I'm fairly new here, stumbled upon EL thanks to a short release article on www.bluesnews.com. The screenshots looked pretty good, but what I wasn't expecting was just about the best space game I've ever played. Its got just about all of my favorite features from all of my favorite games. I'm sure there are a lot of other Sci-fi buffs out there like me with fond memories of newtonian combat and the hoarding of space bucks. Until I found EL I just thought they "don't make em like they used to" and would make due with a periodical replay of Freespace 2, or a weekend freelancer session with old friends. I know there's a lot of others out there in the same predicament. Lets talk about ways to spread the word, and show our fellow space junkies that there's a great new game here... that is worth playing as much as any other game in the genre.
Maybe there's a some EVE players looking for more hands-on combat. Maybe there's a few FPS junkies with dreams of the stars. Lets grab them.
The pitch
When talking to my friends I describe EL like this... I intentionally compare it to other big games to point out how it incorporates the genre's best features. If a fan of the genre doesn't try the demo after this sales pitch, I give up.
-Flight mechanics and combat that remind me of independence war...with a touch of Freespace.
-Simple mission structure that reminds me of freelancer, but with more varied missions.
-Simple inventory system that also reminds me of Freelancer.
-Ship upgrade and customization options that remind me of EVE online, and a great visual ship creator sort of like GalCiv2.
-Scale of the game universe is huge.. something like EVE or IWAR2, with bodies in space that seem realistically far apart. (a big critisism of mine with games like Freelancer, or even the X series)
-Multiplayer in the same huge open universe, with clan support, co-op missions... even capture the flag type scenarios can be set up in game. (I can't wait to try this )
-You can fly down into planetary atmospheres, for combat with atmospheric physics, or land at a planetary city...seriously how cool is that?
To sum it up, the game is big and complicated in all the right areas. (Combat and space travel) with simplified features in all the areas that slow other space games down. (like inventory and mission structure)
Create a facebook "product" page:
Based on the way I read the rules, only Vice can do this... and he's been very busy doing other things we all appreciate. (making EL better) So I'm in no hurry here. The benefit to this would be that we could all add ourselves as "fans" of Evochron Legends, or StarWraith 3d Games. (however Vice would like to brand the page) Then our facebook friends could have something to browse about when they're just screwing around on facebook. I have some friends who tool around on facebook enough to be flying top-tier stuff and ruling the universe if they'd be playing EL half of that time.
Here's where you create the page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Here's an example of a cool product page - http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/adultswim
Create a youtube "channel"
I know there are some Evochron videos on youtube. But if we had a "channel" there could be some basic branding applied to the page... and you could consolidate videos into groups. Maybe a group for Pomotional material like the cool video Vice has now on the media page, and another group for training videos that show a new player what's involved in completing each of the major contracts. Check out the onion's channel for an example http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOnion. If a channel is too much work a playlist of training videos would be helpful for new players, and those who might be on the fence.
IRC
I browsed a bit and didn't see any info for this on the forums, is there an IRC channel for StarWraith or Evochron? An IRC channel would be a good place for players to ask questions and organize impromptu multiplayer events, with quicker feedback than the forums. Most guys who might be into an open-ended space sim are probably familiar with IRC and might jump in the channel to ask us questions.
Which leads me to my only wish for an added feature at the moment. In game-IRC that you could optionally connect to and broadcast to with a separate keybind.
There's a cool quake-like shooter named warsow http://www.warsow.net/ that has this feature integrated. What's nice about it is you can connect to your favorite server and the in-game IRC chat acts as a "universe" wide chat with all players. A feature like this would be very cool with Evochron, would give you a link to other players even if you're playing offline. It could also be used to call players into the game you've joined that might be hanging out in the IRC channel with a standard client. "hey guys the party is in here!"
For my part, I'm going to start grabbing some video this week. I figure the more of Evochron we put on youtube, the more people will see how cool it is. Anyone else have any good ways to spread the word?... links to dig? I don't want anyone else to miss StarWraith games for as long as I did.
[Edited on 2-16-2009 by InterFaced]
), but it was before my time, and I can see something like that being useful. I know a few people who run some irc setups and I'll have a chat with them and find out how feasible for me to run.
