OpenArena Message Boards

I post on a large, elitist forum, which it costs money to be a member of. This forum is somewhat notorious for draconian mods and being full of assholes - although they're pretty damn good at whatever they put their collective minds to and avoiding a lot of the bullshit that plauges other online communities.

This forum has a rather large gaming community. What could I say in an opening post to convince them that OA is more than just 'open source quake 3' and that it would be worth their time to check it out?

I wouldn't let them get the slightest hint that the population isn't amazingly high, along with only showing them the best of the best (screenshots, videos... gerbil's Welcome To OpenArena video might be good)

otherwise idk

I thought OA was opensource Q3a?

How about this:

Make a humble post and don' t promise a lot. Let them know about this neat opensource game that's just starting to take off. Tell them it's in heavy development. Tell them of the project's aspirations and sell them on its potential.

If they're not into FOSS, don't ram it down their throat.

Don't sound desperate. :) If they are elite, they will only want to play elite games.

They're not as great as they pretend they are-there's a lot of self deprecation on there as well. I guess i'm not very good at selling stuff (my main failing as a commercial artist.) Baiscally I'm asking for a ghost-writer to help me since I suck at this sort of thing.

What are the aspirations of the OA project?

Why do you play OA ?

Do not promote (sell), just inform ...

because it doesn't lag my computer and my cd drive is broken, so I can't install quake 3

Are you sure you want them playing OA?

That's a valid reason, even though a bit hilarious.

They're the good kind of assholes.

I can say "Because I like it" or "I can play Q3 and OA fine and well, but I prefer OA over Q3, because it has more options, modes and that sort of thing than Q3". ;D

OK I've made a basic short 'throw it out there' kind of post. Now what?

And the replies aren't exactly glowing -

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3047290

But theyre right. this game takes too long to develope and should be made clear its only beta not a final.

The game never should be for public use when its not finished, biggest mistake ever :D

all the constant changes make people leave because they just got used to the current version and then its get so called "Updated"

To me it was not clear it was only beta when i Installed the game, so many bugs its frustrating. to be honest every update is a downgrade.

This game imo will never take off  and only be a game u might play next to your favorite games when you realy bored.


ToO much problems with this game, as u can read in this forum.
But hey, its only beta right? lol

the other side... I think OA is good.. not had so much fun since since I played Quake II a million years ago..

The chief advantage of it being OS is that the community can guide it as they want. A finished package is great for those with no imagination

I have played:

Nexuiz.. so slow... busy.. flimsy weapons
Tremulous.. great game.. very creative.. I hate it ..
Sauerbraten.. OK but for some reason not quite there..
Warslow.. I really should like this ..but I don't
Alien Arena.. Great graphics but I hate the weapons..

there is something more "brutal" about OA.. :)

I think it's too soon to call. So far the response seems okay to me.

Half the posts were positive.

One negative poster was already aware of OA as he/ she mentioned a bit of drama from almost a year ago. Seems to think the progress of the last year has made OA worse (OA has made great strides IMHO) and then suggests the tiny Q3a demo or Nexuiz as an alternative (Nexuiz is a fine game BTW). I think he/ she already has a dog in this race.

The other made noises about being offended by a single picture of the nekosys model... in a game that was famously built for deathmatch. Must have been a fellow american. xD

One sarcastic "positive" response, mostly just SHITPOSTSHITPOST

why promote it, i mean... it's not a Proper game, i only play it for fun, it just does'nt give u that  'im a killing machine' feeling. P.S Oa is still a quite good game

I've read the post too, and yeah there are people who just play OA for its anime (better said hentai) models and there are people who only play that because it costs nothing. There are really few players who play the game because it has the same gaming experience that Quake3 and players who do care about the GPL. But I think there are already some serious OpenArena fighters here: a new website is coming, there are some excellent map developings going on, we got some talented music composers, and we've already started the first OA Leage! OpenArena gets better and better, I am really optimistic that for the 1.0 we will have a release which will blow away the Nexuiz ninjas and the Warsow warpigs ;) .

You aught to be more worried about the likes of Assaultcube and Tremulous. LOTS of players on those two, more that Nex or Warsow.

Assault Cube is maybe a competition to Urban Terror, but I think it is really weak. And Tremulous is more than an FPS, it has RTS elements too. It can't be compared to OA either.

