You guys do not understand why OTs are dying.

[Animera]

”Tbh if getting started to make an OTS is that difficult then you might as well just already give up. Because it ain't getting easier afterwards.”
Its supposed to be like that, normally when you learn a new skill or anything else, you start with the basics and overtime you get into the most complicated stuff, why make it so complicated for the basic stuff? Lets make it easier and more efficent, all of us might benefit from it.

It isn't hard to develop a OT, but it depends on a few things:

How awesome you want to make it mapping/graphics/programming/website wise... which takes years to develop and you might even come to a point that you will redo your 'bad mappings', or script improvements or sprites/client tweaks in systems you have.

Money or a stable team. To increase the productivity or markeing. Imagine, there are games that has been worked months if not years by a team, Which ends up outplayed in crazy speedruns... You will need a lot of content( = lots of possible bugs), especially online and/or enough motives to keep playing.

Bugs, (valuable) player suggestions in any feature you have or haven't...

My project is almost 10 years old (Done most part solo, but i've invested here and there into some services), and i finally dare to say that i have almost everything to keep people entertained content wise, to make the game more user-friendlier, enough content to last long, balanced vocations, interesting pvp, interesting quests, bug free, general improvements etc.

But so there are enough projects that's been worked on for several months/years by other individuals/teams here..

Only the BETA period, took me over 2 years. It's hard polished tho and stable. Expect minimal support for the biggest time in the project (when your project is 'average'). With all the saturated systems that's been used here it takes these days a lot more to compensate teleport servers, features wise and then you need to make it 'noob friendly' too for being different...

And then you must make it to the end, which isn't happened often.. you know... ghosting/dead projects... meanwhile some people
give up because they aren't able to code anything, and fails in learning it.


Animera

 

[Astrax]

I don't think OT is dying, I came back after a long retirement and I was surprised at how active this forum still is, with some really nice projects going on. Sure, it isn't as active as 10 years ago when we had several other OT sites (remember ot-fans?), but it is hardly a dead community.

TFS' development is slow, but it is close to being a perfect "Tibia engine" anyways, and features like the revscriptsys are very nice recent additions.

By the way, have you seen this? SIMPLE ALL IN ONE: From nothing to a fully working dedicated server on Ubuntu (https://otland.net/threads/simple-all-in-one-from-nothing-to-a-fully-working-dedicated-server-on-ubuntu.212117/)
Don made that script that set ups your OT on a linux machine with three simple commands.

 

[zbizu]

you miss the point, most of stuff is being developed locally, usually on windows (I mean people who work on datapacks usually use windows)

linux is a dump and run kind of system, usually for hosting only

 

[MikeOT]

tldr at the bottom

I get what you're saying with it being more complicated to get into than it was back then, but with that it makes what you can customize with very little programming/scripting knowledge vastly better in my opinion. And really.... the whole "get tfs up and running" is not all that complicated. If you don't have the motivation to learn how to do that with one of the pre-compiled releases, odds are you do not have the motivation to deliver any kind of fun project for the community to play on. Having said that though:

I think the 2 main stems of frustration that steers people away is the lack of tools, and OTclient.

As far as tools go.. yea, they exist. You can get an object builder and item editor that "works" with the latest TFS if you look hard enough. RME is pretty easy to get into.... but, for instance, there is not even an official object builder that has full functionality with 10.98 (which is what TFS uses!) that is released to the community. (If there is I have never ran across it in all my searches).

OTclient took a ton of effort from I have no idea how many people, and it is in pretty good shape nowadays really. Kudos to all those who have contributed to it, but the lack of documentation on how to use that daggon thing would run off even experienced programmers that didn't want to pull their hair out and beat their face on the keyboard for 3 years trying to figure out how it all works for even simple changes/additions.


So, what you're left with as a new user, is that you naturally use THE advertised, official, "The Forgotten Server" in conjunction with the CIP client.

