Old School. Very. Back in "Tha Day"

[psz]

Old School. Very. Back in "Tha Day"

First official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
January 16th, 2000
«Xuri»: Soon now..
«Rain-»: The time has come...
«Revana»: hold on.. =)
«Xuri»: *whistles*
«Abaddon»: please have just a little patience, we are almost there folks
«QBot»: yes our apologies
«Abaddon»: Sorry we took so long guys, but we will be starting now

«Abaddon»: The aims of this forum is for users to ask questions of us, and suggest potential future things... very similar to the uohoc forum
«Abaddon»: Now, Xuri will be the question taker, so if anyone has any questions, private message him and he will pass it on to us
«Abaddon»: So, let the games begin.... Send those questions to Xuri =)
«Revana»: and me..

«Xuri»: <Leper> What is the status on the bug fixing for UOX3? And what was the most difficult bug to fix?
«Abaddon»: At the moment, we are all endeavouring to do our best when it comes to bug fixing. It is a top priority that we see right now
«Abaddon»: Fur fixed what was probably the most difficult one, the memory leak/crashes and the char/item loss
«Abaddon»: at least, it would be the most difficult one for me =)

«EviLDeD»: <Zarnon> Is there a time from for completion of this debugging phase?
«EviLDeD»: We would like to have the last phase of debugging over with in the net 2 weeks.
«EviLDeD»: We are trying to get a full fledge connection, and server willing to host a very large, and constantly running server to work out ALL the bugs possible, will be a public shard as well, and everyone will be able to sign up. for the power test.
«EviLDeD»: We cant give any promises as to exactly when but we are doing out best.

«Revana»: <Morticus> Will there be any type of Quest generators?
«Abaddon»: It is not in our short term time frame at all
«Abaddon»: We have noted it as a future potentiality, but we make no promises on time frame
«Abaddon»: It would be neat though

«Abaddon»: <Zarnon> Are there any planes to add the Select/Set course for boats with the world map?
«Abaddon»: It is not actually considered a bug right at the moment, it's just a feature that we haven't implemented as yet
«Abaddon»: Our goal is to make boats fully functional and bug free, as best as possible
«Abaddon»: It involve some networking/packet type stuff, I'm not sure if we actually have the details on it, but I'd probably place it as medium term solution

«EviLDeD»: <UnknownHost> after the freeze is over, what's next on the agenda?
«EviLDeD»: I would like to say great things, but haven't we all heard that one before. next on the agenda, we are going to broaden the scope of Races, as well as do our best at developing a more real life set of rules regarding Experience, notoriety, alignment, Skill systems to give UOX3 a more real feel.
«EviLDeD»: There have been some really good things thought out regarding town politics, and other systems that *cough* might make it into the emulator ya never know. But you didn't hear that from me

«Abaddon»: <darksentry> Has the bug related to trading (when the person on the receiving end right clicks, they automatically take the item, regardless of other checks) been addressed? And also, is it possible (or will it be possible) to alter merchant selling prices on a global level? (making prices x a value)
«Abaddon»: Well, that's a new bug that I haven't heard of, and I guess it's something to investigate =)
«Abaddon»: And as for altering prices on a global level.... we haven't really gotten feedback as to really needing that at all, but yes, it's something we can certainly look at, I don't imagine it would necessarily be TOO difficult to implement...
«Abaddon»: No promises on a time frame though

«Abaddon»: <Morticus> What about triggers? Will there be more incorporated to aid NPC's in order to make quests? (or is it already possible)
«Abaddon»: Yes, we all have wonderful plans to flesh out the trigger system.
«Abaddon»: EvilDeD and Revana both have ideas for some triggers, and I have a few triggers lying around that I can merge in in the not too distant future, I imagine
«Abaddon»: It all depends on how well the debugging goes in the next 2 weeks
«EviLDeD»: Yea I have in here too. there have been lots of ideas regarding this topic to, none of which have seemed to offer the flexibility that we want, while at the same time giving nice low lag play on lower ended machines.

