The difference between the screenshots of EC and CC

[Wenchkin]

I just wish the graphics team would decide on a look and go through the entire game applying it consistently. I like a lot of the EC art wise, I see some art and it was clearly done with care and love. Then I find the less finished art and it just sours things. The grass just looks pretty nasty if I'm honest. Don't get me started on hiryu and other pets. I love the EC UI: with or without mods it works really well. I don't have any hassle with the interface really, graphically it looks ok on my system. But I still use the CC more, because it still feels like the EC is in beta with some graphics. Too many jarring graphics to use it exclusively.

Wenchy

 

[Smoot]

If Classic Client was no longer available, i would quit Mythic UO. Part of the reason i play it is BECAUSE of the old style graphics. Every other game i play (even if its a new 2d app game) is modern style.

I think all of you must have thrown out your old ataris and nintendos

The graphics in the CC are remarkable. They're stylized, well proportioned, and animated beautifully. To me, they're kind of like medieval paintings come to life.

But UO is an evolving MMO. It doesn't exist in a vacuum like games for those consoles you mentioned. It's will and it must grow and get better and keep up with an increasingly sophisticated playerbase.

And, yes, I did get rid of my SNES. I loved those games at the time and have fond memories of my time playing them. But when I went back and played them, now, post HL2 and post Fallout, they actually are not truly comparable. There are games that surpass the older games in gameplay as well as graphics. That's what you want to encourage.

Agree with what you said for Mythic UO, for me tho thats when id play only the, well, non-mythinc run clients. But yeah i like most of the features of the EC (dont like the squared of backpacks but just about everything else) But i just cant play it because of the graphics. Kingdom Reborn looked great, but it was so slow and buggy for me i could never really play it.

To me the graphics just look a bit like the first "3D UO," Interface is a bit different, but the characters and monsters sill look disporportioned and some of down right ugly. When i tried out the EC, i just couldnt get over the fact that the dragons didnt even look like "dragons," in any sense of what I would think a medieval dragon would look like. The mounts still look horrible too. A character riding just about any ethy in EC looks very very uncomfortable.

And i just thought id mention, i kinda forget but saw it on Xplay that those old nintendo games are out again for modern consoles etc, still 2d but with enhanced graphics. 10 bucks or something like that and people are buying them

 

[MalagAste]

I personally found the KR art to look muted and dull.... almost fuzzy...

And I hated the way that floors had the tops of walls "bleeding" through them.

I hated the way the Asian lattice pieces went from looking like finely polished rich cherry or mahogany to some ancient dilapidated barn siding. No more polish... lacked the shine and luster of the 2d style.

I couldn't stand the way stacked chests looked all bent out of shape and swayback like an old nag.

And I couldn't stand the fact that it was impossible to tell where trees were as they blended in with the grass. Was a tremendous strain on my eyes.

KR had some good things but it also ruined quite a few things. Like Hiryu.... which are still ruined. and for me it ruined the Swamp dragon also still ruined while he is somewhat neatter in appearance I miss the six legs.

As far as some art goes the worst thing in game I can think of is for certain the gargish robe.... The Fancy one looks "ok" not real great but ok.... but the plain one..... totally fugly, worse than "hey I'm wearing a burlap bag".... It looks as though the artist just blobbed some color over the gargoyle... has no shape no definition... NOTHING. It's certainly plain alright... plain freaking fugly. I refuse to put one on my gargoyles ...... I throw them away.

 

[Woodsman]

...

What I know is this...

For whatever reason, all of the original (2d) artwork assets (pipeline) were lost around the time they moved from Austin to outside of Sacremento (if I recall correctly) and a new art pipeline had to be rebuilt (I believe Grimm did most of that work) which was done during KR/EC.

I believe you are right - I remember Grimm posting about it, and saying that it was more efficient than what they had in the past, which made a lot of sense given what UO was originally derived from.

