Xan Kriegor's AvalonRO3 Development Blog

Incoming Test Server, Server Documentations, and More

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:00:00 +0000

I have about 30 minutes before this week's maintenance begins, and thus I've decided it was time I made another entry to this blog. It's bee a while since I've last writen for this, so there's plenty to write about.

First of all, and this is old news by now, we finally have our new website online!

http://avalonro.net/

Big thanks to all the Yoshu Design and Rahul for the design and coding.

Since then, I've spoken with Maever about getting us some advertisements for the server. We expect to have those in place in short notice. It should give our population the boost it needs.

Second on the news is the long-promised AvalonRo Sakray. Many players are still confused about this, so I decided to write about it in detail.

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Sakray and Server Updating

Back when we were making AvalonRO3, I had A LOT of help from the server's most experience staff. Maever, Borf, and Klut were all there to pitch in help and advice. Without them, there's no way our current server could exist the way it does now.

However, in the end, the one doing the actual keyboard smashing in order to get things going was me. Inexperienced as I was, everything I did took forever. For instance, I recall the day I was working on creating AvRO3's first client. Converting the item images, sprites, and descriptions took well over 10 hours. Since then, I've gained a lot of experience on running Hercules, and the server as a whole.

The reason I am bringing this up is because the amateurish manner in which I created the server caused a severe problem that I only really noticed many months later. I made custom changes to the configurations and source directly on the files, which means that if I attempted a server update, everything would ge overwritten. In other words, everything would have to be done over again. Even worse than that was that I never really documented anything I did, which would make everything that much harder.

To solve those issues, and to prevent it from happening in the future, I decided the best course of action was to re-do everything again.

I mean that quite literally. On Maever's test machine, I downloaded and installed a fresh version of hercules. Then, I reapplied every single custom change in a way that would not get overwritten in case of a server update. Finally, I transfered and converted every single custom script again. By "again", the meaning is that, the first time, I had already checked over every custom script on the server to make sure everything was compatible. We're talking about well over 300 files of coded text. It was by far the most lengthy part of the process, but thankfully not many things had to be changed.

Over the course of about 3 days, I completely recreated AvalonRO3 from scratch on a separate machine. Except this time done correctly, and with proper documentation(more on this further down). The server is about 95% done, with the exception of a few things not working correctly/as intended. Soon, Gurrath and myself will begin studying on how to convert the database from the current avalon to the sakray avalon, which is when the trial period can finally begin. I had promised it for last month, and then by the first half of this month, though now I have no timeframe for when the last 5% will be finished. Everything has to work perfectly, else there's no point.

The transitions will be quite simple. First, it'll be open as a test server for players to try out skills in it. Once we've confirmed it's stable, we'll completely transfer the database from the current AvRO3 to the *new* AvRO3. The hastle for players should be minimum.

The purpose of this is but one: to guarantee that future server updates can be done automatically, just by pulling newer files from Hercules' main trunk.

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Server Documentation

Throughout the years, Avalon has had several Developers, Head Developers, and Admins. Most players will recall Zarnox being the head-figure for a very long time. During his time, and even before him, many different people have *touched* Avalon. Browsing through the script files, I have seen scripts being signed by at least a dozen different people. This make our server a very special place, because it's not the result of any single person's effort, but rather, the result of a community of Developers and Game Masters.

Unfortunately, all of the previous Developers have one thing in common: none of them left any documentation of what they did. That was one of the reasons AvRO2 was rather difficult to work on, because nobody on the staff really knew what custom changes had been made before. The only things we could go by were server maintenance logs, but those often don't include everything. Without knowing, I was heading in the same direction.

Fortunately, with the opportunity to recreate the whole server from scratch, also came the opportunity to properly document everything. And thus was born the Dev Bible.

The Dev Bible is a .docx file which I've created that's half-guide, half-changelog about everything we've done in AvalonRO3. It looks something like this:

It details everything I've done to the server's root code, so that everything that quickly be re-applied in case something goes catastrophically wrong. Every single server parameter is listed. In other words, it's the "recipe" for making AvRO3. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I'll continue to be Avalon's head Developer. But perhaps many years from now someone else will be sitting in my chair, and he/she won't have issues with past documentation thanks to this.

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That's all for today's blogpost. Please continue supporting our server, and thanks for reading.

-Xan Kriegor, Head Developer/Head Game Master

Homunculus Balance

Fri, 09 May 2014 19:43:00 +0000

One of the things I had promised when we launched was Homunculus S. Next Monday Maintenanance, I'll fulfill this promise.