«EviLDeD»: <Ripper> what is the eta on multithread in UOX
«EviLDeD»: Well Ripper *cough* isn't it past your bed time, or shouldn't you be up here with the rest of us...
* Revana chuckles
* Rain- grins
«EviLDeD»: To answer that. I am looking to get my hands on the code right now, and add in the console threading system, and lay in the foundation for the login thread as I have promised. The time is near my friend.

«Abaddon»: <Ghosty> What are you doing about the client lock-ups that happen when there are many floor tiles / decorations in one area?
«Abaddon»: Well, we do what we can. But the biggest trouble with that is bandwidth limitations
«Abaddon»: You probably notice that the real UO doesn't actually use that many floor tiles in one place
«Abaddon»: The trouble is that each and every tile has to be sent to each client, and the client ends up getting flooded with information, and on slower modems, it just can't keep up
«Abaddon»: One potential solution is to use WorldForge to merge them in with the native map, it will certainly reduce the bandwidth required
«Abaddon»: but we do realize that not every shard has that option, so we will try and see what we can do

«EviLDeD»: <JustMichael> When are flying creatures and swimming creatures going to be added to UOX?
«EviLDeD»: Abaddon has the snippet for flying creatures, so I would most likely think that it will go in after the feature freeze is over, or possibly when boats are worked out completely. Other wise it will find it way in soon I would imagine, unless someone else can offer any more info on this
«Abaddon»: I have the snippets, but the only reason it wasn't put in weeks ago was because I got around to it around midnight, and I didn't think too clearly way back then =)

«Abaddon»: <Zarnon> The region spawn is a fabulous feature, but it will put npcs in invalid locations, like the black area in dungeons, will/can this be fixed?
«Abaddon»: Well, we always try and improve things where we can, of course
«Abaddon»: The biggest trouble with region spawners is the fact it's not necessarily particularly easy to determine what is, or is not, an invalid location
«Abaddon»: The trouble will be finding a sufficiently quick way of determining, because we certainly don't want to slow the server down =)

«EviLDeD»: <Someone> Hmm... how about local price shifts, depending on the stock that the shopkeeper already has (% against restock value)? -- I'm not sure whether that's been discussed / implemented... but as I can't actually think of another question...
«EviLDeD»: Good question, even if it was outta lack of anything else to ask. Once the freeze is over as I sort of answer a question earlier, there are going to be some more body blown into some of the existing system, as well as some new systems added that will provide the ability to offer complex commerce like you described. It has been discusses, it has not been implemented, and We will certainly take your interest in it as a positive vote that its
«Abaddon»: just a note to the people who have turned up, send any questions you might have to xuri or revana

«Revana»: <Badmoon> Are there any plans to implement mini-games such as chess to be useable by players (if it has not already been implemented)?
«Revana»: Well, currently, there are no plans for game boards since it is the feature freeze, but yes, I think it would be a great implementation. I can have a look after the feature freeze and see what I could do, but no promises.

«Abaddon»: <darksentry> Has the functionality of the remove button been added to bulletin boards or will it be added any time soon? Also, have there been any plans to get books working properly? (users can't open or read/write in books)
«Abaddon»: As for books, I have the snippets lying around for that, so it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Once again, feature freeze is priority, and that's why it hasn't been done yet. But they are fully useable books
«Abaddon»: As for the bulletin board, it hasn't been touched in god knows how long. One thing we need to do is take an inventory of what is in, what isn't, and what would be nice. But it is something we can look at, though I have no idea how soon

«Abaddon»: <Rain-> Here's a question.. - What would you say is the best GM tool to use at the moment?
«Abaddon»: That's a tough one, for sure
«Abaddon»: I personally use my memory, and knowledge of the command list, though I know most people won't =)
«Abaddon»: CGMT is old, and has a lot of reduced functionality because of it
«Abaddon»: ShardAce is the most complete, and a lot of people use it
«Abaddon»: xGM hasn't been updated, though it is still alive
«Abaddon»: and TGMT is an upcoming tool, I believe, hough it is still too early to say

