Preview Thread
 

Okay, so now that we're in a state where many things are stable on the server in their former state (giving me a good idea where to go from here), it's time to update things so they aren't so antiquated!

I will be using this thread to deliver development updates pertaining to things that are being developed in order for a serverwide update that will take place updating the look of players to the new system in the (hopefully) near future.

As of right now I have been organizing all of this by myself, but have the great fortune of being able to use a ton of assets that have been created for the server yet unfortunately not many people got to see because Konidias' Bomy Island project was never completed.

Please note that these updates are a PREVIEW of a future update where this will all be released at once, so you will not be able to participate in this stuff until that update occurs. If you want to help test stuff, however, you can ask and we will see about recruiting a few people to test stuff.

NPC Code:

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>New Features 4/7/2017

 

  >Game Systems

    

     >Added a hotkey system that allows players to equip up to 10 weapons

      and quick-select them by either clicking the hotkey or scrolling through

      them using F and G keys. The icon of the item being selected will be

      shown over the player's head to make it even more convenient.

    

     >Added bug catching job. Players will be able to make gralats by

      collecting bugs for now, but they may have other uses..

  

     >Added Torch weapon. Players will be able to set things on fire and the

      fire can spread.



     >Added Umbrellas. They are an aesthetic item for now. Looks cool and

      makes having rain effects more engaging.

    



>Updates and Fixes

 

  >Jobs

   

     >Fixed Mining Bomb to work with updated systems, added new sprite and animation

   

     >Fixed Gold Axe to work with updated systems, added new sprites and animation



     >Fixed Metal Axe to work with updated systems, added new sprites and animation



     >Fixed Diamond Axe to work with updated systems, added new sprites and animation



     >Fixed Cow Milking to work with updated systems



     >Fixed Dough Roller to work with updated systems, adjusted timing of rolling to be funner



     >Fixed Shovel to work with updated systems



     >Fixed Water Can to work with updated systems



     >Added Scythe tool, will be used for wheat farming to make baking funner



     >Added Axe tool, testing feasibility of adding a tree cutting job





  >Technical



     >Fixed handling of carrying/throwing objects for updated systems



     >Fixed Go Kart animations to work with new systems, added smoke particle effect for exhaust



     >Fixed "Got Item" animation (for obtaining a treasure)

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Here's a preview of the cool item select hotkey system I worked on in action (I made the gani with graalshop pro, thx fp4):
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1491540287

And here's me trying to burn Manny. Ayy lmao
http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1491540765

I'll add screenshots of other stuff mentioned here later.

Please feel free to use this thread for criticisms, concerns, comments, questions, requests and most importantly suggestions.

If you can get the woodcutting to work well, make a system for players to craft some wooden items. First thing I can think of is fletching arrows.

Also do you think you could add some kind of third resource next to bombs and arrows for "elemental" weapons and abilities like that torch? Like some kind of condensed mote of elemental energy. It could open up some opportunities for some cool stuff.

I'm going to be trying a whole lot of different stuff and seeing what is most fun, then adding the funnest things I make to the game. If cutting trees and collecting wood can be really fun, it can get added, but if it proves to not be so fun it won't. We'll just see.

There is a possibility that I could be bringing back an idea konidias had where there was a stamina meter that allowed the player to dash for a short period of time. I thought about different ideas for the torch also, like it requiring a material to fuel it (maybe flammable liquid stored in a bottle), or making it burn up over time so you have to stock up on them or craft them. Like I said previously, I will be testing things to see what is most fun.

If anyone has ideas for insect species I should add to the game, I am especially open to that sort of suggestion right now. Right now we have butterflies, crickets, and frogs. You can also catch the birds. The idea is that you will be able to keep birds as pets that can deliver a message to another player by flight, and display insects on the wall in your playerhouse or sell them.

I was expecting a YouTube video demonstrating the updates. Disappointed.

I was actually working on that, but realized that since I'm using nvidia shadowplay I'm not sure how to record without it being fullscreen, and last time I made some video examples people complained that my 1080p monitor was too large. Well, since then now I'm using a 4K monitor haha. I will look further into doing that again. I tried to get this post organized in a bit of a rush actually because I wanted to get back to working on this stuff, but the purpose of this thread is so that the work happening on the server can be more transparent, so expect more updates.

neat!

