Zenox - a new international classic server (dev)
 

Hello,

I would like to present you my relatively new international classic development server Zenox. At first, I will show you some screenshots because pictures are worth a thousand words ;-)

1
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7...1244488637.png
2
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1...244488941b.png
3
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4...1244489241.png
4
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4...1244491568.png

Here a short description and history of our server:
We have begun this year in january to build up a test platform. Our LATs, GATs and me as scripter made and planned some new stuff. After the test platform wasnt good, we have resetted the project but I made backups of the old stuff like weapon images, scripts (e.g. itemsystem, staffdatabase) and some good levels. Then we made our own inside and outside tilesets and levels with the style of it. Then I have renamed some files and fixed some scripts (to according to the norm to be in classic or hosted tab). We solely use GraalScript 2 as scripting language (we never wont see any GS1 scripting parts on our server)

We also have customized baddies, an itemsystem based on a database (not on files many other servers have - so that it is fast), an own online leveleditor (with that you can create levels online too, select and copy tiles from tileset and level), own hitpoint/weapon system and much more. Our server is secure too so you cant cheat with hits, items and so.

Zenox has some nice ideas in it. For example we dont need parties like many other servers because the expierience every player gets for killing a baddie is calculated automatically (when multiple players attack one and the same baddie), depending on the level difference and damage he made.

Items can be directly dropped by dragging the mouse from the item position in the inventory over the inventory window to the place where you would like to have it (after you release mouse button, it will be dropped).

Also our buy/sell item system is great (you can see it at the moment only in the mine). You can sell items by dragging them on the buy/sell item image (the item image with buy/sell price and available amount under it). To buy simply grab or click the buy/sell item image you would like to buy and a buy item dialog appears (as you can see in screenshot 2).

We are searching for good LAT's (for inside and outside level design) and GAT's (for level images, npcs, heads, bodies, style elements etc.) and Gani-Makers (to gani all our weapon images) at the moment!

If youre good, you maybe can be staff at our server. It doesnt depends on your online time but on your skills like how good you are in e.g. LAT or GAT. So please dont wait and apply in our forum (http://zenox.gediam.de) or PM me Jay (firefighter). To become LAT please send us 1 inside and 1 outside level you made with the offline editor. If you would like to become GAT, please send us 1 weapon image (hmm at the moment we dont really need but to test you it is good) and 2 level style elements (like doors, gates, flags, ...).

Please visit our forum at http://zenox.gediam.de.

All images and ganis should start with zenox_.
Weapons with zenox_weapon_, items with zenox_item_ etc.
Inside levels should start with inside_ (all other levels wich dont start with it, will use the standard tileset (pics1.png)).

Sorry for my bad english but I hope you could understand me.
Hope to see you soon :-)


Jay

Gonna have to change your trees.

why?

They're from Bomy Island.

Also, don't resize your images. A PNG that is not resized is actually much smaller in file-size(thus would download quicker) because screenshots usually contain small color-count because since tend to be made from pixelled images. However, when you resize them everything is blurred and AA'd and the color-count shoots up and you end up with 1mb+ images like the ones you posted.

edit: if you're bothered by posting large images, simply attach them via the attachment center-thing at the bottom when you're posting(in advanced mode). They'll automatically be posted as thumbnails rather than whole images. You can also use the [ attach ]attachment-id(ex: 1234342)[ /attach ] format IN the post itself, to post the attachments as thumbnails inside your post rather than at the end. I've explained this is better detail in a post before, but I can't be bothered to find it.

whoops sorry, i didnt know. lord made...

No big deal, but you shouldn't keep staff on that steal as it could cause you a lot of problems in the future lol. You might find a nice alternative in the 'free tiles' thread where there's a few 'free to use' trees here, here, and here made by Dusty.

Thanks Dusty and Rufus for the nice trees :-)
I have changed the trees. I hope that not more images were stolen by other GATs x.x

The value of pictures in this forum section is worth much more than a thousand words! I've not seen many new server threads with images and things that (I assume) work in a long time - even if there are some issues!. Good luck to you :)

Agreed.


I suggest you get some custom GUI images made, but it looks like your off to a good/decent start.^^

Thanks :D
I know how difficult it is to have an own server. It is nothing you made in a few days. It need much time and patience ;)
I agree too. The only thing you need is a good starting base that we have now. Then nearly everything is realizable ^^

you got me all excited when you said this was a classic server. now i'm disappointed. ):

Cool updates and I hope a new server can finally make it classic soon. One question, what will separate your server from the others? How will people make money? What will keep players busy? Just a thought while your working forward on your server, as these are questions the globals will ask you. GL

Our server seperates at the moment in many points from others.

