Ideas to help out the community

[XironDarkstar]

I don't have many ideas, but I want to open a public discussion about what we can do.

At this point the most effective method to get new/old players to play is word to mouth advertisement. Unfortunetally I do not have any connections to old players. But if someone has contacts to former clan members or something like that. I'd suggest to talk to them.

Second point I have is to find reasons why people left Atulos. And can those reasons be fixed. With this I mean about actual content of the game. Did people enjoy new updates? Why/why not? How Atulos could be improved.

And third. Advertisement. How is Atulos being advertised in the future. We need both short and long term goals. Realistic goals that we can manage. What is the direction Atulos is going? When I played years ago 3D version was in development. Well we all can se that that didn't work wery well. What are the realistic long term goals right now? Steam greenlight? Or some other distribution method?

[Steve]

People left due to a lack of new content. The platform chosen for building the game did not lend itself to adding content easily. When Camm wanted to add a new area, he literally had to copy-paste an existing area, including all its graphics and game logic, then edit that into a new area. To make matters worse, when he wanted to make a change to the game logic, he had to make the same changes over and over again in each area. Just so we're clear, I have no plans to make any significant changes to the current version of the game because there is little reward for all the effort.

My plan has always been to rebuild this game from the ground up. At the moment, I'm working on ways to get the time and money to make this happen. For example, I'm building some mobile games to cash in on the massive freemium games market. The new Atulos Online will likely be 3D, while retaining some similarity to the current game in terms of 3rd person view, click to move, etc.

I agree with all of your points and I'm doing what I can to make it happen.

[Angelus]

No steve, people didn't leave due to new content mate,
people been playing this game since 2006 and with very few or minor updates to layout and abilities.
i agree to add to this game is a nightmare but it was rewarding to see 50 people going at it in the arena was reward enough for most of us.
to be honest i was a little annoyed with my offer of help being meeted with a "nah, your grand" attitude.
i believe the game still has tons of potential and i know for a fact with a little bit of publication in the right areas this game will be back to its former glory.
i have worked on this game for quite some time and i would be willing to work on it again... you only need to ask.
besides my issue with getting the feckin new version of premier to work has still not been resolved.
now i know that some comments above may piss you off but it's the way it is.
regards
Ang

[MrBones]

My suggestion would be a friend list or maybe it has one already I just don't know about. Maybe up the cap on lvling would bring back some old players again that are already capped out on the top lvl.

[Steve]

to be honest i was a little annoyed with my offer of help being meeted with a "nah, your grand" attitude.

I understand how you feel because I've been in the same situation. It's frustrating. Please don't take it personally. The reality is that most forms of help need to be coordinated and managed. Unfortunately, I don't have any spare time for this. It's not like I can just let someone design new levels/features without either 1. turning over all the source and assets (not gonna happen) or 2. spending a crapload of time manually turning the contributed designs into something useful. I'm always trying to figure out how to make some money without locking myself into 80+ hours/week just to maintain it, so I can devote some much needed and overdue attention to Atulos Online. I really am trying!

[Richy]

There's simply little to no traffic coming through. The best spot that I can think of, to post downloads for windows game applications is most likely steam, now and days, the audience and traffic through there is banging. On the bad side, throwing Atu'los up on Steam Greenlight comes with a one-time fee of 100 dollars, if the chance arises to do it. The traffic it could provide; Might be worth it, even if a free version of Atu'los was posted up, just something that would bring people through to try it before they buy it.

Truthfully, nobody is to blame for the state of Atu'los. It comes with the territory of game development, getting a player is easy as throwing a download link at someone, but keeping that player for a long period of time, is like a full time job, and for one that already has a full time job, and needs to pay them bills, that should have a higher priority over a game that doesn't pay the bills.

It's not the players fault either, if a potential player does not know where to download Atu'los, then how can they play it? It's just not easy to throw a full advertising campaign considering most players either facebook game or steam game anymore...

[Steve]

Yep, you pretty much say it as it is, Richy.

[mini]

Well myself I love the way this game is updated mine you there is place for more but that is no reason why everyone has left but me . I don't quite understand you persons . I just don't , you have the greatest game that I ever played and wars and friends and all. And you people just leave it . Well I didn't leave and don't plan to and you can bank on it I would pay again to stay in the game mini

[Richy]

It's all in personal preference, mini. I would not dare doubt your love for this game.

But I have to be honest, personally I pretty much given up on playing Atu'los. I'm at level 318 and the only reason of my being in the game is for 2 more levels to reach the cap, I even forgot the times of wars so, I've little interest of joining them anyways if there's no opponents.

The game was great; I've always enjoyed the fast leveling, mixed with the small community of friends and the Arena. Those key points were what kept regulars around, but those same regulars have gotten older, got wives/hubbies, made children, have jobs, technology populated further than Windows/Mac computers, it's just not the same as it were 8 years ago.

