A little discussion/suggestion about Graal Reborn

I didn’t take it as such, nor could I be offended by any insults toward Graal.

I’m surprised he even knows enough of 2D Zelda graphics to make a comparison. Do the newest 3DS games look that similar still?

This is what I was getting at when I said “depending on how this is approached”. I’m unfortunately not going to take the “already done” route because I hate the limitations they pose. Someone else can, though!

Oh, and…

I really think Rou has more done than I do. He’s not unwilling to use existing libraries for things like I am.

I’d probably be able to provide some sort of assistance with something like this. That’s the reason I’ve not been able to make my own engine, it just takes waaaay too long for one person to, in most cases reinvent the wheel with most of it. I’ve grown accustomed to using Unity where I can usually find a decent framework on the asset to start with then go in and change things as needed, and try to splice certain pieces together.

I give credit to people here building a game/engine from scratch. It’s a long process even with a team effort. I can’t keep the motivation and attention to even do it by myself in Unity… :[

I played a hand in raising him old-school, but more and more being influenced by his friends who thinks only the newest most 4k graphics games are the coolest, and everything else is… x.x

If I had the attention and motivation (and overall knowledge) to do it all from scratch I’d have a great game engine by now. That’s why I splice what I can together and hope it works, but more times than not I run into too many bugs. I long for the freedom of building my own engine… >.<

I envy you in that regard, Codr

Anyone intelligent enough to develop a new client with functionality equivalent to graal would also be savy enough to decouple it from graal as far as to avoid legal issues… you need not worry.

If you knew how much time and frustration was taken to accrue such knowledge, you might feel differently.

I would agree with codr, if you remember the past reborn projects built upon existing software infrastructure, you’ll probably notice a trend of people quitting due to the frustration of limitations. 69ers npc server being one of the noteable ones.

but if we modernize the engine there will be interest. look at cuphead, terraria, stardew valley, all great new indie games with an old feel that have done extremely well.

are you referring to limitations experienced with the graal client?

Check out Starbound, it’s a Terraria-like game with space travel infinite worlds and star systems, multiple races, all kinds of sand-boxiness.

I personally love how alot of indie games are taking a retro look with a mix of retro and modern systems and gameplay.

In game design my specialty is pixel art, lately I’ve been checking out voxel art, which isn’t necessarily better than pixel, but has a more modern style to it.

Voxels are something I’d like to see be able to use in an engine, it’s easier and faster to develop graphics in my opinion. I’ve made a few jRPG type characters using basic shapes and it only took 30 minutes at the most after scratching out an outline. Alot of mobile games tend to use this style as well.

It all goes back to what art style you want to go with, but having options helps keep variety especially in something like a multi-server game like graal.

(I promise I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your own engine xD just providing ideas which if done would actually be more work on the programmers… That’s why I’m trying to learn myself so I could try my hand at creating my “dream” engine lol)

We also need to agree on a common ground.
Is the game engine going to be open source? What components it is going to require? Are we gonna use a scripting programming language available already (Lua, Python, etc) or create our very own?

Which components it is going to require?
Of course a client and a server, but are we gonna follow the same Graal pattern creating a RC client and a NPC Server? I believe the later 2 are not needed with a modern architecture.

In which language and technology stack are we going to develop the client and server? Which platforms are we going to support ? PC (Linux, Windows, Mac OS), Mobile (Android, iOS), Game Consoles (Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4) ?

There are many things that need to be discussed such as the graphic library (opengl, directx, vulkan?), authorization and authentication system (OAuth 2 ? ), data transfer mechanism between client and server (web sockets? socket.io ?, raw sockets? ). Json, Protocol buffers?

What I mean with this post, is that before any of us start programming, is to create maybe a whitepaper specifying what is our game engine going to do (what it will be and what it won’t be), the protocols it is going to follow, and to determine an architecture.

Who is going to regulate the community? Who decides what gets included or not in the engine?
Is there going to be any funding for this? I’m a software engineer and like Graal, but I still have bills, and I’m sure many (if not all) of the software developers here are in the same situation.
We can attempt to build something, but I highly doubt that we can succesfully build a product such as this one with the free time of kind developers.

