Making 'The World of Ragnarok' and Other Ramblings

[@capnbarky2682]

Theres something really special and beautiful about being able to preserve your memories of things like this. I can definitely see why you would do all this work.

[@bipidibap]

Is this the same Doddler that made the stats calculator? Love you dude.

[@SlashZer0]

Nice commentary, I enjoyed it. And thanks for all you've done for RO's community over the years.

[@omegacrash4933]

I think the type of video you made was very appropriate for this game. It was an experience, that is the only way I can describe it. The game was full of magic and wonder like no other game of its time and possibly since.

[@TinchoX]

The good old days..., the memories. Impressed by what you achieved there.

[@Lighthalzen]

I do not understand a lot, but seeing stuff like this kinda warms my heart.

[@brittherself]

It's the legend himself. I used to hang in your tutorials and info dumps. I've made lifelong friendships from this game, I'll always be thankful. I miss the days of setting around geffen tower showing off our new headgears.

[@manlycaveman8263]

This project is so cool! Seeing the maps all connected together at the end was really interesting, even with the weird things they did with map height, lol. In another universe there's a Gravity that kept updating their engine with modernizations like this where we'd maybe have a fully open world. :P Thanks for all you've done and are doing, Doddler. :) You've been such a huge resource for many people playing this game. Your translated kRO updates, class previews, database info, stat calc, various mechanic explanations, etc. were all invaluable to me playing this game. Whenever I see a Hahoe Mask I think of your Biochemist with the Sunflower+Hahoe combo (I think that was it, right?). xD Thanks again, dude!

[@rorycascian7451]

Be cool to hear about your RO history and experiences back in the early days since the Dodd is a legend 😂

[@FinalZeke]

THIS IS SO GOOD AND YOU DESERVE ALL THE PRAISE IN THE WORLD FOR THAT VIDEO!

[@gorinrok]

Never enough Ragnarok Online!!!

[@dennisweisenseel5944]

Man, this is really well done! Thank you for showing off your approach!

[@multicoloredwiz]

about the guild realms not intersecting the map properly, they were added afterwards, that's why. in the beta, the britoniah map had no castles on it. it looked really naked!

[@gamecitizen]

This is impressive! Really great work! If only Gravity had people with the same love for the game!

[@darenk4927]

The absolute RO madman, legend!

[@dark_nation_7]

Really great video you made and a good explainer. I worked on a Blender addon a few years ago for importing GND, RSM and RSW files, although it had some issues I wasn't able to work out because of a lack of documentation on how to interpret some parts of the files. Big kudos to you for working on this, I know how much work these things can take!

[@SC2Villares]

Same, the transformation seems impossible to interpret kkkk, even using browedit code i was not able to...

[@staplecrab]

Fantastic information. Thanks for all your hard work.

[@Teknolaiz]

Really creative solutions to replicate the graphics and style so perfectly. Amazing, seriously. AAA studios fail at remasters all the time, I feel like you nailed it.

[@TheKingFigaro]

Wowwwww. Youre still active! I really miss your video. Been following u for long

[@6arag3]

Great work and interesting video on the production. This makes me hope more enterprising and talented devs/programmers would try to mess around with old mmorpg games to learn how they work or porting it to newer engines only to end up starting some sort of game preservation effort for mmorpgs.

[@Havlark]

this is the most surreal thing ive seen in my life

[@multicoloredwiz]

There are actually a ton of different invisible mobs in renewal that are used to cast skills, mainly used by instance bosses. Some are called relative to the boss npc while others are in fized pos

[@lexprontera8325]

Fixed positions?

[@djentonly6623]

More videos about Ragnarok!!!

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

Snake with geos and pupa is quite great, especially with additional difficulty of not being killed by geos. Wonderful stuff.

[@FuchsiaRiv]

Man I miss this game so much

[@Silreen]

Wait this is what Doddler sounds like?! 😂 first time in a decade

[@xGr4viiTy]

This work you are doing is really important. If you ever decide to stop working on this, it would be a great gift to the community if you could release an open source fork anonymously somehow.

[@xGr4viiTy]

Just saw your github. you are amazing.

[@oldinroplayer]

Great work and the BTS video really is awesome :) The building you're missing in old Payon is Inn and the Pub. Old Payon maps over at rAthena forums have these models. I'd posted comments earlier with links to some old maps, but for whatever reason those are not showing up (prolly caught in the spam filter?)

[@TheDoddler]

Ah, weird about the removed comments, I guess it got spam filtered as I haven't removed any. I actually got the map data initially from rAthena forums, but I scoured several pages of search results and all the file downloads and none of them contained any models, only the map rsw/gat/gnd and textures. Perhaps I'm missing something?

[@oldinroplayer]

The "old payon" standalone map packs on rAthena forums probably are missing the models too, not 100% sure as I haven't checked these files directly. However, I do know that there's an ancient iRO client on the forums, go to the "Off Topic" section and Look for the "Chaos [YARE Base]" thread. I was messing around with those files for nostalgic value. I remember the Pub very specifically the building on the hill next to wall section, because that's where the juice quest NPC was. Happy to help with any more info/things that you need. Not linking to any of the stuff directly here in the comment to avoid getting flagged by the YT spam filter again.