That said, it took quite a bit of effort to balance it for our MaxLvl 255 server. First, I had to decide: How do I want Homunculus to be played in the game?

I never liked the AvRO2 style homunculus. The only usefulness you could get out of it was Lif's walkspeed, or abuse Vanilmirth's bolts. I wanted Homunculi to be more sturdy, to live longer, and to have more than a single usefulness. The obvious step towards that was to increase their HP/SP, and to make sure that they had enough HIT that their physical hits wouldn't be useless. It turned out more or less like this:

Eleanor:

Eleanor might as well not be there. She's the coolest Homunculus S out of all 5, but none of her skills work properly(or at all). The only reason to pick her would be for the sake of having cute catgirl homunculus chasing you. Truly a shame, considering that her ATK is the highest among all.

She is playable if you opt to use a Filir as a starting Homunculus. Moonlight spam should deal overwhelming consistent high damage, but personally I believe Genetics will choose the other Homunculi over her.

Bayeri:

The highlights of the unicorn companion are definetely its crowd control and defensive potentials. Stahl Horn is a long range pushback skill which will make it very hard for characters to get within melee range of you, if played correctly. Alternatively, Stein Wand will save you if you fail to keep your distance.

Dieter:

Non ranged attackers will think twice before attacking Dieter. He will dish out huge damage should he be attacked carelessly. Pyroclastic helps with the ATK based skills, while Granite Armor will help when stacking reductions. The most useful skill, Volcanic Ash, had to be disabled, because it was too strong and didn't accept cooldowns/delays. I intend to repair this issue as soon as possible.

Eira:

While definitely the weakest Homunculus, she boasts the best skills among Homunculus S: Silence Breeze. In a fast paced server like our own, the ability to force-silence someone(even at the cost of your own silence) is likely one of the best abilities you can have. A Genetic with an Eira is capable of shutting down a player, but will require someone else's help in order to actually kill them. A must have for MvP parties.

Sera:

The highly of this homunculus is the ability to bind. With the restrictions on the Genetic traps, Needle of Paralysis becomes an alternative for keeping players on their place. Other than this, Summon Legion is capable of filling up the enemy's screen, blinding them to your movements and actions, and making it hard to click your character.

Those are just the new abilities. They can be coupled with one of the original 4 homunculi skills(and their respective stats strengths) to achieve specific objectives. For instance, creating a Dieter from an Amistr will cause it to have higher HP than if you were to make it from a Filir, though the Filir-based would have higher ATK.

Regardless of which combination you pick, it is fact that Genetic's offensive and defensive power will ride sharply because of this new content. To counter this, we'll be adding restriction on how often you may Ressurect your Homunculus to 10 minutes between uses. That means that if your Homunculus dies while the cooldown is active, you will not be able to bring it back until the timer expires.

Additionally, Event GMs may wish to add restrictions to Homunculus use during events, but that discussion if for the future. For now, I am curious in what useful, creative ways players will learn to use those new pets.

This is all for now. I hope you players enjoy your new content.

Old Websites

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 21:30:00 +0000

Avalon has been up for over 10 years already. In that meantime, we've
had many websites, and the old players will certainly remember it. Take a
minute to take a time travel journey over our server's history:

Our current website, on February 2nd, 2011:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110202203141/http://www.avalonro.net/

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Our old website, still under the excalibur-ro.com domain. September 24th, 2010:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100924005726/http://www.excalibur-ro.com/

Same website, on February 4th, 2009:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090204054848/http://excalibur-ro.com/?

Check out the About Us page, the Staff page, and Server Info page. The screenshots are also worth looking at.

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Next,
the website that came before that one. Most ancient players are from
around this time, and the poring sounds will certainly be nostalgic for
them.

April 6th, 2007:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070406230645/http://excalibur-ro.com/

Once again, check the staff page. I don't even know half of those people. I don't even recall us having a Lineage server.

Same website, on July 18th, 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060718074222/http://www.excalibur-ro.com/?

At this point, we still had AvalonRO 1, and the old Hall of Fame was there.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060718054216/http://excalibur-ro.com/ladder_avro2/

Now take a look at those guilds: The Pixel Army, TianXia, pirati di avalon, Zoro Pirates, Innocence, Dragon Spirits, Islanders.

