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oooh goblins

L

Lord Drakelord

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its the KR client, and that looks like wind dungeon, but then again it could be any where.
 

Petra Fyde

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It looks better than KR (to me) the radar map is much better, the buildings are enough like 2D to be comfortably familiar, yet the landscape is KR. I'm not overly keen on the character avatars though. As I stated a few times with KR, they look more like blow-up dolls to me than people.
 

Magnus

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Goblins were in Ultima Underworld.

As for the client, sadly since they're bring it down with ten year old artwork, its more of a downgrade than an upgrade. :(
 

Flutter

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I just hope it's easier to tell people apart...
 

Crysta

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That shot is from the northeast side of the first level of the Abyss. I recognize it from previous experience. The other new indoor dungeon shots are from level 1 as well. :p
 

Ender

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If people stopped holding on to 2D so they can hold on to Windows 95 and 32 MB of RAM for a little while longer, the client would probably look better...
 

jack flash uk

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well i for one am running a machine with 2gb memory card and vista, it eats fallout 3 for breakfast, but i really want a client that looks less like WoW and more like the uo i respect, i dont play it for amazing graphics i play it for the "feel" of the game

and from what i hear even if WoW has 11m players it still does not have the uo magic

so, improve game yes, but make it UO and not something else
 
V

VorteXPete

Guest
If people stopped holding on to 2D so they can hold on to Windows 95 and 32 MB of RAM for a little while longer, the client would probably look better...
Exactly the problem, cant make SA look any better and be compatible with the ancient 2d....
 

Ender

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It can still be UO without graphics that would have been seen 15 years ago.
 
S

Sunrise

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well i for one am running a machine with 2gb memory card and vista, it eats fallout 3 for breakfast, but i really want a client that looks less like WoW and more like the uo i respect, i dont play it for amazing graphics i play it for the "feel" of the game

and from what i hear even if WoW has 11m players it still does not have the uo magic


I second this...
 
C

Cazzador

Guest
I like it. It has Aspects of both games that I like. I hope they add in the bags and we are set. I'm running Kr with 2d graphs at the moment. If it wasn't so buggy would be perfect. They will never please everyone.
 

Maplestone

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I wonder where goblins fit in the toughness chart? are they akin to Orcs? or troglodytes?

Do they swarm like the angry spirits of magincia? or skitter about like falsehood-inflected NPCs?

Does anyone have a primer on the lore of goblins in Ultima? Do they have a backstory or do they simply exist?
 

Violence

Lore Keeper
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Stratics Legend
Yesterday I re-activated to check my house(s) and send a couple of PMs. Today I had to make an exception and post, seeing this thread. No worries, I'll be gone but first this... It's about System Specs and SA.

I keep hearing that the UO you guys and girls respect is not about graphics, so since graphics don't matter and you can run FO3 full-on why does it matter to you? This notion works BOTH ways.

It's usually the people with Stone-Age computers who complain.. And it has nothing to do with anything else but them being stubborn to the end and penny-wise.

Don't join them, listen to yourself for a minute.. You just want the essence of the game to remain unchanged. Any possible graphics changes EA would have made if these losers didn't complain would have only made things better. Heck, KR would have been better, truth be told here..

Think.. Bethesda destroyed FO3 by going full FPS but this wouldn't happen to UO, if they wanted to go that way UO2 or UXO would be out.

Constant whining ruined UO(and not just about graphics), the exact extreme opposite of what happened with Bethesda- Nobody asked them to turn it into an FPS in FO3's case.
Both games in terms of ESSENCE are lost... although in UO's case there were much more factors than just visual changes. Those never "hurt" anybody who upgraded their computer and connection in the past 4 years.

Now the 2nd thing I wanted to say and I'gone, since if I'm not mistaken houses can go for a couple of months before collapsing after Account Deactivation.

So yeah... Was gonna say "Too late" about not losing the UO you respected.. So what's the point of all of this.
Lastly.. my purely subjective, humble, personal opinion about SA is: Tragic Fail.

That's all.

