general future improvements

Christopher · 07-28-2023

well, starting off this section, when introducing graal to people i meet irl, which is not too often, i like to describe it as a pokemon-like game. in my experience it’s been hard to introduce it. so i like to compare it to those older pokemon games where the graphics are really squary. i mean even the upgraded versions could be compared to it, graphics wise. it can be modern, midivil, can be many things. and who don’t like pokemon? i don’t know. looking at pokemon’s success, i’m wondering, how is it they haven’t created an mmo themselves yet? not sure. however, i think that graal online should consider joining the nintendo shop, too.

gamepad and controller support free your mind.
looking at classic, remember when the ‘gamepad configuration’ option was added to the menu? when you were younger, maybe in your teens or something, going beta for the latest iOS upgrade was like one of the coolest experiences. where i was at, there were not too many people on that train though. not too many people aware of it. so it was like this super secret cool experience. even jailbreaking your device, it was another really cool thing not a lot of people knew about, like irl, i didn’t know anyone who’d do it or even know about it. i just kept quiet about it. after all, the name is ‘jailbreaking’ and a lot of people described it as something dangerous to do. in my honest experience, it’s nothing too dangerous about it. it just allows you to customise your OS better. although, it can be buggy and really i think that’s the big difference in iOS or android. there’s just something ‘bout the timeless simplicity of iOS, really and what jailbreaking does, is a try of android hackers to get into the apple and eat it up from the inside out. like a worm. you know. a nice way to put it. apples have such a beautiful shape. no? i stopped jailbreaking it at a certain point. beta access is still interesting though sometimes. by the end of this special year ’22 i finally picked up a nintendo switch. basically, i only bought it to play sky: children of the light. i still haven’t found any people to connect with, that i could play with actively. if anyone wants to connect there, feel free to hmu about it somewhere in graal. i also ended up getting two physical nintendo games, when really i wanted to get the digital versions. it’s just that in the heat of the moment, you know, when the stove is cooking and you’re placed on a hot stove, you know, you just do things, you don’t really think too much about it. those were two games really dear to me. i was looking to sell them as soon as possible though and sold them just a few days ago on the 18th of july to a record store. i really prefer this whole digital thing. recently i had purchased an iPhone 14 Pro, completely through digital store currency. i really wanted to get it ‘cause the number 14, it awakens a very special and private memory within me. also, in germany, at age 14 you’re allowed to do certain things you weren’t allowed to do before. drinking light beers is socially acceptable. you know, V+, mixery, stuff like that. very light stuff. it’s really good if drugs have a strong effect on you. i think having intercourse is legal here at age 14. so me, being exposed to all this tech and internet community stuff, getting this iPhone 14 Pro, it was just really important to me. it’s a memory i hold very dear. just yesterday, when i originally wrote this, thursday, june 29th, 2023, i paired nintendo switch controllers with iPhone to finally use a wireless game controller for graal as the ‘gamepad configuration’ option in the menu mentions, unfortunately, i came to find that graal didn’t even react to the switch controller. so that was kind of dismantling to see. i didn’t expect it to work, really, i was just curious if it does since it’s all announced in the menu and stuff ever since. had it in the back of my mind to get a wireless controller for that for a while. hm. don’t seem to work as intended yet. anyways, graal online, i think it’s time to release the graal games to nintendo estore as well. maybe even this new worlds.graalonline.com client. that would be pretty cool.

the new client and why making it available for nintendo switch is worth consideration
i’ve been looking into how i could help, maybe to rewrite the graal6 client into something macOS compatible with swift or something alike. i couldn’t put my mind to it too long. don't know too much about coding. i’m sitting there sometimes, i’m looking at playerworlds player count, looking back at classic or era’s player count and i see a server like zodiac, such an amazing game and i’m like how is it there’s up to 1000 players on these mobile servers and none of them bother to check out graal’s roots? visit ‘computer’ graal?
i see a lot of computer players on the more popular servers.
especially in classic.
it plays well on a computer.

