bye
hi. welcome to hell
do you want to build a flame war?
it doesnt have to be a flame war
I think you mean spambot.
Also what’s up? Anything new? I keep managing to forget about you guys, but this time I wanted to hop in and check on stuff since I can’t remember when I was last here
People are just working slowly on their engines (myself include). Some day there’ll be something to show for it, but not just yet.
tricxta, Codr and rou still working on “Graal-likes”. (couldn’t find Codr’s thread, sorry).
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Chicken is working on a text adventure engine.
I’m working on a website development tool.
Antago whom I considered to be a Graal legend turns out to have become a delusional underachiever.
lmao
ok i thought I was hallucinating because of dehydration but codr’s user title is really cool
Well that sounds livelier than when I last came through… I think.
I’m a delusional underachiever. Antago is Yen??? It may be more likely than you think.
obviously kidding pls don’t start comparing me to that lunatic, i have my own very special lunatic powers that are better than his
Engines are great and all and I really like the work people are doing. There is some really great stuff coming along nicely.
That being said you can make new engines with all the features in the world until the cows come home and it won’t matter unless you can get lots of content in it such as a nice world/map, quests, npcs, interactivity, a playerbase/players to play it and other general fun stuff that makes successful games successful.
If it were me, I would replicate Graal’s model that is of building upon player made content. This time around, contributors could be paid certain (small) amounts of money proportionally to the size of their contribution and game’s income.
(More added value = better paid contributor).
I don’t know where money could come from though… displaying ads in message boxes such as what happened in the old days may be intrusive.
Maybe a continual fund, ever existent crowdfunding that has specific rules as to how the fund will be used: 20% employees paid, 5% profit for the company, 10% maintenance, 65% royalties paid to contributors following VERY strict and fair rules so as not to be criticized (To make it look and be as fair as possible, an awful lot of metrics should be used such as how many times a contributor’s npcw is fired, how many users have it, how long it is selected as the current npcw, player opinion on the npcws (star rating); how many visits player made levels have… That could create the onset of contributor guilds… I believe it could be a good thing for good contributors and guilds could have a rating system solely meant for non members that would determine how much weight their metrics have in the end. There would need to be a legalese paragraph about dismantling guilds that pay non members for good ratings and possibility of a ban for the non abiding players) There would be unofficial guilds of course but again that should be punished or something.
Lookie, a whole system has spruced up in my mind just now.
Publish a kickstarter and start paying players once it attains a certain amount. Keep paying contributors every month. Older content gradually have less weight on the balance.
Personally I can’t stomach the old editor. It’s dated, and sometimes breaks for no discernable reason. That, and how stale the game itself feels, doesn’t really encourage me to try anything. Also if it were using something like GS2, I’d probably be encouraged to learn it because I’ve seen some of the cool stuff you can get away with in it. So, I’d say, it doesn’t matter how many ideas I have for maps, quests, npcs, events, etc, the editor itself is a hassle to use to the point where I just say “screw it” and turn on anime instead.
That’s just my opinion though.
Did anyone ever use the message of the day HTML to run ads? I feel like this was a missed opportunity, since that thing runs every time you enter the playerworld.
Also I really don’t have a great opinion of kickstarters.
So better editors would bring you to develop stuff? I’ve never thought about it from that angle.
I don’t recall anyone doing that… but I do remember Cyberjoueur trying to sell Graal as a way to make your business known, advertising that scripts could open webpages.
I don’t have a good opinion of Kickstarters either. But this time it would be to advertise a product that’s already finished and only needs a little funding to entice developer wannabes. Kickstarter might not be the right channel, any crowdfunding that could popularise the product and have a deadline as to when it’s going to be launched would be ok.
I know someone might say that it’s just an excuse that I need to drop, but I feel like there are so many things that the editor and server software should already handle. I realize this is probably a biased view, considering Reborn’s software is practically jailbroken and missing a lot of features from not being able to backwards engineer certain things. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but things like the Graal (Gani) Shop should be integrated into the editor, not as a separate executable. The way the game handles things like BMPs, GIFs, and PNGs, are all very outdated. Also, having to use a NPC every time I want to add a “layer” over something feels wrong, from a design perspective. I think multiple arrays of tiles should be stacked on top of each other to make a map. Changing tilesets should be easier, too; though I don’t exactly know the solution to that, since putting it in each .nw would probably be an unnecessary bloat, but putting it as a weapon on a character definitely feels wrong. It should really just be a push of a button. There are probably numerous problems that I would probably sound stupid talking about, due to my lack of knowledge in programming, so I wont go into that.
Literally can’t launch the editor because of some weird compatability issue with my 64bit system, but here’s a quick mockup on a right click menu that should be a thing but isn’t.
And yes I understand right click is used to duplicate, as far as I remember, but that should probably be moved to ALT+Right Click. I may also be remembering wrong, since it’s been years since I’ve actually used the editor extensively, but I think there’s a distinct lack of shortcuts for stuff like creating an NPC at the mouse location, creating a link in general. Oh and that gives me another idea, when creating a link, there should be a “mini” editor inside the link prompt, allowing you to select the second location for the link, but keeping the default (blank) to playerx/playery. I dunno if that thought is coherent to you guys.
As for “solving” Graal’s population issue, I think becoming a hit on Steam would really help. However, that just brings up the point that you’d be competing with other indie-types like Terraria. Planning “packages” of content like most MMOs these days do would also go a long way. That seems to be the way games are going these days. Though, I’m not really an expert.
edit 2 million and a half: There should also probably be some sort of database you can access for the predefined NPCs section, with player created tools for making stuff in the editor. Running scripts inside the editor to do functions and stuff would be neat, like being able to place down cliffs and letting the program itself add the tops in a smooth way. I dunno, just a thought. Another thing that comes to mind is maybe the editor could have a mini NPC server inside it to help you simulate certain functions within the editor, to assist with larger systems without having to do online tests with a testbed.
Almost all of this is completely unfeasible without rewriting the editor, which nobody is going to do. I agree that it’s terribly lacking, but I’m sure all of the projects going on (should any even get to a point of usability) won’t be so lackluster.
Well I don’t think I needed anyone to tell me it would need to be rewritten. Heck, half the things I suggested would require a rewriting of the game itself. The only reason I brought it up was because those are often the things I start thinking about while using the editor, shortly before wondering what the heck I’m doing. I have faith that the final product of these projects will be at least worth some of my time. I dunno what it is about editors but I love learning what they do and messing around with tile compositions. I’d probably use anything you guys pumped out just for kicks.
That’s a great idea… linking levels is painful right now, that would really help the process.
You could always continue someone elses work if you want an editor XD https://github.com/fry/graal-gonstruct or use my player world I posted if you just want to script or make quests. https://graal.in/forum/graal-reborn-development/development/levels/185057-nostalgia-i-dunno/page10
graal sucks
Arent you shooting for PWA
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