Here is what this looks like for a new user:

At this point your options are literally 10.98 only, unless you start doing some heavy reading, and digging around for some downgraded version which may or may not be really crappy and have game-breaking bugs that you discover 6 months into a project that forces you to either learn programming and spend LOADS of time researching how all of it was built........... or move on to a different distribution and start over.

So then you've got the official TFS going and you're really excited, and decide you want to go the custom route. Ok great. Now... how do I change the sprites around to my custom ones? Through some quick research you find "Object Builder". You download object builder and run it to discover that it doesn't even work with the official TFS. What a buzzkill... so you search and search and download 2-3 different files that claim to work great with 10.98... the first couple don't at all, and then you finally find one that does. All well and good for a bit, but then you learn that some of the functionality that exists in Object Builder doesn't work with 10.98. Oh well.. I guess i'll just do what I can with it and hope nothing breaks.

So now you want to get away from CIP client and use OTclient for customizability. It takes a rocket scientist to compile it, so you give up on it after trying it 50 different ways, and download the latest precompiled version. Oh great, it has bot flags off so anyone can bot on it easily...... back to trying to compile it yourself 50 times with bot flags on (assuming you can even figure out how to do that with NO documentation)..... If you've stuck around this long then you are RAPIDLY approaching burn out already, and you havent even STARTED really building your server.


Fact: If you are coming into the OT world this late into it, you would be better off going to your address bar and typing in unity3d.com, and learning that. In the time it takes you to really get to grasp with all these complicated pieces you've got to put together to make a truly custom Open Tibia Server(A.k.a. Your own game), you could just about have something very similar made in unity with some of their assets like "UMMORPG".

I believe this is why that this community doesn't grow anymore.

Mark my words: The only way that this community will ever grow, is:

- some people on here with the skill set to do so would make much more user-friendly tools that actually work out of the box with the current TFS. Just making the existing tools work out of the box with current TFS would go a long way, but being able to map edit, add items, and change sprites in the same program without having to use 3 different ones that don't always play nice with each other would be a game changer.

- More customization options with TFS to mimic older Tibia versions. You can argue this all you want, but a great majority of people here just want to make a private server that acts like tibia, but to be able to easily add their own custom quests, systems, sprites, etc. Unless you are a decent programmer you are stuck with Tibia how it was played in 10.98, and 10.98 only. It would be GREAT if we could get actual support on the official TFS, maybe even just starting with some config options like "heighstackblock", so that you could choose whether a couple parcels on top of each other would block the player. Not everyone here wants to be some elitist programmer. Alot of people just want to be able to make a cool custom Tibia Private Server without having to spend 5 years learning to program first.

- A better, stable OTclient with actual documentation on how the thing works


Tldr: It is way too unapproachable for a new user to come in and make anything out of what we have as it stands. You have to do an incredible amount of research and trial and error, and spend a vast amount of time just to learn how to make a private server for an existing MMORPG, yet alone make anything that is 100% custom.

The only way to move forward with growth in my opinion:

• Better toolset that actually works with current TFS
• Official customization options for downward compatibility in TFS
• A client that is not buggy as crap with basically NO documentation on how to work with it

I just want to add this also:

Don't take my opinions above as me bashing anyone or anything. At this point I personally have no problems with any of the above things, but it was very hard learned, and therein lies the problem if you want to grow the community. This community has been incredible over the years, and there have been (and still exists) some amazingly talented people from all walks of our nerdy little world, from artists to scripters to programmers to website devs to map designers and everything in between. It is AWESOME that this much code is out there freely available for anyone to pick up and learn..... and for free! This community has taught me a treasure trove of skills that I will probably continue using and growing on for the rest of my life, and I am very thankful for that.

My opinions above are solely in regards to a new user experience, and growing the community!

