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Woodsman
Guest
It did show the problems with the new player journey or experience or whatever. New players are lost these days unless they have people helping them out.
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Remember when we were told that the Hi-Res update was "pushed back," then only mentioned once or twice since? Grimm hasn't even really talked about it, though I expect certain people have given him the stink eye to the point he's unwilling to comment.
We haven't seen any examples of the new art since the way-too-glossy castle wall shot. This bothers me. They seem to want us to believe the art is being done, but are unwilling to give us any glimpses. After the train wreck that was the KR art, you'd think they'd at least want to show us something to prove it won't be a repeat performance. I'd settle for a smattering of wall tiles and such to ogle, or a plant or two if any of those have been redone. But letting us sit here for months waiting for this without seeing anything is a bit fishy.
The static arc events are way too grindy and downright boring, I'm not all that excited by the new dungeons (but they aren't terrible additions), and there really isn't much else to look forward to.
UO has NPE through New Haven, but--from what I've seen so far--Grak isn't told by the devs to do any of the new player quests. It's not a perfect NPE, and it's largely out of date, but it's there. Not only did the devs fail to talk about their NPE, they didn't even--again, from what I've seen (first hour, last half hour)--participate in any quests, at all. Which begs the question, why aren't there quests for the new dungeon experiences? Slay 10 Dazzled Harpies, for example. Simple stuff like that?
You know, you could always just say, "Hey Grimm, what's up with the high res stuff?" either up in the art area or a PM. I respond to just about every question.
As for the high res stuff, it was pushed back pending completing the art demands of the current story. The story is still ongoing, but in regards to art, we're nearing completion of all the required assets at which point we'll return to working on high res stuff in addition to all the other things I have been working on for UO. I don't know if you follow our tweets, butwhle we've been working on all the story stuff, I've been in the process of implementing some serious optimizations for the EC client Human/Elf animations. Which has required me to re-render everything all over again, but the result should be a little sharper and cleaner animation graphics, and a reduction of disk footprint. This is also an opportunity to get as many animation bugs cleared out as possible, so there are going to be a lot of wins on this - and I haven't even mentioned the back end stuff that's terrific.
The high res environment artwork is a collaboration of art and engineering, so that's going slightly slower than if it were all either engineering or art alone. But as we get things to show, you can bet we'll start posting.
-Grimm
TheGrimmOmen,
Thats great news! Jeff and Mesanna should be mentioning this at every public opportunity they get as it IS encouraging! It would be a good idea to see these kind of things mentioned on the Herald every few weeks. Thist kind of udate lets us know what you (or any member of the Team) are working on without setting up any false expectations or deadlines. "Here's what we're working on, in this vague order, subject to issues cropping up." This is the kind of communication we've been craving for years!
Though, while you mention rerendering art, bump up the res a bit.. I'd like to see more details again. Oh, check out a gargoyle wearing a kilt flying northwest - they have a hole that appears in their kilt under them.
Thats great news! Jeff and Mesanna should be mentioning this at every public opportunity they get as it IS encouraging! It would be a good idea to see these kind of things mentioned on the Herald every few weeks. Thist kind of udate lets us know what you (or any member of the Team) are working on without setting up any false expectations or deadlines. "Here's what we're working on, in this vague order, subject to issues cropping up." This is the kind of communication we've been craving for years!
Though, while you mention rerendering art, bump up the res a bit.. I'd like to see more details again. Oh, check out a gargoyle wearing a kilt flying northwest - they have a hole that appears in their kilt under them.
Well, I'll not be touching resolution at this point, nor do I have plans to touch Gargoyle animations - "biting off more than you can chew" comes to mind. But that is an inevitable follow up step. As a matter of fact I've already updated our pipeline to support rendering out high resolution animations, and have rendered out a few at the higher res, but higher res requires engineering support, and a lot of time to render out. So I'm just taking this one step at a time.
EDIT:
As for these things not being in the Herald, that's partly my fault. I forget to ask to see if they'll post these things to the Herald. I'll try to be better about that. Glad to hear that there's interest!
Also, I'm on sabbatical time off for while, so I will not be making much progress on these until I get back. Although I'm still rendering animations as I'm typing this.. ;-)
-Grimm
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Thanks for your help Grimm.
