October 31, Wednesday

New UO add-on: Blackthorn's Revenge -Videric

UOmap files -Videric

As we know, the map file of UO can be changed. Another confirmation to it from FierY iCe about the map files: It also allows us to change Trammel and Felucca independantly of each other. :) -FierY iCe Programmer: Ultima Online Update: More comments from the team: 1) Yes. Terrain and statics... 2) It is for differences between existing terrain and statics. 3) No plans to nuke green acres, at the moment. 4) The system is not shard specific, once turned on. -Hanse UO Live Designer And The whole map is just data. This system allows us to modify that data. Any data in the map that is considered terrain and static artwork can be modified. -Hanse UO Live Designer UOboards post

October 30, Tuesday

UO-Europe was not affected by the job cuts -Videric

I made an enquiry if the support staff reduction applied for European service as well. This is the reply I got from Cordicat: For the record, the current European GM service was not affected. We continue to provide the best service we can, as before. Many thanks to Cordicat for providing the information.

October 26, Friday

Scenario chat Information -Videric

Scenario chat was quite a success and actually had a lot of interesting information. Here is a small bit from the chat: *Videric* Have you worked out a solution for Induviduals to appear in scenario (such as Exodus) as your clearly aiming for non-human control. Having Exodus "spawn" over and over is probably not a solution that would be acceptable? As far as a solution goes, that's difficult to acheive. Whenever we use a major character in a scenario, it's probably going to be different every time. Because our needs of the character as a plot device will change depending on what we want to get accomplished. Exodus, I can pretty uch guarantee you, is not going to be some spawn you whack and loot. He's too big and important a character and we wouldn't want everyone to have a chance to kill him, so to speak Also imporant information: (*grins*) Augur has l337 worldbuilding skillz Ianstorm.com will have the log up shortly, so I care not to post it here as they were the hosts after all. http://www.ianstorm.com/Worlds/UO/

Of Exodus -Videric

A bit info about art of Exodus that can be found at UO3d files: Just so everyone is clear. That demon in uo3d that is called Exodus...is not Exodus, nor do we plan on using it. Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it UOboards post

October 25, Thursday

More about Third Dawn fonts: -Videric

From Alai about the number of new fonts re-introduced: The three fonts of UO:Ren will be available, sadly no others will be for the time being. The white outlines are going away. I think they were a good idea, but they were often used when they shouldn't have been. All in game text will have a black outline. Also - this change will most likely not result in any modifications to books; books are finicky things and changing the font in 'em could take more time than we can spare at the moment. UOboards post

October 24, Wednesday

New Font styles coming to UO3D -Videric

This is from Alai: Actually.... There are plans to put font support into the Third Dawn client. These plans were hatched shortly after I finished putting in the code to support them. Sometimes things just sorta get done between the drinking and the gambling, y'know? Sannio doesn't go on these binges with me, so he wasn't in the loop! Players will have the ability to select their in-game font, and many interfaces will be enhanced to use other fonts as well. I can't give a release date for this, but it should be pretty soon. This was just one of many things we intended to get done for Third Dawn, but time got the better of us. Development for both clients is currently emphasizing the improvement of the quality of the software. Some of these improvements are less glamorous than others, but they will all contribute to the enhancement of the client. Keep your eyes peeled for future updates on other goodies we have coming along! Also as related news, there should be rather big patch to UO3d by the end of this month according to Tajima in another post. The Font post: UOboards post

October 19, Friday

Q & A with Calandryll -Videric

Calandryll was good enough to answer few of my questions: 1 ) Why is the forum of Virtue discussion here, instead of RP board? -Because the virtue system is not soley a role-playing system. It can be used as a role-playing tool though of course. Virtue Questions: --- Sacrifice is Love and Courage. 2 ) I do not understand why Gargoyles can be redeemed, they are not a race of daemons nor they are lost souls so to say. They might have their pride, but that is opposite to that Humility. Shouldn't Reediming be restricted strictly to supernatural(undead, spirits and Daemonic) creatures, to make it more logical? --In the fiction, the enslaved and enforcer gargoyles are not attacking players of their own free will. By sacrificing for them, you save them from their turmoil. The stories on BNN have more info on the gargoyles. 3 ) Certain professions can gain Fame & Karma very easily, would their sacrifice of Fame & Karma be equal sacrifice to those who worked many weeks longer for it? --True. This is why you can only sacrifice once per day. Humility: opposite to pride 4 ) Doesn't Humility turn into pride if one advertices his Virtue Title? (rather philosophical question, I admit) --No. The titles are given to you as recognition, it is up to the player to decide whether to advertise his title or not. Remember, the titles only appear on the virtue gump, so unless someone opens up your virtue gump, they won't see your titles. General Questions: 5 ) Would it not be good to have all eight Virtues done (in design) before releasing any to shards? Eight Virtues meant to form the great Principle (Truth, Love and Courage) together, and therefor their "gain" should be in balance. If not, why not? --We have preliminary designs done for most of the virtues, but we are releasing them one or two at a time in order to make sure we concentrate on them and to make sure the system actually goes in. If we tried to release one huge system, it could be a year before you ever saw any of it. 6 ) Have you considered if shrines could play a part in the system? -They do. You go to shrines to get your status of your jounrey in each path. Also, they will probably play a bigger part in Spirituality. Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it More comments here: UOboards

