Chaotic Dreams

If anyone out there has even the most trivial input on how we promote, package, and release Chaos, I would love to hear it. You may rip us apart if you wish, and we won't hate you for it.

I am however, not asking for input on weapons and features and so forth (at least not in this particular thread). I'm asking about the readme file, the download page, the umods themselves, release days, news posts, menu's, credits, and so on.

If there is anything at all that you would like to see done differently, please share your thoughts. All opinions all welcome, big or small, and all will be considered.

Thank you.

What would be SOOOOOOO KOOL is if you could pack a proxy mine into each box. That would so ROCK! It would also so KILL EVERYONE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME, but that's besides the point...

Ah sorry I havent understood (anyway I am still upset^^)

lord_kungai, maybe if we're ever in our own box. We'll see.

L'architecte, not really sure what you're on about. Be happy to respond if you would please try to clarify the parts that are on topic.

AFAIK, Epic's publicising of the game Unreal Tournament 3 (formerly UT 2007) is not as good as that of some other games, such as the publicising of StarCraft 2.

I was just wondering... can you guys make a CUT3 website similar in nature to the SC2 website? A website that lists all the features of CUT3, as well as provides pictures, development updates and maybe even videos of the game?

Just suggestions... oh, and is anyone else as excited about SC2 as I am? Your excitement about UT3 is taken for granted...

I think game publishers have hit the nail on the head with slowly building up anticipation by releasing a trailer every now and again, showing more and more features and gameplay, until release. For instance GTAIV is doing it, and I believe Oblivion did it, although I might be thinking of a different RPG. Anyways that would be a great way to get people excited about the game. I think once it is released, you guys could put up a torrent, at least for the first couple days. That way it would be a lot faster with all those people downloading. I also think a really nice in-game tutorial would be nice if there are some more complex features. I can't stand read-me's/instruction manuals. Just a couple thoughts.

More advertising.
In game tutorials showing all our features.
Good ideas. Keep 'em coming
Thanx
---H---

Really, I think it comes down to advertising and promotions. Make a myspace page, make myspace banners for gamers and banners for sites like beyondunreal.com

Make flash animation banners and intros/trailers to the main site. The key to a website is it's layout and design. And I think for people who are new to CUT they might see a link or hear about it and think "Hmmm, this looks interesting" and click... Well, if they don't see what they were interested in when they clicked they'll leave!

That's just kind of a "duh" answer on advertising but I think that would be most important. Not only that but getting a community of people and recognizing the players of CUT through whatever means BESIDES a forum. You can really nail a project through advertising though I'd have to say it's one of the hardest parts. You can be an amazing artist but no one will know your work if you don't advertise...

So thats my suggestion =)

Hmm another one... Make goody packages for the big timers of CUT. Shirts+Special DVD(doesn't have to be that special lol)+whatever other goodies.

I think tutorials are a great idea. For instance- I downloaded ChaosUT2 last night and just jumped in and started playing (like I think a majority of gamers do) and I had no idea how the anti-grav belt worked or why I would sometimes be swept across the map- like I was in a strong vortex.

A nice tutorial map showing the capabilities of the weapons and the mod's features would be beneficial to showing players how it all works and what the possibilities are. Or using a "button reminder" pop-up (that can be selected/unselected in settings) that will briefly tell you what button you can press to activate something you just picked up.

As far as promotion I only know what UCMP does and it seems to work. They don't show any 'in dev' screens or videos and don't release anything too early. UCMP will release teaser screens and a video a week before public release. And everything is prepared prior to the teaser release (final website pages for after release, goodies (calendars, mouse pads, hats, stickers, etc.), download locations, contacting "news" sites about the release, etc.)

I think for a mod you could do promotion a bit earlier than a week before release, but probably not more than a month (or six weeks) before a finalized internal release date.
Perhaps starting about six weeks out there's a release of 4-5 screenshots about every 10 days to two weeks. Then, a week before release, a teaser video is released.

-Axe

For the website: Invert the colour scheme or something, please. It looks so very horribly "early nineties corporate idea of what kids think is cool" and it's unreadable (light text on a dark background only works for specific sets of colours). Maybe multiple skins, like BeyondUnreal has?
Also, matching the forum skin to the website would rock hard.
Actually, straight up better forum software would rock even harder...the latest phpBB is cool, but there are other options out there, like simplemachines and friends.
Back to the website; little flash animations of the weapons/gear in use would be good, though you'd need to have an option to turn them off for people on dialup. The people, not the animations, obviously.

Ingame tutorials are nice, but an option to switch them off/skip them would be even better for those of us who have been with you guys for a long time...
Also, you could replace the inevitable opening cinematic with one of your own. The chaos logo flying in one letter at a time, then a proxy hopping up and blowing the whole thing to smithereens maybe? Something like that, anyway.

Yeah, that's all I can think of for now...

azrael wrote:For the website: Invert the colour scheme or something, please. It looks so very horribly "early nineties corporate idea of what kids think is cool" ...

That was funny.

Thank you everyone for the replies, please keep them coming.

And while we're probably not going to debate each suggestion here and now, I can assure you that the team will be talking about these replies, all of them.

I'd like to see more frequent updates to the webpage. which is in line with what people here are saying. something i could help with if needed.

Also Getting some content out early would be good.
such as new skins new models. new weapnón models.
just small tidbits people can use in game. doesnt really have to be much.

and almost most importantly. storyline. well i guess you cant get that much storyline to begin with from a straight shootemup. but... yeah. we need to get creative with the reasons for our weapon choices.

oh and make the story elements somehow part of the gameplay. so people dont just skip it by.

thats just some ideas. also multiplatform support should be touted. i know thats an engine thing. but just letting people know that it works on windows,Linux, and Mac would be helpful (assuming that all these are supported as i currently believe).

Hmm I think the webpage is fine. Though it's probably better to set up some kind of dynamic system to update it.

General_Sun wrote:Hmm I think the webpage is fine. Though it's probably better to set up some kind of dynamic system to update it.

Already have one of those... though its in need of improvements.

I think the website is ok. its not as bad as this anyway:

http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/