Graal 2001, GDT, and You
 

I'm sure a lot of you have been wondering for quite some time now multiple things about the Global Development Team, in regards to what exactly we do, what's going on, etc. The answers I have for everyone is this.

It's really hard to say what direction we are exactly going in. We currently have one project that is starting to enter the development phase which will demonstrate functionality of Graal's engine and help introduce new developers to the familiarity of Graal, as well as educate others with new concepts and possibilities that Graal has to offer. While this is what I feel a satisfactory project for now, I still think we could be doing better, obviously.

The real question I have for every one of you guys, the players, developers, managers, etc. is this: "What do you want from us?"

We will be continually updating the Graal Bible as well as work on Skyld's own independent GScript-based wiki as usual, providing support to those who need it, and work to the best of our abilities to satisfy you the best we can. However, we are limited by our team's own imagination, and we haven't gotten much feedback from the players, so it's really hard to say what else we can do. Aside from that, we have a major proposition for you, the players.

I'm interested to hear who still cares about Graal 2001. Skyld approached me earlier today, requesting the GDT to take over development of the project. Now, I know for a fact we can handle it, and would be a perfect task for us, working on an official server. If we were to accept this project, it would certainly put a hamper of what other kinds of support we could provide, since this would be a full-dedication project. But, there are different ways we could work around this.

I'm not going to decide if we should work on the project, YOU guys are. Simple as that.

This raises multiple options. Once we begin development, I don't see any signs of stopping, since this is something YOU guys want. This will also prove our worth to those who criticize the team to show you we are determined to give you what you want.

A couple of ideas that have been floating around include:

-Hiring individual developers to help the GDT with development
-Once development is complete, how should we set up managerial rights?
-Players volunteering to test for bugs, suggestions, improvements
-Perhaps a bi-weekly/monthly blog giving everyone updates on our development progress, keeping you informed

As I said earlier, we want to serve YOU. If you don't want us to continue 2001's development, I don't see it ever coming back. Do you guys still want it? If not, what do you want? If we don't get much feedback from this, then I feel the GDT will remain in it's current dormant-like state, until we think of new projects of our own to work on. As much as I'd love to jump right into 2001 and start developing, I can't do it with just HR alone. We have a team of talented developers who are just as anxious to work on something meaningful and fulfilling as much as we are.

TL;DR Version:

• Skyld offers GDT to Develop 2001
• We want what YOU want us to do
• Up to YOU what we do
• Provide feedback

We will be eagerly awaiting your responses.

-Ben

I fully support the GDT to develop graal2001 I'd even lend some of my own services if needed to the project.

Agreed with Sky. And I'm also willing to help out. Toss me a forum PM, Ben.

That's exactly the feedback I'd hope to see thus far.

I support the idea of working on Graal2001.

Rename it to the Graal Development Team, make it a guild, then call it a day. Nothing has been done yet that warrants the word "global", and focusing on G2k1 isn't going to make it any more valid.

I'd "support" the GDT working on G2k1 if I actually thought they'd stick to it. Pardon my skepticism, but your track record is hardly impressive.

If you actually think you can finish G2k1, go for it. You don't need our permission. Just remember that your work is going to do a lot more good on small projects you can finish rather than on a giant failed one.

I want to see the "Iron Fist" that's going be required to get this done, and assignments.

I dunno if its wise to dedicate all your time to a single server, especially if you will be doing all the work yourselves without having any management in place to take over once you are done.

My suggestion for what the GDT should focus on is servers that already have structured management (i.e. N-Pulse) but who are lacking in committed developers. If you were to put your efforts into one server you might as well just be called the Graal2001 staff. Though I know it isn't an easy task you took the job as GLOBAL development team, you should in turn do your best to help out all servers on Graal and not dedicate your entire efforts into just one server.

Your main priority should be to make sure that any server on the Classic tab is up to par with current standards set by the PWA. Yes this should be the job of management, however, as I already stated some servers are severely lacking committed developers to help them which is exactly where you should come in. You went onto N-Pulse and converted their text map to gmap format, but gave no explanation to them as to how to clean everything up to fit the gmap format. Although a simple explanation to their staff would be helpful, I do think you should go even further into it and actually physically help them sort out their live server.

