Let's Revive this Community!

This place is like a ghost town currently. I think it’s time we did something about it. A lot of people in the past had the idea that “More servers” would bring more players, however I don’t think this is true. I think “Graal Reborn” needs a total overhaul. We need to ditch the bad name we’ve got from former member’s actions, and we need to stop using any code from Official Graal. I personally believe that in order to attract more members, we need to offer something better than Graal. We need to offer a free, open source engine that players can use without the restrictions of Graal management. I’m not talking a custom GServer for use with the Graal client, I’m talking a complete engine of our own. A client, a server, and tools for use with both. I also feel like we need a website overhaul.

My Proposal

I’m looking to form a new “OpenGraal Team”. I’m specifically looking for willing people interested in working with me to build a new, completely open source engine from the ground up. I’m also looking for people interested in designing a modern website for us. If this is something the community wants to get behind, and forum activity does increase; I’ll look to hire an active moderation team, and will actively work to make this place less of a shithole.

What I’m looking for

  • Capable C++ Programmers interested in working with me to build a new engine
  • Capable web developers & artists interested in working on a new website
  • Moderators that will actively moderate these forums

This is very much my “last ditch” attempt at making GR a place we can all enjoy being a part of. If there is enough community interest and involvement in this idea, I will do my greatest effort to turn this community into a better place; however if things continue as they are, I’ll be looking to find someone else to take over the hosting of GR.

If any of you care about the future of this forum/community/game, I highly suggest you consider helping out, and if you do not have the abilities required; offer your support instead. Jatz will not work on this by himself, and it would be entirely unfair for him to do so. This is very likely the last hope for Graal Reborn. I cannot think of anyone who would want to host a dead forum and game, and I’m extremely grateful that Jatz is willing to use his own space and money to host it.

If this doesn’t work, GR will die.

I’m not all that useful, but I can make levels and videos if needed.

We don’t need anyone for a server.

Well we can have everything we need, but if there isn’t an inviting server people aren’t going to stay. I can garantuee if there was a server with enjoyable and re-playable gameplay that allowed both singleplayer and multiplayer experiences it would have helped this community a lot.

I think promotional videos could be useful as well.

We’ll worry about that when we have something to show. Servers have never been the issue, which is why I’ve never bothered to help with the “UNIFY GR BY MAKING A SERVER” campaigns. The issue is with the forums, lack of a website, and what Graal Reborn is.

Graal Reborn is a place for old Graal players to play Graal for free. That’s what it was made for. Old Graal players don’t want to deal with new player shit. New players don’t want to deal with old players telling them to learn everything on their own, get ignored, or get yelled at. Graal Reborn was never meant for wanna-be GraalOnline devs.

The forums and lack of a website are an issue because players have to be part of the forums to play the game whether they want to or not. You have to make a forum account to make an in-game account. The main community should exist in the game not outside of it. Everything a player would need should be available on the website, and the forums should be optional.

Yes, we will need a server unique to Graal Reborn once we have everything ready, but we don’t even know if we will get there at the moment.

Sad things is, I remember classic when it had like 1800 players. Never felt lonely on there, I wish we could attract that kind of playerbase once again.

Then help me make that a reality by getting involved. I’m not going to make the effort on my own.

So another engine? Whatever. Can we at least start small and only focus on the website? Aim high and hit low strategies are good.

Either way I’m down for it.

Can we call this new engine Growl Reborn? That’s how I pronounce Graal anyway, so it would work out great for me.

I can try to take over some of the simpler C++ tasks, got no experience with it and I program buggy but it’s all I can do. (I can website but it’s too big of a project). As a depressive person who has a hard time even taking care of himself, I can’t promise much either. But I’d feel bad not offering to do anything.

But why are you ditching what was previously done? The Imperim engine?

Yeah how are you going to distribute the work? I’ve made stuff in C++, but I have absolutely zero experience in game design or any C++ gui front ends. So unless you give tasks like “make a class/functions that do the following: …” I would be useless.

As I’ve offered before, I will help with what I can on a website/design basis. Throw me ideas and I’ll try and manifest them.

Can you work with html5?

Anyone who knows html can html5. What is dubbed html5 over the internet is really just a new workflow including new javascript techniques made possible by the new html tags and the such.

What existed before html5 seems enough for a website such as ours.

No. Our website needs to be badass and functional. That means super sweet forms for account creation, server registration, and probably one other thing I’m forgetting. If we can make the site look legit we might be able to remove some of the taboo regarding GR.

All things that were possible before html5. Although these require some PHP and SQL, which aren’t as easy as just html, css and javascript. Personally, I can’t manage these… worrying about all the possible security holes I could not know about makes me crazy.

A nice thing html5 can do that’d be cool would be things that animate as you scroll.

___Merged doublepost__________________

Plus, I think these things would be overdoing the website. Maybe server stats once things get lively enough would be a good thing but the rest I think should be embedded into the engine.

Well sounds like 2ndwolf volunteered for website duty.

All I actually know anything about is building web applications, so I’m willing to take a stab at that. 2ndwolf can have free reign with the front end stuff, I’ll just use Twitter Bootstrap as a placeholder. (@2ndwolf If you’re interested in web development you might check out http://www.theodinproject.com/courses)

I might be able to contribute to the engine or something down the road, but I won’t be able to do too much right away. If you keep the source up to date on GitHub, I’ll actually read through it and hack around with it until I know what I’m doing well enough to actually contribute. (I’m not sure but http://resrc.io/list/10/list-of-free-programming-books/ might have some decent resources for C++ for anybody that doesn’t have books lying around.)

Hop to it.