Battle-City
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Deceth
HELP WANTED ----- HELP WANTED ----- HELP WANTED
This is a big list of things to do. Not all items require programming skills. If you can help or contribute in any way, please do!
Another way to help is simply by sharing your input, ideas and bugs found!
Some things that are always needed:
- new players (We need help marketing!)
- new skins
- new items
- new buildings
- new world maps
- new city designs
- new information shared on the wiki
- Hosting and organization of events, competitions, leagues
- new articles or forums posts to keep people coming back to the website
- new developers! (The game is open source, let's put some students to work!)
Maybe i can (illegally) download Photoshop CS4 / 5 and make something to lure people into Deceth's kingdom, so he will have more minions.
The intent here was to offer some possible things to do for those without programming skills. Folks often ask, How can I contribute, and so, here were some ideas anybody could potentially work on.
That being said, to answer your question, I don't think attracting new players should be a primary focus right now. In fact, right now, the absolute best possible contributions would be making it possible for anyone to easily host a server, and, developing some AI players/cities so that it's possible to still play Battle City if 0 other players are online.
I think AI (artificial intelligence/computer controlled players & cities) is the only way to grow the community. Every time I host a server, people logon, but it's tough to get 8 players online at the same time to have a fun battle.
Sometimes administrators have tried hosting "events" or tournaments and that works because it keeps people online long enough that eventually someone else logs on, notices someone is there, and things get rolling.
With AI players, there will be something to keep you occupied until others logon. Rather than leave, you could play until more skilled real players join. This is necessary to build a sustainable community. Only once something like this is in place would it be worth investing in attracting new players.
A few years ago there were 20+ players on the server at the same time. That was very fun and so computer controller players were not necessary. There were always enough online that it didn't seem like a priority. Things worked out because when the game launched, there were LOTS of people ready to play and the server was full immediately.
But now, we don't have a big group waiting for the gates to open. So we need AI to help make it possible. We need AI so people logon and stay online.
Another perhaps easier way to contribute to this fundamental idea, is to make it possible to minimize Battle City to the taskbar. This way, if you logon, you don't actually have to leave, you could just let Battle City run in the background until someone else logs on. The icon in the taskbar could update with the # of players online, or there could be some sort of option to enable an alert when someone else join the game. This might be a simpler method to contribute to the same objective.
Gotcha... then we need to really provide scope for these tasks:
- [ ] #35 Don't hard-code server IP address in the client!
- [ ] #30 Bots
- [ ] #31 CPU Cities
- [ ] #10 Minimize to system tray, update icon with total players online