[Feedback] So sad..

[Kons]

I think it's so sad that any enhancement related to the new client has been lost lately..
I haven't been seing posts by anyone regarding develpment of the new client in a while.. Not even in the last Mesanna "announcement"..

 

[Pinco]

I think it's so sad that any enhancement related to the new client has been lost lately..
I haven't been seing posts by anyone regarding develpment of the new client in a while.. Not even in the last Mesanna "announcement"..

UO is a clientless game, seems they can't afford the time to improve it.

IMHO they should make the client open source with the packets handlers in a closed source dll so the community can work in the graphic/interface/sound/etc... and surely we will achieve a better client with a better support.
No client improvements = goodbye UO.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Here's a fact that's worth thinking about. In the recent global event, EC users crashed far less than CC users did.

 

[Pinco]

Here's a fact that's worth thinking about. In the recent global event, EC users crashed far less than CC users did.

it's not just a stability issue, also the graphic still stuck with some low quality items... An open source client allows to use 3d models for example, since EA has no resources to use it, and also allows to have an unlimited number of other useful functions not available right now
A good designed closed source dll could prevent any hack to the server, and the rest will be freely customizable

 

[Petra Fyde]

Not being a coder I can't tell whether that would be good or bad. If it made it possible for people to perpetrate the kind of cheats they do in CC it would be bad, very, very bad.

 

[Pinco]

Not being a coder I can't tell whether that would be good or bad. If it made it possible for people to perpetrate the kind of cheats they do in CC it would be bad, very, very bad.

if the packets handlers are closed there are no risks... no packets no cheat

 

[Woodsman]

Here's a fact that's worth thinking about. In the recent global event, EC users crashed far less than CC users did.

I didn't even crash, and a couple of other EC players I know didn't crash either. The majority of crashes I heard about were from people on CC. That was a pleasant surprise.

 

[Petra Fyde]

By far the biggest problem with EC is the random crash to desktop while running at full speed. If we and the developers could only pin down what was causing that!
It happened to me yesterday when I went to tame a fire beetle. I only went into the entrance of the mines - I stock a non-tamer pet stall in Magincia, so you can guess how many times I've gone through that entrance. I've never crashed there before.

 

[Kons]

Most of the crashing of EC i was aware of are related to bad memory using..
Loading too much static items slows the client a lot, then it fails to load map sector in time, then you walk in a black screen..
(i did intensive tests on a map i made)

About the client:
Problems are not packets related, but ARTs related. EA is trying to encrypt more and more their datas so that non official shards wouldn't use them.
I think open source is not the solution. MAny people would create custom clients for their own servers, and no one would play on EA anymore (why do you have to pay if you can have BOTH free client and server?).

What disappoints me is the fact that EC should have been an effort to take uo in the "next century", but seems that noone supports that.

 

[Pinco]

Most of the crashing of EC i was aware of are related to bad memory using..
Loading too much static items slows the client a lot, then it fails to load map sector in time, then you walk in a black screen..
(i did intensive tests on a map i made)

About the client:
Problems are not packets related, but ARTs related. EA is trying to encrypt more and more their datas so that non official shards wouldn't use them.
I think open source is not the solution. MAny people would create custom clients for their own servers, and no one would play on EA anymore (why do you have to pay if you can have BOTH free client and server?).

What disappoints me is the fact that EC should have been an effort to take uo in the "next century", but seems that noone supports that.

the new file format was made just for having 1 format for EC and CC and not to make trouble to freeshards... in all this years the EA has shown no interest on freeshards so it's not a problem...
Technically is already possible to make a custom client

 

[Woodsman]

the new file format was made just for having 1 format for EC and CC and not to make trouble to freeshards... in all this years the EA has shown no interest on freeshards so it's not a problem...
Technically is already possible to make a custom client

Plus the new format was to cut down on the size of the CC downloads, since the CC had a very poor update path apparently. Saves EA a little on bandwidth, but makes it easier for people on slower connections. Actually a win-win.

 

[Kons]

yes it is possible to make a custom client already, there also is project for a 2D Client based on XNA.
Fact is no developer would use his time to develop something that is not going forward but just still.
I would not do that (apart from the fact i have no time to do that )

3d would be cool, but who in the hell is gonna make all the models?!

 

[Pinco]

yes it is possible to make a custom client already, there also is project for a 2D Client based on XNA.
Fact is no developer would use his time to develop something that is not going forward but just still.
I would not do that (apart from the fact i have no time to do that )

3d would be cool, but who in the hell is gonna make all the models?!

there are plenty of suitable models around to use, the main problem is animating it
anyways there is no way to implement the physics without some server adaptation, and EA will never allow an unofficial client to login

 

[Kons]

well using new models, new animation, let's do a new game, so it will be unrelated to EA and you'll could use all you want

 

[Woodsman]

3d would be cool, but who in the hell is gonna make all the models?!

there are plenty of suitable models around to use, the main problem is animating it

The graphics are in 3D, they just have to convert them to 2D for the clients. TheGrimmOmen is upgrading the pipeline to handle 3D and handle high resolution animation for somewhere down the road.

 

[Pinco]

well using new models, new animation, let's do a new game, so it will be unrelated to EA and you'll could use all you want

a new game will never be UO

The graphics are in 3D, they just have to convert them to 2D for the clients. TheGrimmOmen is upgrading the pipeline to handle 3D and handle high resolution animation for somewhere down the road.

no, there are no 3d models on EC... all the mobiles are stop motion like CC right now
and I don't see any graphical revamp soon, maybe in the next 10-15 years but unfortunately the game won't last that long in the current state -.-

 

[Woodsman]

no, there are no 3d models on EC... all the mobiles are stop motion like CC right now

No, the original graphics are being rendered in 3D, and then chopped up in 2D for the clients. Grimm talked about how time consuming it was to downgrade the graphics for the EC/CC because they go from 3D to 2D.

and I don't see any graphical revamp soon, maybe in the next 10-15 years but unfortunately the game won't last that long in the current state -.-

It was not a good sign that the producer(s) have stopped talking about the graphics upgrade.

