Armageddon
 

First off... here
http://armageddon.ekosoftsolutions.co.cc

It's about time a server focused more on the sparrers, pkers, and guilds. Armageddon will be doing that. Other servers in dev are simply copying servers like Era and Zodiac, or trying to merge something towards Zodiac and UN, giving a somewhat boring feel, at least to myself.

That's where Armageddon steps in. It's being developed mostly by a guild, with the guilds ideas as well, so focusing on guilds will be the main priority. It will have easy accessible guild war rooms, a constant war level, guild registration to allow guild access in starting wars, access in their guild house, ect., different style events called champion events, which will be modeled off of tournaments from the renassiance period, and although I cant say it yet, more focus on sparrers as well.

The website will be releasing what the server has as it goes through its development and implements it on the server. There is a section which very briefly describes the dev stages we are doing in the forums on our website as well.

All in all, I've been playing graal since the end of 1999, and watched as guilds slowly died away. It's really sad. Zodiac and Era offer players something different, fun, and somewhat constantly exciting, so we're all hoping that Armageddon will offer players what used to be fun, classic style guilds, sparring, and quests, as well as some new things and features of coarse. The old style is what kept 500+ people on graal, so hopefully the old style can bring that back somewhat.

Anyways, check out the site if you are interested. We are also hiring. Its posted in the PWA hiring section and on our website.

I'm happy to see someone propose a project adopting a classic Graal feel of gameplay, good luck to you.

amen

Totally agree with the 2 above me.

But you have to understand a big part of why there isn't 500+ people on this game any more is because it's a rip off and not worth the money, not because of the game play etc..

Is Bruce Willis in it?

there isn't much to show for the gameplay anymore period, so not only is it a ripoff, but there isn't a solid classic server either

And also, there was a fine player count in 2003, in 2005, even and "ok" one in 2007. Those were all the same, basically as now, but servers kept going towards rp, and shoved off alot of old graal players.

we're hoping to revive that. Just in my own notices, my guild SDE alone has brough back old members, a classic server could do wonders, especially focusing on guilds.

We want a preview! The official October ones blow!

a preview can be ready in the next two-three weeks if things keep going as well as they are.

Looks nice so far. I gave my opinions to Hiro/Cyril/Decus.

Hopefully it goes over well, sounds like it could be quite successful.

Finished one of two war systems. Well, basically it's done.
We have a few more islands to do, a few fix ups here and there, the regular events, special events, and some weapons/items, then the stage 1 development is done, and it will have things for people to do while we finish stage 2!

Hopefully stage 1 will all be completed by mid November.

Well, we've kind of changed our route of how the server was going a bit.

We're going to be focusing on even more classic attributes. We are going to have old weapons revisited, like the hookshot, sword charge, dash, ect ect. Some things will be new, like a new inventory look, new bow, new bombs.

We're going through and making our own turn of things off of Zelda: Link to the past, in a way I guess you could say. Some of our images, sound effects, and music may even resemble the game, but are completely created by us, and have a different twist to them, so no, they are not stolen from anything (in referring to zelda, I just wanted to make this clear). We do have a few placeholder images that will be replaced, just to let people know so we don't hear "OH! THATS from THERE!". Thats why we need a gfx artist so badly.

We are also dedicating an entire gmap to solo players. This will include the classic type quests, alot like Zelda's. Also will have trading, auction houses, events, champion events (will describe that later on after its made), player houses, with a furniture system, ALOT of classic style weapons, and maybe, maybe jobs, although I kind of hate them, it seems a lot of players dont.

The guild stuff will be on its own gmap as well. An entire 200 levels dedicated to guilds for guild houses, fortresses, a few guild events, and maybe a town or two, as well as quests possibly, depending on space. All the guild houses, fortresses, and a few guild events will be able to be taken over completely by a winning guild, and that winning guild will be granted special access to things in the guild house, fortress, ect.

We will also have a small gmap for a constant war zone, called the abyss (rag all you want, we don't really care and yes, we do realize and know for those of you who realize and know the name). It will keep up with the top 5 guilds highest kill numbers, and any guild can go in at any time to try and take the lead, as long as they've registered their guild on the server.

