Playerworlds vs Xtremeworlds?
 

Hi all,

I've seen mentions in a few places on the internet of Playerworlds being 'defunct' or declining due to Xtremeworlds being a more advanced version of the same thing... but then I also hear people complaining about Xtremeworlds being very limited, whereas Playerworlds seems very flexible and modifiable (and looking at these boards and the various Playerworlds games, things actually feel fairly active!).

I tried searching these forums for opinions on Xtremeworlds and didn't come up with anything. Could someone explain the key differences between the two? Clearly there are avid users of both... do they each have their own strengths and weaknesses?

Never heard of these xtremeworlds

It's forked from the Mirage code-base, same as Playerworlds is: http://mmorpgmaker.org/

Some MMOs originally developed for PlayerWorlds moved over to the Xtremeworlds code base, such as Jerrath Online, moved over to Xtremeworlds over time.

It seems to be reasonably well suited to the sort of 'default' Graal gameplay, though I'm not sure if it's quite as extensible?

This has nothing to do with Graal, at all. The "playerworlds" stuff you mentioned doesn't seem to have anything to do with it either. No idea what you're thinking, but Graal is its own game; closed source and not based on anything else. "Playerworlds" is just the term for your very own world/server here on Graal.

Really now!

So Jerrath Online was never a Graal playerworld, and Graal wasn't based off of the Mirage code-base?


If so, that's amazingly confusing (two separate MMO creation systems both called 'playerworlds'), but good to know. :)

Before you start to develop here I will tell you this. Any content you make/use/upload to a server is owned by GraalOnline. So any content that you manufacture and upload is no longer yours and you may never use it for any other game ever. Unless you copyright your material (but I think Graal has then a right to remove it). You may want to look into the actual rules I am not quite certain if there are ways around it.

never heard of that

If you read the terms and conditions and all that, it belongs to Stefan and Unixmad.

This is how they get away with uploading content from all servers to the iPhone and Facebook servers. Its on Graal, they own it. Simple as that.

As for OP: Graal is a game, but it is also a development platform. You are developing a server for this game, using the tools provided.
So, if you plan on making an independent MMO, Graal would not be the platform for you.
Since with Graal, you must go through their client, then connect to your server.

Well actually...there was a "Playerworlds" system, which Graal bought up. I remember because I was looking for it one time and it said something to the effect of, "Playerworlds has been bought by Cyberjours, here's the link" and that's how I got started here. It was rather neat, you did all the editing in game. You could specify each tile as ground, foreground, animated, or drawn above. Then you could tell it if you wanted the tile to block the player or to act as a "shop counter" so that you could talk to NPC's across from it.

Uhm, what?

I've read the terms and conditions, and I'm actually... counting on that, almost?

(Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's ever been a case of Stefan and Unixmad stepping in and taking control of a server away from someone who was actively maintaining it, right?)

I have my own career. I'm financially solvent. The design I'm aiming for isn't particularly well-suited to making money. If I were working totally independently, figuring out all the 'hows' of integrating a payment system and an account management system would be massive pains-in-the-ass that would distract me from doing design work.

If I come up with something good, then Stefan and Unixmad have an incentive to get it onto iPhone and Facebook, get people seeing my work... and those additional eyeballs would be significantly more valuable to me than being able to somehow process my own subscription fees (and suffer through the hassles of figuring out my own hosting).

Thank god someone else thinks this way. <3

It's happened quite often. Once your server is Classic, it's no longer yours, although nobody will take it from you unless you stop working on it or break the playerworld rules too often.

What chris means to say is that if you get a server to classic status and it becomes popular, you must continue to keep it updated occasionally, or at least make sure it doesn't die. Or else, PWA or the likes of stefan and unixmad may reserve the right to replace you with someone more willing to keep the server in good shape.

Gotcha. Has anyone ever declined the option of letting their server become 'classic'?

And has anyone been replaced simply because Stefan didn't like their design choices, rather than because they totally disappeared?

No, you'd have to be insane to decline 'classic' status.

Classic status == no more server payments.

Stefan isn't all that involved at the playerworld level, unless you like to crash your server.

