Scripters? Anyone?
 

Is it me, or is the number of scripters declining....or at least not increasing. The introduction of a more powerfull language was good, but it had some drawbacks. Including a lack of offline support (people have to be staff on a server to upload anything, but how can they be staff if they can't script?) Plus you have the fact that a person learning to script will find the GS2, try it off line, and then, seeing that it doesn't work, give up. Graal needs either an offline editor for GS2, or at least a not to players that offline mode can only handle GS1, and still have guides and how-to's in Graal Bible. Also, maybe create templates of weapons. Nore, pre defined NPCs. You know, a door was one of the first things I could do on my own? And lights too, all because I could see the script when I made them, and learned how to modify it. After that, I started to play around with the other commands, but doors and lights can only teach you so much. Most people don't know how to script, and Graal needs to do something to make it easier to learn. This goes for the often-too-difficult-for-noobs task of making ganis as well

Not too long ago, Stefan was talking about eventually having people make script examples and making them publicly avaliable on GraalBible since there really aren't that many avaliable to people. Personally, I think it's a really good idea to have examples avaliable for people to learn.

The main problem with the graalshop is that most new people find it hard to input sprites. Its what turns them off of it. If we were to have a seperate window where a picture of the image pops up and we could just highlight the parts of the image we wanted to use as sprites, it'd just be so much easier.

Agreed. This is a great idea. Most of the limited scripting scripting commands I learned was from looking at other peoples scripts and learning from them the correct way to use certain commands.

The Online Level Editor stefan is having Er1c and I make is going to be released to the public as soon as Stefan finalizes some features that are to be added to it.

Also we are working on a fully functional scripted movement script so new playerworlds can use it to better customize their playerworld.. there are a lot of projects we are working on that will be public and we encourage everyone else to do the same.

Wasn't there talk of a "Offline/Online Editor that allows the player to personally play in the level with GS2 Scripts and such? O_o My friend and I were talking about this when we saw something on the forums.

Offline editor for the win.

Yea I like the offline becuase you can be the owner of your own personel server. XD

I like it because I actually own the level and don't have to upload it anywhere.

Yeah, having to upload your stuff everytime you want to test it makes it difficult for newbies to learn how online scripting works.

Dude, it is easy. People is too lazy to learn something, that's the problem.

What about me >:( I helped with it too.

So you not only can script, you do it well?
It is not easy for a noob to learn it right away if they have to upload their levels to a server (which they don't have access to) just to learn GS2, so they have to learn gs1 (if they can find the resources, otherwise, they have to teach themselves), THEN learn gs2. It could be so much easier. With the way it is now, i can't see us getting any new scripters in the near future

Or they could joint a community like #gscript which runs a server for testing scripts

The main problem I have with GS2 is lack of offline resources. For GS1, there was that little tutorial and all the other stuff, but I don't see anything downloading itself into my graal folder about that for GS2.

Yay, 200th post.

If someone really wanted to learn, they can. If I did it, anyone can.

And Maniman has helped a lot with the project. Silly Wc forgot to mention you, but I will not. Thanks a lot for all the help!

Rawr yes you helped, but you need to get your stuff working.. cant just give up because Stefan makes it harder by not including features for things :-P If we all waited around for Stefan to make things easier for us we'd never have any work done

I do.

If you want to learn, you will learn. It's just motivation. I have learned by myself my skills. About gs1 scripting, there are many resources, such as newfeatures documents and so on. It's not an excuse. :\
Being lazy is. ^^

I do agree with one of the original intentions of this post.

Make gs2 work offline in the level editor, please.
no sense in teaching the new players old gscript
and then, keeping them on as customers and wanting them to spend more money when they figure out how to buy a playerworld,
it's just bad business to have them learn that gs1 is "outdated" and they have to re-learn scripting. it just makes for another level of difficulty for the customer.

I myself am still adjusting to gscript 2.
Used to be, i would have solutions for npcs i wanted appear to me literally in my dreams, in old gscript - it was that ingrained into my mind process.

I would have much rather just had gscript 2 from the start.
so, it's too late for me, but the rest of the new players - let them have gs2 offline.

also in the online rc npc editor, an equivelant of commands.rtf for gs2
so that we have a quick refrence guide - and no, the wiki is not a quick refrence guide. it's a searchable/browsable database.

I have got to disagree with you finally, gs2 has a severe lack of documentation plus the fact it works no where else but online, is a major drawback.

"hey can I work on your server scripting?"
"Do you know any scripting?"
"Uh, no, i was just hoping to sit around and try to learn by using your server you paid money for"
"Nope sorry, dont think so"

Some things reading them you just dont understand till you see them in action.

The only other thing I can say about the origonal post is I am really trying to encourage people to help out in the scripting forum. It is the place most people will come to first for help if they dont know about GraalWiki or the GraalBible, and its likely if they have a bad experince there, they will either not go looking anywhere else and give up, or they will just continue to be very horrid scripters.

And @Prozac: Gs1 may be depreciated as far as some scripters go, but its far from very outdated. Its also much simpler to do if you havent had a good background in programming.

gs2 will never be ported offline its sad to say but true :( I have a feeling Stefan will come up with another way to do it... maybe a special online npc-sever/gserver that allows for multiple users to work in-game in their own levels would have to have some serious fault checking though so one person cant make an infinite loop that crashes NPC-Server and stefan has to come on and check every script for errors.. would need to automaticly disable the script causing the error, and restart..

anyways getting off topic.. as ive said its going to be tough to make this transition, but its a good place to move to.. GS2 is the future of graal and makes amazing things possible :)

Why won't it ever go offline, noobs will have a hard time doing anything online. And if something is too hard, they probably won't want to start it. If it's easier to learn, more people will want to learn.

On the GraalBible, people can contribute their own documents for scripts there. Remember, unixmad said a lot of contributes from someone can benefit in an upgrade as a reward for such work.

because stefan would have to script an entire virtual server offline for it.. which means completely rescripting an offline npc-server/gserver as well as porting the new gs2 into the offline editor.. do you remember how long it took to test everything and get everything working to where its at now? stefan doesnt have the man power what so ever to do that kind of thing and he will never release his source

Don't want to start any discussion or so, but unixmad's word isn't worth of trust.

Step 1:

• Buy a server
• Be hired on a server
• Use a community server (#gscript has one, for example)

Step 2:[*]Look at the documentation on the wiki, or look at other scripts available on the server. You're not totally in the dark, y'know?

Not like theres any incentive for scripting on a graal server. Staff are lazy and its impossible to find a team thats motivated enough to complete something. Paying money to work != Motivation. If people could work on a server for free (without requirement of gold or VIP), we might see some slightly more amazing things. Also if people were allowed to give access to certain things for real money, I think it would also be a great incentive to work.

There are a whole lot less level designers than scripters on GraalOnline now.

it's the easiest thing in the world to say that such and such won't work
and point out flaws in people or communitues.

it takes bravery to go and learn the required skills and attempt to do what others have given up on : making a playerworld that works.

I think it's one of the more relatively easy languages to learn.

I think this is a great idea.


Can't be too sure, but I thought he added some kind of limit to how many times the loop can be performed?

Yea there is a loop limit, I think a development server for anyone to use would be cool.