[@tomsweeny6837]

This hurts to look at, but in a good way. What a charming one of a kind game.

[@DanielRenardAnimation]

Amazing work 👏 Thanks for sharing the process! It probably surprises many people, just how much goes into something like this. Would you be interested in creating extended, individual videos of the maps? Doesn't have to be hour-long aerial shots of the map, but simply allow the BGM to loop a few times with the camera ending up where it started, so the viewer can loop it. I've had a great time listening to such videos from other MMO's I've played, having the music, ambience and even enemy noises play. Those make me feel so nostalgic, feeling like I'm AFKing in all my favorite spots. 🥰

[@TheDoddler]

I don't have any plans on making any videos revisiting the maps I already went through, not at least without a good reason or new idea. They are a bit time consuming to put together and with only so much time free to work on it I'd rather focus on doing new things. If I do go back to record maps again it will likely be a follow up with 5.0 Juno -> 11.3 Nameless Island maps. That said, the tools are out there and I went over my process in enough detail that if someone were particularly eager it would be possible to create their own variations.

[@uaRO-vk1gu]

Super! Great job! Simply amazing!!!

[@Ricardo7250]

I hope you make a second video on the world of Ragnarok, there’s Amatsu, Gonryun, Einbroch…

[@earlnuclear]

I honestly thought the maps are a lot flatter. Curious to see if different engine could handle loading all of the maps in at once.

[@Mesarthim]

Meanwhile some month back a friend absorbed me briefly into a private server. And then this is recommended to me on youtube. It's just fate at this point. -Reverie, the cranky High Priest from our old ktullanux video.

[@N0P3Sugar]

did you ripp the entire game or map or did you made it yourself with the existing asset and copy it to unity? the entire map showcase is awesome by the way hope to see the other maps like those Ayothaya, Amatsu and Kunlun, and those newer ones i haven't seen after ive quit playing this game.

[@Jbaquero98]

Thanks Doddler, youre an RO legend

[@thebest-bn6rn]

thank youuu!!

[@SC2Villares]

Congratulations on all the progress. I was making a scripts to import rag maps into blender, then imported to unreal, then animated the mage sprite and did the camera logic and controls, it all took me one month, so i prefered to go and make a new game from scretch. I have the question: Don't you pretend to create your own game? You seems so capable of doing something great. Congrats on the project! Outstanding work.

[@TheDoddler]

I have worked in games now for the better part of a decade, most of that time spent on modifying games for localization, sometimes even porting them to new engines. it's a bit weird to say but nearly all of my experience has involved building something new out of existing building blocks. Going from modifying and rebuilding jrpgs and visual novel games to rebuilding an MMO is in an odd way sort of a natural progression. Maybe one day the opportunity will arrive to build something truly original from scratch, I've tried a number of times before but I don't think I could do it on my own. This is just a personal project that I find fun to apply myself to with something I've a lot of memories of in the past... and as long as it keeps being fun, I'll probably keep coming back to it.

[@paweka9149]

​@@TheDoddlernice :)

[@ricardonacif5426]

Thanks for making it open source. Btw, why didn't you decide to stick with the game net protocol? And why not using rathena or Hercules?

[@TheDoddler]

I guess I can sum up my answer as: because I wanted to make something of my own. I've built a set of technical skills over the years that made it possible for me to consider making my own client and server, but I lack the artistic talent (or time) to make something truly original. If my goal was to host my own ragnarok server or make a fancy client I would certainly have started with existing projects, they are many fantastic projects out there, but that's not really the point. What I wanted was to take my experience and the nostalgia of ragnarok and build something that I could enjoy both creating and playing. There are limits to doing it like this of course. For one, ragnarok is not my IP which puts a hard limit on any possible ambition. But that's fine, I don't want to be ambitious. Though I enjoy sharing the process and results with others, this is made by me, for myself. I want to craft something small and playable out of the world gravity left behind for us. It might not be good, it will likely differ in ways people disapprove of, but it would be my own.

[@ricardonacif5426]

@@TheDoddler understood. Congrats on the achievement! Really interesting project. Btw, what would be your thoughts if people used this unity client to make a private server (and hook up with the original netclient?)

[@Churagawa]

Legend.

