What do you want to develop?

[Codinablack]

There has been a lot of talk in the community as of late about the state of TFS, and there are a lot of people basically saying it has died off since the switch to the newest client. This has lead to debates about what is to come, and about which distro everyone should be using.

This has always been a preference, and people have always been divided on what they want from a distro, what they expect, and what they intend to make/produce with/from it.

I think the main sides can be divided into three categories as others have mentioned on discord, being:

Retro developers : those guys using their server to provide for the players playing on older clients (or even otc, but the protocol/combat system is for older client).
Cloned-Cibia developers: the ones trying to make a "Real Map" server.
Custom Engine/Server : the ones trying to make something new or creative, usually looking for the most "custom" features. I have decided to label this "Polymorphic" due to the transformative nature being its design intent and purpose. --Fancy talk for custom

I personally have always been a fan of exploring my creativity by creating new things, so I am strongly for the "Custom" category.

I want to get some actually viable numbers on this subject though, so only 1 vote, please pick the one you prefer most, and please only use one account for voting.

Lets see what you got to say!

 

[Erikas Kontenis]

Majority of players are anyways retro players. However there is no need to seek for older clients support only the retro behavior. I believe that the way open tibia should go to is absolutely forgiving to the Cibia client. By that I mean to stop implementing new Cibia client protocol contract, stop being compatible with Cibia client at all. We should stop seeking client numbers like my server is 8.6 or 8.0 or 7.4 an universal protocol for open tibia (forgiving that one or another version doesn't have addons or mounts) would be the way to go keeping all the features maintainable. Potentially we even don't need to reuse Cibia .spr/.dat or this new protobuf stuff (idk what the assets are called) having our own open tibia formats for everything would save lots of effort switching the clients and the only tools we would need is Cibia to Open Tibia converters- not 100x Cibia assets editors like we have today.

 

[Kuzyn]

Majority of players are anyways retro players. However there is no need to seek for older clients support only the retro behavior. I believe that the way open tibia should go to is absolutely forgiving to the Cibia client. By that I mean to stop implementing new Cibia client protocol contract, stop being compatible with Cibia client at all. We should stop seeking client numbers like my server is 8.6 or 8.0 or 7.4 an universal protocol for open tibia (forgiving that one or another version doesn't have addons or mounts) would be the way to go keeping all the features maintainable. Potentially we even don't need to reuse Cibia .spr/.dat or this new protobuf stuff (idk what the assets are called) having our own open tibia formats for everything would save lots of effort switching the clients and the only tools we would need is Cibia to Open Tibia converters- not 100x Cibia assets editors like we have today.

Sounds nice but I guess people look for OTS because they want to play specific Tibia versions from the past (mostly), due to specific gameplay mechanics.
If you would like to make one universal protocol, would you like to have all mechanics from the past and the owner would choose which one they want to use on their server or what?

 

[Erikas Kontenis]

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. For example take a look at OTClient

otclient/src/client/protocolgameparse.cpp at main · mehah/otclient

An alternative tibia client for otserv written in C++20 and Lua, made with a modular system that uses lua scripts for ingame interface and functionality, making otclient flexible and easy to custom...

github.com

in a simple method to open outfit it has to have 5 IFs to check clientVersion to keep in contract with different Cibia protocol versions. Developing such a backend or frontend adds huge complexity and or for what? To support Cibia client when we already have open tibia client for ages? I give zero interest in supporting Cibia protocols at all but the idea which I actually mean is TFS should stop seek for latest Cibia client protocol and instead develop their own protocol incompatible with Cibia clients.

 

[Codinablack]

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. For example take a look at OTClient

otclient/src/client/protocolgameparse.cpp at main · mehah/otclient

An alternative tibia client for otserv written in C++20 and Lua, made with a modular system that uses lua scripts for ingame interface and functionality, making otclient flexible and easy to custom...

github.com

in a simple method to open outfit it has to have 5 IFs to check clientVersion to keep in contract with different Cibia protocol versions. Developing such a backend or frontend adds huge complexity and or for what? To support Cibia client when we already have open tibia client for ages? I give zero interest in supporting Cibia protocols at all but the idea which I actually mean is TFS should stop seek for latest Cibia client protocol and instead develop their own protocol incompatible with Cibia clients.

