What's the status of updates to the Enhanced Client?

[Old Man of UO]

It seems development of the EC has pretty much stopped. We aren't seeing improvements any more, and bugs that have been around since beta are being ignored. Several of the Modders had stopped updating their Mods, although Pinco has a very nice mod on the way.

There are many of us with modern computers who use the Enhanced Client exclusively. I will not even load the CC because it is too small to even see individual items on my monitor. The EC has pretty much everything that UOAssist tried to do, and does it better. I personally don't care about the graphics differences at all, just the functionality.

If we don't have the EC, and get continued development, of if this client gets abandoned, there there really isn't a future for me and many others in UO.

*waits for the inevitable CC-Only Trolls and Trolls in general*

 

[Babble]

What do you expect as answer except a 'Soon'?

Will there be improvements? Yes.
Will they be soon? Maybe?
Will there be a big push to get he client out of Beta? I really doubt it.

 

[Rimeny]

The last update was from the Devs in August if I can recall correctly.

And I quote:

"Development on the EC has certainly not stopped. We've been working on some UO awesomeness as of late. Maybe you heard?

Seriously though, we have put a lot of time into this Sea Booster, but are looking forward to being able to start putting some time back into the EC.

Thanks for asking.
Grimmy"

Trouble is, no one tested trying to fight Corgul whilst preparing the Sea Booster, this is unplayable on the EC, as are certain other areas of the game.

Any news is better then none

 

[Old Man of UO]

...
Trouble is, no one tested trying to fight Corgul whilst preparing the Sea Booster, this is unplayable on the EC, as are certain other areas of the game.

Any news is better then none

Good post, hardy... that was my point. The HS introduced many many crash-to-desktop bugs, and no word on fixes for those CRITICAL bugs. They have time to make these PvP tweaks, but no time to work on a two-year old Beta client?

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Trouble is, no one tested trying to fight Corgul whilst preparing the Sea Booster, this is unplayable on the EC, as are certain other areas of the game.

Trouble is, no one tested trying to fight the Slasher of Veils or the Stygian Dragon whilst preparing the Stygian Abyss expansion, this is unplayable on the EC, as are certain other areas of the game.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Primeval Lich is unplayable in the EC for the same reasons as Slasher/Corgul.

 

[Pinco]

it's not unplayable, just requires a good computer to play it... I can enjoy stygian, slasher, primeval and all their special effects without a bit of lag... but I run the game in a i7 processor 5ghz with 6gb ram and 1gb of video card

 

[deadite]

Yes, more updates to the EC, please! Some kind of progress update would be great. Don't let it just sit there, devs! But... finish fixing HS bugs first.

 

[Merion]

The last update was from the Devs in August if I can recall correctly.

And I quote:

"Development on the EC has certainly not stopped. We've been working on some UO awesomeness as of late. Maybe you heard?

Seriously though, we have put a lot of time into this Sea Booster, but are looking forward to being able to start putting some time back into the EC.

Thanks for asking.
Grimmy"

Funny thing is, this was posted shortly after they said that the boosters will have no impact on the regular development - what a joke!

But back on topic: please give us anything to hang on to, devs! We really like the EC!

 

[Tina Small]

Trouble is, no one tested trying to fight the Slasher of Veils or the Stygian Dragon whilst preparing the Stygian Abyss expansion, this is unplayable on the EC, as are certain other areas of the game.

Hawkeye, I'm not sure it's entirely accurate to say that no one tested trying to fight the Slasher or the Stygian Dragon while using the EC during the closed and open beta periods. I'm pretty sure that Ailish, Lord(GOD) and/or Beastmaster had a go at both of them during the closed beta. Don't know if any of them used the EC though.

In any event, whether or not anyone did try using the EC while fighting either monster and reported problems, the response would have been the same as it was a month later in September when you and others complained, i.e., "the EC is still in the beta stage."

If you get any reply now from someone on the development team, I have no doubt that it will still be the same old, "EC is still in beta." For all we know, Cal or whoever else is running the show these days is still saying this as an excuse to keep some of the engineers/programmers on the staff.

 

[Mapper]

it's not unplayable, just requires a good computer to play it... I can enjoy stygian, slasher, primeval and all their special effects without a bit of lag... but I run the game in a i7 processor 5ghz with 6gb ram and 1gb of video card

I can kill it once, But we did a second one right after and my EC crashed. I need to restart it now after every giant explosion to clear the memory.