And
the player names: Tiny Turtle, Flippin, Elkenver, Godlike//KO, Sekryu,
Dice, Kumopuff, eLude, Aizen, Walle, 187 Soldier, Reckless Intent,
Farome, Ukiko.

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Next stop: May 30th, 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060530084314/http://www.excalibur-ro.com/

The max stats were lower, and the rates too.

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Had enough? It's not over yet. The ride never ends, at least not for when we look back into the past:

February 18th, 2006:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060218221705/http://www.excalibur-ro.com/forum/index.php

This was under the forum domain, so it wasn't even properly a website.

At long last, we are excited to announce that we will be launching this Lineage II server for real, on February 5th, 2006.

Once again, I don't even remember this. And who is bill?

Taking a quick look at that news feed, you quickly realize how far back we've gone. It's about AvRO2's beta testing.

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We're almost there. Currently on November 24th, 2005:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051124065713/http://excalibur-ro.com/

Nothing much to see here, except the fact we sold t-shirts at that time.

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Finally, we've gone as far as the archive has us saved: September 30th, 2005:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050930212703/http://www.excalibur-ro.com/

I almost refuse to believe this website is ours. The header says we are -=Excalibur Ragnarok Online Server=-, and the newsfeed is nothing except bad news about the server being hacked or having rollbacks and lags. I stopped recalling the GM names somewhere in 2008, so don't ask me.

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I really wish I had a video of the short intro video that played when you opened the client, that used to be there back in 2006 or 2007. The older players might recall it, with the novice called Kyuro.

That's all for now. If you *somehow* got that intro video, please contact me.

Content Updates

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 14:15:00 +0000

The goal of this post is to introduce players to our server's development system, and what to expect of the near future.

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First, a little bit about myself:

Unlike most of our previous Developers, I am not an experienced programmer. The previous staff usually included people whose real life occupations were, or included, programming. Often, they were professional game creators. Unlike them, I have had little programming experience before becoming a Developer. My real life activity is being a Mechanical Engineering student. Though my classes included C language(Ragnarok is 99% writen in C), the focus of those classes didn't include "How to make games". Instead, we're taught how to solve problems. Due to this, I have a different perspective at approaching problems compared to usual RO Developers.

Unfortunately, this also means that there are often issues which I am not skilled enough to deal with. When a skill break, or doesn't work as intended, I usually turn to other Developers for help. Sometimes, that means we have to wait for an official skill fix, and that can't be helped.

For that reason, I surround myself with experienced people capable of filling in for my weaknesses. Maever, Borf, and more recently, Gurrath. All of them are capable programmers, members of the community, whom I call for help with I am in a pinch. Weren't for them, there is no way we could run the game, much less have created AvRO3 in the first place.

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How we operate:

The most basic form of development includes the input from the AvRO Staff community. Valanar, Soshi, Arkay, and Jette(our current support and event staff) call me up in-game or on Facebook and ask us simple tasks, such as making custom monsters for events, or seasonal events. For instance, we're cooking up an Easter event for you players over the next few days, and the previous Valentine's day events all came from requests like this.

However, the core updates for the game come from pet projects the staff members have. When we first announced AvalonRO3, both Klutz and I announced our personal projects for AvalonRO3. I promised the 2.0 Legendary Weapons, and Klutz had already started on his RO Achievements project. At present, we're underway with the 2.0 Legendary Weapons, though we've had to put off the Achievement System due to Klutz' resign because of real life issues he was facing.

The third and last type of update we add to the game are changes that are needed because of unexpected issues, such as bug fixing. This category also includes changes we had not expected to make, such as the much-requested revamp of the MvP Room, and the recent change made to Thanatos Tower Quest(which makes KSing impossible).

Overall, Developing a Ragnarok Server is like contracting a perpetual backlog of things that need to be done. We try to get as much done as we can every maintenance, within the time we can spare for developing every week. We try to put emphasis on things that need more urgent work, though sometimes we go off and work on less important things when creativity compels us to. The feeling is akin to something such as "Oh boy, I just had a great idea, I want to work on this immediately". Things like the Zeny Statistics NPC and the Super Novice Skill Point Quest were born of moments like this.