I want to help as much as possible. If everyone could agree on the core principals of what they want this game/engine to do and become I’ll gladly devote most of my time towards attempting a funding campaign and a spiffy presentation. I believe the talent to get this going is already in the dev staff, but instead of just working on personal projects, everyone, like Eroz said, needs to sit down and establish a core game plan. I could also help with managing the community and work on advertisement portion.

Also, at some point in the process there should be a discussion on a (reasonable) payment method, such as going monthly subscription-based accounts/yearly server. If you’re going to go through all the trouble to develop something on this scale, and if done right, it’d probably help keep motivation for finishing it high.

The reason I believe everyone made such a big deal over graal going subscription-based is because it was initially free-to-play, and everyone got used to it, then changed suddenly with a weird and somewhat forceful method. It just created a bad look for the company, along with all the drama going on with it.

How many programmers do we actually have here? I’m sure most of us prefer an opensource project, but i know a few people here developing their own engines would like to use it in a commercial environment. Would those devs be on board and willing to help if they were granted the ability to use the end product however they choose?

I can’t possibly be bothered to read the entire thread, so forgive me if this is redundant, but I can only see it one way:

If you have ideas, and the means to make them a reality, do it. Help people out in any way you can.
If you have ideas, and no means, unless you’re able to obtain those means, there’s really nothing to talk about. Cheer people on, I guess? I’m part of this latter group, by the way.

At the end of the day, asking for these things is very much asking the world of those who are capable of doing these things. It’s not a simple task to give Graal Reborn a facelift. I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve tried to instigate this same sort of project many times. Since I have really no abilities, I never really realized how rude it was to ask for this kind of thing. I can’t really put that the right way but I guess those are my two cents on the matter.

My intentions on starting this post was just to get a discussion going about the possibilities. Simply giving Graal a makeover wouldn’t even suffice with what I suggested. I understand how large a task and how long it would take even with a fully equipped team it would be. I just wanted to see where others stood on the issue. I apologize if I offended anyone, as this was simply just a hypothetical discussion, but it’d still be cool :munch:

I’m not mad, I’m just trying to be real with you. As I said, I really can’t be bothered to read the thread, so I have no idea about anything else besides what you wrote in the OP, so I’m only responding to that part of the thread. Plus it’s the only real way I can say sorry to the community for some of the shit I’ve done in the past. I’ve been here a very long time, after all.

Eh, I wouldn’t push anyone to do this, everyones got their own busy lives going on. This has been a very interesting conversation and I’ve learned more about what’s going on and people’s thoughts on the community. There was already some work being done towards shifting to a non-Graal route, early work at that, but I hope it may one day see serious progress. Until then, I’ll continue to do my part and try to contribute a decent server, and encourage potential new members to do the same with what we do have. I’d be happy just seeing Graal Reborn gain a little more activity right now.

I don’t see a problem with making requests and suggestions. I can’t speak for everyone, but interest in general is what makes me want to work on my project. If I were just doing it for myself, I’d probably not bother.

I’m on my phone, so fuck trying to add a quote. But Joey, personally, I’m not interested in working on an open source project. I want my time investment to have money-making potential and to be exclusive. Call that selfish or whatever, but it is a massive time investment.

that’s why i added that last part. we could code it with that in mind, and not use any software that has restricting licenses.

Right, but who gets the revenue at that point? And the code would still have been distributed. Not what I had in mind.

well, whoever is on the team would retain full control from any commercial projects they develop with it. free/personal use will always remain free, and on the off-chance we get approached by someone else who would like to use our project - we just divide up the money amongst the team.

code being distributed, yea. looks good on the resume though haha

This has potential to produce a stable income, again with setting up payment methods/subscriptions. I just suggest keeping it simple though, no pay2win options, a reasonable monthly subscription/yearly subscription for accounts and servers similar to graal. That needs to be established before releasing the 1.00 version though.

A good example is Final Fantasy 14. In the beginning it was free to play during beta, and the players were well informed on the plans to go pay2play after beta. It’s thrived since then just fine.

Just make sure those plans are out there for the players to notice up front, Graal didn’t do this good enough, and it hurt its reputation. It recovered and for it to be as old as it is, as well as moving into the ever-popular mobile space, it’s still thriving.

Graal provides plenty of lessons learned on what to do, and what to avoid, and how to go about the public relations process.