*EDIT* The quality of models and any other aspects of an upgrade in graphics, can be improved and should not be taken into account. It is in the hands of the artists working on UO and partly in our hands to criticize their work if it is inadequate- But this should never be reason enough for so much negativity towards the WHOLE, nor for the closemindedness regarding the new Clients' potential!
 

Phaen Grey

Lore Master
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I won't change from the 2D client till they prove they can put out something better, which they have been failing to do since Third Dawn.
 

Sir_Bolo

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UNLEASHED
I wonder where goblins fit in the toughness chart? are they akin to Orcs? or troglodytes?
Goblins would be more or less on par with orcs.

Do they swarm like the angry spirits of magincia? or skitter about like falsehood-inflected NPCs?
They tend to hunt in large parties, rushing on their preys in ambushes at night.
Then they eat their captured human preys (even alive!) and get drunk until dawn, to collapse asleep at sunrise.

Does anyone have a primer on the lore of goblins in Ultima? Do they have a backstory or do they simply exist?
The Avatar met the goblins in Ultima Underworld I and II and in Ultima VII Part 2.

In Britannia they were thought to be extinct since the Age of Darkenss, but on the Serpent Isle they were a constant threat to the inhabitants. Eventually two tribes of goblins resurfaced also on Britannia and joined the colony in the Stygian Abyss.
On other worlds controlled by the Guardian, the goblins served in his armies.

Stratight from the Ultima Underworld manual:

Goblins

The Goblins originated from forbidden arcane experiments performed on
prisoners and other victims by demented, power-seeking mages. (It was for
causes like these that magic was once banned in our lands.) During the Third
Age of Darkness, Exodus bred the Goblins into an army dedicated to his
wicked cause. Following his defeat, the survivors vanished from the face of
Britannia - hunted down by vigilantes or banished to other realms. (In those
times, the Goblins were so loosely bound to this world that a single spell could
expel them from this plane of existence.)
It was only after our Proclamation went out, promising clemency to those
primitive monsterforms who would undertake to follow the Path of the Avatar,
that the Goblins were rediscovered. A delegation of Goblinfolk appeared at the
gates of Castle Britannia, asking for an audience with Lord British. Not just
one but two species of Goblins had survived in hiding from the days of Exodus.
The Gray Goblins, originally mountain dwellers, had skulked in the caves of
the Serpent's Spine mountains. The forest-dwelling Green Goblins hid themselves
by retreating into an underground river's channel, near the baneful lake
called Venom.

Today, virtuous Goblinfolk make up one-third of our community. There was a time
when a Green Goblin would rather slay a Gray Goblin than any other enemy, but
the Path of the Avatar has brought the tribes together as brothers.
(Though the two species rarely come to blows nowadays, the Gray and the Green
still attempt to outdo each other whenever possible in matters of Virtue. Old
enmities die hard. - Corby)
 

Surgeries

Grand Poobah
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It looks better than KR (to me) the radar map is much better, the buildings are enough like 2D to be comfortably familiar, yet the landscape is KR. I'm not overly keen on the character avatars though. As I stated a few times with KR, they look more like blow-up dolls to me than people.
/Signed.

I really hope they address the way the KR Avatars appear. They look funny to me, as well.
 

Ender

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The KR interface is much better than 2D, even now, and the SA client graphics look better so far. <_<
 
L

Lord Drakelord

Guest
The KR interface is much better than 2D, even now, and the SA client graphics look better so far. <_<
The KR interface was to confusing after years of playing in 2d and using UOA. I also did not like the health bar avatar, I DON'T need to see a picture of my character's face there, nor did I like the paper dolls pictures. My poor fisherman looked like a alien from Mars in KR, and not a human wearing a Sam helmet in 2d. Had the interface been more like 2d and UOA was allowed [as it was in the old 3d] we would have tried to work with it more. I also dislike all the unnecessary motion in game, trees waving, circles moving around those things targeted, etc.. All this motion caused many of us to have headaches, in the old 3d I hate it and I did not like it in KR, they would have to have some way to turn it off.
 

Draconi

Most explosive UO Legend
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Goblins were in Ultima Underworld.