 

[Pinco]

I notice some computer filling the memory when there are a lot of effects. A friend of mine has the same problem: last time we did the shimmering he has to restart the game because it's memory was full, but I never had such problem... so can be something connected with certain hardware which block the game garbage collector :/

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Point is, this issue has been known to the developers since 18 months now or longer. Still not fixed. I don't know what to say...

 

[Ls Jax Ls]

It seems development of the EC has pretty much stopped. We aren't seeing improvements any more, and bugs that have been around since beta are being ignored. Several of the Modders had stopped updating their Mods, although Pinco has a very nice mod on the way.

There are many of us with modern computers who use the Enhanced Client exclusively. I will not even load the CC because it is too small to even see individual items on my monitor. The EC has pretty much everything that UOAssist tried to do, and does it better. I personally don't care about the graphics differences at all, just the functionality.

If we don't have the EC, and get continued development, of if this client gets abandoned, there there really isn't a future for me and many others in UO.

*waits for the inevitable CC-Only Trolls and Trolls in general*

This is what happens when you try to fix something that isn't broken.

 

[longshanks]

i had issues with targeting in pvp. i had to clear my cursor if i wanted to put down a field or summons after i had targeted someone with a spell.

i liked a lot of the functionality of the ec but that was a hard one to get over.

people in the other forum said it was a bug and never fixed.

so back to the cc and uoa i went.

 

[Lord Chaos]

Return UO to what it was, instead of this travesty of a "get advantages for free" cheat client.

 

[Storm]

rofl I was waiting for that!

 

[lucitus]

Hehe or another big iusse i got is, what is with a mount up macro?

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

What Enhanced Client (or any non-antique client for that matter) thread would be complete without the requisite posts from the anti-3d/KR/EC trolls?

That aside...

We need an update on what's going on with the EC. Are the outstanding issues being addressed or is it simply to remain in unsupported limbo as an unfinished, unfulfilled upgrade?

And no, minipatches to address issues created with the High Seas release is NOT an acceptable answer when there is a huge list of existing issues that have been present since the beta of KR (much less the EC).

 

[Pinco]

I remember when KR became a public beta and we have 1 patch a week... then 1 patch a month then 1 patch a year. Next step was EC and they stop working on it...
It's a money problem or simply a lack of willpower to finish what they started?

 

[lucitus]

...

What Enhanced Client (or any non-antique client for that matter) thread would be complete without the requisite posts from the anti-3d/KR/EC trolls?

That aside...

We need an update on what's going on with the EC. Are the outstanding issues being addressed or is it simply to remain in unsupported limbo as an unfinished, unfulfilled upgrade?

And no, minipatches to address issues created with the High Seas release is NOT an acceptable answer when there is a huge list of existing issues that have been present since the beta of KR (much less the EC).

The beta of KR was much more fun than the EC now for me

Problems began with the layoffs of december 2007!

 

[Lord Chaos]

What Enhanced Client (or any non-antique client for that matter) thread would be complete without the requisite posts from the anti-3d/KR/EC trolls?

Just because a relationsship is old doesn't mean you have to send your wife in for a boob job, get botox treatment, facelifts, suction and 50 other treatment to still love her.

UO is the CC. The EC is just one huge bunch of unfair advantages, completely the same as slapping a cheat program on the CC. If it was only an optional graphics upgrade, then fine.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

The beta of KR was much more fun than the EC now

Agreed there.

At least then there was a sense of progress.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

The EC is just one huge bunch of unfair advantages

Oh, please, give this tired, debunked, garbage line of jealous reasoning a rest.

And UO isn't a "wife", it's a computer program... or do you still run Windows 95 on a Pentium 200Mhz with 256 Meg of 133mhz SDRAM? (And if you DO, then you're a part of the PROBLEM).

I'm pretty sure I've read a more inane line of reasoning, but for the life of me, I can;t think of either where or when.

 

[[JD]]

Lol that last comment made me laugh. First the ******** kids on the back of the bus make fun of me for using the EC, asking if it has "pretty graphics".

Now they whine like little babies with made up stories of unfair advantages. If you want to use the EC, get rid of your 486-DX2/66 and use a modern computer for chrissakes.

I don't have a super fast PC. Just running a Core 2 Duo, 1TB drive, 4gb ram. Cost be like $400 to build a year or two ago. Had some video lag in the EC due to using the onboard nvidia graphics card, 7000 series *cringe*. Spent $66 on a nice new 3d 1GB card from Newegg and all my performance issues are gone. I even outrun people on my ****ty 768kb DSL.

