ok on this thread you can use your creativity and post a suggestion of how to increase tc:e's playerbase. and i dont wanna hear "mouth to mouth" bullshit because that doesnt always work.

my suggestion is simple, just put fancy looking banners with eye-candy's on popular websites,

the reason why i like tc:e to have a larger player base is because tc:e's small community is starting to get boring, a larger playerbase makes a game last.

so post a good suggestion of how to increase the playerbase and perhaps the P.R.'s will use your suggestion.

continuing to send screens/news to fansites like planet Wolfenstien, among others, is always good (that's how I got here)

I"m not sure ad banners would be a good idea, as they cost money, but the little noxes that other mods can use are nice.

also, keeping the moddb profile is a good idear.

And it would be good to make it a point to avoid travesties like the .49b release.

If I was a new player to TCE and got smacked with that, I would give up and uninstall.

the key to succes is user-friendly setups, when the devs released 0.49, i was truly amazed how professional and very user friendly the installation
setup was, you dont see that very often on modifications, wich was really a big step towards professionalism, but then they released that 0.49B patch wich was a 3 step backwards to amateurisme,

why is windows the most popular software even if its crap?
because of the userfriendly setups and interfaces.

so a userfriendly game is the key to succes.
and a noob friendly community too "cough "cough",

it is really importent that the community is really noob friendly, i know some people that stopped playing some games due to the bad attitude the community has for the newbie's

I think there are many ways to promote TCE,but the best is to submit TCE to game sites such as http://www.mpogd.com , http://massive-magazine.com/ , http://gaming-centre.com/index.php

what i dont like about the P.R. work that the P.R's of TT did, is that they promoted their game on unknown websites like StealthZone,

you cant gain popularity by promoting on such little websites, if you are a skilled P.R. you would aim for a bigger goal, websites like: www.ign.com www.gametrailers.com www.giga.de <-- a german show that i watch evryday, those are websites that have more than 1 million visitors, unlike StealthZone, i can count how many people are visiting StealthZone each week on my hands,

the P.R.'s did once promoted their game on a japanese magazine, wich was very smart, because now i see allot of japanese players on tc:e, it could be cause of the promotion the P.R's made on that japanese magazine,

what i also suggest to the P.R's is to promote their game on Top game magazines like

- EDGE magazine: http://www.edge-online.co.uk/
- POWER unlimited: http://www.powerweb.nl/

but dont think that promoting tc:e on popular websites and magazines will keep the game popular, dont forget about updates, updates are very importent, it maintains the popularity, but also remember that it isnt about the quantity, you can update 10 updates evry 2 months but if the updates sucks ("0.49B "cough") it wont make tc:e popular, so a major quality update evry 3 or 4 months is really sufficient to keep the game hot,

now some of you people are probably wondering about the budget, because promoting cost's allot of money, but if the P.R.'s are skilled enough, they could manage free promotions, depending how they take care of business's, so it means that allot of "sweet talking" should be involved,

and one last thing, the reason why allot of game have eye-candy's like awesome looking character models, or additional features, awesome huds & interfaces, is to attract players, believe or not but a big majority of people judge a book by it's cover,

tc:e doesnt have those eye-candy's except the good looking maps, but tc:e have horrible player models, and an example is the limbo menu... it doesnt look so attractive and isnt that user-friendly either. the player models looks kinda horrible, if people are gonna download tc:e, they probably gonna check out screenshots first and when they see the player models, they probably gonna consider 3 times if they want to download the game or not,

why? because the additional stuff like the player models, interfaces, huds, could give a little information about the developers, are they creative? do they care about the details? do they care about the whole game design and not gameplay only? and the simple way to find out is to look at stuff like how the player models look like or how the huds and interfaces look like ect. ect. just the additional things, nowadays it isnt only about the gameplay, there are tons of factors needed to make a game look appealing.

heres the catch: promoting yourself on gamespot/ign/etc. costs money. LOTS of money.
and in this threadare some important points.

1. they're not getting paid at all, except by the gratuity of the fans.
2. they don't make any money off the mod, and what they get from donations goes to keeping the websites/forums running.


and also, TC:E is probably the most popular total conversion for ET, and among the top mods, and if you don't count ETpro and Jaymod, more than likely #1.

there are TONS of mods that
1. have only a handful of servers (we have at least 20 per gametype)
2. have little or no publicity
and
3. barely get the love and care TC:E does.