As for the client, sadly since they're bring it down with ten year old artwork, its more of a downgrade than an upgrade. :(
Has a toggle for new artwork or old artwork actually - the terrain is generated in the upgraded style though. We built the Abyss this time specifically to look good in both clients.

Other things to note: a lot of those screenshots are initial worldbuilding passes, or mob spawning tests. A lot more as we go!
 
O

Old Man of UO

Guest
The KR interface was to confusing after years of playing in 2d and using UOA. I also did not like the health bar avatar, I DON'T need to see a picture of my character's face there, nor did I like the paper dolls pictures. My poor fisherman looked like a alien from Mars in KR, and not a human wearing a Sam helmet in 2d. Had the interface been more like 2d and UOA was allowed [as it was in the old 3d] we would have tried to work with it more. I also dislike all the unnecessary motion in game, trees waving, circles moving around those things targeted, etc.. All this motion caused many of us to have headaches, in the old 3d I hate it and I did not like it in KR, they would have to have some way to turn it off.
You CAN turn off the idle motion in KR, it's in the User Settings.

A lot of what you are not liking is or can be fixed with the custom UI's that other players have made. Other games are allowing players to customize the interface, and it's a great way to make minor improvements. I just hope that SA continues to allow players to create the custom interfaces, AND take some of the great ideas (e.g. buff timers) and incorporate into the default interface.
 

Gheed

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:yell:
Has a toggle for new artwork or old artwork actually - the terrain is generated in the upgraded style though. We built the Abyss this time specifically to look good in both clients.

Other things to note: a lot of those screenshots are initial worldbuilding passes, or mob spawning tests. A lot more as we go!
Why are you toggling artwork? You are forcing me to design in two clients now.
 

Draconi

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:yell:

Why are you toggling artwork? You are forcing me to design in two clients now.
Not really - I'd just choose the default if I were you, as will the majority.

The default is 2D's polished artwork on top of the new terrain.

The official design position is to make everything look good in this, so really, the toggle is only for those who absolutely can't stand the way 2D's artwork looked.
 

Gheed

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Not really - I'd just choose the default if I were you, as will the majority.

The default is 2D's polished artwork on top of the new terrain.

The official design position is to make everything look good in this, so really, the toggle is only for those who absolutely can't stand the way 2D's artwork looked.
I would guess that any one of the folks internally building the SA world (at least once) designed something with the defuault toggle on then switched to the new graphics and said to themselvs "this doesn't look right". Then changed it. This is what I will be doing from SA on out.
 

Petra Fyde

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I like it. It's sufficiently familiar to feel like 'home'.

However it wasn't the graphics that caused me to give up on trying to play in KR, There were 2 main issues for me. One was the inability to reliably vet my pets or heal my guildmates without finding my selected 'friendly' target had been auto-replaced by a hostile one and I was trying to vet the monster I was fighting.
The other was the inadequacies of the free form back pack which prevented me from being able to stock my vendors. On Siege I play a crafter running a shop stocked with supplies for my fellow players. Not uber rares, I'm not a 'merchant'. Just a 'corner shop' selling arrows, shuriken, stuff like that.

I'd love some assurance that these problems won't exist in this nice new client?

A small note on 'player made mods' I am VERY reluctant to use anything that's going to cause problems every time a publish comes out. I don't want to hear 'you'll have to put this file back before you patch'
 

Maplestone

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You can very easily enable/disable custom UIs in a drop-down menu on the login screen - so you can just log out / revert to default / log in if for some reason a custom one breaks (they go in their own folder, so they never interfere with patching). I have other reasons I'm a little nervous about them, but so far none of those have reared their heads.

I definitely agree about vendor packs though - I've grown to like the grid for most things, but not on vendors. Yet because the freeform is different from 2D, I have no idea what my vendor looks like to the majority of customers.

It would be nice to be able to create a toolbar of targets and be able to target slots on that toolbar - so that you can select from a list of targets with a key or set up a macro to target whoever you put in slot 1 and another macro to target whoever you put in slot 2.
 

Hemisphere

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I do wish people would stop talking about UO's graphics engines like they have even the faintest clue how they work.