I want to say the originals were lost around 2004-2005 or were inaccessible (probably on a server that didn't make the move or had problems or whatever). That was around the time they completely shuttered Origin and were moving a lot of people around - it wouldn't surprise me if what they were running in Austin was different than what they were running in California and they just didn't bother bringing it online or making it available when they got to California - EA may have told them to start using such and such tools or whatever, since if I remember right, some of the old tools were very customized or specially built and probably incompatible with whatever EA was using in California. We tend to forget what the original UO was built upon. It was really incredible that it was able to scale up from what they were doing.

I remember Grimm saying the new pipeline would be better/more efficient. My impression at the time, and I had all but stopped doing anything more than keeping my accounts, was that they were doing a full-blown conversion of all of the artwork, with the result being KR. It was a shock to come back and find out that we had actually regressed.

I have hope though. Somebody put some really nice work into Virtuebane. I wish I could see a screenshot of him in the CC to see if it looks as good and as sharp.

I can understand why people are down on the EC or current artwork, but Virtuebane looked awesome and out-of-place.

 

[Woodsman]

I've had this bookmarked for a while, it is a former UO developer discussing some of what became KR, and now things are making sense - what he discusses below was also what Grimm mentioned - being able to test and get content into the game faster from an artwork perspective. It also discusses a little bit of how KR came to be:

The Joshua Tree: A Decade of Ultima Online, Part 2

# Unannounced game revamp. This isn't a 'great memory' so I don't know why I'm mentioning it. Yes, we were working on UO2 for the third time. We had a 3D client and were doing awesome things with breaking the skills into specialization and quest-based learning. The server technology was mostly staying the same, but we had finer-granularity movement actually working that allowed you to move within a tile. The scope of the project grew huge and we didn't have time to finish it nor wherewithal to cut part of it. Everything was scrapped and the idea eventually became Kingdom Reborn.

# Mondain's Legacy expansion. Mostly support work here. I supported the rest of the engineering team and picked up a lot of the "smaller" tasks like the world collections (museum, zoo, etc) and parrots. I also worked on an asset replacement system that was supposed to help our artists be able to test out new content in the game engine faster. I also helped MrTact and EvilMantis design the guts of the Quest system. I left EA before this expansion went live.

And this was from a follow-up comment that was about the UO2.3 project, but had implications on UO:

The UO2.3 started at Origin and was originally using a custom engine, then we evaluated several different EA engines and eventually went with the Sims 2 Engine (which is actually Maxis' engine, called the Gonzo-Rizzo Framework [yeah, no idea]). It was big and bloated and I hated working on it.

We were toying around with being able to play several of your characters at the same time (on one account) and actually had a concept video made up for it. In the end we were going to call it "Kingdoms" (probably the 'Kingdom' in the Kingdom Reborn name) and it was going to have an RTS element where your house was actually a much larger estate and you had workers, fighters, etc.

In the end, Design went overboard, Production didn't hold the reigns very tightly, we had no budget to redo all of the Art as 3D models and Code had two different methodologies between the Origin folks and the EA folks that joined us. Friction abounded.

The cancellation of it certainly was a factor, but there were many things to consider: The Origin team didn't see eye-to-eye with our then -producer and people's housing subsidies from the TX->CA move started running out. NoCal is expensive

Personally, I think EA figured that we'd all leave when our 1- or 2- year contracts ran out. They were pretty much right. In fact, some theories say that they intended to drive us away.

Anyways, it is as it is.

And this gives you a timeframe, since it was going on at the time of Samurai Empire:

Yeah, UO 2.3 originally started back in Austin, and actually I think the very first ever mention of it was a hint in Introducing STLdude back in July '03. After the move to EA, it started to get much more serious and we picked up team members from the UX:O team that needed stuff to do.The bulk of the team (which included new team members from EA) were working on UO2.3 while the rest of us did UO:SE.

You don't really find any mentions of the project by the dev team on the web, but I know that there were several hints dropped and coy answers given whenever people talked face-to-face.

Fortunately, nothing was ever officially announced. In the game biz, projects like this typically (and often) start up and die without anyone on the outside ever knowing. It's harder to maintain the illusion on a live game especially with a vocal team.