Your second priority, after making sure Classic servers are up to par is to sort through the under construction servers, discuss with the PWA which servers seem to be the most promising and furthest along development-wise, and help put the fine touches and do some debugging on their systems. This would help more servers be completed, making more servers available to be put onto the Classic tab, and in turn giving players more of a choice of where they can play.

I know it isn't easy, and will be a ton of work for you non-payed volunteers, however, you volunteered to be part of the GDT not the G2k1 staff. While working on Delteria I would have killed for help from some of the Global Developers, however the only time I ever saw them was on Kingdoms, and they never responded to any of my pleas for help. I'm assuming N-Pulse, now in the same place Delteria was years ago, trying to maintain one server and develop another with very limited staff, feels the same kind of neglect I did when I was attempting to run the show with Delt.

If you feel that your time would be better spent dedicating all your time to one single server, building it up from nothing and then transferring managerial rights to somebody after you complete the work, then I guess go ahead, it won't change much for anybody other than the future 2k1 staff that will reap the benefits of your work, but I do feel that you should dedicate your time to fixing broken content on the Classic servers first, and helping close-to-completed Hosted servers second. Building an entire server should be the very last thing on your todo list as there are plenty of servers with well established management who are much closer to completion than 2k1 that could use your help much much more.

so in the end you guys decided you might want to make/recreate a server, which i've said since the start was what you guys ought to be doing

it would have been a lot cooler, in my opinion, if you were making a new server instead of remaking an old one. but, regardless, i would support this idea in general - graal needs some new content, and you guys have a good chance to deliver

# We want what YOU want us to do
# Up to YOU what we do
# Provide feedback

I want YOU to give up while you're ahead!

I support this, but just hope not all concentration of the GDT goes into this, but also into handling server requests for help way better, by actually doing them. In other words, don't make it 100%top priority.

I agree with you Ben, this is a great task for the GDT, and personally I would love to see G2K1 back on the Classic tab.

What version of G2K1 would you guys be working with. Konidas had done a lot and I thought what they had was very promising. Any chance you guys would continue with that?

Good luck!

I support it, as long as it's the completion of Konidias version rather then reviving the old one. And Chris, stop being such a negative ned in every thread, it doesn't make you look cool at all. :(

I perhaps jumped the gun since I wrote about it in a spur-of-the-moment excitement, but it won't be hard to branch out and balance everything. There's a lot of factors to consider in essence and everything takes planning.

I'm currently working on UN and Classic when I have the available time. UN still requires a lot of GS1 Conversion and that's up to Gamerkid, their manager. For the most part I'd say at least half of us if not more have already been working on Classic Playerworlds since we've joined the team, and continue to do so, but they seem to seek little to no of our services.

If the PWA wanted us to this it wouldn't be an issue at all, we'd also need RCs set up on these servers since we don't have Global RC

Would love to do this definitely, but we are approached by another limitation by Observer Mode. We can only do as much as the tools given to us and restrictions that are placed upon us.

Sorry to hear about that happening. Not sure if anyone was specifically "in charge" during that time period where everything was a bit sporadic. This is bound to change in the future and will hopefully no longer have similar issues.

As I said before, we can only do so much. If a server development lead or manager approaches us for help, we'd be glad to assist. So far, this has not happened once to my recollection.


To be honest, ever since I joined the team I was hoping we'd be doing something along the lines of starting an actual Playerworld, and/or fixing 2k1. Unfortunately the opportunities never arose. In the end, we're just trying to deliver what everyone else wants.

Will definitely make room for flexibility, especially with the potential interest in the project/currently high-staffed scripters; we will have plenty of resources.

From what I understand, we are continuing Koni's work, as Skyld has been unable to obtain a backup of the previous work.


Again, perhaps I jumped the gun in the original post, stating that it would be a major time constraint in so many words; in actuality it shouldn't interfere with our other duties. Hell Raven still needs to make a statement about this as well and deliver his thoughts, but so far we seem alright.