Here a few examples:

• as I said, our server has its own experience system. For example we dont need any parties (but we have guilds - then you cant get hurted by players of same guild) because experience points are splitted automatically on players that have attacked the same baddie. The exp they get depends on what level difference there is and how much damage was made
• our item system seperate us from others too because instead of only showing images in inventory, we have an alphabetically ordered list of names (with item image and amount)
• we have global buy/sell block class. Not every item is sellable or buyable. To sell item (when sell price is shown) simply drag & drop the item from the inventory (drag it over the inventory window, set amount of dragged item with up/down; full amount: a; nothing: s) onto the buy/sell block of the item of same kind
• Items can be "thrown". They cant only dropped in a defined distance from your position ;-)
• to buy items, simply grab or left-click it. then a GUI will be shown in wich you can see many useful information like description and specifications. You can either enter the amount you would like to buy or the maximum money you would like to give and the amount is then calculated automatically
• we have own nick name layout and multi lined chat messages

At the moment you can only make money by mine. We have a different mining system too because instead of simply pick stones, you must at first pick 6 tiles of the wall of the mine (they really hide) and you will get a mining stone wich you can mine then to get minerals. Some minerals are more seldom than others ;-)

You can either buy items (weapons, shields, armors, tools) directly in shops or make them at your own by collecting e.g. minerals, melt them (you can make alloys of them too like tin+copper=bronze) and smith them in one of the smithies.

Later you will be able to plant e.g. fruit trees, plants, bake, drive own steam engines with waggons on railroads (you need to drop coal in the steam engine then) and much more. You will be able to own shops and manage items (kinds and prices) directly. Also you can own houses and appartments in e.g. hotels.

We have many good ideas. E.g. a player can gets hungry or thirsty too (when he is to hungry or thirsty, he will loose some health). You can stanch hunger by making some food and eat it.
Some stats are dynamic (like intelligence, willpower, luck and dexterity; players can directly modify them by pressing e) others must be trained (like strength, black magic, white magic etc). Among other things experience, strength, black and white magic can be lost if not trained for long time.

So a player will be busy every time :-)

I hope I could give you a good foretaste of what is to come.

Now we have new baddies with pathfinding algorithm and a football game where players can shoot a ball into the opponents gate :-)
Also we got better Item Database (using SQLite) and Movement System.

its look like another zodiac style server , but dont get me wrong, id like to play it if its ever go on the hosted tab. nice stuff

Not classic-style.

Its not zodiac but classic styled ;-)
We changed many things in the last time. For example we are using the default tileset while it is under development, because the other tileset was to near on zodiac's style (could be recolor from gfx) ;-)
You can see many differences when you compare it with other servers. If you for example see the inventory or the baddies, buy-/sell- and also the hitpoint-system.

I would suggest getting a custom gui style for the server to make it more unqiue. The red one doesn't fit the server style.

The problem is, that we havn't enough active staff like GATs at the moment. I'm annoyed about that...
We can't continue this project at the moment with so few active really good staff. I have invested so much time, money and brought the scripts to a level, as you can't see them on any other servers. It is so optimized and player/staff friendly. New good driven staffs are welcome everytime. We would like to continue with making quests so we need some ideas and dialogs. To script the systems/databases is no problem for me.

Also our filesystem structure is clear. All is structurized verry good and the staffs are friendly and good selected.

Indeed it is the most progressed dev server that isn't shown in the Hosted Servers tab at the moment but it will be visible on october the 1st. I hope that it will throw not so much fake staff but real active/experienced staff to us.

Not classic-style.

:confused: Sorry, I don't know what you mean. Can you explain that please?

Classic styled is more like how it is on the server named Classic. Most servers looked somewhat like that before and is known as the classic style.

EDIT:
like this: http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...classic&page=2

Thank you for clearing this. I thought if it is classic or not depends on the world style like if there are guns or swords and such ;)

[idea]
Hey why don't you get off your high horse and actually tell him how he can move towards a classic style instead of acting like an *******.[/idea]

This.

I know that here are many people who are not verry nice. This thread shows me that I can't get help here. Sorry but if it is going on so, I don't know where it will end up...
Not even the global devs don't help (apart from that they are never online)... For what theyre good? For abusing staff rights as many graal kiddies do? Right, I think so. But I won't generalize because there are a few exceptions. But only a few.

Dude, you log on #graaldt one day when Skyld and Ben Rain are the only GDT's online (and currently afk), and the first thing you say is that you want someone to help you with your server.

Me and Rufus tried to tell you that you should come back later when more GDT's are online, and that you should consider applying for Preview status. Instead of listening to anything we said, you just started complaining about the GDT and eventually just left the channel.

Don't expect people to drop everything they have and rush to your help immediately just because you happen to require it.

I suggest you read Ziro's post and think very carefully about the next thing you say about the GDT.

Yes but it's my experience. I have had some of the dev staff on my server a few days ago. I asked them for help but they havn't give me some advice (e.g. referenced to another dev staff that has more time). They only have bothered the server because so many things arn't done. I told them that we urgently need some more good active dev staff to continue the good work.
So my question was for what the global dev staff is good?

