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1) ONE artist on staff
2) ONE engineer on staff
3) CC luddites who abhor change
4) The EC is a far more robust engine (when used properly)
2) ONE engineer on staff
3) CC luddites who abhor change
4) The EC is a far more robust engine (when used properly)
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so you're saying there's a chance?
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From Developer Meet And Greet On Pacific, Monday Feb. 8th 2016:
Syl: Hey there Devs, Just two questions... forgive me if they have been asked before. First, I wanted to know if the team would please consider increasing the classic clients screen resolution. Has there been any plans or discussion on this?
Bleak: So we have tried this in the past. We found a number of issues we would have to address. The biggest is the performance.
Lady Mesanna: If we can find a way to do it that does not effect the performance we would
Bleak: The alternative is the EC : )
Syl: Right. Love the CC tho
Lady Mesanna: I have confidence in Bleak he will continue to try
Syl: Hey there Devs, Just two questions... forgive me if they have been asked before. First, I wanted to know if the team would please consider increasing the classic clients screen resolution. Has there been any plans or discussion on this?
Bleak: So we have tried this in the past. We found a number of issues we would have to address. The biggest is the performance.
Lady Mesanna: If we can find a way to do it that does not effect the performance we would
Bleak: The alternative is the EC : )
Syl: Right. Love the CC tho
Lady Mesanna: I have confidence in Bleak he will continue to try
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You could always start a crowdfunding campgain, raise the required 20-30 mil to help create a top notch modern client . Then let em rework all existing items ( 10k + estimated ), all 2d animations for every possible mobile in game plus all the existing landmass and house tiles.
Make that for 4k display resolution to be future proof.
It would not cost anywhere near 10's of millions to build a client. The most important thing is the design and implementation. Third Dawn, Kingdom Reborn, and now the Enhanced Client all have had fundemental design and art styles which were poor or in some cases just plain wrong. It has wasted so much developer time it is unreal.
From what I have seen if they did redo all the art ingame, it would probably have the wrong perspective/tilt on it...just saying. We might be better off enjoying what we have
I refuse to use the EC and totally enjoy the CC as is. With that said, I would love to see any way the CC could become better but I plain and simplyvjust love the gameplay itself and the graphics could forever stay the same and I'll be happy.
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With limited developer resources, it's not worth their time or treasure to focus on this IMHO.
I don't know anyone who plays Ultima Online for the graphics. I roll my eyes whenever people on here get up on their high horse about their love of CC graphics compared the ECs. Whenever I show this game to any non-UO players or send them YouTube videos, laughing at the graphics is the first thing they do - no matter which client they are shown. Neither client's graphics are spectacular compared to what modern console gaming can now produce.
And any overhauls to the CC will have people screaming to high hell about any unwanted and unforeseen side effects. Might be nice to dream about, but I wouldn't suggest anyone get their hopes up.
I don't know anyone who plays Ultima Online for the graphics. I roll my eyes whenever people on here get up on their high horse about their love of CC graphics compared the ECs. Whenever I show this game to any non-UO players or send them YouTube videos, laughing at the graphics is the first thing they do - no matter which client they are shown. Neither client's graphics are spectacular compared to what modern console gaming can now produce.
And any overhauls to the CC will have people screaming to high hell about any unwanted and unforeseen side effects. Might be nice to dream about, but I wouldn't suggest anyone get their hopes up.
I like the CC just the way it is "Hey who wants to get started on redoing those 30000 pieces of art?". They can't even manage to kick out a few pieces of decent art for the holidays for the last few years. I certainly don't want that crew mucking with the good art. The new art has a cartoon look to me, I like the classic CC art that appears to have texture.
"Hey who wants to get started on redoing those 30000 pieces of art?". They can't even manage to kick out a few pieces of decent art for the holidays for the last few years. I certainly don't want that crew mucking with the good art. The new art has a cartoon look to me, I like the classic CC art that appears to have texture.
sorry but this is horrible reasoning.
