Graal is spiraling downwards..
 

.. and has been for a while now. The game's potential has always been huge, but has never been put to good use. Nowadays, the people who can do anything about this don't even seem to care anymore. There are still some enthusiastic developers around, but I believe what they're doing is mostly a waste of time. At least the forum is still being moderated like a children's playground, eh?

Why does nobody seem to give two shits about this madness?

Indeed.

There are many possible reasons for this, but the standard of communication has always been so poor that it limits one to speculation mostly.

PC servers may never reach anywhere near the profitability and playercounts of the mobile servers, but the life-blood of the mobile servers are mostly developers who began on PC Graal, and ofcourse mobile Graal would not exist had it not been for countless developers here persevering in the hope that things will one day improve.

Although they may not realise it, Graal administration has turned its back on the development community rather than re-pay it.

That's one of those things that bugs me the most. We've all done our share, some a lot more than others, but who cares, everything helps one way or another. But we never got anything for it. Nothing. I'm not even talking money or other forms of compensation, I'm talking assistance. Much needed assistance. Sure, Stefan used to implement a small feature or two occasionally, as requested by some developers, but even he didn't do too much in that regard, and ever since he's gone, it has gotten even worse.

Crow is right.

#MakeGraalGreatAgain

Come on Dev Kamaeru and let's either upload Graal2001 backups or make a new server that doesn't suck.

Anyone who still tries to put in time for Graal is wasting their potential at this point.

I know it's just drastically inconceivable that an individual might care about something for personal reasons without any ulterior motive. Even though it's these types of individuals that are the reason Graal even still exists.

oh crow, my dear friend.

Is anyone maintaining the codebase at the moment?

There is a few Devs that work directly out of the office. Not sure exactly what they are working on.

It's flourishing on a different platform, PC Graal probably wouldn't look as bleak if the client could be used to access the iServers.

Apparently having similar servers co-exist on the same platform is a bad idea because it might cause confusion. :oo:

(not that I buy this pathetically lame excuse)

crow I really want to play a finished atlantis, is someone going to port that to gba

I don't think the PC side of Graal will ever recover unless Unixmad gets off his ass. He needs to bring new programmers on board to fix the clients problems (disconnect bug, linux support, lack of developer tools, etc). And that's just the start, lack of advertising, and overall confusion for new players to even download the client is a huge road block for growth.

Apparently this was fixed ages ago but there is some problem with getting another new client released. Whether that's a technical problem or simply a matter of will still remains to be seen.

We don't drop the PC client at all.

We are working on a completely new client based on unity, the first project using this new client is a 3d version of Era. The new client will include new development tools, like a 3d map editor compatible with tablets.

In the meantime I don't see reasons to spend time on releasing a new client, we don't have any major bug: the disconnection bug have been fixed long time ago and was server side.

Very good to hear this from you! Unity is a good choice I think. Is there any chance of releasing Graal on Steam? Also many developers are not interested in making a 3D server, or tablet compatibility, so will support remain for classic-style worlds?

But there is more that could be done to increase exposure to the PC client no? A lot of which could be assisted by members of the community if given some faith & backing.

I was still experiencing this bug as of a few weeks ago. There are also quite a lot of un-fixed bugs within the current client's release thread, some of which are simple to fix.

Do we known if someone has experienced the disconnection bug on Mac or only on windows?

I think Rob sent me a script last year to trigger the bug, it was a script randomly changing the levels very quickly, are some of you experienced a way to replicate the bug?

I did trace the client some time ago and it look like the bug has something to do with the zib libraries randomly bugging, when a wrong packet is received the client is just disconnecting without trying to recover...

I'm not exactly sure what most of this means, but Kingdoms has the disconnect bug and it really does cause players to quit. I know I've stopped playing lately simply because I can't handle the disconnects.

This bug is NOT fixed, and we've been trying to fix it for years, but nobody wants to help....

Happens on Zodiac sometimes. Random reconnects, but it's been rare for me.

ahh so thats why the job opening for a programmer required unity skills :P!

oh man, cant wait to start making lowpoly 3d models wooooo

Cant wait to see what happens. Graal needs a big change. I have enjoyed some games using unity.

Ahh, this is so awesome! but, but what's going to happen to my wonderful GS2? :(

Will hopefully die. GScript sucks.

On another note, though, glad to hear things are being worked on. Please don't **** this up.

I have a hard time understanding how Graal can continue to be Graal without actually being Graal. Sounds to me like they are just going to make a new game. That's why I was hoping Unix could answer my question instead of talking about some disconnect bug.

While the potential benefits of a new client are clear, this raises more questions than answers and in the absence of detailed information does little to provide re-assurances over the future of current Graal on this platform.

In the mean time, what is going to be done to reverse the current downward spiral?

• Global playercount is slowly but surely dropping

The summer holidays have for the first time as far as I'm aware not produced an increase in playercount, even Zodiac (which has been a beacon of stability for several years) currently finds itself in a slump.

• There is no longer a listed traditional sword server

Although many could argue that the removal of Unholy Nation was on the cards, this would not have happened had it not been for the combined failure in Graal's security capabilities and the compromise of a global staff member, it was essentially scapegoated. Meanwhile control of a poor-mans Unholy Nation in the form of Npulse has been given to a team of developers with no history on the server, whereas CloudStrife was refused access to Graal2001 (which he does have history on) and provided with an excuse of "I'm not in to reviving servers".