I'm sad that UO2.3 didn't come to fruition, but I'm not convinced that EA could've done it right.

This is going slightly off-topic, but from the same post is a discussion of arena/battlefield-style combat:

# Samurai Empire expansion. I did most of the coding for getting in the new wearables. I also did the a lot of the scripting side of the new Bushido and Ninjitsu skills. I did a proof-of-concept for the roof tile system which was later turned over to an intern. I also did a proof-of-concept for a Unreal Tournament-style PvP battlefield system that was rejected (and continues to be a bit of sore spot with the point of view of management).

Just so people aren't confused, the above blog post was from 'Speedman' who a lot of us hopefully remember.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

If Classic Client was no longer available, i would quit Mythic UO. Part of the reason i play it is BECAUSE of the old style graphics. Every other game i play (even if its a new 2d app game) is modern style.

This is what is holding us up. Somehow EA has received this message from one or two people and percieved it to be a message from the majority. If they wanted to replace this guy and his $13 a month with 50 new players and their $650 a month, they would give us a game that was graphically modern, but leave the gameplay identical.

The game is already as deep and involved as it needs to be, so why are we losing players? Well, some people can't get over the whole AOS/classic shard/Trammel thing and quit. Ok, fine. Some people just changed their habits IRL or died or something and fell out of UO. Ok. Where are the new players? I'll tell you where they are. They stopped here first because they must have heard good things about the game that has been alive and kicking for so many years, they got the classic or enhanced client, took a look at the SNES graphics, and said "Screw this, I'm gonna go play WOW."

Anyone that wasn't around to have a SNES (and I was, for the record) would never play that crap today, no matter how cool the games were. If they want to keep this game making money and sticking around for another 15 years, they will stop catering to the long term players for a little while, and replace the CC and EC at one fel swoop with a modern engine, and let the chips fall where they may. They wouldn't leave the classic and enhanced clients lingering in the background as a crutch for those who wish that time would stand still, just scrap them.

As for the EC.... I've grown accustomed to it. Much of what disgusts me now about it is things like the Hiryu... They ruined it..... the Swamp dragon (Also ruined)..... The swamp dragon used to look as though it was loosely based off of Stanley Steamer the Gap Dragon in Piers Anthony's Xanth Novels.... and that made the little guy very dear to me. No it's just weird and funny looking. I miss the 6 legs. I HATE The fact that my dragons are ALL Red... No more brown dragons.... not that I liked the brown ones but you can no longer tell what color things are in the EC. And the colors of the Hiryu's are LOST in the EC..... they look like total crap. I liken it to a plucked chicken... Someone needs to return the beauty to this animal.

I think the swamp dragon looks much better in the EC, as opposed to looking like you are riding a giant pickle with a pointed end in the CC. Not to mention there is no evolutionary reason for a reptile to have 6 legs. The Hiryu is not meant to be a bird. It's supposed to be a dragon. The name means "flying dragon" in Japanese, it's slayers are reptile and dragon... It's a dragon, so why should it look like a bird?

It looks like a T-rex in the EC, if you look at it closely. Big powerful back legs that it stands and walks on? Check. Short stubby useless front legs? Check. Long powerful tail? Check. Gaint head and mouth to bite things in half with? Check. Now granted, the T-rex didnt have funny little wings, or what looks like an oriental pointy mustache and beard, but it looks truer to my vision of a dragon than a colorful bird.

I do hate that the dragons are the same color, though. Sometimes I go to Destard to help tamer friends tame a particularly nice greater with good stats they found, I get there, and ask them which of the 3 greater dragons that are currently eating them for lunch they wanted to keep, and they tell me something that doesn't help me at all, like "Kill the two brown ones!"

 

[Kiminality]

The art should have been consistent at least.
Logic and rationality can bugger right off when two people are looking at the same creature, and seeing two widely different things.
The EC Hiryu should be feathered, and the swamp dragon should have 6 legs (and stupid little wings), for no other reason than that's how they've been established.