But back to the EC. I support fixing the bugs and continued development.

Let's hear from ignorant posters. The drama will keep the post bumped.

 

[Tina Small]

Dermott, do you think that the engineers/programmers who work on UO's Enhanced Client are sometimes pulled away to work on the DAoC and/or Warhammer Online clients?

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

While it's feasible, it's not something to which I have information so I don't really want to make a guess one way or the other.

 

[Rimeny]

I thought I would Bump this thread in the hopeful way it may get noticed by the powers that be.

 

[deadite]

Dermott, do you think that the engineers/programmers who work on UO's Enhanced Client are sometimes pulled away to work on the DAoC and/or Warhammer Online clients?

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the engineers are, in fact, shared... and a lot of them are working on the new Star Wars game now. I wish I could remember where I read that. I guess it's possible that I just dreamed it...

 

[Babble]

Sounds reasonable as they should start polishing up swtor for release next year.

The EC will wait anyway and most of the players too.
And if not they hope that the players will play swtor then.

 

[lucitus]

Sounds reasonable as they should start polishing up swtor for release next year.

The EC will wait anyway and most of the players too.
And if not they hope that the players will play swtor then.

You are right i will wait if i know next year is release but i would not if there is nothing.

 

[wrekognize]

I will not even load the CC because it is too small to even see individual items on my monitor.

You have your display settings on your computer set wrong. I forget what I play with (because i'm at work I can't verify), but the CC looks much better than the enhanced client once you find the right display settings.

 

[Lord Chaos]

...

The EC is just one huge bunch of unfair advantages

Oh, please, give this tired, debunked, garbage line of jealous reasoning a rest.

Its not debunked at all. It gives a whole slew of unfair advantages, which has been shown many times.

And UO isn't a "wife", it's a computer program... or do you still run Windows 95 on a Pentium 200Mhz with 256 Meg of 133mhz SDRAM? (And if you DO, then you're a part of the PROBLEM).

I run it on a far bigger machine than you do. YOU are part of the problem, trying to change what is UO into something intolerably stupid.

 

[Pinco]

The EC is just one huge bunch of unfair advantages

Correction: EC give a lot of FEATURES to everyone (like the zoom and something better tha uoa).

Saying which the features of EC are unfair advantages is like to use windows 3.1 because windows 7 is a cheat...
This is named: PROGRESS.
If you like the stone age... well shoot your head, maybe you will re-born in the stone age that you like

 

[Lord Chaos]

Lol that last comment made me laugh. First the ******** kids on the back of the bus make fun of me for using the EC, asking if it has "pretty graphics".

I make fun of you because you are part of the problem in trying to make UO into something entirely different.

You would complain too if UO was made into WoW looks all of a sudden completely or other similar things.

Now they whine like little babies with made up stories of unfair advantages.

There's nothing made up at all.

If you want to use the EC, get rid of your 486-DX2/66 and use a modern computer for chrissakes.

You can sod right off with your pitiful machine then. I have a watercooled 980X running at 4.6 Ghz, 12 Gb 2000 Mhz RAM, 2x480 GTX Watercooled EVGA (soon to be 580GTX) in its own loop, 250GTS Passive cooled PhysX card, Crucial C300 SATA-3 SSD (350 Mb/ps read), RAID 0 Velociraptors (280 Mb/ps read), 3xSamsung 24 inch monitors at 1920x1200 resolution. My internet connection is a 100/200 Mbit fiber optics connection.

I will not use that abomination client that is the EC.

 

[Lord Chaos]

Correction: EC give a lot of FEATURES to everyone (like the zoom and something better tha uoa).

Saying which the features of EC are unfair advantages is like to use windows 3.1 because windows 7 is a cheat...
This is named: PROGRESS.
If you like the stone age... well shoot your head, maybe you will re-born in the stone age that you like

Your example is flawed and no other company really does the stupid thing and completely remake a whole new client. The client is the game for much of the intent and purpose.

If you want progress, then UO should ditch its skill based system, go 3D and modern style controls...heck, UO should be like WoW with houses.

 

[Pinco]

I will not use that abomination client that is the EC.

Another correction: is not ABOMINATION but DIFFERENT.
Before say that we have all to try it without prejudices, but everyone start it by thinking: "UO is CC, this will be crap for sure" or "I read about a lot of bug, I'll never give it a try".
I liked 2d, but after a real try of EC I can't go back (and I really hated KR for its bug and graphics...)