Please give us hope.
I am really really super excited about an MMO lately... but it's not UO. And I really really wish it was UO. I honestly do.
Hey, Grimm... just a couple of suggestions:
1) Have EA provide you with a rendering machine or two that you can have handle rendering while you continue to work on the assets themselves.
2) That machine should have as much RAM as possible -- anyone who tells you that [X]gb of RAM is too much RAM has never rendered anything at all, or has been asleep while they rendered.
3) It should also have a high-speed quad-core processor at least. Graphics card doesn't matter at all for the actual rendering, so run it on whatever in that respect.
Of course, these things are true regardless of the render, but I am sort of curious... What are you rendering that's taking so long in the process?
I suspect that whatever it is won't have a lot of specularity (if any at all), and while I'd expect there to be decent bump or normal mapping going on, I don't suspect that to keep UO looking somewhat like UO that you'd be doing anything with photon emission and very little with object incandescence. Particle effects maybe, though it would make more sense to apply them inside the game engine itself rather than as renders so that individual graphics cards could make of them what they could rather than hope the animation looks crisp.
What target resolution are you rendering for? I could see shooting slightly higher than 1920x1080 for screen resolution since there are a small handful of us that run monitors large enough with enough pixel density combined with video cards that actually support that kind of resolution, but... even at a full-screen resolution of 1920x1080, I'd think most of what you would be rendering would be at most a quarter of that height, and most significantly less than that, because there's a need to have a lot of stuff going on in that space... though, obviously, if you zoom in, I suppose half-height wouldn't be bad. But when you're talking about a 540px height render, if it's a static (yes, I see some of what you're doing is animation, but since it's frame by frame...), then I would think probably no more than 5 minutes a render on a slow modern machine... presuming you're rendering for animations at roughly 60 frames/second, and presuming you decided to do 1:1 ratio on the animation (most don't, by the way... most do a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio of different frames per each second), you'd be looking at approximately 5 hours per animation... 2.5 at a 1:2 ratio, and about 1.6 hours at a 1:3 ratio.
Long series of questions and comments short... I guess I'm wondering why the render process would be what's impeding things. I'd think the animation and asset build on more complicated assets would be worse.
You have seen how the people moving in the EC thats far away from KR's fast and fluent movement, but i dont think it is a animation problem, it has something todo with the engine itself. I have not watched the whole stream, but the naked bug in the EC when players are appearing naked or when they are duplicated is still there!
Iam very sorry, but today i would never tell anybody to begin playing the game, it is too booring, too pixelated and not good supported, the last 2 years it felt like there is a rat in the pipeline blocking it!
I have a theory.
It's a pretty wild one, so hang in there.
Perhaps the reason existing players weren't satisfied by it might have something to do with existing players not being the intended audience.
What's of interest to a non-player is different to that of a player.
If I weren't a UO player, and I was being introduced to it by a friend, there's one main question I'd want answering; "What is Ultima Online?"
I wouldn't give two hoots about questions like "What are the developers doing for the nth anniversay?" or any number of questions that are metaphorically burning for existing players.
It's a pretty wild one, so hang in there.
Perhaps the reason existing players weren't satisfied by it might have something to do with existing players not being the intended audience.
What's of interest to a non-player is different to that of a player.
If I weren't a UO player, and I was being introduced to it by a friend, there's one main question I'd want answering; "What is Ultima Online?"
I wouldn't give two hoots about questions like "What are the developers doing for the nth anniversay?" or any number of questions that are metaphorically burning for existing players.
That's possible. They also had like 8 people in Skype or whatever they were using to chat, plus the host streamer, Grak, as well as Pokket, were keeping track of a chat room with 100 viewers commenting live. Plus Twitter. That's a lot of distraction. Even so, they had fun, and if you see people having fun then you get interested, in my opinion.
Everyone played for a solid two-plus hours straight and they had fun dying even if they didn't know what was happening. That's a statement. Whether she intends to or not, Pokket even said she wanted to join UO again because she was having so much fun (mind you she was playing the Classic Client while Grak was playing the EC). That's pretty much all you need to get new people, a game that looks fun even if all you do is die trying to obtain a goal. Of course, Test Center has endless gold and free end-game items, which helps the fun factor out a lot!
