Project Community
 

Before having the official GDT forums set where everyone will be able to discuss projects and post ideas, I would like a very global opinion of what the community is looking for.

Really, even as a leader, I cannot always contribute all my time to projects, and I will not justify myself again, because we are all the same and we all got a life.

I cannot always be the one who gets the ideas either. I've tried a couple ideas on my own, but I can't think for a whole community.

YOU are able to tell me what you honestly think would be good for us all, and I am ready to accept any idea that seems acceptable and worth working on.
Don't take this as a joke, but really, I'm running out of ideas!

If you are able to think of something new, something nice enough and possible of course, then feel free to post whatever comes to your mind in this thread!

a couple of new default tilesets that new server owners could choose from might be a nice idea

No, that's stupid. They're here to help, not design something for a server.


I'd suggest more playerworld starter packs, one for three different types of servers. Classic, Guns and Roleplay (are the main categories which all are different) would benefit new playerworlds alot.

More support from the GraalDT, sure they help but I don't see anyone being active or any projects that're being worked on? I ask for help on the IRC and always get a response (mainly from Inverness might I add). This is down on you, being the leader.

More activity on Graal, truth be told I've never seen anyone on Graal that uses their GraalDT developer tag? I'd also like to see playerworlds asking for more help (sounds strange, but I've never seen a GraalDT member work on a public server, could be due to the world not needing help).

Infact- help Zone.

For some reason I've seen more discussion about what the GDT should do than I've seen work done by the GDT. I don't recall anything done by the GDT in the nine months since its conception except some events and a starting pack.

Logically: you can't develop all of Graal's content by yourselves, so you should instead focus on educating developers so that they can produce better content. Making events for Unholy Nation is great, but can you sustainably produce all of the content for a server? This alone should lead you to the conclusion that instead of making content you need to be helping others learn to make it.

There are several ways to help developers:

• Scripting guides. Jer had an excellent one he is/was working on for beginning scripters. Guides also need to be made for specific features (SQLite, using databases, etc). Even a guide to making GUIs would be helpful (and very easy to do).
• Code releases/starting packs. The starting pack was a great idea but it could be even further enhanced. For example, there could be starting packs to "build" on the base one, such as one for modern servers that includes a gun script. The starting pack is also very lacking right now; things like tailors would be great additions.
• Scripting documentation. There are many pages on the wiki that are simply lists without any explanation; descriptions for each variable or function could be added in very little time.
• Levelling guides. Not as necessary as scripting guides for learning, but a guide on proper cliffing (though I think Crono did this?) would be very helpful. Even simple things like linking levels would be great.
• Level collabs. They help new levelers hone their skills. Different tilesets would also be helpful.
• Graphic guides. There are many of these on the internet that just need to be compiled, with some tips thrown in for Graal graphics.

It's nice that you're reaching out to the community (even in a forum post that seems like more of a defense than a request), but if this is all so cryptic to you maybe you're not the right person to lead the GDT. Just a thought.

This is pretty much it in a nutshell, and helping the Gold servers as a side venture would be time well spent too.

Considering the GDT is being treated as a volunteer-based effort, the time should be spent on realistic projects instead of things like a new website (can't even get support.graalonline.com to redirect to anywhere meaningful, I have doubts they'll upload a new website over their current one).

I'm unsure about the above ideas because I feel as though there is always a decline in the motivations of both the players and the developers around this time of the year. Such ideas seem more appropriate when things begin to kick up again, with the larger playercounts and when people are more interested. A lot of these suggestions are long term targets too, and while that's great to have, it kind of ignores that right now this is a diminishing team that people don't actually care about. In my opinion, something flashy and fun needs to happen. I guess I'll post my idea in a few.

Graal World Cup 2010
 

The Purpose (the tl;dr version of the post)

During this time of the year there just isn't much going on in Graal. School lets out, but our playercounts are still low, and for some reason development seems to grind to a halt. There are no special holidays to celebrate, but there is something we can do!

The 2010 Fifa World Cup begins on the 11th of June and continues for a month until the 11th of July. A lot of other MMO games will be celebrating this event, and there needs to be something to occupy the players during a time like this. That is why I'm proposing we have our very own global Graalian World Cup event, much in the spirit of the Graal Olympics. The best time to do the event would be during the middle of the actual World Cup (w/c 21/06/2010) spread out over 2 weeks, with one game every other day.

I wouldn't want this done unless it was done to a high standard. This is an opportunity to show just what is possible in a Graal event, similar to what Konidias and EOTB did with their Bomberman Event on Graal2001.

How It Would Play Out

We've currently got 8 servers on our serverlist, and while the activity on some of them may be questionable, the amount is perfect for a basic tournament. Each server would nominate 6 of their players for a team (the means of this is to be discussed) with additional reserves.