UO must not been compared to WOW. UO is not 3D and modern style controlled, and personally I hate level systems

And if EC is not good, is only because the team who first made KR got the "brilliant" idea to copy the interface from WOW (and the web page too). If they upgrade the old third dawn client instead, now we have an uber client

 

[Lord Chaos]

UO must not been compared to WOW. UO is not 3D and modern style controlled, and personally I hate level systems

Just like the EC is not UO.

Anyway, I would have been fine with it, had the EC only been about graphics, not functionality.

I would have preferred if the team had made a whole new client which simply allowed for graphical options switch (betwen CC and EC graphics), while have completely same UI and possibilies.

 

[Pinco]

however... the EC can be recovered by fixing some graphical issue and creatures and obvioulsy the main bugs remaining

if only they start to works like the early KR beta, in 1 months of hard work they could make it perfect... but the big mistake is the continuous change of focus in always new thing by abandoning the old ones...
I'd like the dev will take from january to july by focusing ONLY on fix and completion of half things. This will give to the entire game some fresh air and hope

 

[Babble]

Jan 2011 to july 2015 to fix the half finished things?

 

[MalagAste]

I always thought they should have put way more effort into fixing the old 3d client... making it faster improving it to be more like the EC if they had put more serious effort in the third Dawn client they would have had a great client by now

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Jan 2011 to july 2015 to fix the half finished things?

lmfao. That's good.

 

[Pinco]

Jan 2011 to july 2015 to fix the half finished things?

maybe in USA the people works 1 hour a day... but if they have in the team some people who really works and belive in his work, in 1 month they can move the mountains

Unluckly I know how the people usually work in office
I remember when I start my first job and the boss send me to install winzip to 200 computer. He said me: "take your time, you have 1 month".
I completed the work in 1 and a half day and everybody starts to look at me like I'm superman :|
But I'm really superman? nope, I just did my work. But the people there like to spend lot of time at the coffee machine and babbling around the office, so when they saw someone working they are shoked

However, I hope the dev team is not like this place or we are ruined

 

[Korik Bloodguard]

I'd like to see some work done on the classic client. There are a handful of nice features in the EC which really ought to be in the CC such as the ability to resize the playscreen This sort of change saves people the desire to cheat to get the same kind of options.

Doesn't matter to me if anyone uses the EC, just work on the CC too

 

[Chardonnay]

Why should we use or even try to play EC if their not gonna do it the right way? UO is CC period...i play UO on a Atari 2600 and it plays just fine...now stop trying to waste the Devs time fixing garbage that only 30% of UO uses and fix more bugs that EVERYONE deals with...

 

[Pinco]

when I speak about fixing, I talk about server bug, not only EC bugs...
Could you imagine that we still have the bushido defensive stances icon not working propely? sometimes they still red even after the effect is done. And these are samurai empire things...
For sure there are other things broken since reinassence where they said: "We are looking into", but nothing happen after 13 years

What I really said is: Stop making new expansion, systems, etc... and consolidate what we already have. We cannot build new thing on bugged/incomplete ones.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I always thought they should have put way more effort into fixing the old 3d client... making it faster improving it to be more like the EC if they had put more serious effort in the third Dawn client they would have had a great client by now

This is like asking Microsoft to put more effort into improving Windows 95.

 

[Merion]

What about we just ignore the CC trolls? This is leading nowhere and by derailing the thread they juast distract from the issue at hand - namely the lack of info and updates of the EC.

 

[Lord Chaos]

This is like asking Microsoft to put more effort into improving Windows 95.

Completely stupid examples still. Operating systems are entirely new systems. Comparing them would be like the EC instead being UO2.

They should simply have left UO alone and developed it as it was and made UO2 with a modern client, that would have been a much better idea.

Right now all the EC does is mess up my game.

 

[lucitus]

The question is what they are planning for the future, will they drop the EC eventually? Maybe the effort is too big to get it good enough for release?

But in general we are the loosers at the moment, 2d is no solution, this fact is also known by our 2d lovers and the EC is also no solution because it is not "build up for the next ten years".

Also we have to look for what we are spending money, for a booster which can be crated in several weeks or for a new "game" which needs more effort but is still UO. If a big part of the playerbase is spending money for content it is clear that the development of that has a higher priority than the client development.

It is your choose, on the one hand you are playing a nostalgic game with limits, but also with memories, feelings and an old playerbase, on the other hand you can play a modern good looking game, which has no memories, another look, another style, but also new possibilities for animations, effects or new systems in the univerese.