An offer to construct a spar only server has fallen on deaf ears.

The agreement to port Graal the Adventure to Facebook/Web has not been honored. In previous years there were echos of Facebook/Web accessibility becoming the way forward for PC servers, one such official announcement being here, but this has not come to fruition.

I also offered to have GtA listed temporarily for the summer, but Carlito put it bluntly that he would not co-operate with me because of his personal differences (had he have been more transparent on the previous point instead of keeping me in the dark all that time, perhaps I'd have been less critical towards him).

• The Graal website is out-dated both in terms of its development and content

With it previously being acknowledged that the Graal website could do with a shake-up, for all I know maybe an individual/team has already been assembled to deal with this. But being a professional full-stack web developer I had hoped my offers to redevelop it free of charge would at least be returned with a "no thank you" or "non merci".

Even without renovating the website there are some relatively simple changes that could be beneficial:

- Add a client download button in plain sight which detects which OS you are using

- Replace (vastly out-dated) news archives with Facebook feeds. Can be done through official JS widgets if bespoke is not desired

- Remove references to Pay to Play & Trial Mode. Whether it's intended for players to still have to upgrade to Gold in order to obtain a Community Name I do not know, but this should be reflected on the Subscription Centre, though that seems unfair given that people in-the-know can seemingly request an account name from a global

- Add link to the new Support Centre

- Remove Graal Zone's inner pages and link the Zone section of the home page to its web app instead

- The link to this forum only works if the user is logged in and has Gold subscription. Would it not be desirable to allow the forums to be found purely for reading purposes? Even then these forums do not actually require Gold, but just a Community Name

- Although this could be classed as an addition, the Graal website does not provide any information on server renting or how to "create your own world", or what exactly dispensing with the €49/€79 fee provides you with. Maybe more people would be willing to rent a server if they were provided with some enticement? Otherwise it's pretty much relying on just word of mouth. I would suggest the addition of both a shorter and longer dev subscription period as well.

• Small things which can be fixed by editing login server scripts

- Client RC doesn't list new body colours

- Make PlayerList Show On First Login

- Mass Message Option Stuck

- In-game GUIs still reflect the old subscription policy. For example the trial bar is still visible (though some servers hide it via script)

(there are probably others, these are just things I've posted)

I'd still love to see a classic server to play in the mean time whilst N-Pulse is being worked on. I think GTA should just get a full release on Playerworlds and onto Facebook.

dont worry, i'm here to save the day. i will host an onlinestartlocal.graal for u all.

uhh sorry i only enter .zelda levels :noob:

will the new client support flying technology

Been a long time since I've posted, but it was kind of nice to hear something is happening. Although, anytime stuff pops up on these forums about "new thing coming soon," I have to catch myself and remember how things have gone for the past 3 years in terms of progress.

I hop on to read these forums every so often, and it has always been a fading light that someday things will get better. To offer my two cents on the unity news, I've never been too fond of the whole 3D gameplay aspect of graal. I know there is a crowd out there that enjoys it, but I'm primarily a 2D developer. It would be relieving to hear that a classic style server is still possible, as others have mentioned here. If there was any other question you could answer Unix, at least tell me we're getting the whole platform converted, instead of a half-baked 3D re-release of the game.

Unity is the way to go, though, so bravo on choosing something modern that could get a lot of devs back on board for building content for servers. As a Java and C# backend developer, I'll happily try out any dev stuff that stems from the Unity build (assuming there will still be some form of script/plugin capabilities -- please no more gscript).

I'm pretty sure every cognizant sane individual in the graalosphere concurs wholeheartedly. The problem here is that the two out of one thousand people who consistently fail to understand the glaring logic in such a notion happen to be in charge of Graal. It's just common sense to take advantage of an extremely well designed and playable server, especially in a time when there aren't any other ones of those lying around.

Couldn't have put it better myself. I'm just hoping since unixmad is on this thread that he see's the demand for a Classic server on client and allows the release of GTA, there is no doubt I believe GTA would get a higher playercount than the majority of the current playerworld servers...I just don't see what the problem is.

Would be great to see ongoing previews of this. Keep the interest flowing!

Unity + Steam Early access... let the money flow in. Even if it's underwhelming it'll still print money.

For Graal v6:
-significantly slow startup time on windows 10 only
-game will randomly crash when switching servers on windows 10
-hackers still running rampant, stefan used to say that v5 -> v6 would help fix it but it didnt

level editor needs to use fowlplay4's workaround or it doesn't work on windows 10.

owell

3d era

the future is coming

Nah nah, 3D Era once its released will be outdated already. We need VR Era in 4K

Development on the PC servers may be dead- but it's not on the iOS servers. We use in game tools to design levels and gani's. (Staff can use external if they want, but they don't)

I've never crashed using Graal 6 on the iOS servers. I believe it's a server issue which is causing the crashing? Have you tried reconnecting several times to hosted servers to test your theory on it crashing? If yes, I stand corrected.
---Just tried logging on Era PC server, I crashed. Runs slow too - never had this lag on iEra.