«Revana»: «JustMichael»: Will the account system be fixed before the feature freeze is over? Specifically how it currently messes up accounts after the one you delete.
«Revana»: Yes, fixing account is the second top priority for me. (The first is my mid term exams). Some things you can expect is a new format, but it will also work with the old one, and the new acct system will never mess up with characters.
«EviLDeD»: On that one JM, We think that the account stuff should be fixed, as that is not a feature but a bug. I am not informed on the corruption, but if you want to detail it for me I would be happy to have a look into it.
«Revana»: also, minor note
«Revana»: If you do experience acct problems, please send it to [email protected], that way, I can compile all the problems
«Revana»: so I can fix everything.

«Abaddon»: <^Treker^> Will it be possible to ride Dragons and other creatures in the future?
«Abaddon»: It would certainly be nice, wouldn't it? =)
«Abaddon»: Yes, it would be a nice feature for us to try, and that is one thing that we will be looking at in the future. It's something I wanted to work on earlier, but never got around to (mostly due to races).
«Abaddon»: But I have no idea how soon that might be

«Abaddon»: <Someone> A lot of the messages on the board are about the "nameless" items that are being produced by players... It seems that the "NAME" field of the items are blank. - as opposed to "#" - Any plans to fix?
«Abaddon»: In actual fact, I sent JM our current source only 30 minutes ago, and he said he would look at that for me. So in theory, it's a short (very) term solution
«Abaddon»: Possibly today, maybe tomorrow. Certainly within the week

«Xuri»: Any more questions, people? /msg me then.

«EviLDeD»: I have to make a comment in this lull of questions.
«EviLDeD»: There was a decision made by me last night that may effect a lot of people, but I think for the better. The current script team was fired!! I don't even know who all that meant, I know that effects Sephiroth, Rain, and a few others, but I made this choice based on the fact that the scripts were and are getting really messed up.
«Rain-»: Doesn't affect me..
«EviLDeD»: At this time Eagle is the head of the scripting team, and I think is the best choice right now. Rain, or anyone that thinks they should be on the team still please talk to Eagle. Lets work together to make this great EMU and script.. no hard feelings just a decisions to better the project on a whole
* Rain- reminds Evil he wasn't on the team

«Revana»: <Someone> How about the secure trade bug - that sets your weight to about 400 until you try to move? -- Stamina goes bye-bye and you're stuck until you move an item in your backpack?
«Revana»: I believe that is a new bug.. but I guess the team will have a look into it.
«Revana»: but.
«Revana»: more information would be better.
«EviLDeD»: Yea, on all bug reports, at all time please be as specific and forth coming with where you were, what you were doing carrying, etc. when submitting bugs. This helps us track them faster

«EviLDeD»: «Boris»: Will adding own pictures and sounds ever be implemented? possibly after freeze devs try to make a UOX client?
«EviLDeD»: When things come together with the devs this year we will start our journey into designing a uoxdev client to be used with the UO EMU's out there. Not sure how long it will take, but proves to be a very exciting venture to undertake. I would like to start dropping features, and gold, but I am going to have to just say be patient, and see what the future hold..
«EviLDeD»: As for the Secure trade bug I am not up to speed on that specifically at this time, maybe one of the other devs might be able to pop in here. Otherwise it has been noted and will be looked into

«Abaddon»: About the secure trade bug when right clicking, I just received a fix for it and it is in the source
* Xuri cheers
«Abaddon»: thank Dupois for that one on the board =)
* Rain- thanks him

«Revana»: will necro REALLY work?
«Revana»: that's from Boris
«Revana»: There is two groups working on necromancy currently..
«Eagle»: also let me make a small note here is you have any bug that are 100000000% sure that its a script bug e-mail it to me and i will be sure to get it fixed... ( [email protected] )
* Revana glares at Eagle
«Revana»: I dunno which one will go in, both are different in how they work. But I guess it will be the public's opinion
«Eagle»: =) i am working on the new scripted spells....other than that i believe rev is working on the hard code
«Eagle»: for ( necro )
«Revana»: =)