IMO, how we're going is just fine.


regular updates are already part of the plan, and IMO, the only reason .49b is considered a "substandard" release is because people are mad about free-aim, and aside form that, it is a maintanace release. if you want a new feature every release, be prepared for another 15 bugs too.

and you know what? TC:E's models are AMAZING for a game running the engine it is. I would say with confidence, that if we moved to the source engine, we would lose about 90% of our playerbase. same if we moved to any other engine (minus Q3GPL, but it's been done, in a sense) and the graphics would only get a slight boost (we'd get true HDR, slightly better textures, and slightly better models.) and have to fight major problems (I.E. mod being toasted after steam release, requiring a MAJOR bugfix, performance problems for 50% of the players, etc.)

IMO, I'd rather have a mod I can run on my older computer(s) so I can have a LAN game against my pals than have slight improvements.

your next paragraph is similar to one written by my down-the-block neighbor (he's 7.), all I can make out is that you don't like the playermodels aand limbo menu, and that people are going to like the game 3x more because of it, but here's a newsflash:

playermodels are the best they can be. changing them more can be done, but with one problem: they cannot be implemented, because the engine can't handle any more. and IMO, the limbo menu is just fine. it lets you see what's going on as you select your weapon. could it be tweaked? sure.but I STILL want drop-down menus. clicking+holding once is easier than clicking an arrow 20 times.

one more thing about eye-candy: it's a beta. from TC:E 1.0 I would expect MUCH better things.but we're half-way through the development process. hell, .49 is thier 4th ET build. everything before that was TrueCombat. considering that they've been working on the engine for a shorter time than many other mods, but still churn out top-quality stuff (we're on the best of tactical gaming page. as a recommended game.)

and at this stage in development, it is ALL about gameplay. here's how it should go:
<internal builds>
1st build: new models/skins, some weapons too
2nd build: full weapon selection (given none are decided upon in the development process), new animations, initial HUD/limbo menu changes
3rd build: HUD/limbo menu almost complete, features like ironsights, etc are added.
<closed beta>
4th build: tweaks to weapon balance, changes to hitboxes and damage system
5th build: gameplay
<open beta>
6th build: gameplay, balance, etc.
7th build server browser tweaks, balance, features by popular demand (this is about where we are)
8th build: gameplay, major bugfixes
<final version>
9th build: changes to models, etc.

as someone who actually plays the mod, I know that gameplay at this time is VERY important. and I (and my pals) would rather see changes to weapon balance, gameplay and features than have new models.

I've seen some games for the source engine that look terrific, city 14 is one of them, it looks amazing. only one problem: the game is literally impossible to beat. you're locked in a room without any supplies. no HEV suit, no weapons. just you and a boarded up door (I nocliped around, there is no other way out except a vent that needs to be broken. that you cant.)

then there are games that look like crap. suck as Iron Grip: the oppression. it looks like it was made on the ET engine. the models are FAR worse than those of TC:E, but you know what? it is TONS of fun to play. it won mod of the month a while ago, and has a very nice community.


now on to advertising ideas:
signatures would be a really good idea. I, for one, would have one on every forum I can possibly fit it in.

What about Apple.com?

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/

We could also do Enemy Territory there...

TT doesn't own rights to WET, they just made a mod for it, so no we couldn't.

we could "poke" the guys at id/splash damage to do it for us. or we could contact apple about the game.

I suppose...

Guys,why search for something complicate?
The easy way is to just go to any gaming communities sites and post about TCE.Also many sites offer free advertising/banner exchange and such.
Before spending money and what not,use those avenues

with a simple and creative way of thinking you will always find solutions for the impossible.

just put the tc:e file on the page, let them download it, let them install it, if they dont have ET, than a popup should appear on their monitor with a warning that they should download ET first before installing tc:e, the popup allows people to redirect them to the official tc:e download page,

i once suggested this, evryone said its illegal, its really not, ive read the EULA, what would be illegal is to bundle ET & tc:e in 1 download,

$5 says doing that would get us 150 mac users saying "how I install game"

people skip warnings and EULAs. I think our best bet is (as mentioned above) to go around to community sites and preach the word of TC:E there.

What also would help would if TCE could appear in the GameSpy game browser