I think the problem for returning players--once again--is that you have to pay to play UO. Honestly, if I am a guy who quit ten years ago and I'm searching for Ultima and I see there are free shards that do exactly what I remember, why am I going to pay for 1997 graphics and a tile-based world? Shrugs. I don't know about other MMO games and how/if they are emulated, but I feel like free shards are a huge problem for UO as far as securing former players.
Speaking of free MMOs, SW:TOR will be on a free trial period starting today and ending Monday. Check out Weekend Pass Free Trial | Star Wars: The Old Republic for more information! Edit: nm looks like they still might make you pay for the client! boo
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Sevin0oo0
Guest
Just reading this thread, I think that was the intent, How quickly a noob can get in and do the basics w/o being anal, Using standardized gear instead of customized and tweaked templates, a fair offering. If it showed a concern in the NPE, I'd look for changes in some form to occur.
Yes, other games are emulated. I've removed threads from a number of our other areas in the past offering private servers for the games.
Looks like I missed an interesting event, wish I had known about it, but from watching the vids and listening to comments my impression is it looks like you may be right on Cirno,
about it being targetted to new players. We, who are and have been playing, are not going to see the game in the same light as a new player, because of our experiences and longevity.
The new player isn't going to have preconceived ideas or notions about the game, and will build upon their own experiences. Someone that plays can tell a new player their perspective
on what it's like, whether positive or negative, but until you play yourself, one really doesn't know. It did make me smile in listening to the comments and that they were having a good time.
That's really what it boils down to.
Reading this thread about what did happen and did not happen is almost depressing.
I do believe that UO has it worse for emulation, though.
No evidence for it, though, just a feeling.
Oh, you're talking about New Player Experience. I thought you meant Null Pointer Exceptions and couldn't figure out why you were wanting to see crashes/bugs highlighted in the video/interview.
I do like to see things fail. Bear in mind I played "Mouse Trap" as a child. That must be why I spend so much time on Test Center ;D.
i watched all event and i was a great expectation about it, and at end my feeling of frustration, the event be gark dying, the only thing that i see talk about 15th was a question that i send to gark about bring kr art back, and answer was, no way.
for me the devs lost a great oportunity for show more about game and show that good thing that uo have, a big part player that watched event are player base, but has a player that stoped player a long time or never played uo before, so i think that talk more about new art res or how devs intends implement it, is a good thing for hold attention. now i know that grinn try answer all question about that subject, but how i dont have any notion about graphics is complicate to imagine how it work, if new high res art, is good or is more the same, the only think that gave me a idea about it was 2 pictures that release with pub 73 more nothing.
but grinn you are a great dev, as I said a while ago, I never saw before a dev that interacts with the community as you. then congratulations and I hope work with the new hight resolution, surprise me.
for me the devs lost a great oportunity for show more about game and show that good thing that uo have, a big part player that watched event are player base, but has a player that stoped player a long time or never played uo before, so i think that talk more about new art res or how devs intends implement it, is a good thing for hold attention. now i know that grinn try answer all question about that subject, but how i dont have any notion about graphics is complicate to imagine how it work, if new high res art, is good or is more the same, the only think that gave me a idea about it was 2 pictures that release with pub 73 more nothing.
but grinn you are a great dev, as I said a while ago, I never saw before a dev that interacts with the community as you. then congratulations and I hope work with the new hight resolution, surprise me.
I think the devs did a pretty good job considering that on my very first two hours in Ultima Online, I got scammed by a player who later became a very good friend. Since Ultima Online is not a casual game, there is no way you can explain what it is and most importantly how much it offers in just two hours, even in-game, to two players who have at most a vague recollection of the game. I think this is by far the best description of the game but you need to commit some time to understand.
For the new players, we have a New Player House in Europa run by Mim Foxglove and also a book on the floor of the New Haven bank that welcomes new players to our shard and describing how to reach the house. We have a lot of dedicated veteran players on the help chat channel answering the questions of the new players and helping them with training, equipment and also finding them a guild. Bowden recently created a new guild (Next Generation) only for the new and returning players.
