Push to make RWL popular again

[Drakus]

You can't get help from windy or any other programmers you know?

It could even use the premise of the original game (and hence all the formulas) except with some rudimentary graphics, more in-depth player mechanics, etc.

[Krowdon]

What kind of graphics do you even want?

[windhound]

Sorry Drakus, I'm not really a programmer.
Kinda like Shadow, I can do maintenance and some minor features and cleanup, but the stuff you're talking about is rather major.

I'm not really sure how you drag a promi game into modern times, given I don't think any other promi succeeded in doing so I'm sorta doubtful it's possible.  So you have on your hands a full rewrite of an entirely different game.
Ish.

imho Ollie's themes made the game look the best a promi has ever looked.  The point of RWL3 was to make the game more approachable...  and it is, kinda.  But being a promi there's still a fair amount of intricacy and fiddling you need to do to play competitively.  And I don't really know what you would do about that.  Strip out some of the things that would challenge a newbie and you end up with a more boring game, neh?

[Holby]

I like the enthusiasm, Drakus, but it's a tough ask.

RWL is nearly 12 years old. Promisance, the code it's based on, is even older. Way back when, an entirely text based game made a lot of sense. It was instant, fast loading, and you could play it on any old connection, on any old web browser.

The ROC was still relatively popular. There were a lot of websites, and they were big. Combining those two things worked, because we attracted gamers and RWL fans. But over time, Promisance got stale. Technology moved on. The Redwall series wasn't as popular.

Today, people use tablets and smart phones for all their casual web stuff. They don't really use PCs in the same way they once did.

The only way I see a game like this surviving into the future is as an app. A super casual one. And you'd have to make it, and that would be hard. Even if you could do it, the competition out there is enormous.

So, I don't really see a way to drastically turn things around. I no longer play the game, and the forums are mostly a way for me to stay in touch with the friends I've made over the last decade.

If you bring in a few of your friends, that's great. But I don't forsee a time where RWL will ever have the hundred plus actives it had in its first couple of years. It only had about 40 actives in reg in 2007. It's now 2014. We've done well to hold on.

[Shadow]

I couldn't do anything graphics related to save my life. Which isn't to say that I wouldn't like to learn, but there just isn't the time right now.

If you have specific ideas for what you would like to see with "more in depth player mechanics" then I'd be happy to hear your ideas and code them if they are realistic, however.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

The current layout is confusing as all hell (particularly the front/signup page) just sayin' - I think this is a major issue.  I look at the front page and I don't know where I would begin to sign up?

[Ashyra Nightwing]

whoops

[windhound]

Hey Ashyra!

I donno, is it really that bad?  Right up top it says Welcome, Guest.  Please login or register.


Granted the Game Login block is empty until you sign in, suppose that could be slightly confusing.
Once you have an account the home page provides options for the game logins there -- if you're used to the old system, we nuked that a while ago.

From a "wtf is this shit" standpoint we could def. do a better job though.
Might add in a short blurb under the Game Login section that goes away when you log in.
Cheers.

[Firetooth]

I will play this game again in July, and I will try to bring sharpienoob back with me.

Maybe I will message Pip, too. :)

[Krowdon]

I will play this game again in July, and I will try to bring sharpienoob back with me.

Maybe I will message Pip, too. :)

Please message Pip

[iman361]

yea     (whose pip)

[Durza]

Pippin.  A player who has been around longer than I

[Sharptooh]

It is sad to see the game/forums in this state, especially as it's been such an important part in most of our lives.

I think there are a lot of reasons for this really, some are inevitable (text based games just aren't cool anymore), some are/were semi-avoidable.

I think one of the biggest problems is the fact that even though we're a Redwall based game, the game/forums actually have very little to do with Redwall at all, the RP forums have been dead for an age and nobody stays in character in game anymore (or has done for a long time).

Most Redwallers are also likely hardline Christians (I don't have any data to back this up, but I think most people here wouldn't bother arguing this point) some of whom are also possibly put off by the kind of subjects we've had in the past (especially in UMD).

I think to say Redwall as a community is dead is a bit pessimistic though.

Here are the stats for this forum:

Yearly Summary	New Topics	New Posts	New Members	Most Online
2014	121	1,872	67	49
2013	451	8,947	297	55
2012	1,461	44,737	1,030	252
2011	2,011	70,905	692	83
2010	749	16,177	555	59
2009	1,552	67,956	142	25
2008	1,236	20,024	497	49
2007	811	15,006	616	32
2006	633	7,881	171	19
2005	266	4,100	25	9

Depressingly, if the second half of this year is similar to the first, this will be the worse year that RWL has had on record (although to be fair 05 won't be that far ahead).