We have extra things too, like:
-a message system that compliments the regular pms, toguilds, and chat, as well as guild messages that pop to members on login or tag set.
-Extremely unique jail and ban system.
-Awsome warper (coming soon). It really is coo.
-A war system that is clean and simple, accessible to any guild memebers in a registered global guild that have "access" set in that guild. Up to 5 wars can go on at once. Has an invite system and all.
-A gui to control guild stuff, as well as view your guild information.
-A lot of things like a shop system, graphics uploader, ect thanks to the graal community. We have no problem utilizing those scripts, thats why theyre there. xD
-Theres more, I'm just tired.

Anyways, check that in my comments and in our hiring thread, we are still hiring. We have alot to do, and our goal is less than 3 months. So any help is appreciated, because we're pretty much a team of 5, and only 3 of those can do levels, nat, or gfx each.

Some screens of stuff.

I see some perspective issues in some of the screenshots, but the server itself looks nice.
The development is quite fast and from what I've seen, I expect everything else I'll see to be decent. Good job and keep going ! :)

I lol'd.

I like the tileset and the way you use it. It has so much more of a Graal feel than anything else I've seen the past few years. The levels definitely need some serious work, though.

I'm interested to see where this project goes.

I wish you the best of luck, for this is a server I would love to see made. There is starting to be a lack in guilds, which in my opinion, is one of the most fun aspects of Graal. You seem to know what the players want, and have some great ideas.

Again, I wish you the best of luck.

Looks very nice, if this project is ever completed I would probably consider downloading the client again and checking the server out.

Looks nice, I'd just say two things:
(1) Make sure all levels look nice, a few are too plain
(2) Staff boots off = how it should stay. Staff boots shouldn't really ever be on imo! Although, it would make it more nostalgic to see staff run around the server!

We are still in dev. xD

Theres going to be some plain ones right now, and some completely finished ones. And the staff boots, its just for old times, we all know they really arnt too necessary.

From what I recall, that tileset(houses, trees and such) weren't allowed to be used on Graal because they're just resized and cleaned up versions of Link to the Past tiles. Not to mention the swamp statue is a rip as well as the horizontal bridge.

Nope, we haven't been told otherwise, and all the images besides the town signs are made from scratch, not editted versions. Recreations of something similiar but not exact, and not modificiations, are allowed.

With that said, what made you conclude that the swamp statue is an assure rip?

It would probably be best to refer to my latest large post on the server in this thread again, where I comment on a few things like this more generally.

That tileset has not been made from scratch. It's copy/pastes of various tilesets, the house/trees of which were made a long time ago and weren't allowed to be used(Stefan deemed them too similar to Zelda, since they are essentially just resized/retouched LttP tiles).

The rips I'm talking about:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ptpdvm.png

Man, I knew there was a reason this server had such a nice Zelda feel to it :(

from what i recall, decus is using those tiles not as apart of the finished tileset. since we're looking for familiarity with a link to the past we are using those tiles as placements which will be replaced once proper GFX has been produced to replicate it in a style of our own with a reference too them (for example taking off the triforce symbol, changing the look of the face on the statue, but keep the size at the same dimensions and border detail the same to a degree)

our questing system is going to be completely separate from the other systems on the server, making them meant for solo run through. we will have some quests have guild/party aspects, where it's the same quest being redone after completing it solo, but the enemies get stronger/more frequent and the loot dropped is better. because of this, we felt it appropriate to adopt a zelda-type style seeing as graal is a zelda-platform. i'm designing the quests to have that type of feel, though it won't be running through a main storyline like with shaded legends - each will be it's own separate story/event, and can be done at any time. that's the only reason we have the tiles we have now, to make sure that the feel is there in the levels

loot, just to be clear, is all in terms of NPCs and "hat" prizes (or GFX such as hats which are independent of the actual body, sword, etc.). all of them are planned to be dropped randomly, taking into account how many times the player has done the quest, and how many players are running the quest

Not sure if you're keeping them, but I don't really like the hearts... lol

i agree with you - other methods of GUI will become available when they have more priority in the creation process

I figured I'd quote myself. Apparently people need to read a bit more closely...

Those screens are newer stuff, and are also placeholders, thought you were referring to some other things, sorry about that.

We're trying to give it a zelda feel, so yes, we are going to have similar things.