So while I agree that the new player experience is a must, in the mean time, veteran players are trying to do everything they can to prevent any frustration the new and the returning player might have and I'm sure this is the case for other shards as well.
For the new players, we have a New Player House in Europa run by Mim Foxglove and also a book on the floor of the New Haven bank that welcomes new players to our shard and describing how to reach the house. We have a lot of dedicated veteran players on the help chat channel answering the questions of the new players and helping them with training, equipment and also finding them a guild. Bowden recently created a new guild (Next Generation) only for the new and returning players.
So while I agree that the new player experience is a must, in the mean time, veteran players are trying to do everything they can to prevent any frustration the new and the returning player might have and I'm sure this is the case for other shards as well.
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Ghost71
Guest
I ended up dropping the 70mil and some other things i had on me at the void. I died 2-3 times and it sucked trying to move 70mil out of the way to find my stuff. It was fun, and is cool to see the video again. I said hi mom a lot hehe
Nice how the only dev comment here, again, is from the Art guy who seems to be the only source of contact. Thanks for trying Grimm but Mes has screwed the pooch....how about another video where we all lounge on the sofa talking about nothing?
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Sevin0oo0
Guest
I watched it, they seemed to all have a pretty good time, the Guy said he'd certainly play it more, if he had the time, the girl said she would, if she could figure out her acct.
Other things:
contest to move Sudiva - My vote, thus far, is Petra's idea of into the Mushroom Caves
Next dungeon revamp has a champ spawn - Fel only: Destard, Deceit, Despise,Fire. Leaving: Bedlam, Fan Dancer Dojo, Labyrinth, Twisted Weald. ???
certain weapons that last 25hrs (of actual use) have a visible timer? or representative marker 0-100% life?
Other things:
contest to move Sudiva - My vote, thus far, is Petra's idea of into the Mushroom Caves
Next dungeon revamp has a champ spawn - Fel only: Destard, Deceit, Despise,Fire. Leaving: Bedlam, Fan Dancer Dojo, Labyrinth, Twisted Weald. ???
certain weapons that last 25hrs (of actual use) have a visible timer? or representative marker 0-100% life?
Way, way ahead of you.
It's not e complexity, it's the sheer quantity of the animations to render out. Generally I keep each frame render time to about 1 to 2 seconds (for weapons and equipment), but when each asset renders out at around 3500 frames, even at a one second per frame render, the render time is just about an hour. Multiply that times the hundreds of assets and you get the idea. Add to this time the fact that I'm going through each asset and performing minor fixes and changes and time gets added in on top of that, then there's post-production, yada, yada.
As for the target resolution, that really isn't a part of the conversation at this point. But my focus was to enable the pipeline to support whatever resolution we decide to render at (if we decide to render out high-resolution animations) while still supporting the lower resolution renders at the same time within the same animation render cycle.
-Grimm
(Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD)
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Ghost71
Guest
Enhanced graphics for EC would be nice. I also wouldn't mind seeing EC UI for 2D.
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Woodsman
Guest
A returning player is going to want a house, and as Petra and others said, housing would be one of the top things you'd have to pay for under a "free to play" UO, along with access to lands other than the original continent (micro-transaction for access to Malas, micro-transaction for access to Stygian, micro-transaction for access to Ilshenar, micro-transaction for access to Tokuno, etc.), micro-transaction for mounts, micro-transaction for access to say more than 50 items in a bank box or your backpack, micro-transactions to own a ship, micro-transactions to chop colored wood or mine colored ore, etc. Free to play is never going to be truly free to play.
Companies do it because a lot of people are gullible and don't stop to add up how much they are paying in micro-transactions. I sometimes think that people who push f2p have never actually played the major f2p MMORPGs, or if so they just casually popped in and out, or they didn't stop and add up how much they were spending.
World of Warcraft and other MMOs have the same problem. Even though Star Wars Galaxies was shut down, there are plenty of free shards available, and most are based on the pre-Combat Upgrade, which was what ultimately killed off SWG. When Sony implemented CU and some other changes, people started really working on getting the SWG free shards up to speed, and people were leaving SWG in droves. Imagine if shortly after AOS or Tram, UO players left in droves for free shards. As bad as the changes have sometimes been for UO, we've never had it as bad as SWG.