This is a beta demonstration of how wheat harvesting will work on Bomy Island.


http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1492015951
Bako is tired of swinging his arms, so he asks you to pick up the Scythe tool and harvest your own. Since you don't have anything to hold the wheat, you carry it to the bakery. The plan is that you will be able to buy a backpack that allows you to hold multiple farmed materials of the sort, wheat being the first one.

The wheat in this field grows by itself, but in the future we may allow you to grow your own and stock up in farming areas.

This is not final, I will be polishing the design of the area, adding ganis to the characters to show them speaking during dialogue, etc.

I had a difficult time recording it because I'm using a 4K monitor. I had to use the alt-8 zoom option which caused the text dialogue box to scale improperly, which sucks, because I worked a long time on that and it's one of the things I wanted to show off. If anyone knows of a better recording program I can use that allows you to record games that are windowed, let me know. Also I do not own the music playing in the background, that's just the mother 3 ost I was listening to and forgot to mute.

why not fullscreen and change the resolution?

If I try to change the resolution as low as 1080p it causes major problems with my display, and will only display in a box that is 1/4 the width and height of the screen for some reason.

When I tried fullscreen, it looked reeeeally bad. Neither of these things work, don't you think those are the first things I would have tried?

nope

Ah, well, I guess you were wrong. Those were the first 2 things I tried.

would the messed up things have shown up in the screen cap or was it just the monitor acting up at that resolution?

If you ever get a 4K monitor you will find out that most things are just not ready for that many pixels for some reason. I get weird problems, like with RC, all the checkboxes disappear for some reason in some of the menus. Even Windows 10 has major issues with scaling of windows and text, and even though they have options for that, nothing is really perfect. Many games won't work right unless there is a 4K option for menu and text scaling built into the game (most modern games have this but some don't still).

As far as recording goes I think I have found a solution, I am going to be using OBS Studio which can do window capture for videos in the future.

ya its too early for me to adopt 4k, no way im pushing good FPS with my rig :(

I started with a PC I bought for $150 at a pawn shop, and while I was working over the years I bought 1 part at a time until I built a new computer. Now I have an i7-4790k, 16gb ram, a few SSD drives, and 2 GTX 980Ti gpus running in SLI. It will basically run anything in 4K max settings 60fps. Too bad there really aren't that many amazing games available for PC that I'm super interested in, but modding older games I like alone justifies the hardware. Playing F-ZERO GX in DolphinVR using a Wavebird controller and official Nintendo USB controller adapter is pretty sweet, definitely better than the VR games on Steam. Sometimes you gotta make your own fun with video games.

It's cool just having the option to play games in super high resolution. Some games, like PSO2 (yeah I play that), have bad GUI and menu scaling problems where everything is tiny in 4K.

ye im rockin an older i7 (2600), 32gb of ram, couple of ssds, and an r9 390

will prob upgrade next year tho

You should be able to do a lot with that setup, unless you have a bottleneck somewhere

nah the 390 wont push 60fps at 4k on modern games

Depends on the game I think, it would probably run DOOM 2016 nearly perfect if you use the Vulkan API version. The only issue I see is lack of properly optimized PC games that are also must-play titles. This is why I like Nintendo, because the graphics in BOTW runnin in 720p on Wii U are impressing me more than anything currently available on PC I can run in 4K. Also when the quality of gameplay is so high it's really easy to forgive frame drops. The reason PC users are so concerned with performance is because that's the extent of enjoyment you can really get out of games with gameplay on the more boring side of the scale.

For some reason I've always liked that style of inventory display. I made the same thing for my permanent clothes system on Graal 2000.

I'm working on adding the new stuff to this inventory like the Bug Net, Torch, Scythe, Umbrellas, etc. Then I'm gonna start on a new inventory select in this style for the clothes, then I'm gonna unify it into a new general inventory system. The circle menus are one of the best things about 2K1 so I'm keeping it and streamlining the way players access it. I will likely assign a quick access key to each one, such as Trading, Food Basket, Backpack (will hold farming equipment), and Clothes (to expand what was previously the Hats menu).

it gave me nostalgia from secret mana or seiken densetsu 3 :P

http://theologygaming.com/wp-content...-densetsu4.jpg

I want to add candies as an inventory item, just not entirely sure what they will do yet. Possibly feed bomy pets? Increase speed of certain abilities, like mining, crafting, baking, etc? I'd like that but I don't want players to abuse it for an advantage in sparring, events, etc either.

using candies is disabled in public event/sparring because it's impolite to eat candy when you didn't bring enough to share with everyone

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1494816196

I'm going to be working on boats to make them a cool part of Bomy Island. I have plenty of my own ideas, but I want to hear yours. Any suggestions will be considered. How you think they should control, where should they go, and what should their function be?