Furthermore, the engine of which Atu'los is built under; Steve made a passing of it in another topic; MMF2 isn't very easy to get a development team on, and from personal experience of mapping on MMF2, it took several hours to get one level mapped out, not to mention what time Camm had to take to get them all in the game and make them playable.

It's a very time consuming process. I regret giving Camm a hard time about everything in Atu'los, because I've witnessed first hand how hard it is to handle a game and a player base, I don't even have a wife or children! Feel bad for that homie lol.

[DoomBladeEdge]

Jesus, the level cap is 320?

Whaaaaat?

What happened to the good old days of being like, level 30,000 in the forest, laughing at the newbies? Wow I've not played in a long time.

[Mad]

Back to topic.
You wanna help the community?
Then let's (re)start the community!
If you read these lines, just log on once or twice a day at an exact time, I mean XX:00 or YY:00 atulos time.
You all do it, and the community will be back again!

[DoomBladeEdge]

Mad mate, I don't think it's that simple.

I'm with Richy on this one, the game doesn't have a name out there, no one's bloody heard of it. To make matters worse, since Atulos has no sort of advertising campaign, no one will hear of it. To boot, word of mouth won't work for many of us. I've tried to bring friends into Atulos but, let's be honest here, the game has a cult following due to 1990s graphics and game play. Why should people play a game like Atulos when they can play something like ESO? End of the day, a steam greenlight is the only way I can see this game getting a following again, and the chance to earn some money to help with the building of that 3D Atulos project Camm was working on (can't remember for the life of me what it was called, it had it's own secret forum and everything but it looked kickass.)

A whole host of features (correct me if they've been changed) also add to the frustration of this game. If you have a new comp, or had to factory reset you have to climb the levels again as you can't recover characters, or premium if you purchased it, for that matter.
Finally once you played it through once, you've played it through a million times. Atulos had very end game content, sure wars were cool but that was about it.

Now I understand if you guys will slate me for this post, it's your right, I just don't have love for the game like I did 3-4 years ago. It needs too much changing which Stevie boy can't do on his own whilst balancing a job. Quite frankly, if some of you were dedicated as you say you are you would have no problem in giving donations to help fund the 3d campaign.

The way the game stands now, it'll have little more than a cult following of truly hard core, die hard, fans.


P.S, not a personal attack on you Steve, I know you're having a hard time, I'm just saying it how (I think) it is.

Blade-out.

[Mad]

Mad mate, I don't think it's that simple.

I'm with Richy on this one, the game doesn't have a name out there, no one's bloody heard of it. To make matters worse, since Atulos has no sort of advertising campaign, no one will hear of it. To boot, word of mouth won't work for many of us. I've tried to bring friends into Atulos but, let's be honest here, the game has a cult following due to 1990s graphics and game play. Why should people play a game like Atulos when they can play something like ESO? End of the day, a steam greenlight is the only way I can see this game getting a following again, and the chance to earn some money to help with the building of that 3D Atulos project Camm was working on (can't remember for the life of me what it was called, it had it's own secret forum and everything but it looked kickass.)

A whole host of features (correct me if they've been changed) also add to the frustration of this game. If you have a new comp, or had to factory reset you have to climb the levels again as you can't recover characters, or premium if you purchased it, for that matter.
Finally once you played it through once, you've played it through a million times. Atulos had very end game content, sure wars were cool but that was about it.

Now I understand if you guys will slate me for this post, it's your right, I just don't have love for the game like I did 3-4 years ago. It needs too much changing which Stevie boy can't do on his own whilst balancing a job. Quite frankly, if some of you were dedicated as you say you are you would have no problem in giving donations to help fund the 3d campaign.

The way the game stands now, it'll have little more than a cult following of truly hard core, die hard, fans.


P.S, not a personal attack on you Steve, I know you're having a hard time, I'm just saying it how (I think) it is.

Blade-out.

Hyia, nice to see u back matey

Well, you re basically right on everything.
I'm  bit lazy to answer all your questions ioi but here are my thoughts

3D game project was just abandonned as far as I know cause Camm has no time for it, while the job takes a huge amount ot time. Ang helped him, but that wasn't enough.
So Camm decided to focus back again on the 2D version before Steve get the lead.

Also, I think we should start from the beginning to make the game played by a large amount of players. First, when newcomer log in, he/she just see an empty game. This is the really most important reason no one would stay.
When I started to play Atulo's, the gameplay was not so addictive even back in the days. I stayed because of guilds and wars, not for leveling ioi.
Hopefully, Steve maintains the server up, with his own $$$, thanks to him!
Means that we have a chance to make it last more if we take that chance.

When a true community will be active, then and only then, the game could be advertised or part of a multi game platform.
And I suppose, at that time, Steve could consider updating the core or others part of the game.

Hope to see you in game boyz!