Compare this to the last few months of activity on the official Redwall Forums (they've probably already got more posts in this month than we'll have this year):

Monthly Summary	New Topics	New Posts	New Members	Most Online
June 2014	79	5201	10	69
May 2014	174	11707	22	79
April 2014	133	13567	19	57
March 2014	158	9972	22	49
February 2014	139	8582	28	48
January 2014	151	9661	25	60

If the game can be changed in such a way to appeal to these people, and the forums can be made more redwall-y then I'm sure the site could at least be doing better than it is now, I don't think there's much time for this to happen though, in my experience as RWLers mature they generally leave the site or reduce their activity to the point where they'll post a few times a month. This site relies on a steady stream of a players hanging around to replace the leaving players, this stream has been lacking over the last year or so and it's really starting to show now.

As has been stated too, the games code is also a big mess, it's using so many deprecated/bad practices that barely keeping it running over the next few years will be a challenge in and of itself, PHP is now starting to actually remove functions that RWL relies on to function.

The code base really needs a rewrite to use some kind of MVC framework that's more modular and accessible to new devs, putting the codebase on Github would probably be great too. I think part of the problem has been the insular nature of the game development. For a long time this game was basically Shaels pet project, and while I'm not denying she's done a lot of good for the game and community, I fear RWL struggled to escape from it's status as her project.

All this talk of an app is nonesense too, making the site responsive would solve the whole mobile issue whilst meaning there's still only one codebase to work on. As far as I can see PA has set it up in such a way to achieve this, but left before he had time, it's not something that's too difficult to do, I might try and hack some CSS together for it when I have some free time.

The problem with all of this though is that it would take time, a rewrite of RWL would take weeks full time (to do it well) let alone part time unpaid. The code has been cobbled together by quite a few people over it's 10+ years in existence, and nobody has really documented anything whilst developing it, meaning there's still things in there that we even today don't know if it's safe to remove (at least that's been my understanding, I have read through the code, but not in months).

None of this is feasible though really, I've undertaken one small pet project recently and even that killed hours of time after work for many weeks. The only people here with the skills for a rewrite (or even a tidy up) don't have the time, besides which, if you're working 9-5:30 staring at a computer screen do you really want to come home and do more of the same day in day our for weeks, unpaid?

I guess the easiest (and maybe best) thing to do would be to port the code over to the QMT promi code, it's relatively up to date and quite nice to work with. I think Shael started working on this before she left, it'd be interesting to find out how far she got.

I agree with Ashyra regarding the homepage too, it doesn't tell you anything helpful as someone new coming to the site (in fact I'd even go so far as to say it looks a little daunting).

[windhound]

Small correction Sharpy -- The game was Retto's pet project (and Boze's before him).  Retto was rather protective of the code -- it was one of the friction points with Beatles, Retto even went and got permission to not release the code (contrary to the game's license). 
Shael, Ollie, Shadow, and I all worked on the code at the same time -- Shael somewhat reluctantly towards the end (she tried to pass to torch to me earlier but I really didn't want it...  she then just dropped it).  As said above, there's been noone to really pass the torch to. 
If you're volunteering I'm more than happy to work with you.

The whole 'responsive' website thing is kinda cute.
Blogs, general information sites, sure.  Because the main thing there is a text block, and if you only have 4 words per line fine, whatever, it looks artsy.
Promi is a text-based game, yes, but there's a reason some pages (like the scores page) are structured like they are.  Reworkable?  Sure.  But it's a fair bit harder than you're implying.

As far as switching code bases...  believe it or not we looked at this a few times.  Every time it's been daunting.  There's a reasonably long list (longer than you'd expect) of features custom to RWL that would need basically a full rewrite to implement.  None of the themes would transfer (and, sorry, but vanilla promi is fugly).  It would be my vote to transition to FAF's code base, it was gone through with a fine toothed comb and one-ups standard QMT in most areas.  It has clan forums (mini-bb iirc), cronless turns, the pages don't use frikken frames (what year is it?), it's clean and usable.

But again, a fairly major undertaking.  Shael didn't get too far with the newer QMT base.

You did accurately pinpoint the problem however, time and motivation.
After my 9 - 5 do I want to open up a text editor and sort through some archaic code or go blast some crap in Borderlands with my few hours of spare time?

The thing you didn't address is promi, as a game, is horrendously repetitive.  It gets old fast, and there's soo many games (website, mobile, pc, console) competing for your bits of spare time -- it's just tough.

Reading back over this post (and those I made previous) it does read rather pessimistic... but it is what it is. 
Are a good portion of RWL's site problems solvable?  Sure.  But only by pouring time into it, and eh.
The ROC is mostly gone.  I am glad the official Redwall website is doing well, but they're about it.
Just...  /shrug.

If you're interested in helping out let me know Sharpy.

(Also, I somewhat doubt the UMD has scared too many off.  A couple, sure, but they're the ones that tried to argue their beliefs without having a firm understanding of just what their beliefs were.  A good number of forums just ban religious and political discussion, at those that don't they'd mostly receive the same (if not more harsh) response.)

[Drakus]

Personally, I'm having fun with the limited community we have. But who knows if they'll stay...?