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Dolphonia
Section 1 - Transportation and the World
Section 2 - The Staff System
Section 3 - Firms and Commerce
Section 4 - Contracts and Patents
Section 5 - Economics and Politics
Section 6 - Resources and the Environment
Section 7 - Challenges and Concerns
Section 8 - Notes
Section 9 - Final Words
Introduction:
As the sun set for the final time in the year 2000, it began to rise again and with it rose the server Dolphonia. This was a time before NewMain, before Unholy Nation, before Era, before GraalOnline was a pay game, when Graal was far younger than it is now.
Dolphonia was a modern server. It had cities, roads, and airports. It was created by Delph Inc. It was a fun server. It was the server where I was first levels administrator (and from there later on I went on and became levels admin of over a half douzen other online playerworlds).
Unfortunately, the server was hacked (by Ghost_Hacker) and eventually shut down. Different people had different ideas on how to proceed. Delph wanted to focus on a different but similar project. He toyed around with ideas such as Galactica. From what I hear, he eventually ended up making a server called Dolphonia2, later renamed to Era. I, however, wanted to remake Dolphonia and continue from where it went down. I have recieved Delph's permission and I've been working for some time on the new Dolphonia.
I want to remind people that although this Dolphonia is in a sense a parent to Era that there may be some unintended similarities between it and Era, but there will definately be differences. Whereas Era has guns and gangs, Dolphonia will be using the classical sword-combat system in a more Earthbound-esque world. There will be less emphasis on pk'ing and more emphasis on economics and travel.
This is a brief introduction to what's been going on behind the scenes.
Section 1 - Transportation and the World:
Dolphonia was originally going to be a world composed of five cities; one for each respective direction on a compass (North, East, South, West) and one central one; Main City. As of this post, Main/Central City and West City are online, as is the 40 level wide highway separating them.
Whether or not the names of the cities will be changed is still a matter of debate.
The cities will follow different themes, as originally planned:
Main/Central City: A city with a body of water surrounding it located in the geographical centre of the world.
West City: A desert valley reminiscent of the historical American west.
East City: An oceanside harbour with a mix of beaches and rocky shores.
South City: A heavy forest/jungle with a large river going through it.
North City: A formidable mountain range covered in harsh terrain.
Keeping with the original theme of the server, there will be multiple ways to travel between the various cities. Through Main/Central City, each other major city is can be reached by either highway, train, ship, or airplane; however, not every city is necessarily equipped with every means of transportation (you can't take a ship to West City, for example).
Through this, I have personally found it akin to a SNES game I played alot years ago called Earthbound. The way I have designed the transportation between the cities and the organization of the cities themselves has had Earthbound in mind and I am pleased that I have been able to retain the same feeling on the server when travelling from city to city.
Each city and each highway does infact have it's own corresponding gmap (beginning with the the prefix dolphonia_ as to not overwrite other gmaps of course). If a weather system is put into place, different regions will have different weather settings.
In addition besides the cities, there will be additional regions for players to explore with all sorts of goodies. This will leave room for exploration, questing, and future developement.
Section 2 - The Staff System:
It is through Dolphonia's Judicial System that it will have the luxury to do what other playerworlds have not.
Traditionally, Graal staff have been divided into upper administration, a development team, a GP team, an events team, and perhaps an FAQ team.
Dolphonia's staff structure will be as follows:
Manager, Judges, Enforcers.*
*the lack of any development team will be explained in Section 3
The role of the Manager is to manage the server, easily enough. Text will not be wasted continuing what would be thought to be an already obvious role.
The Judges comprise of the Judicial system. They are direct representitives of the manager and because of this it is absolutely vital that they remain honest and loyal to the server. They have virtually unlimited power and it will be a challenge to find those who can responsibly handle the job.
The Judges will have varied roles. They will hold trials in things ranging from broken contracts to trainer-usage on the server. They will give and execute judgements. The means by which a Judge holds a trial is entirely up to the Judge and may include but not be limited to private investigation, a hearing, and a jury decision. In addition, Judges will approve or deny requests for businesses, tax relief, patents, and anything else that could be necessary. The Judges will be led by a single Chief Judge (which is already getting nicknamed "Judgemaster" from I suppose Final Fantasy fame) who would likely be a parallel to an Assistant Manager position.
If the Judges are the hands of the server, the Enforcers are the eyes, ears, and mouth. Any disruption in the server (glitches, misunderstandings, bug abuse, trainer-usage, hacking, breaking of GraalOnline/server rules) is ended abruptly by Enforcers. Enforcers will help players as best they can when there are questions and will also be responsible for restricting access to bugged areas and disabling disruptive players (who will be reviewed by a Judge later). Right now there is consideration to change the title to a more appropriate one, from Enforcer to Agent.
Section 3 - Firms and Commerce:
Players will be able to own firms/businesses upon being approved by a Judge. All firms will have a standard 1000 shares, all of which will belong to the original founder initially. When shareholders of a firm vote, 501 shares is what is required for a majority. Any desputes within a firm are to be forwarded to the trials and sorted out by a Judge. Players are able to buy/sell shares as any other item at any price they both agree on.
A stockmarket may exist for the purpose of gathering a bunch of buyers/sellers of shares in one area. The latest price a share is sold and purchased for is the value of the given share. Some business models may have the firm organized to give shareholders a regular dividend (dividing of profit into 1000 parts, each part to the owner of each share). How businesses operate will be very open-ended. Businesses can own other businesses as well as property (land, buildings, npc's, etc).
The general idea of a firm is to maximize profit. In order to do so, firms will offer services and/or products. For the purpose of this simple brief explanation of the server, we'll consider the service firm and the product firm as the two different firm types.
The Service Firm:
The service firm is one that offers services in exchange for money. Such services may include professional work (level-making, gfx-making, script-making, etc) or more in-game services (transit, security, assasins, quest-help, etc). Because players have the options of submitting levels and npc's (Section 4) and the quality required for approval will be considerably high, professional service firms would likely be in high demand.
An architecture (level making) or engineering (npc-scripting) firm may win contracts to produce levels/scripts the server requires by winning lowest-bid auctions held. That is - When the server requires large volumes of levels or special scripts made, rather than have dev staff on hand, it will invite all major professional firms to a lowest-bid auction and whichever firm can produce what's being requested for the lowest price will win the contract to do so.
The Product Firm:
The product firm will be able to either purchase a pre-existing "magical" machine or develope and patent it's own "magical" machine (Section 4). With a magical machine, players will be able to input X amount (specific to each machine) of some resources (specific to each machine) to output something (specific to each machine). The something can be furniture, food, weapons, and many, many other things. All things mass produced will need to be done so by magic machine.
Example of Product Firms:
One product firm wishes to build their own A-07 type engines. A-07 type engines can produce 10 units of output for 2 units of fuel. First the firm applies for a patent via a Judge. The judge reviews the submitted script and for the sake of argument, approves it. The judge gives the firm an unlimited-time patent on the specific engine, puts the price at 10,000 credits per machine to purchase, and 25 iron to produce the each engine through the machine. The firm spends buys such a machine and pays employees 1 credit for every 5 iron they harvest and return. The firm then has other employees take the available iron and has them produce engines for pay of 1 credit per engine built perhaps. The engines are then moved and stored in the firm's warehouse, where the firm waits for another firm that produces cars (but not engines) to come and buy engines to add to their cars. |
05-13-2006, 05:43 AM
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