Something New: Player Development for Graal Kingdoms
 

Hey guys.

We recently had the discussion that some new content needs to be added; my final suggestion was an active system to improve the general gameplay and some documentation to help players understand the directions they can travel.

We observed in the recent discussions how busy Tigairius and I are, however it dawned on me that I could create a concept and illustrate guidelines so that players may development the content themselves.

That's exactly what I have prepared for you, and I think you will agree it's a very fun concept. I hope to launch the event, once developed, as a automatic event players can vote for (or control via some other automatic method).

Graal Kingdoms - Break Floor - Concept Guidelines

I now invite you to read the conceptual guidelines for the development of this "Graal Kingdoms - Break Floor" event. If any players with to develop it I suggest you elect Chaosorc as your development manager; he initially suggested some of the elements of this concept to me.

Additionally, you may wish to use these individuals for content development:
Switch - GANIs & Scripting
Alarid - Graphics
Stephen - Graphics (please only ask me if you cannot find anyone else)
PoJo - Levels

It's important that this content is developed correctly, especially if it's the inaugural "player development" on Graal Kingdoms. As a result, I strongly suggest developing parties consider extra elements like custom sound events, particle effects, and other elements to help improve the overall event experience. I'll try to keep this short - so if you have any suggestions or improvements please discuss them here.

Thanks!

I don't understand the concept much.

Are you breaking the walls, the floor, in 3x3 segments (according to the diagram), or what?

The articles long but doesn't make sense.

shame on you

Can you elaborate on that, or are we so immature as to spit out stupid one-word insults?

his guidelines are pretty clear... the mazes would have tiles that are 48 pixels by 48 pixels

I still don't know:

1) If it's a turn-based game.
2) If the arena has 3 dimensions (X, Y, layer).
3) If floors or walls break.
4) If you lay bombs to break the floor or simply your character's perceived "weight".
5) If it's simply luck or there is some ability to hinder other players without sacrificing yourself completely.
6) The goal is to.. be the last one standing? Reach the end of the "maze"?

The way I gather it is that there's nine tiles.

X X X
X X X
X X X

The middle tile cannot be broken, you start there.

You move left, right, up, or down.

There's a chance to fall. If you fall, you go into another layer, where you start in the middle again.

Rinse repeat, get to the "end"..?

I'm probably totally wrong, which would show the article's badly written if I can't extract the meaning from it..

Incidentally, I address every single concern very clearly in the concept guidelines. Perhaps your questions may be illuminated if you read them?

I read them o.o

Explain it in layman's terms instead of wasting your time with specifics bull****. Nobody wants to read/take the time to contemplate your article and you're lucky I did.

They are specific guidelines which must be met before player development for GK can be accepted & uploaded. However, for the sake of passing and casual conversation, the summary is as follows:

Users are placed within a confined maze. A script dynamically generates a path which can be successfully followed. If you fail to follow the path - step outside of the boundary generated by a pathfinding script - you will walk on a "breakable" tile. If you walk on a breakable tile there is a 20% chance it will break. If someone walks on the same tile as you, it again could break - kicking you both out of the confined maze to an observation area. The objective is to either travel to the end, or travel the farthest distance without failing (falling through). Players are forced to move within a timer. If they fail to move their navigation is generated randomly.






As a note, children read 200 words per minute on average. The guideline is just over 1000 words. The guideline would take a child approximately 5 minutes to read.

1) its an event so you have to make your way through it like other players are.

2) the floor will have invisible cracks.


I read through Stephens guide and its actually quite simple to follow.

@Stephen: I think the person is having a problem with you guidlines for how big the map should be and stuff like that.

looks stupid

how about content instead of making an event we will get to play 1 time a week.

The intent is to make it so players may automatically create break-floor instances. :)
Which is surprising; that is the most detailed topic, with technical specifications clearly indicated.

ho ho, you got me.

Hell of an idea you got there chap, if anyone perhaps needs me for any sort of assistance let me know, I have excellent abilities in the crafting of levels!

Ah, I am very happy to see you volunteer - but I am afraid you miss the initial point. I present this guideline document to the players - like you - so that you can work together to make content that is fun and "pre-approved". :)

Initial post edited, thought I misunderstood originally.