The event itself would play out similarly to the game 'Nintendo World Cup' for the Nintendo Entertainment System, as the simplicity of this game seems very appropriate for our environment. Here is an outline of some of the features:

• Players are only able to face two directions--left and right--and are able to strafe up and down without changing direction.
• The ball itself attaches to the player that has posession of it, and the only means of losing it is through being tackled by the other team, or kicking it away.
• When a player has the ball he or she has the option of either passing (a) or shooting (s) and without it, the player will simply be limited to tackling (s). In addition to these simple options, there would also be "super" tackling and "super" shooting, possibly by holding down the s key (again, needs to be discussed).
• The only soccer rules that would apply would be if the ball goes 'out of bounds' and everything else is fair game. Players are only able to be tackled once they have the ball however, as they are invulnerable to attacks without the ball.
• The NES game also has a feature where each player has.. welll.. HP I guess, and if they're tackled too much they end up fainting for a period of time, and this might also be suitable for Graal.
• We could go either way with the scoring by having a timer or being goal based, or it could have a merge of the two. Wouldn't want it to lose its momentum for people not taking part though, and when you're just watching a bunch of people play in an event for an hour it just becomes boring, even if you are supporting your home server.

At the end of each match a "post-match summary" would be displayed, showing the statistics of both each team and its individual players. Examples of these statistics would be the goals scored, assists given, balls stolen, and how long they had posession of the ball.

As opposed to hosting the event on each individual server, the Graal World Cup would be developed (and then released) as a completely fresh server. It would only appear on the main serverlist while an event was taking place, thanks to the help of the Playerworld Administration. While it won't be on the serverlist all of the time, it would still be open to players at all times, enabling players to play on their own or practice playing with their friends.

Further Expansions

Like what I had outlined for the Graal Olympics in 2008, there could be some kind of spectator participation (although when I read my idea from back then, it didn't sound as good as I thought at the time). World Cup related items could be sold on individual servers for gelats (or just regular server currencies, but there's nothing to spend spare gelats on these days) such as hats or quirky NPCs.

In addition to entertaining the players on PC Graal, the event could also be released as a Classic iPhone serverwide event. I talk to quite a few iPhone players and staff, and I think something like this really be a hit. Obviously there's only one iPhone server at the moment, so it might be better to do it with their local guilds system instead.

The GDT Team should be there to train new developers :)

I think this is a great idea, maybe for guilds ^^ =D

Graal Olympics-esque pipedream

I think it could be a little hard to do with guilds as activity within them is pretty low. It would be easier to get teams out of the servers we have.

world cup soccer NES on graal has been my dream for years

doit

How about offering to help servers that need it? For example, Zone, Npulse Rebirth, Delteria Dev... I'd say gk but its sorta helpless.

I adamantly agree that a new website is a waste of time. That is quite far into the realm of crap that CJ needs to do itself.

Not all of us have the time or the interest in personally training new people. At most I would answer questions while a person learns on their own while reading some tutorial/documentation. The lack of documentation and consistency in GScript is a problem. Hell I just found out a few weeks ago that there were clientside constants for keycodes that Stefan added years ago.

I'm sure if they want our help they could come and ask for it.

I'd say teach Developers too, better having many good devs than a few good devs.

Would that have helped? When Era asked for graphics help a few months back we received nil.

Well, I've asked for help on Rebirth, and Rogue Shadow and Soala have helped, especially Rogue.

As Inverness just said it is too time consuming / waste of resources to individually teach people development, instead more documentation needs to be provided so people can research and learn how to develop with additional support from the GDT if needed but most of the process should be passive using documentation and guides.

I don't think it is a good idea for the GDT to be on the gold servers.

Why?

I didn't think it was a good idea for you to be on the gold server, but it happened didn't it?

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions though ^^

I don't think GDT needs to focus on documentation simply because, if something doesnt start attracting players to pc graal, thier will be barely any developers (that are even willing to learn) to make things.

Not everyone is entitled to be a jackass, however.
I hadn't heard of this, and don't remember a thread about it in the forum, who did you ask?

I don't remember who I asked, but there was definitely a thread about tile help.

I remember it as well.

I think it is a really good point that Aeko brings up... If you look at this thread, some of the posts are to help the development community (e.g., documentation, tutorials); the other posts are to help the game directly (e.g., new website, cool event).

I think it is extremely out of scope for the GDT to tackle both of this problems -- there is simply not enough manpower, or will.


So, which would be better to focus on?

As Aeko pointed out, helping the development community can only help the developers. And there aren't many developers left, and the number is going down.

However , in my opinion, the alternative of trying to directly help the game is an enormously more difficult task. I mean, take a look... there have been many, many server start-ups that have failed to get anywhere. Some would argue that this is a result of lack of developers, but I do not believe that is the only reason; it is also will of the server leader and the will of the developers; it is also the general community response to the server.



My personal belief is that GDT should not try to "fix Graal." The problem is too big to fix. Instead, we should stick with the current model of players trying to build successful servers, and using them to attract more players; an overhaul of this model is unrealistic.