«Xuri»: <Boris> if there was a woodchuck in uox... how much wood would that woodchuck if it could chuck wood?
«Xuri»: a woodchuck would chuck no amount of wood cause a woodchuck can't chuck wood. Even if a woodchuck COULD chuck wood, and even if a woodchuck WOULD chuck wood, SHOULD a woodchuck chuck wood?
* Revana laughs
«Rain-»: they don't chuck wood i hear
«EviLDeD»: I was just going to say that the amount of wood that the wood chuck could chuck wood was purely indicative as to how large his tail was, and the size of his keyboard. so in short if uox3 could chuck would it would start a fire
«Revana»: I really wouldn't care, just pull your sword and bash the wood chucker.

«Eagle»: <Someone> Scripters! Any plans for a "Scripting for Dummies" FAQ anytime soon? I'm bumbling my way through them, but I'd love a FAQ...
«Eagle»: yea along with the new scripts there should be ALOT more doc's and better written doc's
«Eagle»: but that might not be until v35 scripts
* Revana thinks Xuri should change his Xuri World Guide into "UOX For Dummies"

«Abaddon»: <darksentry> Is there any particular place that discovered bugs should be posted? Or just sort of stick to q/a on the stratics board?
«Abaddon»: With keystone being down, it's a problem
«Abaddon»: Xuri has been compiling a list recently and I will go bak to displaying it on an HTML page for general viewing
«Abaddon»: I'll also open up my email address soon which will receive form based stuff from that page
«Xuri»: So send me those bugs =) [email protected]

«Abaddon»: <Badmoon> The source for the new build is being released tonight right?
«Abaddon»: Any changes we make to source always go straight into the CVS which is a publicly viewable area
«Abaddon»: we also keep devupdate.txt up to date every time we commit, so people know what happened
«Abaddon»: Xuri is working on an update.txt so people know what happened from the 69 series to the 70 series
«Eagle»: FYI : if you want to look at the cvs goto http://www.uoxdev.com/fur/
«punt»: A note to Linux Users out there. The compiler with RedHat 6.X will not compile UOX source properly. Update to gcc 2.95.2 (the shipping version).

* EviLDeD THANK YOU!!!! It looks like the very first Meeting of the UOX3 House of Commons has been an overwhelming success! Thank you for taking the time to join, and participate if you have. Only through this kind of exchange of information can we ever hope to take UOX3 into the millennium. Thanks again from all the DevTeam
«Xuri»: =)
«Abaddon»: A log of this chat will be available later on tonight

 

[psz]

Second official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
February 6th, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

«Revana»: Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's Open House.
«Revana»: Tonight's chat is "General Discussion"., please try to keep questions along these lines.
«Revana»: Uox3Hoc_bot will be the moderator for this chat..
«Revana»: To submit a question, do /msg uox3hoc_bot !question question here
«Revana»: Xuri will be on standby
«Revana»: just in case the bot fails
«Revana»: Ok
«Revana»: The Bot is now on
«Revana»: Please remember that there are 10 slots only for questions

* Uox3Hoc_Bot : Are there any plans to optimise the code of UOX? Possibly create a UOX4? Or plans to reduce memory consumption by removing unused read in data?
«Abaddon»: I'll field this one
«Abaddon»: Yes, there are always plans to optimise the code in UOX. It's a never ending battle for us, but I doubt there'll be anything along the lines of a UOX4
«Abaddon»: I myself have been looking at the way to reduce spell book memory consumption, and a few other things as well
«Abaddon»: EvilDeD and I are conducting an analysis on the code, noting weak areas, ways to optimise things, what can be removed
«Abaddon»: but yes, we're definitely hoping for a reduced memory footprint and general speedups
«Zippy-»: I also have been digging around in the code, there are a bunch of places we could trim memory down for characters and items....