I can script rather well. This seems like something incredibly simple on the scripting end of things. Just a few arrays and a quirky, simple movement system that only allows the four cardinal directions on a tile-based arena, similar to Pokemon, if I understand correctly. I'd help out. I don't really play GK, though.

Also, you keep insinuating that I haven't read the article. I have. It's just very vague and obscure. However, your new explanation explains it better.

Excellent. It should be understood that this concept, presuming it's fun, is open for any other server to create. :) (9600 posts, woot)

e: Here's some nice floor-breaking sprites you can use (thanks Epica), but if you have the opportunity please make a nicer version of the floor (tile included) crumbling!

To be honest the concept itself doesn't sound like that much fun, but with unique graphics, sounds, and ganis, anything's fun in Graal, mainly because it's a void of creativity at the moment.

Hey Stephen, if the event is completely player-run (even though EM's can probably host it) will they still receive prizes? Part of the reason kingdoms core isn't ever played is the fact that there's no actual reward, like kingdom points. Wondered if you could script in prize-boundaries depending on # of people playing while it's player hosted. There's the obvious risk of the event becoming abused so something along the lines of the same player not being able to start the event more than once in an hour and prizes to start after a minimum of like 5 players participate.

Yea, that would be the ideal solution. Although I want to emphasize that the guideline is made available so players can develop the event.

Hello,
This seems like a very interesting idea and I would be happy to do the management work on the project. I will admit that I do not have any experience writing script in general, let alone in Graal, so I will need bit of assistance until I get the hang of how things work.
As Stephen said, the end result must be done correctly, and should also be impressive, but I would encourage everyone who is interested to get in touch with me and give me an idea of what you might be able to do. A balance between of new and experienced scripter’s and graphics artists will allow the new persons to learn from the experienced, and hopefully allow the experienced persons to focus on the harder tasks while the beginners work on some of the easier settings.
The idea in this outline may not seem overly exciting to some, but it is relatively simple and I think it will make a good place to start for a first project. Once we have a team together and get thru this event, we could tackle something a little more advanced.
Again, if you are interested in being involved in this project, just post a reply here, and or forum PM me.
Thanks

I'll Support.

I hate to discourage the thought of this event (or whatever you may want to call it). But we have plenty of events that we don't use already- I have a feeling this would just be another one on the list eventually.

*prepare for thread derail*
But why not add something that would add actual gameplay when the EMs aren't hosting. Such as new multi-tiered dungeons, quests, party quests, etc. I don't presume they'd be very hard to implement and additions of new items would stimulate the economy and perhaps bring some new (and old) players over to GK. The change of the level caps for guests/trials/classic could be introduced (if it will be at all) at the same time of release aswell. All of this could be one large update that would land us some new regulars.

I agree.

Any server relying on events to stay alive is pretty much a dead server. The whole point of actual gameplay is to keep the server alive on it's own.

If content like this gets added and the player initiates the start, not an events master... it becomes more of an activity than an event.

I'm not saying GK doesn't need questing dungeon content though. Stephen, is it your intent to keep that stuff between you Tig and me?

Stephen (God of Gold Servers)

maybe i think you're taking it too far?

This project is intended to give players a try at developing for GK. This way they can learn some of the challenges that goes into developing on Graal, learn and practice new talents, and just generally work together on a nice project as a team - a community.

I hope that anyone seriously interested won't be distracted by comments that are purely political. :)

think about it, if we get enough small fun updates like these, were left with a nice, content-full server. support anything you see that you enjoy, its pre-approved, and looks fun.

Any people still interested in this?

I don't remember agreeing to this, was I supposed to be making something?

I had mentioned that anyone who took charge of the event would need people to fill individual positions. I had made some suggestions for each position, you were my suggestion for levels.


I think we'd both agree that you're a good suggestion. :P

I'll head up the "good lookin" department. I think we'd all agree that I'm the best suggestion.

this

qft

I dislike this whole concept, there are reasons why players are players, and developers are developers.

You should of had them make a dungeon (re-playable content), not an event.

Conqueror (Style Admin)