Test bed server revival
 

How interested are you in a testbed server revival? Testbed server will allow developers to create and test scripts and levels in a server environment.

I believe NicoX was also trying to do this. There are some problems tho. The way testbed was structured would be to big of a pain in the butt to rescript. And getting backups, well we all know how long Stefan takes. That being said I believe it's already being revived.

I paid for MD to have a server he never uses, I'd pay for this in a heartbeat if it meant you guys got what you needed and could run it, free for all to come and play. I dunno about the headache of any backups or hierarchy but the money is there.

I need to get together with NicoX then to see if we can't help each other. I have an idea which greatly simplifies the structure. The design promotes tools that can be written outside of the Graal environment. And everything is backed up through github or one of the like. T request I have that my users must abide by. All code that is written on the testbed will be open source.

Any contribution to move this project further is great. However for my design, our biggest hurdle is to enable the use of TSocket class.

^ +1

Sounds fishy...

So you basically want a resource of free work for some greedy guy

Who is the greedy guy? I don't understand your comment. If you are suggesting that open source is for greedy people then this is the last time I respond to you.

I think he is implying that with everything being open source it will be a heaven for people wanting to make a server whom cannot find scripters which, ask anyone, are hard to find as it is. It will be to tempting for people not to just go on copy scripts paste them to there server. Which honestly I am not against anyone who wants to do that. I do however strongly caution doing so as things might not be scripted to the most compatible, or flexible, way for your server.

That being said it does offer an easy way to learn off other peoples scripts. I remember starting out I would look at other peoples scripts and make changes and see what happens until I learned what functions do what. The other problem is you wont have privacy to work on your own scripts that you might not want to share with others, or if then implemented on your server you lose some security since people will know your scripts inside-out like the back of there hands.

I guess people feel that completely open source.. is kinda sketchy. The old testbed had public, and private, scripts you got to chose if you wanted to share or not which is personally what I prefer.

IMHO GS2, Graal script in general is pretty wonky. There are only a few people that actually know this language in and out. This is something I want to improve.

I honestly don't recommend taking any scripts from a testbed and using them in a production server. As these scripts are going to be produced by people that have little to no experience scripting they should be used for learning purposes only.

If you are at the level where you are creating scripts for a server, then maybe you should go get yourself one. While your at it take some people from the testbed that you have created a relationship with coding side by side for x amount of time. This will make me smile!

Lastly, my hope is that allowing code to be seen by others will spark some intelligent conversation and code review. This in its end result will allow this community to grow, and grow together respectfully.

Thats why the current as-is testbed offers the feature you are wanting with the added benefit of being able to keep things private. GS2 is a bit wonky I agree. I want to see GS3 released or more of it.

But common now you honestly expect people NOT to use these scripts on there servers? I remember the old testbed and people scouring over for scripts to use on there server and I don't see anything you would offer to prevent it, so it's going to happen. People also do it with the code gallery.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is people wanting to make servers and don't take any input from there scripters and then the scripters get that idea hey I will make my own server then the next thing you know you end up with everyone scattered working on there own projects. I think I remember DustyPorViva making a comment on everyone working on there own projects instead of working on other peoples projects. And from my experience it's not just scripters all areas of development seem to have people working on there own projects with little help from others.

Maybe I will add the feature to select which scripts are public/private I haven't nailed all the user details in stone. It could be a possibility although unlikely.

I never said I expect people not to use those scripts. I recommended that you do not use the scripts for they are from inexperienced scripters. To add to this point, if a server owner does steal a script from the testbed repo, why wouldn't they just hire the scripter? And lets be honest, if you are in fact stealing scripts off the testbed, that server isn't going very far.

I agree that people are spread way to thin over projects. I wish there was a development team that just knocked out great servers. I am in if anyone else is. lol

Because it's easier to use a scripters script then to convince him to work on your server sadly .. it's not like you can go yeah this script is awesome, who made it? oh u work for me now.. lol At the point of making private/public you just recreated the old testbed which the original scripters for those systems claim it would be a nightmare to remake.

Tho you did mention something about TSocket's.. can you elaborate on this a little more maybe? It sounds kinda interesting but I would like to know more on the idea actually.

It's something Stefan disabled which in turn broke some servers backup systems and abilities to communicate with external services !pissed!

Tushay sir, you first have to have a good server idea.

All I can say is that I hope it will be a huge improvement to graal as a whole.

Lets lobby to give my server use of TSockets, so I can make incredible things for graal and not have to do it in Gscript!

I know about that but I mean for him to elaborate a little on his idea to use it to improve upon the testbed idea. It's kinda interesting and im not quite sure what he had in mind for improvements using it.

Open-source projects are the best way to move Graal as a whole forward and improve upon our current technologies. The Code Gallery is a prime example of that.

It doesn't mean everyone is working on things for the benefit of one person. They would be working to learn, and to help others.



Instead of having to go through and privatize each and every new script that comes along, simply put a disclaimer on the server that lets people know that the work they submit there may be re-used by others. If they're that sensitive about people using their work for different purposes, they can rent a private server themselves and do that work elsewhere. Besides, more than half of the scripts on the old testbed server were usually things like staff boot and bank scripts, or other things like that which are easy to replicate.

As a community, we should try to build on the more groundbreaking ideas, like editors and other tools that allow people to get work done faster. And open-sourcing all of the scripts would be a good way to do so. As Scriptless mentioned, really good scripters and code are often hard to come by, and it would be fantastic to have a server that stands as an archive of all the great work we've done. Because, like it or not, people come and go, and when they go, sometimes really fantastic stuff gets lost forever.

Well said sir. If this community wants to survive we need to work together. Start talking about what we can do instead of shutting down ideas because of personal opinion.

I am glad that Nico is reviving the testbed and if he needs my help I'll be more than willing.

Some iEra staff are working on an Era themed Testbed-esque server.

Still working on the systems and such.