 

[MalagAste]

The art should have been consistent at least.
Logic and rationality can bugger right off when two people are looking at the same creature, and seeing two widely different things.
The EC Hiryu should be feathered, and the swamp dragon should have 6 legs (and stupid little wings), for no other reason than that's how they've been established.

Exactly ...... The hiryu looks HORRIBLE in the EC. Like a naked chicken... I know it's supposed to be some form of Dragon.... but far as I know the thing has feathers..... I see ZERO feathers in the EC and the color that was very nice and vibrant on the CC hiryu looks like CRAP on the EC because it's pretty much just one single hue.. I hate that.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

The art should have been consistent at least.
Logic and rationality can bugger right off when two people are looking at the same creature, and seeing two widely different things.
The EC Hiryu should be feathered, and the swamp dragon should have 6 legs (and stupid little wings), for no other reason than that's how they've been established.

Meh... It's a different artist's opinion of what a dragon should look like. I think both are fine in EC, the swampie looks kinda dumb in CC, and the Hiryu is pretty, but unrealistic in CC. But, regardless of the art, if it has "A hiryu" floating above it's head, it's a hiryu, and if you find yourself in the Tokuno spawn, you try to kill as many as you can. If it's a pet, then it's invariably one of the "designer pets" like the people in real life with their pure-bred whoopty do micro poodles with fancy haircuts and painted nails and funny hats... I got this particular hiryu because it's hot pink! I don't see anyone complaining about the elementals all looking different, as opposed to a vaguely whirlwind shape that just happened to come in several different colors.

But really, I hope they flush all these designs away if and when they really decide to save the game by revamping it graphically. They will do best to completely redraw everything in the game from scratch, since they will invariably be working with higher resolution. Then they could hire a small group consisting of half long-time open-minded players and half new players to do their beta testing for them, while not breathing a word to the rest of us. Then, when it's debugged and actually ready for release, unlike most of their updates and add-ons, they close all the shards for a day, and throw the CC and EC into the garbage, and irreversibly replace it with the new engine and client. Then they could actually release a downloadable quickstart manual so everyone knows exactly what to do to get it to run on their copmputer, and set up their UI to something that works for them. I think most players would give it a shot, and those who didn't would soon be replaced tenfold.

 

[Ender]

Honestly one of the biggest problems I have with the EC client is the size of some mobiles. Dragons mainly, seem WAY too small, which I hate to say since they're such a nuisance in the classic client, but the size is just wrong in EC.

 

[Nimuaq]

I think most posters agree that EC graphics should be better and should reflect more of the CC's original graphics' feel.

I have found this wonderful website after one of the posts of Amathist, maybe most of you already knew about it:

(most images are gif animations, wait for the animation to update to see the new version)

Andrea's Ultima Online page > General > UO Art > Hi-Res Challenge
Andrea's Ultima Online page > General > UO Art > Hi-Res Challenge
Andrea's Ultima Online page > General > UO Art > Hi-Res Challenge

and especially this, stroked version of the KR graphics:

Andrea's Ultima Online page > General > UO Art > UOKR Feedback

and better paperdolls:

Andrea's Ultima Online page > General > UO Art > UOKR Feedback

My question this time is: would you play using EC with the high resolution images of the CC client, as in the images on the first links or using a client that has freshly designed graphics which reflect CC's sharp strokes, or are you happy with the graphics of CC even after seeing the high defination images on these links, or the graphics of EC even after seeing the KR Feedback links?

I personally get very excited every time I see the high definition unicorn on the first link. I'd love to play in EC with those graphics.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Personally, I want the following:

Terrain Bring back the KR "wilder" terrain (at least the grasslands) maybe add in a toggle for the type of terrain desired (Low Resolution = 2d terrain, High resolution = KR terrain)

Character/Creature Models Keep the current EC models, but have a High and Low Resolution setting for them. Tweak models based on feedback for individual models if possible (i.e. Gaman, pigs, and hiryu to start).

