Creation/New Player Development Guide
Welcome to the New Player Development Guide!
This guide is meant to assist new Graalians in finding fun development projects to help with. Just playing Graal is fun, but when you've helped create part of the world it is much more rewarding! The goal of this guide is to help new and existing players enter the world of developing their own content on Graal.
The Basics
A Playerworld project generally consists of at least a few people from the following developmental fields. Although these aren't the only groups, Graal is made up of three main development communities:
The Scripters
The Levelers
The Graphics Artists
Scripts
Staff of this category are generally referred to as NATs (NPC Administration Team). Skyld, a former member of the Global Scripting Team, has written a decent introduction to scripting that can be found at GScript for Dummies.
GScript is a function based language which has many pre-defined functions triggered by game events, such as a player touching an NPC or typing out a word/phrase. Users may also create their own functions, which allows extremely flexible creation using GScript.
If you excel in HTML, JavaScript, or logic in general, mastering GScript will make you a highly sought after resource for many Playerworld projects.
Levels
Staff of this type are generally referred to as LATs (Level Administration Team).
Levelling is the process of placing tiles in a 64x64 grid which is saved as a .nw or .graal file using the Level Editor.
Some tiles allow a player to pass over them, while others do not. This is how we create the game-world and any terrain imaginable. A castle, for example, may have "wall" tiles which block the player, "chair" tiles for the throne which make the player sit, "water" tiles for the moat which make the player swim, and etc.
Levelling is widely considered the easiest developmental skill to learn. Many new players find it easy to pick up level making since the level editor is WYSIWYG or "What You See iWhat You Get". While levelling is easy to start out with, there are many techniques that a master leveler will use regularly to achieve amazing illusions of depth and detail.
A master leveler is valuable to a project not only for the feel of the world, but the speed at which it expands. An experienced level artist can build entire continents in a matter of days, rather than months as a beginner would. Strong levelling skills are the driving force behind any project.
Graphics
Staff of this type are generally referred to as GATs (Graphics Administration Team).
Making graphics is a very simple task for players who are more artistically inclined. Once you are familiar with how the game uses graphics it is only a matter of time and dedication with digital illustration programs to produce content for Graal.
For instance, a tileset used by the LATs is a grid of tiles. Depending where the tiles are placed on the grid determines if they are blocking, swimming, chair, etc tiles, and a GAT must put the correct tile in the correct area on the image.
For somebody who is a wiz with digital illustration, there are unlimited opportunities to join exciting projects.
Notes
Very small start, not even a complete outline yet.
Players: If you seek what this guide may some day hold, check Creation as a good starting point.
--HoudiniMan 10:40, 5 July 2007 (CEST)