Posted by Christopher

in a sneak peak of the new client and what it can do in '21 i noticed that it was able to log in to servers era mobile, zone mobile and even 'ol west if you typed in the servernames in the search bar. i'm not sure if i was able to log in to classic at that point. but i think you were able to have multiple servers open at once with that worldsplay client. it was real cool.

i think it’s really important that this new worldsplay.graalonline.com client is gonna be compatible with macOS, too. and now that i see, nintendo went and made it’s own estore too, i think that maybe nintendo should get it’s graal online client, too. nintendo switch has a touch screen. so. i think that’s really important. also, when you look at zodiac's current mobile controls, using it on a phone, it feels very, uh, heavy, uh and, like, just a bit more resistant, like you're carrying a heavy weight. playing this on a nintendo though, it would not feel like such a heavy weight. these mobile controls are joysticks, too, so ya, it would be a good addition to be able to play this on on nintendo as well. you know, when you’re active on graal for a while, you’ll realise, its it’s own operating system, in and of itself. when i look at nintendo’s roots, it reminds me a little more of microsoft to be honest though. if i had to exaggerate what i’m saying, it’s that nintendo, it’s like a mixture of microsoft and apple. i’ve been a big fan of nintendo. just the early pokemon games man, it was the best storylines. but pokemon mystery dungeon? man, it was the best game. wherever you’d go. had a gameboy advanced SP, managed to upgrade to nintendo DS, you know, the bulky original version and still keep my gameboy. i’ll never forget my labradogs. nintendogs. whatever they were called.

if anyone wants to connect on writing that macOS client, get together, you know, figure this out, let me know. i know, these changes seem quite a piece of work right now. even me, i don’t know fully how i’d rewrite the client. that little piece of work though, it is going to be so, so worth it. the more accessible it is, the more people will be able to check out the game. the worlds.graalonline.com page has been saying that it’s coming soon for quite a while now.

transparency issues
so i’ve reported this in several past posts and its about transparency issues. i’m more of a gameplay person but every now and then i’ll draw some, edit some, do some gfx. who doesn’t like to look good? even in projection. i’ve stumbled upon this time and again though and its that sometimes, especially in bodies but in heads and other type of gfx like shields too, the black outline will disappear which looks very strange. i have not really understood this so far, even when i first started out getting into the process of painting and drawing something and uploading it. so, there is the option to have even uploaded bodies change their colour. if you use the colours 0000ff, ff0000, ffffff, 000000, ffad6b and ce1829 and index the colours on the palette. usually, the background colour of these colourchangeable graal bodies is 008400. like, when you look up in the gfx sites offering gfx for download and use, when you scroll through those pages and you see a body with that background colour, you know that its colourchangeable. even when i did everything as it is supposed to be, you know, tick the transparencies box, avoid using certain colours and index the colours on the palette, often times when i uploaded something i was met with the missing outline, missing whole coloured areas of the gfx or this. so, like, that’s a little confusing. i do like the game though. but that part can be quite uncomfortable. especially when you put some time and effort into creating a piece of gfx and this happens.

solution: an in-depth, maybe in-game description for these transparency issues and how to avoid them.

skin colour
i have said this in previous feedbacks and this is a very subliminal… “issue”, but as i said, if your skin colour is not white, but something darker in pigment, black or even a mixture of both, i dunno, i’m sure there’s even different colours yet, often, to find the right skin colour for your in-game character, you have to purchase vip whereas people of the “white” skin colour, they can just set it there, its a default, other people have to pay for that. pay for freedom of expressions. so i think that it is no wonder that you see such few really black people in here actually enjoying this. in my opinion, this is a problem. on the one part, the game is offering to come play in all the diversity there is, then, on the other part it’s like, if you want to set your skin colour to what it actually is to fully express yourself, often, in all those cases of people whose skin type is not the “orange”, or the black of their skin is actually a darker brown or even lighter brown, you won’t find it if you’re not subscribed to being a vip which costs money. this is a problem generally though, in the language, like how is it that colours or contrasts such as white or black just go ahead and put themselves as the end all be all, solid, plain colours whereas brown is a mixture of it, in a way, being something lesser, not as solid in status as the others?

browser game chat bugs
the chat bar in any of the graal games’ browser clients has a lot of issues. such as when using copy paste, it’ll just display the v key, you know, the key you use to paste is the v key along with the cmd key. using that, it’ll just display the v key instead of what was copied to paste it. or it’ll repeatedly spam the v key ’til you halt it. what’s also is that functions like auto correct or keyboard text replacements such as “omw” turning into “on my way” don’t seem to be recognised by the browser client’s chat bar. another bug in the browser game’s chat bar i’ve noticed is that when you’re in the middle of typing something, maybe you got distracted by something, wanted to open some other page or something and when you go back to what you were typing and start to type, it’ll repeatedly spam that first letter you were typing until you halt it.