Item Artwork High resolution versions of the 2d artwork.

House Tile Artwork Add in the KR versions of the house tiles as additional tilesets to go with the Legacy tilesets.

Plants KR, please dear GOD bring back the KR plant artwork (plus the partial hue ability they had with them)

 

[Smoot]

This is what is holding us up. Somehow EA has received this message from one or two people and percieved it to be a message from the majority. If they wanted to replace this guy and his $13 a month with 50 new players and their $650 a month, they would give us a game that was graphically modern, but leave the gameplay identical.

The game is already as deep and involved as it needs to be, so why are we losing players? Well, some people can't get over the whole AOS/classic shard/Trammel thing and quit. Ok, fine. Some people just changed their habits IRL or died or something and fell out of UO. Ok. Where are the new players? I'll tell you where they are. They stopped here first because they must have heard good things about the game that has been alive and kicking for so many years, they got the classic or enhanced client, took a look at the SNES graphics, and said "Screw this, I'm gonna go play WOW."

I totally agree. If an "Ultima Online 2" came out with modern 3d and first or 3rd person view i would preorder it. Id still keep the CC UO tho.

I just rather have the CC then some crappy mutant 2.5d client that always seems to be worked on. Just quit work on anything new with the EC, and make a new, advertised, competitive modernized UO. Screw it if they delete the old UO theres always private servers.

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

I totally agree. If an "Ultima Online 2" came out with modern 3d and first or 3rd person view i would preorder it. Id still keep the CC UO tho.

But the thing I was talking about is no overlap, no UO2, as it would have existed back in '99, as in seperate game/timeline, and I'm definitely not talking first person. I'm talking about keeping the same feel and perspective (hell, it was so successful, everyone else copied it) but totally worked over. Something that would graphically be recognizable and stay true to the heritage, but completely eclipsing even the polished screenshots that Nimuaq mentioned.

Imagine true 3D with realistic shadows that grew and shortened depending on the time of day, realistic transitions from day to night, realistic weather that affected gameplay, real intelligent NPC AI that we got a crude glimpse at in Ultima 7, where the NPCs were not chained to a certain spot. Depending on the time of day you could find them commuting, eating at the pub, sleeping, etc. When it got sunny they opened the shutters and when it got dark or stormy, they shut them. I'd like to see monster AI for some of the pack instinct creatures, and the ones with high intelligence, Pet AI, so they knew which enemies to deal with first, and would use different tactics to deal with different enemies, and actually learn new tactics and abilities based on experience.

Would that be enough to make you scrap CC? I'd think so.

I just rather have the CC then some crappy mutant 2.5d client that always seems to be worked on. Just quit work on anything new with the EC, and make a new, advertised, competitive modernized UO. Screw it if they delete the old UO theres always private servers.

The EC has some minor points of contention, seemingly based around graphics and textures, and other inconsequential things like the paperdolls and mob graphics. For me, I can look past that for the advantages and conveniences that I could list, but it has been done to death, and CC people would find reasons to downtalk them for no other reason than to cheerlead CC. And let's not forget that CC gets patched just as much as EC. I wouldn't be as likely to spend the time I do in UO if they scooped EC out from under me without replacing it with something better. And that something is not CC.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

the NPCs were not chained to a certain spot. Depending on the time of day you could find them commuting, eating at the pub, sleeping, etc. When it got sunny they opened the shutters and when it got dark or stormy, they shut them. I'd like to see monster AI for some of the pack instinct creatures, and the ones with high intelligence, Pet AI, so they knew which enemies to deal with first, and would use different tactics to deal with different enemies, and actually learn new tactics and abilities based on experience.

Would that be enough to make you scrap CC? I'd think so.

Not really a good example as all of this would be done via server side NPC scripts, not client side.

NPC behaviour is the same regardless of client.

Yes, it would be a VAST improvement to UO to have at least Ultima 7 level NPC scripting in towns, but that is in no way client dependant.

