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!

He wants to revive it, not turn it into a money making scheme.

iPhone/Facebook, for me, is really kind of a last resort. I know there are tons of players on iPhone servers, but I just have this attachment to PC Graal. I'd like to do it here first, if I can.

Delteria was all about its community though, no? Seems silly to try and draw in players from (the dwindling playercounts of) existing servers instead of a potential mass of new players.

Which nobody would play on facebook because it hasn't succeeded on PC yet see? One step at a time my friend <3

1340 on the server I'm playing on now... 203 (combined) on servers-he'd-potentially-be-taking-players from online now. Do the math wise guy.

A server needs to succeed on PC Graal before anyone will play it on Facebook? ... what?

That's entirely untrue. The Facebook and iPhone servers have a much larger audience than the PC servers do.
You cannot associate success on the PC client with success on the iphone/facebook client, because if Classic iPhone were only released to the PC, and never to the iphone, then it wouldn't have been successful either. What makes Classic iPhone successful is the fact that it's on the iPhone and Facebook. Classic iPhone doesn't offer anything that Unholy Nation doesn't already offer and Unholy Nation isn't pulling in 1600 players a day.

I'm not pushing the idea of an iPhone server away entirely. If we could get a stable release going here for the PC first, I'd really prefer to do that. Otherwise, starting with an iPhone server and porting the work over to the PC isn't a bad idea, either.

I know an iPhone server has to be scripted extremely efficiently, and there are only very few developers at all that I know of who can code that way, and they're busy with other projects.

But I'm not flat-out saying "no" to an iPhone server, not by any means. I like the idea. I'll have to read a lot more about them before I get involved with it.

My point is, the only 2 servers up on Facebook are Era iPhone and Classic iPhone.
Era PC and Classic PC are very successful servers themselves and have been for a long time. If somebody where to put a server I have never heard of before onto Facebook, I would choose the more well known servers over the new, unknown one. That is my point, but I do see what you are both saying.

no <3

Wait facebook has era now too? -- lol the facebook sever of classic, even though new, only draws in about 160-200 plays tops a day. Most of them are v.i.p. members too, so they play both. Has facebook been successful yet?

Sad to hear the turn of events, though completely understood.

Whatever the decision, I am glad to have contributed to this in the first place and will be glad to continue doing so in what ways I can.

this thread made me depressed :[.

sad to see delt come to this

I'll just say what's right and not popular; drop the project, offer the content to the community.

Paid the server a visit, it looks nice but nothing spectacular, there's no theme or cohesive concept to grasp.

Unfortunately, we don't all abandon our projects. It has massive potential and all we need to do is bring it out. ^_^

^_^



..really?

Yes. Otherwise I wouldn't have written it.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to MattKan for all the rep he has given me. And also, because I love him because he is a kittykat <3

You know you're best friends when you're able to negative rep each other 100% of the time and still get thanked for it <3

This may seem like another unpopular thing to say, but we can talk about potential as much as we want, to actually fulfil it and make that elusive breakthrough in this day and age of PC Graal is always either going to take something miraculous or it isn't going to happen at all.

Granted, Delteria does have a mouth watering set of graphics in dire need of a coder to bring to life, and should be able to showcase itself above the many rented playerworlds seeking such help, but lets face it... what talented/experienced/reliable coders are active and not already occupied by a project?
Unfortunately I think it's a case of either hoping somebody falls from the sky, or taking a big gamble on people who aren't proven to the extent such a project with good visual foundations may deserve. Inwhich case simply throwing numbers at an older project is something that is yet to generate an end product.

On the other hand, as much as other projects may benefit from Delteria's resources being distributed, it simply wouldn't be Delteria anymore, I don't think any remaining people with hope for the server would appreciate it as a form of nebulous 'spirit'.

In conclusion I'd say it's a matter of weighing up whether you'd prefer to sacrifice the potential quality of the end product against the sacrifice of identity, ofcourse many will argue that an end product is better than no end product, but can that still be sufficient for success?

Well said Thor.

With the currently available (or just visible) resources most people overlook the incredible amount of work and time is needed to create anything substantial around here. When starting out, or if you're no longer on the classic list, 90% of the potential developers will most likely expect it to go nowhere (the last time anything hit the classic list without getting removed after a month of being abondaned was Zodiac. This was FOUR years ago.) - there may be alot of improvements behind the scenes on that server, the visuals are still terrible.

So Alex, in your current position I think the work that's necessary for you to do far exceeds that of what a sane human being would devote their time to. And in the end, will unlikely benefit yourself as much as other activites would apart from perhaps a shortlived e-fame on a 2D online game.

I don't want to sound like a pessimistic jerk, by all means, if you want to - make it happen. Anything is possible.

I already know that there's very little benefit to me, but I don't care about that. When I started playing Graal in 1999, the feeling of the game was magical, and if I could at least make one newbie have the same feelings I had when I started out, then I will have done my job. This server isn't about me; it's about everyone. Why else would I offer up the tileset to aspiring level makers should the project ultimately fail?

The thing is, since posting this thread, I've been given a plethora of ideas by a good deal of developers. Yes, I'll still give out the tileset for use if we fail, but as it stands now, I have a couple of options for directing the server that I didn't have before.

I know better than most people about the development talent in existence on Graal. I've talked about it before, even. I plan to release some of the documentation on the server to see if it might interest other people into jumping on board.

I wouldn't say that it's an unpopular thing to say. It's completely true. There are far too few coders to go around on Graal, and many that I've spoken to are extremely busy with other projects, but a couple have offered their assistance.

A big problem that Delteria has always faced is management that quite literally disappears. SP Agent, MisconceptioN, Sandz, and more; they stop showing up, and we end up losing a lot of progress because of it. The blame isn't solely on any one person, though. I'm going to try to direct the project as best I can now, I don't have any priorities outside of work anymore, since I just finished up with school in the spring.

Waiting longer on this project isn't really a big deal -- it's been in development since 2005. So, what I mean, is that I'm not going to rush the development on it. That stresses out developers and just makes a terrible environment for everyone involved. But like I said before, I don't want a server made only in my own image, so I'm still trying to get input from other people involving themselves with the project. Delteria isn't Delteria for Delterians anymore. The new server is going to be for newbies and older players alike, without the elitist community that pushed others away.

I can help too.