 

[Kuzyn]

@Don Vic
The answer is simple, Tibia attracts fewer new players than there are old players who give up the game (rly, how long you can play the same title). Anyway Tibia can still boast of quite a large group of fans for such an old game.
Btw, how many people came to Open Tibia without trying Cipsoft's one? In my opinion, almost nobody and we all know that Cipsoft's player base isnt growing a lot. Of course today its easier to get new players into our community, indie gamedev is a big thing but Im not sure if they are interested in playing varations of original Tibia. They might be willing to play some unique projects that try to break the ties with RL Tibia, but they are quite rare. Maybe in future Phobos will get some more players after launch, but unluckily for us they are from "outside".

Problem with rangers arcani was that they launch bugged server with cash-grab premium shop there was around 500 unique players in first two days most of them simply lost interest in waiting for bug fixes also rangers arcani is NON-PVP tibia server do u see any non-pvp server around? Would call it open-beta not official start tbh

Also a lot of ppl already explored most content and stuff during high rate test server so it was boring for them

❤ Oh!❤ And there he is. Our beloved hater.

 

[zbizu]

how many people came to Open Tibia without trying Cipsoft's one?

my ex gf was a pokemon (tibia client based) player
she even had RME installed on her laptop and attended some mapping competition
she never played tibia btw

 

[XeekXeek]

That's why once in awhile, I checkout new OTChaos servers (copies, updates, OB-set quests, etc..). Very simple and straight forward to play.
This is my main goto "old school" server.

 

[Evil Puncker]

now you can see only 4-9k hardly

yeah sure dude

 

[zbizu]

2007 was the shit

64k online

 

[Merlin]

So these threads pop up every now and then that "ots or tibia is dying" but can someone show some actual statistics?
Because from the numbers I've seen this doesn't seem to be the case.

Ots weren't really "easier" to make back in the day.
You have the same tools and even better ones to create ots today.
Actually you can just download and run most of the old ots and they will work the way they did back then.
But here's the thing; the vast majority of ots (successful or not) that were created 10 years ago were complete shit in quality.
Now that many of those popular ots datapacks have been released it only takes a minute of looking through the files to see that server was made by a noob with barely any idea of what they were doing.

The reason why things got "harder" is because the players are no longer willing to play shit quality ots.
This means that for anyone new in making ots, you have some serious catching up to do if you want to compete, and half-assing won't get you there.
And honestly, it's not hard. Laziness and impatience make tasks seem hard even though they're not.

I started learning how to play the guitar 5 months ago through youtube tutorials, most people that hear me play think I've been taking lessons and practicing for years (humble brag ik). What I've done is practice for 30min - 1h every single day.
The point I'm trying to make is, if you ask yourself this: "If I put 1h each day into learning some programming or just ot development related stuff, would I still be a newbie after a couple of months?" Learning shit takes time and persistence.
@Delusion Is a great example of this, he was a complete newb back in 2015, look at the code he shares today.
People who knew more than him back then ask him for help today.

The first thing newbies have to do is get rid of their impatience. Even for someone experienced, creating an 8.6 evo server that's not complete shit will take at least a month even with all the readily available scripts, maps, events, etc.

I'm not trying to invalidate the points about how things could be more user friendly and better documented.
But who's responsible for making things more user-friendly? Who's responsible for writing proper documentation for OTClient?
Nobody, and thinking that someone other than yourself is responsible for making things the way you want them to be is called entitlement (unless someone is being paid to do it).
Many of the contributors on OtLand are self-taught and with all the information available on the internet there's rarely an excuse for anyone not being able to do the same.
What you can do is

• Wait and hope that someone will do these things
• Offer to pay someone to do it and hope someone takes the offer
• Learn how to do it yourself and contribute

Just my 2 cents.