 

[Woodsman]

I'd rather they not start over on a new client - we've been through a few of those now. We have a 3D engine already with UO - we just need better artwork.

If all of the monsters looked as sharp/crisp and as vibrant as Virtuebane, it would be a much different story.

Speaking of which, I can't seem to find anybody that took screenshots of Virtuebane from within the CC client.

 

[Davin Darkblade]

Why Andrea hasn't been snatched up by the dev team is beyond me. EC has basically traded half of it's artwork to 2d (building textures for example). So why not just transfer the whole thing back and utilise some of this art work?

 

[MalagAste]

Why Andrea hasn't been snatched up by the dev team is beyond me. EC has basically traded half of it's artwork to 2d (building textures for example). So why not just transfer the whole thing back and utilise some of this art work?

We've discussed this a 1000000 times..... never going to happen the DEV's are afraid to tackle it.

 

[Crysta]

...

the NPCs were not chained to a certain spot. Depending on the time of day you could find them commuting, eating at the pub, sleeping, etc. When it got sunny they opened the shutters and when it got dark or stormy, they shut them. I'd like to see monster AI for some of the pack instinct creatures, and the ones with high intelligence, Pet AI, so they knew which enemies to deal with first, and would use different tactics to deal with different enemies, and actually learn new tactics and abilities based on experience.

Would that be enough to make you scrap CC? I'd think so.

Not really a good example as all of this would be done via server side NPC scripts, not client side.

NPC behaviour is the same regardless of client.

Yes, it would be a VAST improvement to UO to have at least Ultima 7 level NPC scripting in towns, but that is in no way client dependant.

Its also impossible with what they have available, if I remember what Drac told me right. Sherry was a test of such a system, and she ended up using too many resources to make such a thing viable.

Now, I can think of ways to actually make it client-side, but it would be complicated to do, and would have high chances of breaking lots of things...

 

[Roland of Atlantic]

Not really a good example as all of this would be done via server side NPC scripts, not client side.

NPC behaviour is the same regardless of client.

Yes, it would be a VAST improvement to UO to have at least Ultima 7 level NPC scripting in towns, but that is in no way client dependant.

My bad, I'm not really up on what is controlled by the client and what is controlled server side. But I'm sure you see the spirit of what I was trying to say. There are games which have taken what we have and built off it and achieved realistic results with rock solid textures that appear as if you are looking at a real miniature world that you could reach into the screen and touch.

Imagine lighting and shadow effects on players , objects, and terrain that indicate where the sun is in the sky, whether it is sunny, overcast, or raining, and realistic, smooth scaling transitions between those states. Imagine being able to tell the difference between an object floating in the air and an object sitting on the ground one or two tiles north. Being able to stack items to create a staircase to reach higher elevations, and being able to tell that you have reached a higher elevation when you get there.

This is all easily attainable, and well-used existing technology. Of course they would have graphics options to make it compatible with all but the oldest of computers, and options that could give current computer technology with high end graphics cards a workout.

But this is not something that can be transitioned to with the current state of the game. It would require completely replacing the entire "engine", so it's not something that they can release like a new client, and it's not something that would enable the continuation of the classic client, which I think is perfect because there could be no half-a$$ing it and creating a half decent alternative like EC and KR. No turning back, only looking ahead. The way it should be.

Of course, we would expect a finished product and not a year-long half-complete buggy beta phase upgrade like the EC itself, and the high seas expansion for that matter. So they would have to run a private, separate test server outside the game itself and solicit beta testers from among their current subscribers to iron out all the faults PRIOR to releasing it to the public, to ensure that people actually enjoy a finished, polished product when they make the switch.

I think they could do it in such a way that would enable us to retain what we have worked for in the game, and our real estate, but likely they would have to raze the houses to bare foundations, so they could have a ramp up period of a couple weeks to give people a chance to tear down their houses, pack and organize their belongings into increased capacity bank boxes or moving crates in preparation of switchover day. They could even collect a one time upgrade fee to help offset the expense of the process.