I am also for this kind of progression as well, and completely agree with you!

This would also allow us to explore options for potentially making the network more secure as well.

 

[JeiDi]

There has been a lot of talk in the community as of late about the state of TFS, and there are a lot of people basically saying it has died off since the switch to the newest client. This has lead to debates about what is to come, and about which distro everyone should be using.

This has always been a preference, and people have always been divided on what they want from a distro, what they expect, and what they intend to make/produce with/from it.

I think the main sides can be divided into three categories as others have mentioned on discord, being:

Retro developers : those guys using their server to provide for the players playing on older clients (or even otc, but the protocol/combat system is for older client).
Cloned-Cibia developers: the ones trying to make a "Real Map" server.
Custom Engine/Server : the ones trying to make something new or creative, usually looking for the most "custom" features. I have decided to label this "Polymorphic" due to the transformative nature being its design intent and purpose. --Fancy talk for custom

I personally have always been a fan of exploring my creativity by creating new things, so I am strongly for the "Custom" category.

I want to get some actually viable numbers on this subject though, so only 1 vote, please pick the one you prefer most, and please only use one account for voting.

Lets see what you got to say!

There are more and more retro x custom servers.

 

[leo18dff]

as a 35 years old tibia player id prefer always retro servers 7.4 to 8.0. But nowadays peoples are making a lot of weird customizations that in my guess are breaking the game. But actually a good built retro server is appreciated until theses days

 

[Codinablack]

I am noticing that the ratio is not what I think that everyone expected. I am delighted to find there are more of those who wish to go the polymorphic route than what may have been believed!

 

[Peonso]

I am noticing that the ratio is not what I think that everyone expected. I am delighted to find there are more of those who wish to go the polymorphic route than what may have been believed!

Clearly biased by the sort of member that lurk the discussion board. Never ever saw a thread about updated real map servers in discussion board, still those are the most common and played otservers.

 

[getema27]

not very surprising


d) trying to stay "open" to any type of tibia server

Please stopping creating pools everyday.

monthly thread achieved

 

[Codinablack]

not very surprising
View attachment 82645View attachment 82644

d) trying to stay "open" to any type of tibia server

Well you are just a ray of sunshine aren't you?

I don't create polls all the time, and I definitely don't strive to start a thread once a month. If you really have nothing to contribute to the conversation except pure unadulterated negativity, then why post anything at all?
Oh I get it, I forgot how you already mentioned boosting counts, must be you wanna boost your own "post count".

Smdhl.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Chasing latest protocols and being up to date with cip tibia is deffinitely not what most people creating servers are interested in. Those who want to re-create original, newest Tibia must deliver the result asap to attarct players, while open source project like TFS is way slower, that is understandable. So the first group must hire someone anyway to manage being up to date with all the newest content, it is huge amount of work. So the idea of sticking to certain protocol, and have all the tools developed in many years back still available, is perhaps the most desired. Slowly but surely updating TFS with new features that players desire, and ignoring the race for latest protocol, also building better, more stable and bug-free enviroment, would be something for me, as a mid-experienced content creator, the most desirable way of TFS development. It doesn't need rush, like having latest Tibia version, and it offers complete system with all its unique features working, not the latest protocol with tons of bugs and half of the features unavailable.

 

[Codinablack]

Since this is a discussion thread. Those of you who like the polymorphic category, hit me with some ideas that you think is awesome that could be implemented with a reasonable amount of effort! I would love to hear what you guys want to develop, what kind of tool-set and framework would you really want to find an OT project with? How you wish it could be?

Post automatically merged: Mar 5, 2024

Chasing latest protocols and being up to date with cip tibia is deffinitely not what most people creating servers are interested in. Those who want to re-create original, newest Tibia must deliver the result asap to attarct players, while open source project like TFS is way slower, that is understandable. So the first group must hire someone anyway to manage being up to date with all the newest content, it is huge amount of work. So the idea of sticking to certain protocol, and have all the tools developed in many years back still available, is perhaps the most desired. Slowly but surely updating TFS with new features that players desire, and ignoring the race for latest protocol, also building better, more stable and bug-free enviroment, would be something for me, as a mid-experienced content creator, the most desirable way of TFS development. It doesn't need rush, like having latest Tibia version, and it offers complete system with all its unique features working, not the latest protocol with tons of bugs and half of the features unavailable.