Something people also tend to ignore with this issue: People who are already playing free shards are not going to up and switch to an EA "free to play", because most are playing free shards that have a certain ruleset that is not present in EA's UO. Over the years, regardless of which UO forums you read, there aren't tons of threads from players quitting and saying "OH MY GOD I CAN'T AFFORD $10 OR $13 A MONTH", it's usually about changes that were made to UO that pissed them off, or real-life problems that have nothing to do with UO, or boredom.
It's also rather insulting to those people when players (not you G.v.P) flippantly remark that free sharders would up and switch. While I don't mess with free shards anymore, I have friends who do, and they would no more give up their communities and friends and rulesets that they've had for years than you or I would.
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Woodsman
Guest
When can we see anything? All of this secrecy about things concerning UO's future is not fun for players trying to get people to come back.
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Sevin0oo0
Guest
The both of us here are IT service background, and been in CS all our working careers. I can tell you, Nothing makes a client madder, than to feel ignored. Even if we can't deliver, we maintain contact with the client and Try to provide a time the resolve will be performed. No BS excuses, we got the facts covered. Making the people wait, not just for content, but to even get a "when", simply makes them mad. Now there's Two problems to be faced. Even then it doesn't 'all go away', because a deeper root has started, and it's not a flower.
Honestly, I've never played a f2p UO, but every time I try to Google something from way back when I get a few results from a third-party site. Back in '99 or around then I was aware of a UO emulator because it was actually hosted on Stratics, and so I was aware of how anyone could create their own server if they wanted to, and I realized this was how a lot of the cartoonists of the time--in addition to static, third-party programs which collected art for the sole purpose of creating images--made their flash animations, or the like.
I'll have to do exact f2p comparisons regarding microtransactions as I assume most of these have pay rates quite visible on their main page--at least for my own understanding, as talking too in-depth about f2p here isn't going to get anywhere.
That's true, SWG lost a lot as they made jedis easier to get and the whole process of changing the way skill trees worked insulted the player base. UO: AOS wasn't quite as dramatic as they only really killed one skill: magic resist. But that one skill was important to us older players, and it was still a huge change. AOS wasn't stress tested enough, either, which made it the most awkward period of time for this game hands-down. If people didn't quit because of the changes they quit because of the lag.
Likewise, I'm not making an argument for existing UO subscribers to up and quit just for UO f2p. In every case I've seen, personally, another pay-to-play--or traditional game--is involved, if not a completely RL reason (Peter Pan, pregnancy, a move, etc.). I'm only focused on returning players after a long hiatus, users who come back to UO and are forced to play the EC because "I was led to believe that's where the party's at," or whatever Grak said during the stream, and users who start to search for UO on google then find third-party alternatives by accident because the interest in them is rather high. For example, a lot of times when I try to do research on T2A I stumble upon third-party sites/boards trying to recreate T2A. They're trying to remember in order to make it exactly like it used to be, I'm trying to remember to figure out how WWs used to work for a possible future WW upgrade on production ;D.
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Woodsman
Guest
I think they have technical issues that would bar them from ever fully embracing f2p - the account system and the game store are still not that good as we all know, but honestly I think at this point the best thing they can do is get the graphics upgrade out there and go from there.
The videos showed they need to work on the new player stuff, and maybe they could borrow the people who finished the Camelot New Player Journey stuff since that was actually pretty decent. Just imagine a player coming from another MMORPG. Except you don't have to imagine - we just watched it.
The videos showed they need to work on the new player stuff, and maybe they could borrow the people who finished the Camelot New Player Journey stuff since that was actually pretty decent. Just imagine a player coming from another MMORPG. Except you don't have to imagine - we just watched it.
Well, like I said, once we start back in one them, I'm sure we'll start posting new pics!
-Grimm
(Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD)
Glad to hear it.
I just purchased a new desktop because I made the unfortunate discovery that my laptop was rendering 5x faster than my previous desktop, and that... was not good. hehYeah, I hear you there... 3500 frames? Wow! I'm guessing that includes all directional facings and everything all in the render? I mean, it's a smart way of going about it, no question...
