I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be doing when I connect. It is at this point that I typically struggle to find help and tutorial commands - where upon I read them, see a giant, complex list of features, and then disconnect out of frustration.

The most effective scripting is that which provides a pleasant experience (free of those frustrating moments like the one above). Effective scripting is like a website which is so straightforward and easy to use that, even if you did just blow a bunch of money on it, you can't help but feel great inside because the transaction was so smooth and simple that you still can't fully grasp what you've just accomplished in such a short time.

Okay, maybe I'm taking this a bit too far. But anyways, the website I'm talking about in the example above is www.capoproductions.com. I bought some loyalty free music from that website for my community currently in development, and I was shocked by the robust, yet simple process involved.

[Syntax]

Simplicity, from my personal point of view, has a major importance. Actually, let me ask you a question. Would you rather join a server that has complex features that are absolutely impossible to understand or a server with user-friendly features? Well, of course, I am not saying that servers should have features that are present on each and every (in this case) roleplay server. They must be unique, but at the same time simple.

What I actually mean is that scripters should be endlessly looking for alternatives. Instead of adding a system that is similar to X's server, make an unique one. The same one, but with another form and look.

Perhaps my words are pointless to you, but an opinion is always welcome, isn't it?

[Niko_boy]

DM isnt boring at all BUT very simple form of DM like joining dm and kill other in face to face is borning

something like a form WW DM called AAD is quite intersting , it has various technical gameplay its also a TDM like thing but advanced and ppl have to be serious in playing it, there are things like Clan Wars which further adds to Fun it is Having in playing DM as AAD[ Attack and Defence ]
and a Very Intersting DM server called GTA-Touranment [ by DracoBlue ], it maintains a quite good player base
But such servers are generaly not public open[ not locked but ] cuz it require some DM skills to cope up ingame

so u cannot simply say 'DM is totally boring'

[NL-Sultan]

I fully agree with you, I don't like all those TDM or DMs either. I prefer a cool, big, wide and unique roleplay script to play on with amazing and real fun features where you're not just killing each other and re-spawning.

I also like zombie servers, they're pretty exciting! Atleast, some of them, I hate those onces where you have different rounds in a restricted map, where you fight against players that are zombies, and if you die become one yourself. More talking about the rpg/roleplay & more realistic onces!

[DiGiTaL_AnGeL]

Why? Because it's hard to do a good script, and there aren't too many good scripters owning a server, most of them get bored of SA:MP and they are just scripting. Anyway, there are a few scripters(good ones) who are doing something unique and big, but most of the time the server ends up with 20 players because everyone "wants admin" and only newbies in SA:MP are playing JUST for fun. I hope this won't happen to DRP.

[Abhishek.]

i understand what you wana say and its true people are too lazy to keep working on a single script ,like me :P
and why you wrote it (because there are always like highest 30 players in your awsome serveer which i am addicted too )

[Riddick94]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Y_Less Scripters code what people want - people play DM, scripters code DM!

Why? just copy DM script from server package, right?

[TOPIC]
Anyway, if we would script some DM, then I don't see any point of that. DM is just DM, you've got whole SA map for players, some vehicles, guns and that's it, that's a DM, really basic and simple. No extra features, buying properties, bank accounts or anything like that. Create some characters with different weapons or features, player's choosing, selecting and playing. No need even for register & login system.

[Tyon]

Yeah.I feel same way.They make simple gamemodes.We do not take a 20 mins to understand a script

[CalvinC]

While some servers have unique script, most has a hard time getting noticed, because everyone is playing on huge RP, DM, stunt, freeroam servers etc., and stay active there.
And eventually the unique servers die again, and the idea is lost.

But it's hard to get a good idea, DM, RP, freeroam, survival, stunting servers are so wide-spread, it's hard to get a good idea. If i got one, i would surely script that and try to make a good server, but will it be recognized?
There might aswell be alot of unique servers right now while you're looking for some, but there's over 10 of thousands of copied NG:RP scripts or something, from kids that wants to play admin in a well known script.
I have seen alot of people using gamemodes and setting up a local portforwarded server just because they don't want to apply as an police officer or something on another RP server, and they just copy a gamemode and make themselves a police officer.

I actually have an idea i might do. But it costs money for host, website, teamspeak.
Alot of people don't like new things, they like the good ol' DM with their friends. So they stay on the big servers, so no-one notices the unique ones.

Alot of people might have ideas, but they just don't know how to do anything else than the normal scripts.

[PowerPC603]

As Rifa4life said, the interface must be kept simple.

I've seen servers (a long time ago when I was searching for a fun server, and from watching which servers my son joined) which have a bloated interface, where almost 50% of the screen is covered with textdraws.
It was just a mess to me, I don't get it how you can block most of the screen with useless info spread all over the screen (not even organised) and have fun in such servers.

I have to add new textdraws to my own script as well to present the most needed information in an orderly fashion, but I won't over-do it like such messy servers.

Most of the people (kids) here also won't enjoy games like X3: Terran Conflict, which is a spacesim which has it all: building, trading, fighting, exploring.
This game takes days to get over the learning curve, not just an hour or so.
I've struggled with it as well, but most of them won't even try it.

I haven't seen many trucking script releases or similar gamemodes.
It's always zombie, roleplay or deathmatch scripts.

Nobody even tries to make their hands dirty to create something new, and especially unique.
It's sad.
And some of the released scripts have errors in them, bad indenting giving you warnings (loose indentation and such), and they even write in their topic to just ignore these warnings.
They don't even try to fix these warnings or their bugs.

[Athrun]

Personally, I've been scripting my GM since 2007, and it's been a rollercoaster of player counts over the years. Too many players want to play on the generic NGRP GM's out there, and won't give more unique servers a try because they're so used to getting everything handed to them on the generic servers.

I've been running my own RP server since 2007, and have had up to 80 active players in the past. It's been shut down several times due to costs, personal reasons, etc, but was always able to at least get a good 15-20 players. I'm trying to bring it back now, but can't even post an ad on here without 15 rep, so that puts a damper on it significantly. Being an RP server that has a unique homebrew GM that's been worked on, improved, downsized, streamlined, and overall expanded since 2007 means it will probably get overlooked by the generic GM lovers. But I'm still gonna keep trying. It combines "realism" RP with "fantasy" RP from a technology standpoint.. not dungeons and dragons fantasy, just advanced technology that would be realistic to create if given the right means.

[Gammix]

Its because there are more imitiaters out there.
Also another reason is that there are more regular scripters than regular player. +There are NONE unique gamemodes(except afew), all having the same style of roleplay, tdm or dm. Take example of COD scripts!

OFF: well, i am making a try to attract players with a decent game based on RCs! (not to be considered as an advert)

[$$inSane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gammix Its because there are more imitiaters out there. Also another reason is that there are more regular scripters than regular player. +There are NONE unique gamemodes(except afew), all having the same style of roleplay, tdm or dm. Take example of COD scripts! OFF: well, i am making a try to attract players with a decent game based on RCs! (not to be considered as an advert)

Thats exactly the truth about COD modes!