It's time for some input.
 

(Read the whole thread before posting, it'll save you time)

I'm going to give everyone a rundown of some things that have happened.

Earlier this year, Sandz expressed interest in the manager position of Delteria. Given that he himself is most of the creative genius of the server, I gave him this position. Nobody is better suited for the job of Delteria's manager, except perhaps Tiamat. Both Sandz and Tiamat have amazingly creative minds and are able to spawn crazy, imaginative ideas that fit extremely well into the server. Unfortunately, Sandz disappeared (again). Tiamat is far too busy to manage a Graal server. This sticks me in a bad position; I am not nearly as creative as Sandz and Tiamat, but I'm sitting in this manager position right now doing absolutely nothing. MysticalDragon had been gone for a while too due to some real-life circumstances, but then he came back. But now, he is gone again.

Here is where everyone else comes in: this server is dead.

What I want to know, is if there is still genuine interest in this project. If there really is enough interest from the players of this dying game to see this server through to completion, then I won't hesitate to hire those who are interested. Of course, I wouldn't mind appointing management staff to manage the project, should anyone want to do it their way... I warn you, however, that I don't know the ins-and-outs of the system NPCs, and it would be an enormous feat to sift through hundreds of lines of code to add to these systems, and that's why I'm hesitant to continue the project any longer.

What I mean by that, is that I'm considering shutting down the project entirely. For good. And will likely do so, if there is no interest. It would be heavily disappointing to do it, but most people have moved on.

However! I would not wish for all of the work on Delteria to go to waste. I would not feel bad at all distributing Delteria's tileset to developers who are interested in using it for their own projects; by contrast, I would feel awful if something admired by many people went unused forever. I hear so much praise for Delteria's tileset everywhere I go, and it's truly unfortunate that our development staff was never able to release anything with it. This tileset is not owned by any one person. Its first incarnation was the work of Mateus, with other developers like Sandz, Cloven, MisconceptioN and more adding to it and editing it.

So, what I really want from everyone is their input on what we should do.

Levels / Graphics yes - everything else I'd start over x-x (really no offence)

Delteria is one of my personal favorite servers. From the original, to the newly designed look.
The visuals are simple beautiful, better than anything i've seen put out on Graal.

So much work went into this over the years, it would be a shame to just watch it disappear.
I can understand how frustrating it must be, having an amazing server, with no one to work on it, or progress it to the point of it being playable.
The thing is, I don't know how much (good) development there is on Graal any more.

The scripters I see working on various projects are okay, at best.

So, I would be very sad to see this project die, and I wish you the best of luck finding staff.

I believe the tileset would be much more beneficial to be in the hands of all level makers. Sounds like it's your call though.

If you're going to terminate the project, at least make your horse graphics/ganis free to use. That way, we can finally replace the god awful default ones with something bloody amazing.

It'd really be a shame to see all the awesome work go to waste. The levels and graphics are nothing short of fantastic.

It's sad to see Delteria in such a position. It's my personal favorite. You can probably release the whole server, every single part of it could be beneficial to the community and Delteria would live on as part of the community and in many servers to come.

On the other hand, if you were to continue working on the project, I am certain there are at least a couple of developers out there that could contribute to it. I'd gladly help out with whatever free time I can contribute to it. It's your call in the end.

hmm idk i wouldnt give up on it ya i gave up on delteria when i was staff due nothing was getting done that needed to be done so i felt like i was wasting my time.
MD i doubt he going to come back lack of lazyness to script alot of systems from scratch hint y he try to use mal systems

I'd definitely be interested in developing - although; I'm a bit of a bastard when it comes to servers who don't have a specific vision or the ability to take on any constructive criticism regarding the server. My support is there if you need it.

Same here. Need some music? Give me a bell at [email protected]
Always happy to help <3 I would really be interested in working for a server that I think the Graal community would severely miss. I know I would. Is what you need is a committed team of professional developers that come online to develop more than play. I would absolutely hate for this server to die and never come back until 4 years or even more when another player would like the opportunity to bring it back again. So, I am putting my hand out to delteria. If you need my help, I am always here.

I like the server and hope it gets continued, but I agree with Ziro... The content should be released to aid other developers, because it is truly fantastic.

God damnit. Delteria is a goldmine of development material, I'd just hate to see all the great work scattered throughout half-assed dev servers. Really is a shame it's gone down the way it has, but I understand. Most of Delteria's population left Graal a long time ago.

I really don't think that any of the content that was constructed on delteria should be released to the public for the exact same reason stated above. I don't want to see such fabulous work and so much effort slammed into a development server that will never take off. It would be a great shame and a great loss to all of that work that many developers have worked on day after day for god knows how long. I want to see delteria back on its own two feet again. Although, that will take some time, effort, commitment and loyalty to the server to get the best possible outcome. I firmly believe that it is possible. I am not saying, however, that it will be a holiday. It will be difficult, tedious and very stressing at times, but the outcome ways out all of that. Don't give up hope quite yet. Keep going!

Give me and my brother a month and it'll be on classic.

I know how you feel. A new Delteria wouldn't even be made for Delterians. It'd be made for the people who already play the game, and maybe new people, too. The unfortunate part of developing a PC Graal server is the playercount. It's around 1:30 PM here in Indiana and the server with the most players (Zodiac) has 95 players on it. Era is next, with 72. Then Unholy Nation has 36. Valikorlia has 10. There just aren't enough people playing PC Graal anymore.

Remember back in 1999 and 2000 when Main Server had 200+ people, constantly? Then Unholy Nation came out a little further along after that and dethroned Classic as the server with the most players. At the same time, though, there were multiple other servers with a hefty sum of players: Enigma, Mithica, Delteria, and more. Many more than today.

When I posted this thread, I don't know if I made it very clear, but my first priority with Delteria's stuff is to finish Delteria. It's not that we don't have many systems planned (because we do), just nobody is coding it. Which brings me to this:

Given that it'd be difficult for anyone to jump on the server and start looking through tons of NPCs, each with tons of code, I completely agree with you. It's a mess. Having to start over the coding entirely would suck, but if there are coders that are ambitious enough to do it, then I would by all means accept their help and show them what they'd be working with.

My take on that, is that you can't make a server wholly in only one other person's vision. It'll end up like every other UC server that never gets off the ground. I'm very open with ideas and criticism. If you send me a forum PM I can get you set up with an RC and show you some of our documentation and ideas.

I've never put the thought into the server for music. Every time I've gone on a server, I've turned off the music. It just didn't fit. But I'm not going to discount anything if you want to help out, too, so if you shoot me a forum PM I'd be glad to give you an RC, too.

I'm not sure if it was poor word choice on your part and I don't mean to offend you either, but nothing on Delteria would really aid other developers. It would pretty much be offering them a different set of tools, more than anything. I only plan to release Delteria's work if there is zero interest, but multiple developers have since jumped on to talk to me about what we have planned.

As for everyone: I'd like to thank you for your input and praise on behalf of all of the developers on Delteria who spent their years of free time making the content we have now.

Go iPhone!