[UO.Com] Ask & Answer No. 10

[Kyronix]

UN-aesthetically pleasing was a dev opinion of the resulting graphic quality, and may have been influenced by the fact it wasn't like the EC graphics which the devs apparently consider good. Classic Client users may find the 'UN-aesthetically pleasing' results an acceptable alternative to the EC.

I doubt the CC is a 'house of cards' as you put it. It's just written in a programming language none of the devs have bothered to learn how to write well. I'm sure there are programmers in their 30's or 40's who are quite capable of writing code for the CC. It's likely in the same code UO itself is written in after all.

Given UO was released in 1997? I'd say it's pushing twenty years old. With the turnover in devs UO has, I'd say none are still on board. They've got somebody writing new code that works with the old code though, so whoever that is can write new code for the Classic Client part of the old code. Whoever originally wrote it likely didn't write a 'house of cards' since it wouldn't have been fun to upgrade as he needed to, or looked good on a future resume. I imagine Richard Garriott worked with professionals after all.

No I can't. I've played using the 'dark side', it's not a good UI, I've un-nstalled it from my gaming machine since it's not an acceptable alternative to the 'light side'.

The *evil grin* part of that quote is very appropriate given the quality of the EC. They're basically saying "tough tadpoles customer, we're saying this is what your going to have to eventually play UO with, you've got no choice because we're going to leave the CC behind as time goes by. Keep paying us your money and use the client your given. Join the Dark Side...<**evil grin**>

My reply to that is sorry Charlie. A fun game has good content and a good User Interface. Let the good User Interface fall to far behind the game so that we're left with only a bad User Interface to access good content with and the game is no longer fun. We're left with seeking a good content/good User Interface game elsewhere.

How many of those who have left in the last few years since wide screen LCD monitors have come along did so because the largest CC game window was to small on their screens, and they too found the EC unacceptable?

Without getting to a huge debate on whether the CC or the EC are more worthy (I think people feel just as passionately about both options) if you want to see an example of why we can't "just" extend the size of the client window in the Classic Client head on over to Castle Blackthorn in Trammel. If you go to the Western half of the Castle there are two lookout/guard towers. Head to the Northwestern tower and climb to the top. Once you are up there move around the Southeastern corner of the tower. What you will see in the ocean is a slew of brown tiles that represent filler terrain that is outside the draw radius of the Client window, in this case the result of your height. This was similar to what we saw when internally testing an increased client window size. To us, that's unacceptable and I think most players who still enjoy playing the classic client (myself included, I use both) would agree.

The *evil grin* part of the quote was made in jest and was more of a joke related to the fact that often times many things pay homage to the Star Wars reference that many of us are fond of. If you took it as offensive I deeply apologize.

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