Virtues in Development -Videric

Instead of cutting and pasting many pages I just link you to the design documents: In Development: Virtues In Development: Virtue of Humility In Development: Virtue of Sacrifice More discussion and infobits can be found at: UO Stratics UOboards

October 17, Wednesday

More of Virtues -Videric

Comments from the team: http://update.uo.com/comments.html

UO3d Comments from Tajima -Videric

Some various comments from Tajima about UO3D: There have been a few threads like this since the UOTD beta. I'd like to comment briefly on some of the underlying technical issues behind the project in an effort to clarify some misunderstandings that I see repeated frequently: The first and probably greatest challenge for UOTD was the requirement to be fully interoperable with the 2D client. This involved converting all sprites to Direct3D surfaces, rewriting the terrain rendering system, generating all-new art, integrating an animation system, and developing an orthoganal camera system. (Since there's no sense of "distance" in UO's game display, a typical 3D camera system wouldn't work. Instead, UOTD's camera system prevents "distant" 3D objects from diminishing in size.) There were also considerable challenges with the texture memory situation. Since UO's original sprites were often much larger than necessary or sized to non-optimal dimensions for many 3D cards, we had to spend considerable time developing a texture compression scheme. (Players of the beta should remember how badly the jungles lagged the client before this compression system was enabled.) By being completely interoperable with the 2D client, we also inherited the isometric view. While the overwhelming majority of our players prefer this viewpoint, it prevents us from using some vital techniques common in first-person 3D programming to improve performance: 1) Mesh Level of Detail: By reducing the number of polygons based on the distance of the object from the viewer, the processing requirement is also reduced. (e.g. A monster 10 meters away uses a mesh with 500 polygons, but at 100 meters the mesh used only has 100.) 2) MIP Mapping: Multi-Image Pyramid mapping is a method used to reduce texture memory requirements. Much like the mesh level-of-detail technique, the resolution of textures changes based on the distance of the object from the viewer. (e.g. A monster at 10 meters uses a 512x512 texture, where the same monster at 100 meters uses a 64x64 texture.) By saving texture memory in this fashion, the need to cache textures to the system RAM (bad) or the hard disk (worse!) is greatly reduced. (While we could have used both of these techniques in Third Dawn, the end effect would have been a peculiar "morphing" result as polygon and texture detail changed on the fly as objects entered and exited the screen. Not a desirable solution!) 3) Distance Fogging: By "fogging" objects and terrain in the distance, the requirement to draw them is reduced or eliminated. 4) Scene Culling: An intelligent first-person 3D engine can determine when objects can't be seen by the viewer, and avoid spending cycles drawing them. As line of sight in UO is a server function, our client is still required to display "unseen" objects. Though the isometric viewpoint represented considerable challenges for us, the fact that the game is an immense massively-multiplayer environment is by far the greatest one. In UO, players can be anywhere on the map within seconds. This isn't true in a typical level-based first-person environment. Since we can't predict where a player will Recall at any given moment, we can't set up a predictive texture cache. On top of that, even if we did know the geographical location a player was planning to go well ahead of time, we can't accurately predict what he'll see when he arrives. With UO's extensive range of monsters, weapons, wearables, and mounts, the texture load can range from minimal to overwhelming in seconds. In addition to all the other performance-enhancing techniques a first-person game enjoys, many level-based games are constructed to limit what the player sees at any given moment. By aggressively controlling that viewpoint and the content within, the all-important considerations of polygon count and texture usage can be maintained within the desired range. To accomplish a similar effect in UO, we'd have to physically prevent players from entering heavily-populated regions, or limiting what items they carried. Again, not a desirable approach! Hopefully this will clear up some of the misconceptions and inappropriate comparisons of UOTD and other games. Every game ever developed has been a series of compromises, and UOTD is no exception. That said, we're continually tweaking here and there to improve performance, stability, and appearance of the Third Dawn client. We're confident you'll like what's coming up. -Tajima More shorter comments Bug fixes are constantly coming. A significant patch is in QA now, and will hopefully clear and be published by the end of the month. There are some very significant art improvements in development, as well. -Tajima UOboards post Yes, UOTD was a difficult project, but there are a lot of online game companies out there that would love to have the problem of hundreds of thousands of passionate fans scrutinizing their every move. Regarding the future of UO, it's safe to say we're going to do three things: 1) Very probably some things you'll like. 2) Possibly some things you'll hate. 3) Definitely some things that will surprise you. Never a dull moment! -Tajima UOboards post Question: >>Do you have talented human resources for this task?<< Very much so. -Tajima UOboards post And a bit more info on the same post: Windrider and Sniper are primarily responsible for the Third Dawn art improvements. They've many years of experience in the games industry. We also work with independent contractors when the need arises. -Tajima