1. yes. this is fact, however we've seen very easy implementation of least a bigger play screen in other places. 1 should be able to handle it just fine with the proper info.
2. i dont think anyone would complain if everything looks the same, just able to make it bigger. basically so the game would just look the same on a modern monitor as it did on the extremely small ones from the '90s.
4. No one plays EC for the graphics. they play for the features, and these people are still a minority. Re-working 1 client with the classic graphics with updated interface would have been the smart path to take. (think a simplified version of EC without alot of the cheat-ish features and useless fluff / bulk)
I play UO for the graphics. I can get modern 3d graphics in just about any game out there but theres very few with that nostalgic '90s feel and is one of the reasons i still play this retro game.
Change for the sake of change is not progress.
If you want a shinier, modern looking game with all high res graphics and new tech and lens flares and everything, there's about 500 other MMOs on the market, and more keep coming every day.
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I don't think it should be discounted that we would be asking one single person to make changes to a 20-year old client software. Mind you, this is someone who has other responsibilities (i.e., fixing current bugs, focusing on adding new content with upcoming publishes and so forth) and wasn't here when game launched. I'm afraid it's easier said than done, especially considering they've confirmed that they have already tried.
For the benefit of the community, I would love to see this happen because I know how many people who be happy. If the EC added an option tomorrow that allowed you to toggle to CC graphics on the full screen and keep all other features in-tact, I would gladly use it. However, those are happy thoughts that don't take into context the true cost-benefit analysis of what it would really take to make this happen.
Also, not sure it's fair to imply that some EC features "cheat-ish" just because they're not in the CC. The folks in game whom I know are using illegal third party programs all are running CC. However, I digress that it is an entirely different topic for a separate thread.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find UO's 2d graphics to be pretty damn good, especially given how old it is. And, unlike most people whose opinions I've read, I actually like the EC graphics as well. They certainly beat the old 3D graphics. I'm using the EC more for the utility it allows, but I like the graphics just fine.
Maybe I'm going blind as I get older. *shrug*
not really on topic of thread, but this is one of the reasons i dont agree with many of the "features" of EC. because to accomplish those things in CC you need an un-regulated cheat program, so having some of those features in EC make people think its ok and acceptable to use cheat programs for CC.
At this point it might be a good idea to choose those features that EC has, and get a player or intern to make an approved 3rd party program thats downloadable on UO.com to put CC and EC on equal ground without having to use unregulated ones.
but thats a whole other topic and not really meant for this thread.
a third party program posted on UO.com for download would also be the easiest way to accomplish a bigger play screen without having to re-work the actual game.
As I've said in the original thread (although it may be off topic), I really hope they can at least enlarge the gaming window resolution to have a wider field of view. This doesn't involve modifying preexisting artwork, and has been proven feasible to a degree as @Hannes Erich kindly pointed out using an unapproved third party app. Although this may not be exactly the intention of this thread, I believe it would be pretty cool and could be considered some sort of compromise. The CC game window is just too small on newer monitors, and could use an update.
That roughly estimated cost did include a rework of all the art, which is needed for bigger screens and higher resolutions. Apart from that, both third dawn and KR have been fails just because of tight budget and hard deadline to keep costs under control. Ofc, what has been spent on all 3 3d clients combined could probably have produced a real good client. But thats EA's fault. And dont forget that money that has been spent on things like UO2.
Did anyone actually try using a 1600x1200 screen, set cc resolution to 800x600 and let monitor or graphics card do the upscaling ? This just doubles pixel count in every direction and should not produce any unwanted artifacts from scaling.
So where are you getting those numbers from?
Where to begin...
A) UO should not be crowdfunding. It's misuse of such a program.
B) That's a ridiculously high figure. It wouldn't take that much, or even a 10th of that much.
C) You honestly think UO could crowdfund 20-30 million for a CC graphics upscale?