Thanks for your perspective!
There is much to agree with!

I know we can all agree on something stable, and a client-server protocol that doesn't change, I like this to be its own protocol, one that is perhaps less rigid, more flexible... that would be spectacular!

 

[Tenzhiro]

View attachment 82644

I don't understand the logic of having a custom map with high exp

Isn't it ideal to have a custom map, nobody ever played, and have it closer to 1x?
I remember I played on some high-exp servers a long, long, long time ago, and the purpose of that was that I was getting bored of progressing through the Real Map, so essentially high-exp would just mean skipping the grinding part of the game in a lazy way.
------

Although I would assume if one takes the effort to create a fully custom map, that they would also take the effort to edit loot tables, experience gain, and all that of all creatures.

 

[Silba]

Polymorphic and based on this poll result the default state of this engine could be retro tibia.

It could follow similar to otcv8 where ot devs are expected to just enable/disable what they want to change their tibia "version" and it could have a nice amount of toggleable features that are most common, then if devs want more they can... dev it. and hopefully submit a pr for it.

sprites = 760
spellSystem = 740
wands = false
skullSystem = false
fightBack = true
experienceFromPlayers = true
mounts = true
addons = false
wings = false
auras = true
playerKillersCanUseBoat = true

etc...

Would need a new format for sprites and items too probably since spr and otb is cancer causing and really gets in the way with 300 different versions of everything and none of them work properly.

What TFS got wrong is always chasing new features while ignoring real and big issues. So we got a bloated engine now that is barely functional and definitely not useable for most newcomers to OT hosting.

If anything comes of this, please make it fun and useable by newbies. Let newbies have fun, let them host their silly ots because they will become the future devs, they will release their fun servers and once again "hosters" will exist in a casual manner and OT will be fun again. TFS is not fun, TFS is almost impossible for a newbie to setup and make a functioning OT in a casual and fun manner.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

What TFS got wrong is always chasing new features while ignoring real and big issues. So we got a bloated engine now that is barely functional and definitely not useable for most newcomers to OT hosting.

This is soo right, TFS is missing crucial, old features like reward chest or have seriously bugged features like elemental weapon damage, how? Those things are like 10 years old.

What TFS need is somebody in dev team who actually cares, who uses the engine. For now majority just don't care, and the result is the engine that is the reflection of the efforts.

 

[Codinablack]

Let's try to remain close to the point of the topic.

Polymorphic and based on this poll result the default state of this engine could be retro tibia.

It could follow similar to otcv8 where ot devs are expected to just enable/disable what they want to change their tibia "version" and it could have a nice amount of toggleable features that are most common, then if devs want more they can... dev it. and hopefully submit a pr for it.

sprites = 760
spellSystem = 740
wands = false
skullSystem = false
fightBack = true
experienceFromPlayers = true
mounts = true
addons = false
wings = false
auras = true
playerKillersCanUseBoat = true

etc...

Would need a new format for sprites and items too probably since spr and otb is cancer causing and really gets in the way with 300 different versions of everything and none of them work properly.

What TFS got wrong is always chasing new features while ignoring real and big issues. So we got a bloated engine now that is barely functional and definitely not useable for most newcomers to OT hosting.

If anything comes of this, please make it fun and useable by newbies. Let newbies have fun, let them host their silly ots because they will become the future devs, they will release their fun servers and once again "hosters" will exist in a casual manner and OT will be fun again. TFS is not fun, TFS is almost impossible for a newbie to setup and make a functioning OT in a casual and fun manner.

I really like the configuration, and how you have the sprites for one version, but spellsystem for another. Although I think it might be a bit excessive and exhausive to support so many different versions of everything, I get the core of the concept and think it is a very nice idea!

This is soo right, TFS is missing crucial, old features like reward chest or have seriously bugged features like elemental weapon damage, how? Those things are like 10 years old.

What TFS need is somebody in dev team who actually cares, who uses the engine. For now majority just don't care, and the result is the engine that is the reflection of the efforts.

I think if we stop chasing tibia, there won't be "missing" features anymore.


I don't think that TFS spent too much time chasing newest client tho, they were on 10.98 for what felt like a decade, but that's off topic talk for elsewhere.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Let's try to remain close to the point of the topic.