* Uox3Hoc_Bot : About scripts, will we minimize them into smaller files, for easier debugging and modifying?
«Abaddon»: Well, certainly
«Abaddon»: in actual fact, Eagle plans to rewrite most of them from scratch. That way we don't have any bloated scripts
«Abaddon»: And we'll only have the essentials required
«Abaddon»: I don't know how far along Seph's docs are, but with newer slim lined scripts should also come some documents
«Zippy-»: There are a few that aren't really needed at all... We'll look at those with Eagle and see which we can take out.

«Abaddon»: Question: As it stands now, accounts cannot be deleted without skewing the accounts. Are there any plans to fix this, either by numbering the accounts or by some other means?
«JustMichael»: I would like to add the new version of LoginAce will delete them without skewing the accounts.
«Revana»: Ok, I'll field this one
«Revana»: Yes, I do have fixes for the accounts
«Revana»: Most of it works, and there are few bugs I have to crush unless you want to be able to login once =)

* Uox3hoc_bot : What are the future plans for UOX?
«Zippy-»: Well, that's a vague question... but right now we want to get very stable and reliable exe first,
«Zippy-»: Then we have lots of plans for fun new things.
«Zippy-»: EviL wants to get threading in, as well as a VERY advanced script system for quests, triggers and such.
«Zippy-»: But right now we want to have something we can be proud of before focus shifts back to features.
«Uox3hoc_bot»: *** Please Remember, to submit a question, you have to type: /msg Uox3hoc_bot !question Your question. ***

* Uox3hoc_bot : What's currently the biggest bug.. in your opinion?
«Abaddon»: Well, I'd classify this as a bug. The big problems with memory allocation and usage
«Abaddon»: We're using up way too much memory, more than you'd reasonably expect
«Abaddon»: And I've noted the last 3 times I had to try and realloc memory it just crashed me
«Zippy-»: (About 700 bytes per item, and 1500 per character)
«Abaddon»: The spawn.scp bug that causes a crash is actually memory related I believe, as well
«Abaddon»: That's one of the reasons that a few of us are undertaking a major analysis of the memory situation

* Uox3hoc_bot : Why does uo freeze when I try to put my password and name in?
«Revana»: Well
«Revana»: one solution to that problem is
«Revana»: that you either have a bad client
«Revana»: or the uox version is wrong
«Xuri»: ...or the ip is wrong. or the port. or 1000 other small things *winks*

* Uox3hoc_bot : Is there going to be any ready to play full worlds for those who want to play offline?
«Zippy-»: Well, there already are several available... I don't think there are many COMPLETE worlds, since those who have them like them too much to give away.
«RevolutionShadow»: Plus they would be too big
«Zippy-»: There are a few people attempting to make large public worlds, and I'm sure you could find links to pages if ya look around a little
«Zippy-»: Revo, weren't you working on one?
«RevolutionShadow»: RevNet's world file yes
«RevolutionShadow»: Will go public when the server finally goes down

* Uox3hoc_bot : What is the current goal if any on when the exe will be stable to add more features? And can we get the addmenu into its own file?
«Zippy-»: I'm not sure if we have an exact time frame... I know we would like it as much as the users would.
«Zippy-»: And addmenu has already been coded to go into its own file, we'll talk to eagle and evil about when exactly that will be implimented.

* Uox3hoc_bot : When will the features freeze be over and we can get the rest of the spells working?
«Abaddon»: Well, the feature freeze will be over when it's over
«Abaddon»: We had hoped to have it over by now, but these things just can't be guarenteed
«Abaddon»: There's no point us making definite time frame promises, because we just don't know exactly what may crop up
«Abaddon»: Yes, we'd love it to be over and done with, to be able to add new features
«Abaddon»: All of us would. But what's the point of adding new features when people are having such probs?
«Abaddon»: As for the spells situation, if you consider it a bug, then message a coder with the exact details, and we can try and get it fixed
«Uox3hoc_bot»: *** Please Remember, to submit a question, you have to type: /msg Uox3hoc_bot !question Your question. *** *** There are 10 slots only so please have patience if it is full ***