Yeah but AssaultCube has more variety in it's gameplay modes - There's like 3-4 variants on CTF, whereas harvester doesn't even work and overdrive isn't exactly popular.

And does AssaultCube have RL, RG, LG or BFG? Assault Cube aims to be real, just like Urban Terror, True Combat and Counter Strike. But it's not a competition for us, OA aims to be fast and arcade like. And so want Nexuiz and Warsow. You simply can't compare the two.

Ok, :S wow, so OA IS A BETA!!! Damn guys, you really gotta get your asses into gear. The longer you wait , the more people you are going to lose. Sure you may get a few QIIIArena guys QLive peeps and some 30+ yo gamers.

I'd say capitalize on the recent boom in QLive and give links, video responses and comments on anything to do with QLive on every damn site that says anything about it. like YouTube vids, facebook, forums etc. These are obviously very similar games (duh) so maybe another "free option" won't hurt them. Next time hit up Quakecon and bring in all your OA goodness and hold a side tourney somewhere w/ a small group of players. create funny pics for photobucket, make stupid videos like Red Vs. Blue. Do some DeFrag vids (movement w/e), Frag vids (seen a couple really nice vids on YT, but not that many with high quality players), and remember to tag tag tag those vids , music, pictures or whatever your working on. I've bumped into a few vids of OA with NO F***ing tags at all. the more tags the more hits you may possibly rack up.

ofc if your still in beta, maybe building up some hype pre full release would be great. If your thinking about some major changes to apply from QIII than now is the time to do it, before it gets too late. Why it's in beta I have no idea... because you guys are taking the source code from a finished game? Well, I can't wait till 1.0 hits, I'll probably be on till then, well after I mean. great f****ing game.

to me : Q4
QIIIArena
QLive
Open Arena

I have more games, but these 4 always make me comeback for more :)

OpenArena is in beta, not because of the source code, but because of the game content. A vast amount of game content isn't there.

There is a wide variety of maps available for OpenArena, but personally very few of them have a professional polished feel.
Not all textures from Q3 have been recreated for OpenArena.
Very few map objects.
A variety of the character models have broken animations(mainly the ones I submitted).

Overall OpenArena is very playable, it just lacks polish... Which takes time.

I'm curious, what map objects are OpenArena missing? If someone can create a list & display an image of the Q3 version, I'll start making alternatives. :)

The real producers that aren't lazy at the mo is pulchr, ArmageddonMan and cosmo. I'm the ultimate lazy ass that is holding OA up. enki's very busy lately with RL, which is why there's not many new fresh models for OA in recent times.


Self-promotion in every inch would hurt much more than it theoretically  benefits. It would depict this community as annoying, desperate people seeking attention for frag fodder.  I don't do this.

Example: The promotion of illicit Quakeworld shareware repacks.




Building hype always leads to disappointment.

just to add that i really am lazy

i've got lots of mapping plans - but not much get done, unfortunately

Me too. I want to make oa_bases9, oa_city, oa_b5m1 (beach themed dm1), oakyne, and other maps :(

Even for a beta stage game, fromhell and her staff have really come a long way from what it seems. And since it's only 5 to 6 people developing OA, I'm in no rush.  I'm perfectly content with 0.8.1 for the time being. ^_^

I'm actually trying to spread OA around through word of mouth, basically saying that it's just like Q3A, but free!  I mean, who doesn't love a free game?  Plus, I think it'll get people who've not played Q3A to see what they've missed out in the early 2000s when it comes to fragfesting.  Who knows?  Maybe the servers will be super crowded one day... (and not just with bots.)

Don't forget kit89. :D schlorri has done some coding work as well.

EDIT: AND SAGO TOO!!! How can we forget him!!! He does his (greater) part with OAX.

Not always. Some games are just too overhyped for their content -GTA4 for example- but this game is the best firstpersonshooter I know. But as it's not commercial (which means no ads anywhere and not in stores) you can't really build a hype much.

I really like OA myself, The GPL princeple behind it, I think OA is the most worthy successor to q3 after the engine got gpl-ed.
I am really looking forward to be playing 1.0 and try to do my 2 cents, by running some servers with popular settings/mapcycles and some gimp work. I find it pretty challenging to start with the all white GIMP square, so i usually pick some basewall from the OA svn as a background. I am not very good at that either, so it takes me a long time to get something decent.

Anyway, i'd promote this OA beta like a preview beta, not yet finished but completely playable.