visual manaserv configuration interface

Visual configuration interface

Current Situation

Setting up and administrating a Mana server is currently a task which requires to learn a lot of knowledge. To create a server with really basic gameplay, a server administrator has to know how to edit various XML files, learn the LUA scripting language and some basic SQL. To make the learning curve mre newbie-friendly and also allow seasoned system administrators to perform simple changes more quickly, we should start a new project to create a configuration tool for the Mana server with a graphical user interface as soon as the configuration files have reached a stable state.

The goal is that an inexperienced user is able to set up a basic game world without having to edit any XML or LUA code by hand.

Features

• GUI-Based
• Remote-capable (run the GUI on a client machine)
• Capable of handling user with reduced privileges so that server admins can delegate tasks
• Platform-independent
• Can auto-generate updates on an update server

System administration

• Overview of server network and its status
• Basic Server, Network and database settings
• Remote starting, stopping and restarting of servers

Database administration

GUI for viewing and manipulating the most important data in the database. Should hide the used database backend from the user. * User accounts * Characters * Global variables * ...

Gameplay

• Viewing and manipulating gameplay-related settings in manaserv.xml
• Visual editor for configuration files like attributes.xml, equipment.xml, runes.xml and other gameplay configuration files.

Community

• Edit News.txt file
• Edit MotD
• Make global announcements
• Schedule global announcements to be made at a later date or at regular intervals
• Create and administrate public chat channels
• Edit permission groups and their members
• Assign permission groups to players (promoting and demoting game masters)
• View GM transaction log

Items

• Viewing, editing, creating and removing items from items.xml
• When removing an item, offer to also delete it from the inventory of every character in the database
• Cross-integration with monster and NPC components to control drops and shop prices.

Monsters

• Viewing, editing, creating and removing monster types
• When removing a monster, offer to also remove any spawn areas with this monster on maps

Maps

• Assign maps to game servers
• Add, deactivate and remove maps
• Graphical "World Viewer" which auto-generates a world map from the warp connections defined in the map files.
• Show active and inactive player population in the world viewer (maybe even allow statistical analysis of map population?)
• Edit monster population and map properties
• Integration of Tiled for opening and editing map files

NPCs

• Visual editor for simple shop NPCs
• Visual editor for NPC dialog trees which auto-generates LUA code
• Edit sourcecode of NPC scripts in an embedded text editor with syntax highlighting, syntax checking and auto completion for LUA (is there a usable 3rd party solution?)

Discussion