D) Assuming it DID cost 20-30 million, and by some loaves and fishes level miracle they were able to raise 20-30m, do you really think that that's a good use of 20-30 million dollars? Upgrading the CC art to a larger (but still antiquated, and viewed as outdated) version of the same graphics? For this game, that has 20k, (being extraordinarily generous) subs? You could probably make UO2 for that money.
Overall... no.
See, im ec user, dont even have cc installed because its totally unplayable for me. But as much as everyone else i would love a high res 2d cc.Where to begin...
A) UO should not be crowdfunding. It's misuse of such a program.
B) That's a ridiculously high figure. It wouldn't take that much, or even a 10th of that much.
C) You honestly think UO could crowdfund 20-30 million for a CC graphics upscale?
D) Assuming it DID cost 20-30 million, and by some loaves and fishes level miracle they were able to raise 20-30m, do you really think that that's a good use of 20-30 million dollars? Upgrading the CC art to a larger (but still antiquated, and viewed as outdated) version of the same graphics? For this game, that has 20k, (being extraordinarily generous) subs? You could probably make UO2 for that money.
Overall... no.
First, cc is probably 20 years old spaghetti code that is near impossible to maintain or expand . Only way out here is a complete rewrite. Add a working cheat protection while at it.
Second, as everyone else i dont have numbers on anything. But look at the insane amount of items, tiles, equipment and landmass in game. Plus every single animation frame for every single mob in game. All that has to be reworked by hand , you cannot simply upscale 2d pixel art, it doesnt work, artists have to manually add details to everything that is there.
So take some estimated numbers, add up wages and you could end up anywhere inbetween 5-50 mil.
And as we rework everything up to modern standards, people will soon notice that ingame music and sound are also outdated.
Also take into account, that EA had 3 ( 4 if you count uo2 ) attempts at a new client and new art and didnt get it right. And im pretty sure they had budget and top artists.
So what makes people think you could pull that for 1-2 mil when that big company did fail 4 times in a row.
For a comparision, its rumoured ESO did take around 200mil to make and it took Bethesda another year of hard work after release to make it somewhat good. And guess what, nearly 2 years after release, it starts to look a bit old compared to what is possible today.
I'd rather they reimplemented the KR environment art into the EC and redid all the art that didn't exist in KR into similarly high resolution textures.
Item graphics weren't great but landscape and some statues and stuff looked amazing in KR.
Item graphics weren't great but landscape and some statues and stuff looked amazing in KR.
Seriously?Reality is horrible reasoning?
UO has one artist and one engineer, that does not equate to the resources required to do any kind of art update properly at more then a glacial pace. The 30th anniversary may well roll around before it would be done.
Lets also not conflate a "bigger play window" with a graphics update, nor with the fantasy that some people wouldn't get bent out of shape and ragey were it forced on them instead of given as a toggle. Simply upscaling the graphics and slapping them back into the client would send U.Hall nuclear.
Mesanna herself has said, at last report, that client use was 50/50...and she prefers the CC. Why would she lie? We have to take what she says as the truth, as anything a player spouts is unfounded conjecture.
Its thinking like this that's dooming UO to a slowly dying niche game.
If you don't appeal to a wide audience, you don't make money. However, nobody said that UO needs to look like WoW or a bad JJ Abrams movie, it simply needs to look better.
Foolishly resizing 90's era art assets without polishing them isn't the answer. It will look like flaming caca.
I would rather doom it to being a slowly dying niche game than make it something I don't want. It's already beautiful. If you don't like it, find something that fits your taste.
Sort of...
Third Dawn went all polygonal on Sosarian lifeforms, but the poly counts were laughably low and the meshes looked dirty (as in dirt covered). The play window was bigger and you could zoom, so it was sort-of higher res.