People's preference of the original artwork doesn't hold anything back.

the 2D client AND the KR client AND the SA client all use 2 dimensional sprites.

The 2D client uses them in the traditional way, and so they look crisp and clean.

KR and SA uses them in some sort of bizarre pseudo-3D system wherein the 2D sprites are rendered onto polygons, which allows for scaling and various other neat "tricks", but the resulting graphics are.. well, you know those old Playstation games where the trees were made from two polygons in an "X" formation? Well KR does it's graphics like that, except with one less polygon, and the results are similarly dire.

(imo)
 

WildWobble

Sage
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Stratics Legend
well i for one am running a machine with 2gb memory card and vista, it eats fallout 3 for breakfast, but i really want a client that looks less like WoW and more like the uo i respect, i dont play it for amazing graphics i play it for the "feel" of the game

and from what i hear even if WoW has 11m players it still does not have the uo magic


I second this...

I rambled on and on but in the end simple solution is say yes i am of this mindset myself :) love Ultima.:D
 

Gheed

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I'll try again. I build homes to themes. I am very involved in this proccess. A long time ago I realized that people do not need larger sized plots as much as they need everything accesible from a realatively close proximity.

My first involved build was themed from my love of mining and doing BoDs. I spent a long time designing a home around something that would nicely display my hard won collection of colored anvils. I didn't want to just line them up in a row. I went through many revisions over many months incorporating new ideas I picked up along the way. When someone hit the steps I wanted them to immediatly realize "This guy is a crafter". While at the same time designing a space that I could do all my work without having to move around a lot.

What I ended up with was a well organized system of chests and designs that utilized every square tile of a nearly max sized plot:





What I created was something of a community smithy with a forge place for each anvil. Inside imbeded into the north wall I have two sets of nine chests each set over it's own forge. Above the East forge I have chests color coded for stone. The stone (thank goodness) is stackable now so That frees up over 1000 secures. The 9 chests above the West forge contains my collection of BoDs. The runebooks to the far west used to be my backup collection of (now worthless) prime mining locations. The 8 chests in the West wall held my stockpile of garg axes, prospectors, and sturdy mining tools. Whenever I would mine or purchase a great excess of ingots, they would be placed on the shelves imbeded on what would be the 2nd floor.


Now lets look at it in KR:



Hrm well I really like the new forges. But that doesn't matter because I dont get to see them that way... My UI wont have the right switches flipped on it. And those that do won't exactly see my design the way I designed it. Must be a bizarre pseudo-3D system wherein the 2D sprites are rendered onto polygons. And where is the second floor? I even removed my runebook collection after the mining changes because they no longer served a purpose. This is an example of why KR graphics were a show stopper for me. Had I built a themed house in that client, it would look nothing like this. And I spend a lot of time there doing my BoDs.


Toggling graphics will force those heavily involved in their designs to basically build them in two clients. Especially those who are designing shops (I am currently involved in designing three luna shops) that want the look of them to appeal to everyone. This is why I strongly feel that art in homes should be toggled by a deco tool and not the UI. It's the best of both worlds. Devs also gain the ability to see what specific pieces of new art truly appealed to most people (like the new forge design appealed to me).

I realize that I will have to drink the kool-aid and use the new client for the better of the game. I realize that I will have to make changes to my designs. Maybe in 2 years when I can place a mining cart...
 

Uvtha

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It's usually the people with Stone-Age computers who complain.. And it has nothing to do with anything else but them being stubborn to the end and penny-wise.
Not my experience. I have found that people don't like KR cause it wasn't/isn't very good art wise, and that the UI is often difficult to deal with. I always thought the monsters looked great, but the items and pretty much everything else looked abhorent.

Ive got a computer that was top of the line a bit over a year ago, and I dont use KR. I was even excited about it, but when it came it just sucked. 2d might not be brilliant, but its something were used to, so its pretty easy to predict people will choose something crappy they know to something crappy AND buggy they don't.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

i for one am running a machine with 2gb memory card and vista,

Download Windows 7... you'll do better.
 
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