📚 Prettify and add information to Readme

[Hiradur]

Prettify the readme and add some keywords, mostly for SEO and to give a better idea of what the gameplay of Rigs of Rods has to offer.

[Zentro]

I like this, but in my opinion it seems too long? I think Ogre's README can guide on showing, not just telling 😉
https://github.com/OGRECave/ogre/blob/master/README.md

Also, the copyright is 4 years out of date. The correct way (and maybe much to his peril as the project leader), it should be "2014-2025 Petr's name and Rigs of Rods contributors" as per the GNU license

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html

The GNU license doesn't require the copyright holder to be a real person per say, but must be any legal entity that holds the copyright to the work and in this case it's a real person.

[Hiradur]

I was wondering if it was becoming too much. Some small screenshots or GIFs like in the OGRE readme would be nice as well. I think it would still be beneficial to keep all the keywords for SEO. They could be moved to a compact keyword section perhaps.

Not sure if I should be the one updating the copyright notice, but I could if desired.

[ohlidalp]

I like the trailer links and the formatting tweaks. And the spring-mass-damper wiki link.
However the new Feature overview and Gameplay sections are all wrong, too verbose and repetitive (4 "reallistic..." bullets in sequence!), going into details that feel obvious from the preceding text or are straight-out tips for dummies. Also the structured bullet list is not a good fit for this info - a short and to-the-point paragraphs would be much better. GIFs would be great, like on https://github.com/turanszkij/WickedEngine

[Hiradur]

Yeah, I was wondering if the realistic claims were too much. I think RoR's original intention was to strive for a realistic simulation. If you look at the code you can see enthusiastic coders wanted to build a complex simulation but it doesn't take too much gameplay to realize that isn't quite that realistic. Besides that realistic might be a bit of an overstatement, what else do you think is wrong?

Anyway, I agree that the paragraphs might have grown too large. To be honest, I threw in so many buzzwords for SEO, but the README might be the wrong place for that. I was even wondering if they give away of the gameplay too much. When I see other people discover RoR, they are repeatedly amazed when they see something you can do in the game which they didn't see before.

It seems to be a balancing act: In today's gaming landscape there are a lot of cheap and free games and time to play seems to be the limiting factor. On the one hand I think it is important to have people quickly find out if a game is of interest for them or not. If they know too little and have too much other offers, they might skip it even if it would actually be interesting for them. On the other hand, if you give away too much in the beginning, there is little left to discover and they might not stay for long.

I'm not sure if I agree on the for dummies part though. For veterans it's clear what you can do in RoR and it might look obvious. However, let's assume people stumbling upon this README via an internet search have never heard of RoR before. They found it by searching for some of the keywords and haven't seen a video. Even if they did see a video, they might not know, for instance, that you can have more than one vehicle at a time or leave the car (it's easy to get this impression if you watch only some videos). I do agree though, that a list of bullet points this long is a bit dry.

I also think that there aren't many racing/vehicle games that allow to do as many different activities as RoR does and it should be seen as one of its unique selling points.

I will not insist on getting anything in. I've been thinking from the start that the bullet points are untypical of a Readme and doubted these sections myself already. Not sure, but maybe it would be a cool idea to start some kind of community contest about who can create the most interesting, yet concise paragraph about RoR's gameplay possibilities.