Kingdom Reborn was all new art in a somewhat darker pallet. Everything was new, land statics, items, mobs etc. However, too many people whined and they were aiming for an unrealistically low hardware spec...hence the infamous comment from Draconi about smoking video cards. Item graphics were so poorly done as to be unrecognizable. EA Japan screwed over the project by giving out an impossible release date, which for some unfathomable reason the devs acquiesced to. Parts of KR were higher res, other parts weren't.
The EC is truly a Frankenstein's monster. Upscaled CC art comprises the majority of world and item art, which has been polished somewhat...but not by hand. The ground is redone KR art. Mobs are mostly from KR, though a few have been redone since. The character mob is a poorly resized version of the KR model, but we're all so damn tiny now... *grumbles* Anyway, the EC, for all its myriad flaws, is higher res.
In other words, make a new game. Seems unlikely.
I do some pixel art, so I have some idea of what the task would entail, and you are dramatically over estimating (up to 50 million now?!). People make entire mmos for under 10m. Artists don't make like 250k a year, especially when you outsource, and especially not to do pixel art. Plus an HD pass wouldn't make the graphics look any more up to date... it would just make them more visible. The biggest obstacle, I feel, would be time not money. Redoing all those assets would take a good sized team a few years. I don't see that happening. I think it would be a completely stupid investment frankly.
You act like Broadsword isn't EA. EA is still the publisher, as it has always been. What makes me think that is that you are only going to be spending crazy money on the art department when you are making a AAA game. It would obviously be a task, but not one that would cost more than making a whole new game.
Yeah, that was a modern AAA (ish) game, and it was a whole game, with a huge ad budget. It's a completely different scenario. Take a look at any of the indy MMO's and that would be a far better comparison. Things like Shards, and Shroud of the Avatar... these are whole games being made by small developers for well under 10m.
3d wasn't it was... 3d, rather than sprites. KR was, and EC is just KR with CC art blown up and spliced in. So really only KR, and it wasn't a making the old stuff "HD" it was all new art.
To be fair, I don't think there's any change that will make UO anything but a niche game.
Oh, I completely agree. Though the dying part could be avoided...
my point was is that he doesnt have to actually design anything. they just have to work a deal with who has rights to the program currently. a deal could possibly be completed in 5mins or less.
Reality is horrible reasoning?
UO has one artist and one engineer, that does not equate to the resources required to do any kind of art update properly at more then a glacial pace. The 30th anniversary may well roll around before it would be done.
of course she did. it would be horrible business-sense to release anything other than numbers justifying a client thats at best tolerable (i dont think anyone would call EC a full success)
Mesanna herself has said, at last report, that client use was 50/50...and she prefers the CC. Why would she lie? We have to take what she says as the truth, as anything a player spouts is unfounded conjecture.
in real world experience, and from dealing with over 500 players since EC was released, ive found the number to be more like 25% percent who use EC. and im sure others would agree.
third dawn had a 3d paperdoll
What rights? A program that illegally modifies someone else's IP would have a dubious claim to "rights" at best. I don't know what the current program is that's doing it now, though I assume its one of the programs-that-shall-not-be-named. I only remember a program that increased the game window size from over a decade ago, but that was all it did.
Should Bleak get something to work, more power to him! He'd just better make it a toggle.
Pure conjecture and anecdotal "evidence." I'll believe Mesanna over numbers pulled out of a player's butt any day.
i bet you believed mesanna when she promised for 5 years that a high-res client was coming too ?
Nope, as there was scant evidence of such an endeavor after 2011, plus they canned the only artist who even had a vague feel for UO's style. Also, every time Mesanna was pressed for examples of what was being done, she'd waffle or just disappear.
All we ever got was two pathetic screenshots from around the time of Publish 73 at the end of 2011:
Comparing client stats to the vaporware update is apples and oranges though. One BS would have solid login stats for, the other is just another in a long line of unfulfilled promises.
It's still 2016 right....not every other year this has been talked about ever?