I really like the configuration, and how you have the sprites for one version, but spellsystem for another. Although I think it might be a bit excessive and exhausive to support so many different versions of everything, I get the core of the concept and think it is a very nice idea!



I think if we stop chasing tibia, there won't be "missing" features anymore.


I don't think that TFS spent too much time chasing newest client tho, they were on 10.98 for what felt like a decade, but that's off topic talk for elsewhere.

I guess that the most important thing to get TFS alive and more interesting is to start with picking the right protocol(s), stick to it(them) and accept the fact, that this engine cannot be successful in chasing real Tibia.

Then it would be necessary to address the kind of issues/bugs that directly affect gameplay, rather than focusing on irrelevant things like changing the way doors work, I think this is a great example of a highly irrelevant change that was made that provided no real benefit, instead for those who wanted to upgrade from an older TFS to a newer one, it added unnecessary work. From my point of view, it is important to avoid such changes.

But to be honest, TFS development is so unclear to me, unclear what it wants to be, that having chosen version 1.4.2 I doubt I will ever move to any newer version. However it would be great to see this engine thriving again.

 

[Silba]

I really like the configuration, and how you have the sprites for one version, but spellsystem for another. Although I think it might be a bit excessive and exhausive to support so many different versions of everything, I get the core of the concept and think it is a very nice idea!

I could elaborate i suppose, wanted to keep my post small incase it's a terrible idea

Sprite config i see just being like rme/otc, so it's just going to look for the spr you tell it to with no problem loading custom spr. So newbie devs or "hosters" can download 7.4 pack and use "740" config option with no issues even though it means nothing, just like rme/otc. Just some ease of use feature intended to help newbies. I'm assuming the map that comes with the engine will be small and insignificant so doesn't matter if you change sprite pack.


The idea for spell system config is because the 7.4 spell system isn't the same at it's core as 7.6+, so maybe just 2 spell systems need support, lvl based magic and ml based magic. The engine would just need to change how npcs sell spells and how spellbook shows spells and maybe a few other things so that a developer doesn't need to regex all his spells and change the mana costs, or change "level" to "magiclevel" when he wants to make a modern server or a retro server. It's very tedious is prone to errors at first.
The actual spell configs could still just be up to the developer to modify however, support the 7.4 spell system + a modern spell system doesn't seem like much bother and im sure community would create spell packs. (as we already see, 7.4 spell packs are available for tfs and pretty download and run)

Maybe even just support for "spell packs" is good enough, let spell system be modular and defined in some sort of pack and let anyone make their own drag and drop spell systems while the engine officially supports the 10.98 spell system for compatibility.
On tfs to change the spell system properly back to retro style is kind of hard, very tedious and easy to make mistakes.


tl;dr: Writing this out i realise that i'm mostly talking about modularity. It doesn't matter what is officially supported or "default" if core features are modular. The community would provide retro packs for sure, and other custom packs and version specific packs if they're easy to make. I know it's hard to make things modular once they are already made to be not modular, but if the idea here is to kind of have a refresh then having modularity in mind from the start seems like a win-win situation.

Sorry for the long post, i didn't realise that i didn't really know what i wanted before i started typing.

 

[Codinablack]

so maybe just 2 spell systems need support, lvl based magic and ml based magic

How about we take it a step further and enable by default the damage calculation is defined inside the spell/rune script itself, but allow an override inside config.lua to set the default formula and skill (I am thinking about a possible future polymorphic server that doesn't have its skills predefined by tibia), so someone could make "arcane" determine the damage, or w/e "skill" their heart desires. Alternatively if we want to allow a greater modification (and still the ability to override defaults) we could make an event that is triggered on any and all "casts" similar to our current creature events like "onMove" and such, where we can hook right in and override the damage of any spell in an instant, or even specific types of spells, and still have readily available all information about the creature that casted it, and its target.

TLDR; Modularity and user configuration for everything sounds like the start of some great core concepts for a polymorphic aimed server, and could be done many different ways

Post automatically merged: Mar 7, 2024

Then it would be necessary to address the kind of issues/bugs that directly affect gameplay, rather than focusing on irrelevant things like changing the way doors work,

I love this! Legit!