xKrazyx
Old School
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
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- 899
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Your points are valid, but I think you may be underestimating the amount of developers and users that are still loyal to old school. I'd argue its as many as 8.6/10.98+.If I would host a retro server, I would definitely be interested in a downported version of TFS, that has cool stuff like Revscriptsys and other engine features. No matter which protocol, I'm sure stuff like proper guildhall support, Asynchronous HTTP API with lua bindings, Parse packet in Lua, yelling behavior would be beneficial, along with tons of other stuff we have in our pending pull request queue.
If I was you, I would spin up a test server and help review and test pull requests, so it gets merged, so it later can be downported and adapted to the server you are interested in. Even if the main repo is not specifically targeted for your use-case, it will benefit you in the end. (unless you are forcing yourself to be stuck on an old obsolete distribution).
if there are pull requests you arent interested in (like protocol specific ones), then just ignore them, and help solve the ones you do care about. The advantage of open source is the ripple effect, once code gets released, it can be ported and adapted to specific use-cases, and will in the end benefit you more than one might think.
This would just make things slower and harder for us developers. We would need more testers, and developers who are actually interested in those protocols. Old protocol developers come and go, and when they do they tend to make a downport. Nostalrius has done that, Nekiro has done that. But most of otland dev team isn't interested in maintaining 3 separate repos.
But nothing is stopping you from doing that. And I will happily encourage anyone to set up and maintain a downported version of TFS, especially when done properly. @Nekiro did this, but I imagine it is challenging to constantly keep up with a master branch. I'm sure when TFS 1.4 is released, people are going to downport it, so the more updates you can contribute to TFS now, the more features will be available when the next big downport happens.
Nekiro maintained a clean downport of 7.72 and 8.6 actively for 4 months, any retro dev could have forked and continued this. I guess they were too busy keeping their modifications private and let it die. I think perhaps this is a challenge within the retro community, many devs here argue with each other and compete against each other when what they should be doing is collaborating (for the sake of their dev scene).
But its not too late, 1.4 will most likely bring a new attempt at a retro repo. It won't be official, but it will probably be recommended for that scene.
But unless retro developers change their mindset and embrace the open source, its going to become another short period one-shot that dwindles into obsolescence. (Then again, obsolescene is kindof the charm for retro devs? )
Just the most recent page 1 of "Server Gaga"
7.4-8.0 x 7
8.54-8.6 x4
10.0+ x5
Custom x 1
Then you have medivia. tibiantis. wearetibia.. retrocores.. etc etc the list goes on. scroll Discussion and see how many are about 7.4-7.72.. its a lot.
Example: Which is the best distribution out there for 7.72 (https://otland.net/threads/which-is-the-best-distribution-out-there-for-7-72.273318/)
I myself used OTHire for years and helped countless users with that distro rather than the 1.3 downport.. I simply was just too busy to make the swap to 1.3 or familiarize myself with the changes... I finally did that due to how obsolete the distro was becoming. The issue was/is OTHire is not very compatable at all with OTC or OTCv8
Just lately have been working with the Nekiro downgrade for 7.72 in the last year, however there are many changes such as revscripts you mentioned that would be great to have, so thats why I have never committed to that repo yet, and currently why I dont have any server out. I have been lookin into how hard it would be to import the latest commits/PR from the latest official repo, and some do look to be a little complicated to merge. I cant tell if its more worth starting from scratch, or importing commits onto Nekiros latest downgrade. Then there's Nostalri~ which has its advantages & disadvantages. As to your point about otland PR, I have no motivation to download any tibia 10.~ on my computer. Later tibia versions depress me xD Thats the issue im describing.. if there were an updated official retro repo.. I would be testing many PRs.
Nekiro has mentioned he is waiting for 1.4 to do this 7.72 downgrade. I think the main issue for many developers is the time is money factor..
I agree to your point it doesn't need to be official, just needs some push to standardize. Stock OTC and retro clients take a lot of work to put together. Now that OTCv8 is presenting a good solution for the client side, a comprehensive retro repo is probably the most enticing thing to a lot of people in my opinion.
Look at world of warcraft.. they went back to their roots and admitted the Vanilla version was just too good. They made WoW Classic for a reason.
Im not trying to say OTS are like Wow but im just trying to say nostalgia is very important for some.. look at how many posts alone on this forum are about Medivia sprite changes...
I think there are some out there that lack the knowledge but have the money for advertisement, if there were pretty easy solutions to be able to launch servers users wanted to launch, such as how counterstrike or minecraft servers are easily deployable, you probably would see a lot more activity around here.
Closest thing ive seen to that is Don's service, but its hard to find and not catered towards different versions.
If you want to launch a Retro server in 2021 on the latest stuff, you actually have to put in quite a considerable amount of work. (im not complaining im just trying to think of things to increase the amount of servers / keep servers alive)
What ive always envisioned is a system, such as a web panel.. where a user can upload his/her map files and optional data pack files or go with the default datapack supplied.. click the version number, choose ram usage and launch the server with the IP address. It would not be difficult to make this if the distribution was there. You can deploy minecraft servers in 60 seconds many places. <- I would help work on this if anyone were interested..
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