 

[Pinco]

No, the original graphics are being rendered in 3D, and then chopped up in 2D for the clients. Grimm talked about how time consuming it was to downgrade the graphics for the EC/CC because they go from 3D to 2D.

no, the only real 3D client that UO had was the Third Dawn client. Then it came KR with the same stop motion of CC....

 

[Woodsman]

I'm not being clear and I apologize. Right now, the new high resolution update is taking the 2D CC graphics and converting it to high resolution 3D (or doing high resolution 3D versions of it).

GrimmOmen has talked about how it can be time consuming when they get high resolution graphics finished , to convert those graphics back down to to 2D for the current clients, because they have to slice it up and mess with perspectives or whatever. If they were just handling 3D from start to finish, they could add more content to the game, but they have their hands tied with 2D.

This is some of what he's said over the past few months. The comment about having to take 3D models and slice them up for 2D is in an older thread.

Absolutely, we’ve done some really fantastic work with the high res stuff, there are still some engineering and artistic issues we need to sort out, but this is our and Jeff’s point of view, what’s the point of putting I all this work and money if it’s not bang- on? And let me tell you, converting 2D to 3D (and then converting that 3D BACK to 2D) ain’t no walk in the park.

Well, the new high res tiles are going to have the same feel (and in some cases be indistinguishable) as the classic client, as opposed to a completely re-invisioned look like we did with UOKR. This is so UO in the EC client doesn’t loose the “UO look” that classic client players have come to know so well. So converting the 2D graphics into 3D has a LOT of wins associated with it. And really goes a long way to bringing UO into a more current pipeline development scheme, which has been what I’ve been working on for UO since I started on this team 8 years ago. So visually, it’s going to look like UO, just higher resolution.

I have a lot- and I do mean A LOT of pokers in the fire. These pokers cover environment, FX, AND animation stuff. Actually, I’ve started the process on something for animations, but you guys won’t really notice the difference except for a lot of animation bugs getting fixed. This is a long process, but I’ve been working on it in the off hours. So a lot o stuff is getting worked on, you will most likely see several small updates, then hopefully a whopping one… followed by another whopping one. And I’m not even talking about the things going down in the regular course of the UO publishes and stories. So I’m very(e10) busy… LOL

Yea, we’ve made a lot of headway on the high res artwork, but we’ve got a ways to go. Converting pure 2D artwork into 3D is very tricky, and we still have some technical issues to resolve. Not to mention a ton of artistic ones.

Back end coding for high res animation processing for creatures is in effect!

Render count today: 46 assets, over 1600 animations, just under 80,000 rendered frames of animation. That's just a portion of the weapons!

Rendering animations... in the last 24 hours I've rendered nearly 116 Assets. That's 5,627 animations and 275,513 rendered frames!

Animation Process: Animation tweaking = 15 minutes, Setting up batch render = 2 minutes, Rendering = 30 minutes.

Getting all the equipment animations is taking FOREVER!

Ok, Multi-Tile Animated Tool? The code already accounts for em! How awesome am I??? Don't answer that!

That's it! Animated Tile Tool is in the bag! Now I gotta think about how to do a multi-tile animated tile tool..

Ugh, rewriting our animated tile pipeline! What a lot of work - but fun!

 

[Pinco]

I'm not being clear and I apologize. Right now, the new high resolution update is taking the 2D CC graphics and converting it to high resolution 3D (or doing high resolution 3D versions of it).

GrimmOmen has talked about how it can be time consuming when they get high resolution graphics finished , to convert those graphics back down to to 2D for the current clients, because they have to slice it up and mess with perspectives or whatever. If they were just handling 3D from start to finish, they could add more content to the game, but they have their hands tied with 2D.

This is some of what he's said over the past few months. The comment about having to take 3D models and slice them up for 2D is in an older thread.

well grimm have a lot of good ideas on how to improve the client and I'm sure he could make something relly good, but looks like a bird in cage...
If EA open the cage for just 1 year, I'm sure we will return back to future

Actually I'm imaging him working with the scraps trying to make some good patchwork that could work

 

[Woodsman]

I'm imagining him doing this as some kind of secret project.

 

[Kons]

lol, i'm gonna post this to him.

 

[Woodsman]

I'm just imagining TheGrimmOmen as the Robert DeNiro character from Brazil, only instead of being a renegade air conditioning specialist, he's a renegade artist.

 

[Kons]

So, dued to the fact JP will stop working on UO i think EC is near to the end
Enjoy my UOReader while it still works on something..!
I'll check the forum from time to time, goodbye all

 

[Woodsman]

When my gametime runs out, I'm done as well. I'm not going to watch UO slowly die. This game hasn't had a true vision for over a year now, and even when it was hinted out, it was all hush hush. The hell with that, I'm not going to be strung along any further.

 

[Pinco]

When my gametime runs out, I'm done as well. I'm not going to watch UO slowly die. This game hasn't had a true vision for over a year now, and even when it was hinted out, it was all hush hush. The hell with that, I'm not going to be strung along any further.

I'm going to wait until september to see the "great change" of the game so when I see just few items I can quit without remorse :/

 

[Woodsman]

I'm going to wait until september to see the "great change" of the game so when I see just few items I can quit without remorse :/

Unfortunately my gametime runs until after the anniversary.