* Uox3hoc_bot : Why does UOX disconnect the UO Client when charting a boat course on a World Map?
«Abaddon»: Well, I believe that this was asked, and answered, in the previous chat
«Abaddon»: It's considered a lack of feature, not a bug
«Abaddon»: It's essentially at the moment a packet we pass over, but we actually ignore it for the moment
«Abaddon»: The only way to safely ignore it is to disconnect the client, otherwise you start running into probs with the other clients and mixed up messages

* Uox3hoc_bot : There appears to be a bug that causes a player not to be able to relogin into a shard (until it is restarted) if he tries to login when the server is initializing and then cancels before the server is done loading. Is this bug known? If so, any eta on it being fixed?
«Abaddon»: Well, yes and no, to a bug
«Abaddon»: It happens because we init the port at the start of the code, and it's really an impatient user problem
«Abaddon»: We could try moving the port initialisation further down, to try and mask these problems, but that may introduce others
«Abaddon»: Another option is to block any receipt of messages before it finishes loading
«Abaddon»: Another thing that needs looking at =)

* Uox3hoc_bot : I have several walking bug errors. For example, in Delucia normal players (non-GMs) fall through the floors. Is there any estimate to when walking issues will be resolved nearly 100%?
«Zippy-»: The problem with this is actually the tile bits are set wrong in the mul files....
«Abaddon»: I must run, but the others will answer all your questions, please continue...
«Zippy-»: Some solution is of course to make your own.... You could try patching these "holes" with dynamic tiles....
«Zippy-»: And of course walking is very complex....

* Uox3hoc_bot : So, any info on the possibility of a Macintosh client?
«Revana»: Well, i can't guarantee a Macintosh client
«Revana»: but, currently, there are two clients in design. One is done by TUS, it's kinda like the regular client, just designed for their Emu. And the other one is a 3d client, it's in its basic steps, but hopefully, it will work out..

* Uox3hoc_bot : With the implementation of the newbie.scp a while back why is the initial starting gold still included within the uox3.ini?
«Zippy-»: Pretty much, it was never moved... There a few things laying around we don't use anymore... perhaps it should be moved ;-)
«Cestle»: I would think that would be done with Eagle's re-write that was mentioned earlier

* Uox3hoc_bot : In the future will the books be dealt with differently? As it stands now books are created in the misc.scp. While this method makes sense, it does not allow players to create books on their adventures.
«Revana»: Yes, books will be dealt differently.
«Revana»: Currently, I have a source code for writeable books.
«Revana»: But since the feature freeze is in effect, I can't add it to the main source. So you'll have to wait and see.

* Uox3hoc_bot : About that 3D Client, do you know if it supports GeForce's T&L Technology?
«Revana»: yep. it supports it.

* Uox3hoc_bot : This 3D client interests me greatly. Who is currently developing it and how far along is it?
«Revana»: Currently, it's a small organization.. the project is ran by EvilDeD.. and I'm currently designing the engine..
«Revana»: It's still in it's initial stages
«RevolutionShadow»: Any URL?
«Revana»: but if you wish to help, email me at [email protected]
«Revana»: no URL, sorry =)
«Uox3hoc_bot»: *** Please Remember, to submit a question, you have to type: /msg Uox3hoc_bot !question Your question. *** *** There are 10 slots only so please have patience if it is full ***

* Uox3hoc_bot : Spawns at the moment tend to not care about where they spawn things. A region spawn will create a NPC within walls, under the floor tiles, in water, etc.. Is there any plans to fix this?
«Zippy-»: This has to do with the rewrite of a lot of UOX's map functions. They don't spawn on anything just a lot of stuff they shouldn't.
«Zippy-»: And this should be fixed soon, but I'm not a man of dates and times.... )

* Uox3hoc_bot : When a house (multi) is created, it seems that the other people around the multi are not updated with the information that the house has been placed. They can see the door and the sign but until they walk away from the update area and back into it, they cannot see the building itself.
«Zippy-»: Sounds pretty simple to fix... Famous last words: "I'll look into it" )

«Revana»: Well folks, time to wrap up for the night. I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight
«Revana»: Please visit http://www.uoxdev.com/uox3hoc/ for the log which will be posted soon.