I thought it would be cool to add a new island that can be traveled to. Not sure if I want boats to be player controlled or automatic like trains. Or both.

I was a really big fan of the boat travel system on Graal The Adventure, especially loved that you could fish while traveling by boat together with other players, and buy stuff in the shop inside the hull.

Also I really dig the boat travel concept in Animal Crossing.

I think I want to have a few different sizes of boats, possibly even paddle-boards that players could use. Also ideally there will be pirate battleships. We will see.

wow they copied graal!!

This is demonstrating some of the new hats and masks, showing how they can be equipped simultaneously, while also demonstrating the "hathair" system which allows hats to be guaranteed to equip correctly without being overlapped by the hair sprite behind it, not to mention it just looks cool and makes equipping stuff more interactive.

I didn't show in this video, but you can also have face paint, earrings, necklaces, etc. I am going to be working on an inventory for each category and then a main inventory to access them via. I also plan to implement a system where the top 10 row on the Q menu will correspond with the 10 hotkeys, so arranging your weapon inventory will automatically equip your hotkey menu.

I also show off a bit of the new animated emoticon system to replace the default Graal emoticons.

I'm not sure if I like the idea of all hats removing the hair sprite. For something like a helmet it makes sense, but not for something like a tiara or crown. Maybe it should be a toggleable option.

face paint sounds cute

For clarification they don't remove it but use an alternate sprite sheet. So we can do custom stuff however we want.

New barber shop idea I'm working on. The concept is that you will be allowed one free hairstyle per day, and changing it after that costs a small amount (maybe 5 gralats). The hairstyles and colors will randomize every so often. Each hairstyle has 64 colors.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1496904717

As a LAT it is funny how many times you see that exact room configuration.

I threw this together fast as a test level so design is not final, but I have rarely if ever seen anyone get 2-tier house inside tiling correct as you can see here. You see people repeat the house walls for the basement floor when the correct solution is castle tiles which are cleverly made to link up with the bottom of house walls.

In the future I plan on making more diagonal walls, like I did for castle insides.

With the heads being separate, customizable heads with elements (hair, at least, idk what all you've got) versus the "classic" head style, where does this leave "non-human" style heads/atypical skin colors ("cynober")?

Like zorbi

Zormite is one of the races that will definitely be in the game. Not sure how I'm gonna execute it but Zormite is one of the Kingdoms that will be a staple no matter what.

The original idea Konidias had implemented is that you transform into a Zormite by drinking this Zormite potion: http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1497073227

Konidias developed Zormite characters for Bomy Island that look like this:

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...1&d=1497073227

But I am not sure if those are what I want to use, really I want to make it possible to build your own Zormite character face like you can with humans.
I want them to look more like traditional Graal Zorbi/Zormite characters as well.

Yeah I'm not really a fan of the whole idea. Being turned into a Zormite via potion makes it sound like a mutation which in my opinion dishonors them. Zormite isn't a transformation, they're a noble race!

I like the idea of potions and the graphics they made but I don't think they're appropriate for Zormite and the context of playing as a Zormite character. Yes we will honor the proud ethnic Zormite race. It was actually the first kingdom I joined back in the day.

Really having alternate races like Human, Zormite, etc makes more sense than having Bomy players. There are also graphics that were made for a kappa/turtle race and a wolf race.

One problem I had with Konidias' vision for the server is that he planned to get rid of bottles as a means to store liquids, and instead wanted to make it so bottles appear only as an icon for stuff.
I like the idea of bottles being a practical item that can be used to store stuff, and always was a fan of how it worked on old school 2k1, so I won't be using these sprites for stuff like Zormite Potions.

Ha. Reminds me of when Tyhm tried the same sort of thing on Classic. It wasn't well received, mainly because the races weren't properly balanced and certain skills were bugged. Also it wasn't really fitting of a Classic style spar server. But I thought it was a pretty novel idea and incredibly innovative at the time. I'd definitely be interested if you tried the same thing on your server.

I wonder if any of Tyhm's old work on this still exists?

I remember that version of classic, and personally I thought it was awesome. I played as a zorbi and remember you could shoot bubbles or something. It was hawt.