Project Focus

A "project focus" is development that Project Topaz is trying to focus on to add new features or improve the quality of existing features. These focuses are strategically chosen by our team to meet the desires of the community, increase adoption rate, or broaden our general appeal.

Our current focuses can be found under our list of Projects on GitHub.

If you want to help contribute to Project Topaz and are looking for direction, we would be especially eager for contributions relating to one of our current focuses. Of course, we will still gladly review contributions outside of our current project focuses and consider them for inclusion into Project Topaz!

Project focuses are typically divided into different categories, with only one development project occupying the "slot" for a category at a time. When the development project currently occupying the slot for a focus's category has been developed to expectations, that project vacates the category's slot so a new development project can take its place.

Categories for project focuses are as follows:

Meta Content:

Projects under this category are focused on improving the usage of the codebase and tools (program interactive, or online collaborative), from a point-of-view ranging from server operators to players. They usually result in producing information rather than code.

Examples: Setup guides for new administrators, lists of functioning features for players, large-scale reports on retail inaccuracies to assist developers, or guides about how to acquire data from retail.

General Development

Projects under this category generally aim to improve or add new features to the codebase itself, more from the point-of-view of a developer than a player. These might have broad, sweeping effects on the rest of the codebase.

Examples: Making the codebase easier to modify, improving server speed or stability, code refactoring, or implementing new programming paradigms.

Story Content

Projects under this category focus on improving our implementation of "story content", as portrayed through missions and quests.

Examples: Refactoring how quests or missions work, scripting several quests for an area, or implementing expansion storylines.

Battle Content

Projects under this category are considered the "meat" of party-oriented combat, which are the reason that players improve their characters to prepare themselves to challenge and conquer.

Examples: Implementing what might be considered "endgame" content (of any era) like Dynamis or Limbus, everyday "low man" battle content like Assaults or BCNMs, or even content that's considered "solo" by today's standards like Walk of Echoes or Trial of Magians.

Job Improvement

Projects under this category typically focus on a single job at a time to improve the experience of playing that job.

Examples: Verifying that all of a job's abilities and traits work as per retail, making sure a job's unique equipment fully functions, or scripting quests or NPCs which relate solely to that job.

Mob Improvement

Projects under this category aim towards improving mobs on a large scale. This can refer to the type of mob that players fight, or even mobs which assist the player.

Examples: Improving mob AI, implementing pet-like mobs which follow and assist the player, refactoring how mobs or their drops work, or quality control of all NMs in a specified area.

Misc Content

Projects under this category tend to focus on features that a player might want, but don't fall into any of the above categories.

Examples: Player hobbies like Fishing and Gardening, festivals, special features like goblin mystery boxes and waypoints, or cutscene playback NPCs.