All too often I see communities maintained and updated by a single person. This phenomena is very common especially in the world of OpenTibia and appears for several reasons, the most common one is that the server itself is very easy to setup and maintain, and to let others help you with the server usually means to trust what makes your server unique in the hands of an unknown associate whom you only know over the internet.
But trust me when I say that this does not have to apply to you! There are several tools that will allow you not only to get things done faster by dividing the work, but also to make sure that only the files that are essential for your associate’s progress are at risk of theft.
To make sure neither of the staff members have an outdated copy of their working directory you will want to use the SVN protocol. And of course you only want them to access the files or directories in which they are working.
It is with these reasons in mind that I recommend the VisualSVN Server (It’s free, dont worry), it is based on an Apache but stripped down to the very core and equipped with a nifty graphical interface using the Windows Management Console. You can set up usergroups, users and folder/file permissions as you please.
Personally I have set it up so that there is one usergroup for each folder (One for Actions, one for Creaturescripts, and so on) and then I simply add my users to the usergroups (folders) that they will need to modify in order to do their work.
An essential tool when working in team is somewhere to communicate and coordinate the work, for this I recommend a forum (phpBB is free) where you either discuss all projects/tasks in one board, or one board for each category of work. It may seem very serious to label all threads with a hint of what kind of task(s) it relates to, but it is in fact very helpful for all users, so this is a recommended practise.
Using the SVN in the mentioned manner and perhaps making the discussion board public will allow you to outsource your work and still stay safe as long as your most essential files are safe (I dont recommend giving anyone access to admin.xml, config.lua, or the main .otbm file). Your end-users get the chance to improve their favourite server and you get more time to watch pr0n, it’s a win-win situation!
If all this seems too advanced for you it doesn’t bother me. Feel free to keep doing all the work by yourself and let the project consume all your free time.
If it on the other hand seems helpful and you decide to consider using any of these strategies in your project, good for you! Let me know if you have any questions about making the work more efficient.
Shutting down or resetting a community to make way for updates and new content is never easy nor fun. You will always hear the tiny voice in the midst of your head screaming “Dont do it! You are destroying everything you hold dear!”.
But no matter what people say, living in the past is never a good idea.
Sure, some of your customers may prefer the comfortable feeling of something they know inside out, they know where to find everything. The unknown that lies behind the hills scares them, because they cannot control everything that happens from there on.
But what about the other 90% of your userbase? The ones who get tired of the stuff they so eagerly explored and revisited so many times. They will eventually stop using your service and go somewhere else.
Even though the new update may bring you something to do for a long time into the future, some users still want their fair share of attention. And as far as attentionwhores goes, I think the whinging ones are pretty much worst. They can be amusing from time to time though. For example, first you recieve angry letters about how you are destroying the community by allowing it to evolve into something better and removing the “oldschool” feeling. Then you recieve several letters, from the same conservatist, proposing several changes that wouldn’t even have made it to the dustbin back in the day.
Speaking of old times, do you remember the Columbus fellow? The guy who took a piece of wood and floated all the way to the Big Apple? Yeah, him.
I’m willing to bet my last pringles that there were whingers back then too. Like say, this jolly fellow! (Yes. I am aware that he remained stupid long after Columbus died and had already proven the world was not flat.)
“Don’t do it Christoffer! You will fall over the border that nobody has even proven to exist!”
“Okay, let’s go back to church.”
I started using computers back in 94 when we were the only family in the whole appartment complex who owned one. It was a Compaq with MS-DOS on it, me and my older brother had lists with commands you could type and stuff would happen on it. For example, if you typed “Games” it would automatically go to the Games folder. Mother, sweet as she is, had placed .bat files there so we only had to type the name of the games to play them, rather than changing directories and stuff.
Me and my brother were first introduced to the internet sometime in 96 when we went to our dad’s place and saw him playing Command & Conquer, he explained that he was playing with his friends and later we played Transport Tycoon via serial cable.
So here we are, 12 years later. With computers almost 20 times as fast as they were back in the good ol’ days and ethernet cables jacked directly into our veins. My family now has about 10 computers, I have a triplehead setup (three screens) and a laptop on the side of that. But we still wait those long seconds for the programs to start. How come the hardware always seem to be just about enough for the software to run? Are we smarter now and make more advanced programs (Please, dont answer that.), or are the hardware developers just too lazy to create something that is actually ahead of the software developers?
I’d like to see a computer without loading screens, just once.
Yes, Im talking about you and everyone else you know.
Since I started with OpenTibia back in 2005 the core structure of the server has gone through major changes. It is now capable of not only triggering events as you use an item, but also as you walk above it, when you talk, when you level up, gain a skill, login, logout, use a weapon, when you equip an item, and of course when you greet an NPC.
But nonetheless, the core developers are still only trying to mimic Tibia. Of course this is the sole purpose of OpenTibia so that makes perfectly good sense. But when we look around and see how everyone wants to be unique with their servers it amazes me to see that noone uses anything that is just that, unique.
Personally I have since 2006 been using a backbone on my servers, it runs whenever the server is restarted (Back in 2006 you could rely on unintentional crashes, so that was no problem. Nowadays we have daily serversaves instead) and executes the code that - I like to think - makes my servers special.
Through the backbone we have the possibility to build unique features such as auctions on the website, mayor elections, and much, much more. It is truly amazing, the things that you can accomplish when you think that nothing is impossible.
The people of OpenTibia (In the future referred to as OT) have grand plans of huge maps for their players to explore, level, and battle upon. Their quests number in the hundreds, although most of them introduce nothing new. The majority are simple ones where you slay the monsters on your way to the chest which contains your reward.
But how many of them focus on their community? And how many do really shape their updates to enhance that very community? The optional forum is a great way to start, but it can only take you so far. Somewhere during the lifespan of the server you will notice that the gameplay starts to get dull and the growth of the server starts to level out. And when that happens, what do you do?
Once a server has existed for a while you have had alot of players pass through the server in search of the best one (in their opinion). If they did not like the server the first time they visited it, they are unlikely to come back.
Of course, you cannot satisfy all your visitors, but I think alot of the potential players are left playing on a random server because it was the last one they tried on their list of servers, and none of them were truly unique.
I beg of you, the community, to encourage your most wicked ideas and craziest proposals.
Because nothing is impossible when you have the power of a website at your fingertips.
