A gold mine of good feedback for potential future development of the game as well. Like, maybe making the ledges more conspicuous, having two pistols rather than one, and making so the random spread stacks with existing spread.
Also, I have some other ideas regarding future development. With the Smart Lighting 2D light engine, could you make the "fog of war" feature better? It seems like you would be able to make it not only less 'chunky' but also more realistic in function, by potentially making all parts that wouldn't be visible completely dark.
Also (and maybe this is a overly complex idea but.. so was 3d tiles I guess?) maybe you could enable jumping, for things like ledges and such. Maybe even allowing blocks of a few different heights (like heights 0,1,2, and 3, and jumping from 3 to 0 would cause fall damage, while jumping from 0 to 2 or 3 is impossible) that have to be reached from the level directly below. It would add an extra layer of depth and make new strategies emerge, though it would take some creative implementation to make the different heights distinguishable from each other. Also, crouching (when right next to a ledge) to be able to potentially shield yourself from anyone shooting over the ledge, with some fairly simple logic (if bullet goes over ledge, bullet does not hit player crouching directly on the other side, easy peasy).
Aside from CS2D, though, I was reminded in that video of my own attempts to find Unreal Software through web search. Maybe it's time we do a bit of SEO, just enough so that unreal software is the first result when you literally look up unreal software. That seems like a case where SEO is a reasonable solution.
NanuPlayer: Thanks for sharing the video! It was interesting.
The video has over 230k views already (good number compared to the most recent videos of LamWarp) and I think it does have some impact. 60+ players are a lot for CS2D in these days. I check how many people are online from time to time and the last few weeks it was more like 10 to 20 people. Significantly less then the current ~60.
I don't think that the numbers will stay this high for a long time but it's still nice to see so many people online
We should try making YouTube shorts. They get tons of views. If one of them becomes popular, we would attract a lot of new players.
Just look at this video, it got 200,000 views and immediately brought in a bunch of new players who are super excited about the game. Also, if we can get a YouTuber with a million subscribers or more to make a video about the game, it'll be more than enough to bring the game back.
74k subscribers, its nothing for youtube and more nothing for cs2d
the video amassed 200k views in a day so your statement is incorrect since you can clearly tell by just logging in the game that compared to how it was 1 week ago it is obviously more filled with players
@ Gaios: I think we should take a closer look at the available options we have. It's impossible to bring back the old players, as most of them have grown up and no longer care about CS2D.
Our best bet is to attract new players to the game. If CS2D doesn't die out completely in the next few years, it will be different from the one we used to play, as most of the players will be new and distinct from the old ones.
There should be nice mods with good explanation, moderators/admins, good server ping. I see many newcomers still stay in the game and play it, currently mostly standard servers, casual os full almost 24/7. Some other servers have 2-8 players.
To keep players You need to develop a shit, prepare good thing to make players want to back and play servers, but this not happening. Anytime we have new players, nothing is made for them, we're there only who can interact/teach them, but nobody is doing that.
I think the new players will probably stay for a decent amount of time. After all, they were actually introduced to the features within the game, so they won't be blindly fumbling around and then get bored because they don't understand how it works. They also were introduced to the cool parts of the game, so it's not like they won't be able find anything fun to do on it.
I think they're gonna be sticking around and are probably more likely to appreciate the game for what it is.
And, as Mora pointed out, maybe we aught to do a bit more to make it worthwhile for them.
@ Mora: True, it's sad that most servers are standard.
I mean, CS2D is not supposed to be played this much in standard mode, or we could simply switch to CS1.6 for a better experience.
When I first joined CS2D, I used to play modified servers like IRAN TOWN and KGB2D Zombies & GTA a lot. But now all I see are servers where scripts and interesting maps are barely used. Moreover, these standard servers require some skills, which most new players don't have
khaled1968: Seems like people realized they could get more players by just making more maps with lower quality. Could be somewhat mitigated by an internal rating and/or ranking system, which I think I may have suggested previously on a different thread, if I remember right.
If people could rank maps based on "coolness", "creativity", and "quality", among other things, I think we would have a better ecosystem of maps and servers.