What the GDT should focus on is something within grasp. One success leads to more. I believe setting a goal regarding adding more to documentation and creating tutorials would be a good move.


Something my research advisor has always recommended to me is to always have two goals... one small manageable goal, and one slightly more difficult one. This way, even if you fail the difficult goal, you always have something accomplished in the end. In the case that you do accomplish the difficult goal, great! But don't bank anything on it.

I'm a certified jackass.

how is what i suggested not apart of starter packs? pretty stupid huh

i agree, but you also have to work off of the servers that are there already. determining what UC server needs help more than another for a small group is kind of hard: and the creation of "starter packs" and other such things are good for all servers. however, when you log onto graal, you find the current 8 servers visible, and they have obvious problems or places for improvement

that said, making a starter pack sounds like a grand idea for them to make at the moment. the community as a whole should benefit the most out of the GDT

I'd love to see more of these as it would not only help people learn but also teach them how to mesh their styling of levels with other developers. I'd imagine that most if not all developers work along side at least 1 or more other person. Having a new one each week or two weeks would be nice and I would defiantly get involved in it. However it would be nice to see not just collaborations of just pics1 but also modern tiles and even terrain.

I wanted to start a thread on this about a week ago but I assumed that nobody else but myself and possibly 2 or 3 other people would show interest in it. I really hope that another one of these gets started. I don't want to see it just happen once, a weekly collaboration would be awesome and give me something to do in my free time since I won't be rushed to do it. As I said before it with all those modern UC servers a modern collaboration would be nice too.

That's exactly the kind of discussion I wanted to bring up.
As WhiteDragon said, "fixing" Graal as a whole is really an impossible task for us little developers, even if some of us are quite experienced, and I'm sometimes afraid when I realize that there is so much to accomplish.

I've been thinking about big projects that would finaly take months to be eventualy successful, and I'm now personaly more interested by developing on promiseful servers.
So yeah, in the end, working on small and short projects sounds what we should be doing, for now.

Then there are plenty of great suggestions in this thread, cbk's post especially.

Even just a little help could fuel the motivation for players to work harder on their servers. Also I think that any help given by the GDT that ends up not being used or is put on a playerworld that has put little to no effort in development since it was assisted should be be made public for use of other players who might be able to use it for their servers.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion THOUGH the difference is some are right and lots more are wrong.
It's entirely possible if the developers work together. A team must be formed and a feasible endgoal needs to be decided on. After an endgoal is established the developer team should start pursuing the individual components - each a successful improvement to Graal on their own. That's not unrealistic, that's business.

I think a distinction needs to be made between "fixing Graal" and "improving Graal".

The first one is not easy. It would require reform of nearly every aspect... marketing, payment, development, and more.

The second one is easier, and can be broken up into smaller goals (like you seem to be suggesting). This is where effort should be put into. Small goals towards the endgoal of "improving Graal." Anything else would be far too much for ANY group of people to handle.



The fact that this organization got off the ground is good. It has already made progress, so let's not try to weigh it down with enormous goals like "reforming" Graal.

Forming groups for every problem isn't going to fix them, actual changes need to be made. "Feel good" threads made by "feel good" teams may sound like a good start to you, but it sounds likes spinning tires to me.

Which is why I've always believed the GDT should be less of a go-to-guy and more of a game producer. I'm really bored of the whole idea of people coming to the GDT for help (which doesn't happen), and in the meantime us releasing personal projects and coordinated projects (which doesn't happen often).

I was referring to the released starter pack, and other small releases, as well as help provided by GDT members.

Like I mentioned in my first post in this thread, although creating a great server would be... great, it is not much easier for the GDT to do it than any other group of developers.

I think it'd be best to tackle smaller projects, at least for now.

If you think an opinion can be right or wrong, then that is not an opinion you're thinking of.

I think it would be great for the GDT to create its own server. If that's not palatable to most members (and it's definitely not a matter of ease -- it wouldn't be incredibly difficult for us to create a server -- but simply a matter of whether or not people think it's what the GDT should be doing), then at the very least we should be developing existing servers to their full potential.

Like I said, I'm getting bored of how the GDT currently functions. Sitting there waiting for server managers to request help, and in meantime working on small, largely inconsequential projects. We don't even have the system of distribution that gave the GDT appeal to me -- packs that could be directly downloaded to a server, instead of releasing things into the Code Gallery like any common Joe can do. Also, look at how many talented developers we have in the GDT. Every small project described could be done simultaneously, and we'd probably still have people left doing nothing. It just bugs me that some in the group have predetermined and limited the GDT into something incredibly boring.

Creating fancy systems to download packages directly to servers is an unnecessary waste of time for little gain. There are far more important and practical ways to invest time. The GDT is not too good to use the code gallery like every other "common Joe."

And creating servers is not in the realm of what the GDT is about.

Agreed 100%.
There aren't enough capable scripters to finish the near-complete server.

What has been done to attract capable scripters to the server?