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Upcoming changes and features:

Our modus operandi for AvalonRO3 is like the construction of the ISS. The AvalonRO3 launch was the first, basic, naked environment we created. Overtime, we will add extra modules that will add to the game experience. The 2.0 Legendary System, the Cash Shop, Caspen Dungeon, Achievements, and more. Those things will take time, but it's not like you players don't have enough content to explore right now. The upcoming changes we had planned for you are:

Priority List:

1) New MvP Room System. It will NOT be an instanced MvP room, but we will change the format in order to end ambiguity due to MvP KS reports;
2) Homunculus and Homunculus S. The reason we don't have this yet is because we didn't have the time to balance their skills during the Beta Test period. I've promised this for within this month(April 2014);
3) Website and Voting sites. I'll set up voting site links as soon as our ongoing banner contest ends. The Website will follow shortly after, hopefully(We've hired an outsider to do it for us. This is where the money from your purchases plays into. Thank you for your support);

Normal Development:

1) Legendary Weapons
2) PvP Rewards System(This one deserves its own post, which I'll make soon)
3) Caspen Dungeon
4) Leviathan MvP(The fishing quest will not be going in again. The original author has withdrawn authorization to use it, because he intended to make his own server)
5) The Battlegrounds System Implementations. The BG weapons are way too strong, and will not be implemented. Some other sort of reward will be given for use of the BG, though this has not been set at the present time

Bug Fixing:

1) Bugged Skills(when fixes for those skills become available from the Hercules community, or if we ourselves manage to repair them)
2) General Exploits we find. Keep reporting them !!

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Long term objectives:

Just before I joined the AvalonRO3 effort, I had intended to get get started on another project. This idea was an old promise to the community, which I believe will add much to the game experience: The RO Houses Project.

The basic concept is: You are able to earn/purchase a private residence for yourself, or your guild, that grants previleges to the user. I had already selected the maps which I was going to use, and I fully intended to give them as prizes for the 2013 Best of Best Tournament(Stop asking me about it, Melk). However, the AvRO3 project took priority, and I had to dump the idea. I will be implementing this, but not anytime soon.

Klutz' project, the Achievement System, has also not been discarded. This is, by far, the hardest one to do. It's not just an in-game feature, it also requires an extension to the website, which shows which achievements you have on your characters and accounts. This is heavily inspired on the Khara System from Ragnarok Online 2. There is so much we can do with this, and we haven't outlined the concepts yet, but also fully intend to add it.

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This is all from now. I'll make more posts over the next few days/weeks regarding more details of what's coming up. Thank you for reading.

Introduction

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 13:46:00 +0000

The purpose of this post is to explain the purpose of this blog, and introduce a little bit of the history of our server.

This page is a collection of my ideas and thoughts for the purpose of improving AvalonRO, the Ragnarok server I work for. Avalon Ragnarok Online has been around since 2004, and it is currently on its third version. At first, we ran using Freiya Emulation, follow by eAthena, and now Hercules. We're part of the Excalibur Network.

I started at AvalonRO2(previous version, pre-renewal) in 2006, at age 14. I became an active member of the community over the next 7 years when, eventually, I was recruited by our former Head Developer, Klutz, to join the Dev Staff. This took place around July 2013.

At the time, the subject of upgrading our obsolete eAthena platform was already being discussed for almost 2 years now. At around October of the same year, it had already been decided that our new software would be Hercules. It was at that point that I became involved at the project. Prior to those developments, I had been playing iRO, the official Ragnarok Online Server, for about 2 years. I had collected experience and knowledge of both 3rd classes and Renewal, which greatly helped in creating the AvalonRO3 experience.

Once we had settled for Hercules, we had to define the server parameters. Our Root Admin, Maever, asked us to provide him with a proposal for AvalonRO3. The proposal became something like Avalon's Constitution, and it looked something like this:

It was a 7 page document detailing the plan, from the transition, up until how events would run. Of course, we've made changes to the plan, but the outline is still the same. During its conception, I had two concerns:

1) To keep Avalon's original premise, so we wouldn't become something completely different from before;
2) Adapt to new player's preferences, in order to attract new players;

In order to do this, we've come to the point in which almost every skill in the game is altered in some shape of form. The result is a game totally unlike the vanilla Ragnarok experience, with fast paced combat and long lasting battles.

At the time of this writing, the AvalonRO3 server is already over 4 months old, and I am most pleased with the outcome. Yes, although there are plenty of bugs and some issues with unbalance, I believe the worst exploits are already taken care of. Buggy skills had to be outright removed, but will be reintroduced in the future, when they work as intended.

I've already made this blog post extensive enough for an introduction. I'll try to update this as often as possible, so check back every few weeks.

Thanks for reading.