Sad but true.
Agreed. Sad but true. I would love to credit an artist on their work but its more than apparent artwork introduced in last several years simply doesn't belong in CC UO.
On a positive note - and this may be the oleeeeee whiskey talkin - despite everyone's difference of opinion on matters such as game content etc., at least there are still people that care about a 20 year old game deeply enough to take the time and get on stratics and voice their opinion and fight about it. Shows that UO is still a great game.
I recently visited the Fallout Shelter (mobile game) forums after hearing it has become the most played Fallout in all of the series. What I saw on those forums was kind of pathetic in terms of players actively pushing for game changes. Fallout Shelter isn't even that great and has like zero complexity to it. It gets flat out boring after a week of playing it. I get that UO is an MMO and Fallout Shelter is a single player mobile game and as such there is no perfect way to compare the active participation of their respective player base in online forums. But still! We got 43 posts on one topic alone in a single day! Hopefully this is some motivation for the devs to get going and make this game kicka** again.
That being said I really hope they can implement some realistic things in this game. LIKE A LARGER GAME WINDOW. I think people are wasting their time with pushing for high res artwork.
Drunk rant complete. Don't judge me if I just sounded like an idiot. Its friggin Saturday.
On a positive note - and this may be the oleeeeee whiskey talkin - despite everyone's difference of opinion on matters such as game content etc., at least there are still people that care about a 20 year old game deeply enough to take the time and get on stratics and voice their opinion and fight about it. Shows that UO is still a great game.
I recently visited the Fallout Shelter (mobile game) forums after hearing it has become the most played Fallout in all of the series. What I saw on those forums was kind of pathetic in terms of players actively pushing for game changes. Fallout Shelter isn't even that great and has like zero complexity to it. It gets flat out boring after a week of playing it. I get that UO is an MMO and Fallout Shelter is a single player mobile game and as such there is no perfect way to compare the active participation of their respective player base in online forums. But still! We got 43 posts on one topic alone in a single day! Hopefully this is some motivation for the devs to get going and make this game kicka** again.
That being said I really hope they can implement some realistic things in this game. LIKE A LARGER GAME WINDOW. I think people are wasting their time with pushing for high res artwork.
Drunk rant complete. Don't judge me if I just sounded like an idiot. Its friggin Saturday.
Ok time out!
I will explain this one more time....
EA owns UO.
EA holds the purse strings.
Broadsword is still running UO/DAoC.
Mesanna has been searching for more workers for the game.... she has interviewed many. Of which so far many who tried out didn't work. Even someone on stratics took the challenge and left after few weeks. They couldn't deal with it.
They must have some experience in UO... how hard can it be?
Apparently very.
She has 5 counting herself people to deal with the running of UO.
EA let go or sent elsewhere good talent from mythic before it closed shop. (stolen/lost talent)
This was not a sudden thing.
EA plotted this..
Look long gone are the days when over 25 Dev team members worked on the game.
UO was written on very old software, using ways designed by our games creator's and his dev.
Every time a publish that goes in ether for bug fix, update of current works, or a new publish it messes with that old code.
When I say messes I mean it breaks it in ways that can be impossible to repair back the way it was.
Ok I have one thing to ask and that is this... who went to the old Meet the Dev gatherings at the office?
I know some of you went to the old Mythic offices on the anniversary a few years ago.
I remember one commented on how much went into working on a nearly 20 year old game.
They don't pussyfoot in there people.
It's not easy working on that old a code and not cause a catastrophic failure....
Also time... how many times do you all pancake that they are not talking to you or listening to your wants and needs?
Last time I looked those meet and greets that are on usa shards mind you at 7pm est and run well past 11pm!
Asian and Oceanic time meets are hard too as the hours players are on them can be super late/early for the dev.
7 to 11 is not quite office hours!
Saying Mesanna lives and breaths UO is mild.... the lady lives on UO time! Dedicated to the players and game.