[@Adrian00213]

This is Highly impressive. so much work was done. i can't imagine how long it would take for a single person do do all that. came up with solutions. repacking the whole maps to unity, networking, logic, shaders :D very very impressive :) Just from the fact that its actually made in Unity not relaunched in unity gives you all the options unity has , which is a lot :D stupid example you could add grass to Prontera field. and particle effects. you are able to scale up the game and make it cross platform. Btw since you are using the walk tiles layer. and not actually collision to detect walkable surface, do you Combine the map objects to one? for better performance? Have you considered removing the walkable path tiles and go Tiless style? for a more user controlled style? where you are not bound to tiles? at least when it comes to walking. the tiles could still be there but you could stand lets say in 1/2 tile. Or maybe making the walkable tiles smalleer? to make it more precise when it comes to walk/ skills etc? Could I ask whats the final thing you would like to do with this? private server? open source? In regard to the whole map thing try to use some object combiner or something. if each tree and element is a separate obj. Unity isin;t great in handeling a lot of object unless they are GPU instanced. This is also one of the things. see if you can change the map Object shader to GPU instanced. this should improve performance > should i think. I am not Unity master but i remember something like that from time i used to do some stuff there Damn this is madness :D

[@crisgrowth]

in loveeeeeeee

[@joaopedrosilva3796]

awesome video =) I'm trying to create a converter to export all 3d maps and models to gltf, however, finding a way to calculate the correct scale, rotation and position of each 3d mesh in a map is a nightmare. Is your github repo up to date? Maybe I could use something as reference.

[@CliffCliffy]

Hello, I am a game environment artist and is wondering If it's possible to export the game models and texture files? I'm thinking of making a remaster look of RO (like texture and model update in Unreal Engine) do you know if that's possible?

[@supernoobgamesOK]

Amazing work! Is there a way to just import just some maps in Unity (and not the whole server complex thing) in order to render a bunch of cool photos?

[@8232322]

Omfg are you the one and only Doddler? I used to play with you during iRO even the same guild. I don't think you remember but you used to make a VDO of my Character. Ign is Taugunka Anyway good surprise to see you here again.

[@guidontheub3084]

So you are trying to rebuild ragnarok in unity ? Maybe one day I will take your work and try to make a VR experience out of it, it should be simplier if it's in unity engine :)

[@Shadow-bc2ks]

Hey what about other countries/Place? When i was child i don't really remember but i think iRO Map is More bigger than this! When i was 5-7 Years old playing with my cousin

[@RabbitRinsBadAtGaming]

I had a question: if you made the client from scratch, how did you get the guilds for the War of Empyrium part of the video? Are those just photoshopped in or did you get the data from a server that just recently had WoE? I recognize one of the guilds but they haven't played in years so I was confused.

[@TheDoddler]

I kind of cheated there, if you saw in the video I only showed one set of flags at a time. I wrote out a list of which guild would have each fort and before recording each segment I simply swapped out the woe fort texture. As for the guilds themselves, I used a combination from the different servers I played on in the past, both notable guilds I was a part of or noteworthy adversaries. I actually have a list of who's who, which you can find on this tweet: twitter.com/RoDoddler/status/1699374018145755334

[@neozhang8700]

how do you get the model and animation from RO?

[@fumomofumosarum5893]

...that is so weird, does youtube auto-delete comments ...? wtf...

[@Maedren]

✌

[@hallissongomes5610]

MUITO BOM!!!!!!!!!!

[@gamongames]

Do you think it will ever be usable by the community to set their own private servers?

[@TheDoddler]

I doubt it'll be usable as is, my joy (and interest) is maintained by bouncing between whatever I fancy doing, but there's a lot you'd need to do that frankly I can't see me being motivated to work on. The code is out there though, so anyone can pick up the torch on that if they do choose. If nothing else I'm sure some aspect of this could be helpful to someone.

[@mateusb09]

​@@TheDoddler what about an offline version? or does it goes beyong your motivation?

[@TheDoddler]

​@@mateusb09I try to be realistic with what's possible, but if I did make a release it would probably be in a form with drastically changed progression so that you could have a fun time just running it solo or by inviting 2-5 friends.

[@RLMemeLord]

​@@TheDoddlerDoddler ftw.

[@MRSYYKKGY]

I not good at understand programing things. But it really cool project

[@Razorkame]

have you thought how AI could be implemented to run various bot like characters in maps to make it look more alive?

[@multicoloredwiz]

Jesus christ man

[@giftbox-e]

Like baking ChatGPT into opencore? lol

[@MTandi]

I was wondering whether you are related to the RoBrowser in some form... I was just blown when I randomly stumbled upon it on the internet. And then they got that DMCA takedown notice... God how I hate IP laws at times like this.

[@TheDoddler]

I was really lucky because while the project is shut down, the GitHub was only shifted to read only, which means it's still available for reference. Still really sad to see a promising project end, and I probably have to be a little careful to avoid similar issues.

[@MTandi]

​@@TheDoddler well, since your project doesn't have any of Gravity's code or assets, it should be ok... right?.. Hope to see more of it. It would be a dream if we could join an open source RO project to make a community-adjusted version of pre-renewal while being able to run it somehow without troubles.

[@agesboy]

damn i forgot to Like and Subscribe because you never remind me to

[@insanitysoul13]

man i hope garvity is good on making games ahaha

[@rd6931]

Hah. Exactly like Snake II from Nokia phone.

[@sinistercr0347]

create new job called: summoner

[@a.g.r.v.3144]

truly incredible work

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

Unexpected, but great. All the best, Doddler.

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

Unity sucks, but it's really impressive what you did. Bravo.

[@GregoryMichalski]

looks like a cool opportunity to merge the maps and fill the in between spaces/ add new locations to maps. and making it one big landmass. maybe move them into a different engine