 

[zbizu]

funny how rl tibia manages to keep solid 10k online for years despite everyone saying that it's dying

04:27 CET (00:27 br time)
official servers: 11k online
otservlist: 14k online (assuming some servers spoof, the amount of legit players would still be higher than global)

 

[nugo]

It’s difficult to say its dying, it’s still a steady player base and there’s no reason for it not to remain. Go onto steam and look at all the indie 2d pixel games that people play, if you could tap into that market you could attract players easily. I think there are two major problems and both have been addressed above already. It is certainly a valid point that the barrier to entry has become a bit to much, it really does need to be streamlined and cleaned up. That being said that in today's society everyone expects things to be easy and convenient (online ordering to the door step, uber eats to the door step etc) and Otland still "lives in the past" in that regard, there is definitely a sentiment that people want things just handed to them ready to go but with anything you do there will always be an element of hard work that needs to be put into something before you become good at it. That applies to OT-servers as well. Its up to you personally if you decide whether that’s a good thing or not but its still the reality. I very rarely speak on these topics because i don’t really have much to add but i really feel this time around the below suggest would significantly improve OT-lands future outlook, in fact I don’t think I have commented on a thread like this in 10 years.

Otland needs to OWN a system of tools/server/client that are official and are easy to use but difficult to master. You will start to see more people doing things for themselves if the programs they are using aren’t intimidating when they first look at them. Its the whole psychological mindset of compartmentalization that’s humans do when faced with a problem. People are put off from a problem that seems to large at first glance and i feel the OT-community doesn't do a good job of combating this with the tools/stuff it supplies.

Otland needs to own the following:

Server = Already does that with TFS

Client = OT Clients alright but as people have mentioned its a nightmare to setup. Its not easy to use and difficult to setup.

Map Editor =RME is decent but lacks a lot of support and features (its old and unloved atm). There isn't really a goto guy/team that’s maintaining it at the moment.

Website/Acc Maker = Znotes website and acc maker are pretty much perfect, easy to set up and use and difficult to master when you deviate from pre-set layouts.

+ whatever else i have forgotten of the top of my head that’s essential to making and OT.

By own I genuinely mean have these types of programs on an official OTland repository that’s controlled by OTland staff/teams. With project managers assigned to each one. Almost like an “off the shelf package” that comes with all the tools required to create a basic OT from scratch. I really feel the future of the community needs to be driven from the top down. These changes need to be dictated and controlled at high level. I personally do project management in the engineering discipline at a Senior level and would love to help but I don’t see people at my level in the community instantly being put in charge of overseeing the direction of something like this. I really feel after a good 11 years of looking at these forums that if you were to put these things in place this community would be even more successful than it is today, more servers would be opened, more new people visiting this site won’t be as intimated and I feel it would benefit the community as a hole with literly 0 negatives. Otland at the moment is a somewhat free for all organic environment which is good and it should always stay that way but some overarching direction would go a long way. Don’t get me wrong the admins, mods, content developers, community people and all the other support staff have done amazing things for this community, it wouldn't be where it is today without any of those people. I just feel like Otland and the OT community is wasting some of its potential and it would be great to see it flourish. I hope this doesn’t offend anyone that’s not the point, just some constructive feedback from my view. I have used my 1 opinion post per 10 year allowance, I’ll do another one in 10 years haha.

 

[zbizu]

@nugo

TFS is ok, but it's moving forward very slowly. A major cleanup would be needed. There are issues and PRs that have been active for years.

RME is doing its job really well. 2.1 was already good. 3.5 isn't perfect yet, but it's a solid mapeditor.

OTC's problem is lack of documentation and examples. I spent half of the day digging in most basic features of it to figure out how to edit it.

Znote AAC - not bad. If it had more scripts maybe it could surpass Gesior AAC in popularity.

We can't really speed up the pace of progress. People rarely improve the repositories for free and when they do, they usually do it for themselves. Some old bugs/issues never get resolved because nobody codes in the areas in which the bugs occur or the bug is too difficult to fix.

