Far be it for me to say (although I guess I'm saying it), but the current first impression to the vegastrike web site is a little bizzare. On the good side the screenshots show off the graphics really well. But for me what was a bit stange, is the first thing on the web site front page for the last ~10 months has been a claim that the project is not dead. Of course a casual browser would figure this as "this project is almost dead". Now we all know this is not the case, far from it, but allow with info about technical problems with the forums almost two years ago, its a strange first impression of vegastrike.
As far as I can tell, vegastrike is a live kicking project, 0.x release or not, its certainly pretty cool to game to play, even for non-developers. I'd imagine many who come to the web site for the first time are just interested in this cool game. Maybe a little restructure in the way the web site is presented would help things to progress even better. One possible structure:
-Game section
* News (to attract interest in the game. eg. cool new finished space craft added)
* Features and gallery (showing off)
* Story (to spark interest in the universe)
* Download the game
* Official documentation (user manual)
* Mods
* Get involved (to encourage them to assist with development and point them in a productive direction)
-Development section
* Developer News (to keep developers up-to-date. eg. "help needed to create new space craft")
* Forums and wiki
* Project Mission
This way people see what is appropriate for them first up. Then we can subtly lure them into becoming a contributor (mwhahaha). It's such a great game probably one of the best open source there is, the web site should let people know how good it is!
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On a completely seperate and far more unrealistic note, it would be great to seperate engine from content so that once the core of the game is installed, the user can then download the game content on the fly (no pun?) using a game tool. This could mean they could start with a small download and single system "demo" and then download a bigger universe set if they like it and it works on their system. Mods could also be loaded easily. Automatic updating of game content is another unrealistic but very cool thing I can't help but imagine (eg. updating texture for starfortress). The biggest bonus I would think though would be testing. Someone can upload a new ship (for example) to the testing section of the game content archive and then it could be tested by non-developers to get feedback. Of course this would take some considerable work, but hey I just wanted to say it.