And yeah, I completely understand the adjustment even after a render. Sometimes it's easier to open a frame in Photoshop than it is to re-render it to change a minor goof or a "the renderer did something goofy here, have no clue why, but it doesn't look right," especially if it would take more time than to just fix it manually.
Only reason I was asking about the resolution is because it obviously affects render time. Right now most of the stuff I do is at 640x480x96 for sake of demonstration purposes, and I cut corners to keep the render time at a minimum, but full quality pieces might see as high as 1920x1080x96 for my portfolio or 1920x1080x150 if I planned on printing it out (though I suspect I'd find a more "portrait" or "landscape" resolution for print media). And of course, individual game engines and uses all have their own requirements so that's a bit of a mish mosh.
Mostly was just curious about the target resolution as it gives an idea of target zooms and how they're handled and all that kind of stuff.
At any rate, thanks for the response! It's good to know you've got a nice render machine aiding in this endeavor.
Iam not seeing the problem in the animation stuff, the EC client but also 2d behaves like a bubble gum, but it should be fast and fluent. Look at the movement of the players in this video
it lags a bit but also at this zoom level equal how the enviroment looks, it is fluent and not pixelated, the walls are not double animated, but who iam telling it, you have created it!
Dont understand me wrong, it is overall your decesion which art you show, but you should log into KR and look how the players are moving, how the sound is working when they are mounted and running, how detailed also with legacy mode turned on the legacy textures are and how the performance is, my tests on the same old machine gave me a clear answer of no significant difference!
I have to admit, I was very dissapointed of vidio 2, is all they can show about PvP a stupid moongate fight, where the blue is hidding in gaurd zone like chickens. I would like them to make a vidio 3, made on Siege. Let them join GIL in their hunting and let them see both fights and peaceful interact med the reds. Also show about the guild NEW on Siege.
Also it will show how it is to be a newbie. We could help him with the training.
UO's strong side is not just the dungeons PvM and PvP, it's much more, it's also crafting, community and much more.
Also it will show how it is to be a newbie. We could help him with the training.
UO's strong side is not just the dungeons PvM and PvP, it's much more, it's also crafting, community and much more.
I'm going to have to say this.... there are FAR too many good aspects of UO to show anyone everything in a short 2 hour time period. NO they never showed anything of crafting, they never showed much of housing other than the little bit of house I was able to show them... I wish I had furnished that house more... but at least it was a NICE custome design not some god awful crystiline monstrosity or gods forbid a highly user-unfriendly castle or keep with all that unusable space... though I would have liked to have shown more.
Would have been nice to have shown them more about a newbie experience.... Where to get training... which NPC's you can get it from. How to use the Chat system... There was absolutely nothing shown of fishing, boats, the newer Ter Mur, even Gardening... But like I said there are FAR too many things in UO to show them in such a short amount of time. But using the cheats on TC I don't think is really giving them an experience of the game the way it really is.
Would have been nice to have shown them more about a newbie experience.... Where to get training... which NPC's you can get it from. How to use the Chat system... There was absolutely nothing shown of fishing, boats, the newer Ter Mur, even Gardening... But like I said there are FAR too many things in UO to show them in such a short amount of time. But using the cheats on TC I don't think is really giving them an experience of the game the way it really is.
I do think it was the facts, that it was made on TC and not on normal shards with the community there and special that stupid moongate fight made me sad.
I do know, there is far to many thing in UO to show in such a short time. I know you all did your best in trying, sorry.
I do know, there is far to many thing in UO to show in such a short time. I know you all did your best in trying, sorry.
I was thinking that if something like this were ever to be tried again it would be nice to have members of the community that are especially good or knowledgeable about certain aspects to be able to set up something in advance for them to see. Such of things like Community events, Corgul runs, Doom Gauntlet runs, even a peerless or trip through the Abyss... a look at New Haven and the new player experience... A Pirate Run.... Perhaps this would be good not only for the prospective new players to see and to get things out in the public but also for the DEV's to see just how the game is being utilized and what sorts of things could use improving to make the experience better.