Laaaaaaaaaag -Videric

Update on Lag: We're checking the scenario publish on the shards that have it to see if anything in them has caused the lag on the shards. As soon as I know more I will let you know. Update: There is a problem with some code in the publish, not related to the scenario code. We are going to have to revert out the scenario publish though since they are merged together. More information will be up on the site shortly. Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna Designer, Ongoing Content a wizard did it UOBoards post

October 16, Tuesday

UO3d Graphics -Videric

Some good comments here from Development team about the issues: UOboards post

October 11, Thursday

Lets get married dear! -Videric

Well maybe not, but you can possibly say it with more meaning if this thing "in Concept" comes true. In Concept However Divorce is not part of the concept, so you are literally married until death (delete) takes thee apart.

October 9, Tuesday

Rumour time -Videric

These are Wild rumours, but as these are unusual rumours, I decided to provide a link. Take them as you wish: (It involves Lord British and player races) UOboards post

Event Comments and Virtues -Videric

Thoughts on Event Preparation from Sannio Creating an Event: Preparation And about Virtues becoming meaningful: UOboards post

October 6, Saturday

Chesapeake: History in the Making -Videric

The following is about History in the Making at Chesapeake shard. History in the Making Dig out the skeletons in your armoires, find the hidden books in your chests, relive those wild adventures you had in the land of Chesapeake! There is someone who would like to hear your tales of valor or lack thereof. That someone is Roland, an intrepid soul with a passion for learning who is having a contest for the best stories that make up the history of our beautiful shard! Read on... The contest and the reason for it are rather simple. I am trying to create an actual history of the Chessy shard. The way I would intend to do this is by having you write a story of something that has happened to you in game. Preferably the stories will not just be about you and how great you are, but more along the lines of someone helping you out doing an act of bravery, or your own selflessness by helping out a fellow player. The reward for the best story will be: First Place - A vet reward of your choice Second Place - A Special Dye tub Third Place - A random bag of goodies I will put together For the first round, you can send your stories to me at Roland981@hotmail.com. In the subject line, please mention that this is for "UO Contest". The deadline is one month from the day of this posting, November 5th, 2001. I will then narrow it down and contact the winners who will proceed to round two. In the second round, the people involved will have to put their story in a blue book in game and get it to me by either giving it to me in game or dropping it off at my Guild. The Guild is the Jade Knights located in Yew, and its GM, a fine man by the name of Adran Blackshafthe, will be more than happy to collect the books in case I am absent. After two weeks, I will announce the winners. All the second round books will be kept to build the history of Chesapeake, and will be available for public viewing. Thank you.

Of Gargoyles -Videric

UOboards post

October 5, Friday

UOHOC log -Videric

?:th UOHOC has ended, with nothing really new on our sleeves. I was interested in the Trammel bookselve question, but it seems getting books to Trammel bookcases in towns and at Lycaeum is not a priority. However positive promise was that we will see some new ingame books. Read and judge the UOHOC yourself: Stratics UOHOC

October 4, Thursday

House of Commons tonight -Videric

Yeah, it is House of Commons night, and I probably will not stay up for it as it is so late my time. The problem with the House of Commons is that on bad nights only ten or so questions is handled, and the handle rate is rather slow. Worse of all, many times the questions are not even new, but rather something that can be read from the forums. They really should save some special info for the UOHOC IRC meetings. However lets keep our thumps up and wish that this will be an interesting UOHOC. http://uo.stratics.com/