I'm not sure "placeholder" gfx justifies directly ripping gfx from another game.

That's doesn't even fit the general definition of what placeholder gfx is supposed to be. It's supposed to be something like "programmer art," something quick and (often) crappy meant to show what's supposed to go there.

I've used placeholder graphics that were rips before(mainly sprites), but I never used them in public screenshots or such. The problem in this case, besides the advertising while still using ripped graphics, even if just placeholders, is most of the tileset are just copy/paste so how can you tell what is placeholder and what's not?

Lol, "most of the tileset" is not just copy/paste images.
And if placeholder is just something quick and crappy to show whats there, then that actually justifies the purpose, we are going to model off of it, so its just showing an idea.

People are always so ready to attack on this game its unreal. It's a server under development, if you want to attack, wait until we say its done, then do so.

I believe being that this has been "stated before" to Dusty, but no one else that works on the playerworld? It should really be a pwa telling us what to do with it in this circumstance as well. If the placeholder needs to go, then we need to be told that, not some random person who has nothing to do with the playerworld at all.

animosity aside, we intend to have all original content when we are finished with the server (and by finished i mean ready for classic tab, who knows if that means we'd be actually completely finished at that point) and it should be noted that GFX can be subjected to changes very easily. our main focus is not on GFX and never has been; when you guys participate in the systems we have created, and run through the quests we have designed, i believe the zelda-esque tiles and screen shots with placeholder GFX will fade into the background (meaning it won't be something you are aware of) of your consideration of whether or not the server is fun: especially if you are in an active guild. the GFX is not important enough to bring down the whole of the server

It doesn't justify it because it's up, live, in a situation where it is copyright infringement. If this was offline, say, if you were making your own game and it was in development where it was not being distributed, than it would be fine.

Actually its not copyright infringement, it has been created from scratch and is not exactly the same, but is still a placeholder because we dont want anything THAT close on our server anyways.

It's a simple, logical thought process...

Besides the fact, I didn't start this thread for debate on the server and its graphics, but on news for the server itself. If you want to start a debate, please start another thread, or I will just ask for this thread to be closed until further notice or something.

Yes it is:

End of story. lol

i'll scribble red lines over the current GFX so it's not identical

Whatever floats your boat, though I can upload a picture of Master Chief with red lines scribbled on him and use it on a server and it'll still be copyright infringement. :)
Honestly, I just don't want you guys to have any kind of trouble with this lol I think it would be nice for a decent server to be made for once. That hasn't happened in many years.

My point was you can achieve a 'Zelda-feel' without resizing Zelda tiles. Create something original and try to accomplish the Zelda feel like that. What you're doing might not technically be copyright infringement, but it's not something GraalOnline condones(I've said it many times, but Stefan does not want any resized Zelda images, no matter if they're not technical rips or whatever). Be creative about it.

we can manage this; the perspective and design is all that was being considered, we'll reach a quality point in the graphics soon enough

Answer (for idiots that can't read):

Read closely, it states in my post ALREADY that we dont want anything that close, we are going to change it. Stated that many times. You guys are just stupid if you didn't see that.

then...
No it's not. lol.

We've locked the server, and it's been locked for over the amount of when i made the newest update in this thread, so it's not being distributed, no one can see it but developers (i feel like i have to spell this out like im talking to a five year old, freakin ridiculous). lol. All you can see is OSL. Idiots once again. Should have checked it before you "talked". Learn to back what you say up.

Did you ever see those images put ON the server? At ALL? Because they havent been on the tileset now for half this discussion. Maybe you should double check yourself before you start bashing a server in development, that is locked where people can only see OSL, and you dont even know if the images you see are actually being used at all. What a ...omg..., seriously, read and think before you post, its a necessity at this point. Add this to the rest of the things I've said about images so far...

And finally, my favorite...

SERIOUSLY. IM NOT JOKING. WE'VE HAD 2 ON IN THE LAST 2 WEEKS, NOTHING WAS SAID SO THINK PEOPLE...THINK...!!

stupid, ridiculous, and pathetic (its graal, audience, they will keep going, even though all they have said amounts to no validity at this point)...

x_x You've just lost my respect.

The players of GraalOnline have no authority to tell you to remove something or edit anything, ignore them.