I don't think it is fair to her or the rest of the dev to hold something promised when EA had such a big hand in an effort to kill us off.
I play the CC. Yes I would love for it to fit the big screen on my TV.
but...
I can and will live with what I got and still be here till the lights ether go out on me or the game.
I will explain this one more time....
EA owns UO.
EA holds the purse strings.
Broadsword is still running UO/DAoC.
Mesanna has been searching for more workers for the game.... she has interviewed many. Of which so far many who tried out didn't work. Even someone on stratics took the challenge and left after few weeks. They couldn't deal with it.
They must have some experience in UO... how hard can it be?
Apparently very.
She has 5 counting herself people to deal with the running of UO.
EA let go or sent elsewhere good talent from mythic before it closed shop. (stolen/lost talent)
This was not a sudden thing.
EA plotted this..
Look long gone are the days when over 25 Dev team members worked on the game.
UO was written on very old software, using ways designed by our games creator's and his dev.
Every time a publish that goes in ether for bug fix, update of current works, or a new publish it messes with that old code.
When I say messes I mean it breaks it in ways that can be impossible to repair back the way it was.
Ok I have one thing to ask and that is this... who went to the old Meet the Dev gatherings at the office?
I know some of you went to the old Mythic offices on the anniversary a few years ago.
I remember one commented on how much went into working on a nearly 20 year old game.
They don't pussyfoot in there people.
It's not easy working on that old a code and not cause a catastrophic failure....
Also time... how many times do you all pancake that they are not talking to you or listening to your wants and needs?
Last time I looked those meet and greets that are on usa shards mind you at 7pm est and run well past 11pm!
Asian and Oceanic time meets are hard too as the hours players are on them can be super late/early for the dev.
7 to 11 is not quite office hours!
Saying Mesanna lives and breaths UO is mild.... the lady lives on UO time! Dedicated to the players and game.
I don't think it is fair to her or the rest of the dev to hold something promised when EA had such a big hand in an effort to kill us off.
I play the CC. Yes I would love for it to fit the big screen on my TV.
but...
I can and will live with what I got and still be here till the lights ether go out on me or the game.
GOOD READ @Lady Storm You go get em girl
you can get a larger game window. there is some setting in Windows 10 that allows this. capt lucky posted details about it somewhere in a stratics post.
if you're not running windows 10, there are illegal programs that will change the uo window size. i don't know anything about these and won't use them for fear of being hacked.
Because of the one line paragraphs
My brain always wants to
Read your posts as if there were
written as poetry.
But there isn't any meter.
So my brain gets confused.
Stops reading after a few lines.
too bad BS requires developers to work on premise. i'd be up for the challenge to work on old proprietary legacy code since i do it daily now.
Agreed. The game itself looks fine, I play UO and the CC because the CC is UO. To me the EC is NOT UO. It doesn't look, sound or feel like UO. For some reason the developers seem to suffer from this false assumption that to update the CC means completely overhauling what the game looks like. The game looks fine, the game looks great... Or atleast fel + tram does. How the game looks does NOT need to be changed, what needs to be updated however is how the CC processes data and manages memory.
I would point out third party clients for free servers that were created by a single developer that are based completely on the classic client (granted it is designed to run on a completely different system than what retail UO runs on), however I don't feel like being moderated and having to re-post this exact post but tailored to some silly rules.
For example, five gargoyles flapping their obnoxious wings while standing in one spot doing nothing else, are capable of forcing the classic client to move at a crippled crawl. And the solution to this isn't completely redesigning how the world around those gargoyles looks. The solution is figuring out why the classic client completely ****s all over itself in that situation and resolving it. And clearly it's an issue of some sort considering that the EC has an option to DISABLE FLAPPING GARGOYLE WINGS FOR YOUR CLIENT TO REDUCE LAG... Something that is apparently an absolute no-no with the classic client however.
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