Unless ofcourse you'd simply prefer to wait until your server is more complete and self sustaining, as opposed to having it on the list for the sake of the server being on the list, albeit much harder to deny when costs are involved.

To the OP, if you're looking to emulate Zelda, the server "Classic" is arguably the closest server to it on Graal, believe it or not Graal Online began as Zelda Online and Classic is the latest version of that same original server.
Paying a visit may possibly answer some of your questions regarding NPC interaction and feasibility.

Will do.

I think at this point, I've got satisfactory answers to the basic things I'm wondering about, and I just need to spend a while reading up on the scripting language.

(And just to be clear, what I'm ripping off from Zelda is more the combat than the overall experience. Which is great, since Graal provides that as a more-or-less default!)

I still am convinced that intellectual property rights are above the TOS and any agreement Graal has. Plus, there hasn't been a precedent of anyone challenging something like that in court.

Well, my wife's a lawyer... ;) But frankly, I couldn't foresee it ever becoming an issue. To charge for your creation, you'd have to port it off of Graal to another system entirely (and there aren't any equally accessible stand-alone systems around, Graal seems significantly more stable and full-featured than Eclipse Origins or NetGore for example)... and if you're going to all that trouble, surely you could be bothered to change the names and settings around a bit? :)

It sounds like Stefan's a capable and good-natured steward of Graal, which is more than good enough for me.

The PWA has removed managers because of the direction they wanted to take the server, yes. You really won't need to worry about it though, as long as you keep doing your job if your server becomes classic.

I agree completely.

It's your choice, when and if, you apply to become hosted (going hosted means you're 'uc' playerworld is basically done and entering beta to work out the bugs and get seen by more player) and when you think you're done with hosted you continue on to apply for classic status. Not sure if you can apply for gold, but I wouldn't recommend it anyways, seeing as that would limit the number of players that could play.

Don't believe anyone has ever been removed for anything other than being abusive or extremely unactive. And that's on classic servers only. You really shouldn't worry about your playerworld being messed with by anyone, including the pwa and stefan lol. You'll likely never even see them unless you request too.

We don't commonly remove managers anymore unless they go inactive and cannot be contacted. Any manager is given ample amounts of warnings about their inactivity before any action is taken, and usually it's not removal, we'll just request that the manager adds a "co-manager" to help keep the server running smoothly. What you're talking about was more in the past.

They have been. Look at GC, who was removed as Era manager while TSA was head of the Playerworld Administration because he hired staff members the PWA didn't like (to be fair, it was his first day as manager, so I think they would have more restraint in removing a long-term manager).

As Tig said, though, the PWA seems a lot less likely to interfere than they were before. Again, I don't suspect anybody will have issues unless they go inactive.

And so UN shall perish.

I wonder how many warnings Crono has...

Exactly what I was thinking. Tig and the rest of the PWA need to focus on important issues and solve them instead of worrying about trivial player bans.

He's still manager?

How did Master Storm slip past the inactivity rule for so long?

Since when is Crono UN's manager?

Absolut_Crono, not *Crono.

Oh, that makes sense.

I wonder if it's possible to make a graal.exe that auto connects to your server, hmmmmmmmm.

Ironic, Tig was the same individual who persisted that GC be removed.

Its simple with the current PWAs (Tig),
As long as they (Tig) like you, you can do no wrong.
If they (Tig) don't like you, doesn't take much but breathing the wrong way.

So like everything else,
Its a lot of politics. ::rollseyes::

Oh, well, that changes everything.

These xtremeworlds sure sound extreme, although I don't really understand how you expect not to be flamed by posting all of this on Graal forums.

One thing to note is that server costs aren't that bad for a dev server, it's just the fact that most of them don't get a playercount above 6 thus nobody really donates. At least that's what happened to Testbed...(?)

Testbed was not a regular server. I donated the first time Aeko was looking for donations for Testbed, but haven't since because I don't want to directly support Stefan forcing players to pay to provide resources he should be providing the community. I suspect many other people feel the same way.

I strongly agree. It wouldn't damage or harm anything to bring testbed back, but somebody would have to be given rights to manage it because *Stefan is too busy to manage testbed.

Interesting find, thank you OP. The concept of hosting a playerworld on hardware other than Graal's has always intrigued me.