Many basic things are done as I said. I really take care about my server but we need people who bring ideas to the server because the most of the content of what the player can do is missing at the moment.
This seems to be the most difficult part.

Yes

Modern, Medieval/Fantasy

I'm not saying he should; I'm saying it's not classic-styled and made me mad.

Cynical. You can, you just need to know how to communicate with them, have an idea that they like, and/or get some of your Graal buddies to help; however, you should never expect to go far with a server without good communication, ideas, and knowledge.
Perhaps if you send them a query on IRC, make sure they're online, and/or don't ask only for work, since some like teaching rather than only giving work, then they'll help. Also, they don't get rights on any server unless a manager, admin, etc. gives them those rights.

As said above, perhaps if you don't ask only for work, since some like teaching rather than only giving work, then they'll help.
The GDT isn't in any way obligated to help a server, nor are they obligated to do a server's work, but they can and usually will, if they are efficient in that development area, give advice or redirect you to other sources (wiki, forums).

Jesus christ Switch, who the hell cares for dumb semantics like that? You can understand what kind of server he is making based on his summary, so what does it actually matter? Nobody has officially defined the term of a "classic server" it's entirely up to your interpretation, and to interpret what a server is about you are more than likely going to read a summary.

Disappointing.

Edit: Boo.

you should insult them twice as much in my opinion (8

Now we have our old Railroad System back (with railroads, steam engine, waggons etc.) :D

You can only ride with the steam engines if they have enough coal (if not, just mine or buy some coal and drop it onto the steam engine) ;)

Also we will implement a variable item property system that items e.g. can get broken etc.

Added Party-GUI, pimped up and fixed some things (e.g. by using a client-side item-cache).

Hate to break it to you, but SQLite is notable for being one of the few SQL implementations that DOES use files. Also, it's not much faster (if at all), and if you're storing all data for every player in a single database, it's going to get very, very slow.

Doubtable, by no fault of your own. Graal just isn't all that secure.

You have a great start all things considered, but you really need to work on some originality, because so far I see none of any note. It's not enough to have a well made server, it needs something new to offer and to be fun to play.

I know that it uses files (at least one for the main database) but it gets loaded into the memory and from there it's verry fast :)
Also it uses many different algorithms to speed it up (like Binary Trees/Binary Search) and I let it work with integer primary keys (not comparing/searching for strings everytime for internals).

I also know that but the point is that the main and important part of the HitPoint and Item System isn't clientside and theyre also some serverside checks for validating all actions that are done clientside. Youre right related to the movement system but there are some tricks in detecting speedhacks and other hacking tools ;)

Thank you. As far as you should know, Zenox is under hard development. The base things are done and we are working on the content (what the player can see/do) now. Some things you already can see and try are nearly finished and I think theyre nice because the most of them you have never seen on other servers in this complexity and user friendly kind before. Also there is a new concept in the organisation of the items, player-/npcshops, vehicles, farming (including milking of cows :) ), baddies, partys, ...

I'm sorry that we are using many graphics from developers that offers their graphics for free. But some of them look really nice and the rest should be replaced in the future because theire place-holders at the moment ;)

If you intend on having a lot of players on your server and keeping the database loaded into memory I would not suggest using one database for every single player. That's a lottta lotta memory usage.

To be honest I see absolutely no benefit to using SQLite over, say, TIniFile, for mudlib storage. Loading/Saving of player data using these methods should only be done on login/logout, a file for every player, and is not slow enough to where using a system like that is necessary.

Also: Unless you figured out some way to better encrypt the packets going to-from the server, say, RSA encryption, then I doubt you're protecting against calling functions/triggers through hacking means :D

Transactions, queries to analyze your data, and a centralized backup of all data seem like big benefits to me.

Hmm I don't think that this is a problem because mostly only integer numbers (for the indices) must be held and the memory is large enough i think :)

I hate storing data in files ...
Sometimes there is no other method to store data but I prefer to store it at least in a Database-NPC (I think also based on files but held in the memory). And storing the data on logout isn't good because the logout-event isn't called e.g. if the graal client crashes or not?

I don't know if it makes sense ;)

But thank you for your attention and tips :D

It's a mud system, what kind of analysis are you gonna be doing? Also backup is pretty easy no matter system you're using. Transactions are useful, of course, but I still don't see SQLite as being worthwhile as a replacement to other methods.

You'd be surprised. Now that Stefan seems to be migrating to new servers, memory may likely not be an issue, but you'd be surprised. If this was a few years ago memory would be a genuine cause for (lots of) concern in a system like this.

Hm, I've never had a problem onPlayerLogout not being called if a client crashes. Ideally I would think it's called when the connection is lost.

Oh, I was joking about the RSA encryption stuff lol There's honestly just very little we as scripters can do to protect from most forms of hacking. That has to be done in the network code, which is Stefans end of things.