 

[Evil Puncker]

otservlist: 14k online

always divide that by 3 or even 6 even if it is not considered "spoof" by xinn, most of the servers allows like 4 online character per person (MC), and lets not forget about afk trainers, where some owners set afk quick time to 600 minutes LMAO, I'm yet to see an OT with more active players than afk trainers...

and about @Znote AAC, it is pretty solid and have like 99% of gesior scripts converted to it already, and I'm pretty sure that znote is allowing to convert anything that is missing. IMO what is leading users to use gesior instead of znote is just the "name", since there is no other explanation ((oh yeah some are dumb and still use xampp because of outdated guides I guess )

 

[zbizu]

always divide that by 3 or even 6 even if it is not considered "spoof" by xinn, most of the servers allows like 4 online character per person (MC), and lets not forget about afk trainers, where some owners set afk quick time to 600 minutes LMAO, I'm yet to see an OT with more active players than afk trainers...

and about @Znote AAC, it is pretty solid and have like 99% of gesior scripts converted to it already, and I'm pretty sure that znote is allowing to convert anything that is missing. IMO what is leading users to use gesior instead of znote is just the "name", since there is no other explanation ((oh yeah some are dumb and still use xampp because of outdated guides I guess )

let's not forget TFS bug - when you exit while attacking something, you don't get kicked so trainer monks can stuck you online

I still use xampp for local testing btw.
I don't set up website because I create characters through sql queries.
apache + mysql + xampp control panel is very comfortable to use

 

[J.Dre]

The community as a whole is dwindling to an extent. It was different 13 years ago. What has died, in my opinion, is the passion for developing and learning.

Those of us who were here in the beginning didn’t have the ability to download a ready to run server. We had to create, design, & learn. This was all driven by our passion to build something better. Most of these people left and we gave all of you new members a platform to build something even greater. Priorities changed for a lot of us older members. We have a life to live. I don’t mean offense by saying this, however, OpenTibia is in the state it is in today because you let it get to this point. Perhaps, in a way, we made a mistake by leaving such resources so readily available for use.

Want to see change? Create it. Want to see this community thrive? Build it. Take initiative and pave a new path. Experiment. Go against the status quo. Don’t be afraid to fail over and over again. We all did.

 

[Damon]

The community as a whole is dwindling to an extent. It was different 13 years ago. What has died, in my opinion, is the passion for developing and learning.

Those of us who were here in the beginning didn’t have the ability to download a ready to run server. We had to create, design, & learn. This was all driven by our passion to build something better. Most of these people left and we gave all of you new members a platform to build something even greater. Priorities changed for a lot of us older members. We have a life to live. I don’t mean offense by saying this, however, OpenTibia is in the state it is in today because you let it get to this point. Perhaps, in a way, we made a mistake by leaving such resources so readily available for use.

Want to see change? Create it. Want to see this community thrive? Build it. Take initiative and pave a new path. Experiment. Go against the status quo. Don’t be afraid to fail over and over again. We all did.

OT: Might wanna update your signature mate. That e-mail probably doesn't exist anymore, does it?

On topic: I agree with you to some extent. The desire or willingless to learn has dwindled quite a bit.

 

[J.Dre]

OT: Might wanna update your signature mate. That e-mail probably doesn't exist anymore, does it?

On topic: I agree with you to some extent. The desire or willingless to learn has dwindled quite a bit.

It does. I’ve begun developing again.

 

[Exeus]

I just tried to setup tfs straight from gh, but years ago I've been messing with this shit and that's my take on it:

compiling engine - pretty trivial

setting up mysql - pretty easy (except permissions & remote connections, generally a lot of googling, I'd rather swap database driver from MySQL to postgre sql or mssql (SSMS offers best tooling by far) if I knew CPP enough and wanted to create ot seriously)

creating account - oh shit, here we go again, so as always in order to create simple acc 1/1 you've to setup whole php website? yaaay!

creating account & characters via sql & let's log into the game -

shit works, but throws 10000 exceptions on console and nothing actually work like eating blueberries \o/

___

Effort that this old.community put into TFS is very impressive, many of them probably made careers of that, but unfortunely this game isn't ""sexy"" anymore and putting effort into creating new OTS is risky investment because it requires a lot of time & knowledge on how to balance the game in order to make it playable, but players pool is tiny as fuck.

On the other hand settings up servers for other popular games like LoL sounds impossible.

 

[zbizu]

I didn't even do much in c++

but I got into programming starting from doing lua in yurots 0.9.4d