 

[psz]

Third official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
February 21st, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

* EviLDeD would like to welcome everyone to the 3rd uox3hoc meeting. Please direct any questions to Xuri, and I guess lets begin
«EviLDeD»: First off I would like to address the last rash of crap on the message boards.
«EviLDeD»: There is no problems in the DevTeam there were some personal differences of opinions that made it public and they never should have. There is nothing to worry about. So please try to limit questions away from this recent set of issues

«EviLDeD»: Question: When and how will the 3D Client be implemented? How is the development coming along?
«EviLDeD»: The client is in the dev stage. There is no hard code at this moment. This project will be starting soon and has been side tracked to dig deeper into the problems of UOX3.

«EviLDeD»: when will we see the next official release and what issues will be covered in it?
«EviLDeD»: At this moment we are in a tracing for some large bugs that seem to crash the server, as well as track down some memory issues, as for a definite release on the next official release that is hard to say. were going to try to deal with as many large ended bugs as possible.

«Abaddon»: is the feature freeze over yet?
«Abaddon»: Nope, not a chance. As EvilDeD mentioned with the previous question, there's a lot of large bug / memory issue type of thing that we doing our best to isolate and repair
«Abaddon»: We've had too many reports of crashing and instability, this freeze was designed to repair as many problems as possible, before implementing new features

«EviLDeD»: Question: When do you expect to have the script files converted into binary and the code to use it readily available?
«EviLDeD»: the reading code is well underway however crashes on OR have directed my attention towards finding a means to keep it running more stable before ripping hard code apart. Got to keep the users happy, as for the
«EviLDeD»: scripts being binary, some dev's are against the thought, so more talks about that will have to be done before that ever takes hold

«EviLDeD»: Who's on the script team? what has happened to the people on it?
«EviLDeD»: This is a good one, as it seems that's what the base amount of the shit on the message boards has been about as of late.
«EviLDeD»: right now the script team is Eagle, he came through when the old team was slacking off, and has told me that they are but a day or 2 away, so as that question goes Eagle is the script team..
«EviLDeD»: There was some issues that happened between me and another regarding scripts and I was hasty to select him over eagle, however in my own defence I wasn't sure that Eagle was coming back as
«EviLDeD»: communication isn't one of the strongest traits we both share.
«Eagle»: heh
«Eagle»: FYI: i am looking for others to help me just email me at [email protected] DON'T ASK ME IN IRC

«EviLDeD»: Question: Any chance we can get some hot females to work for UOX, it would bring more people to UOX?
«EviLDeD»: on this question well, come on there has to be something better to ask

«Abaddon»: Can temporary fixes be released so as to make the server playable again ?
«Abaddon»: Well, temporary fixes are usually that. Temporary. A lot of the stuff we are working on now are the critical subsystems of UOX, and hence we are trying our best to rigorously test them all out before releasing any fixes per say
«Abaddon»: I know I've been working on some things that have taken a few days of work, and even then I'm not finished, or close to finishing with testing
«Abaddon»: I imagine if we find anything truly critical, we'll try and release these fixes if we can, but we make no promises currently.
«EviLDeD»: To reinforce what Abaddon's just said if we get a critical bug killed and its well tested a release will be made
«EviLDeD»: just when isn't determinable

«EviLDeD»: «Chaos»: Question: What is required to be on the "UOX3 Script Team"?
«EviLDeD»: I just talked with Eagle, and he said that he is going to post on the web some criteria laying out what's needed, and why we are looking for. Eagle will provide the url when its ready.
«Eagle»: well that's a good question but I have no set requirement , as with the dev team, but i will put applications up on the web tonight and make them available

«Eagle»: With the changes in the scripts what can we look forward too? Will it affect our current tools or worlds?
«Eagle»: well a lot of bugs are hiding in the scripts and none are uniform in nature so a lot of what we are doing is setting a standard for the scripts , you shouldn't lose and tool functionality as tools like shard ace PARSE the scripts but if there is any questions about that there will l be conversion tools if UOX doesn't do it its self

«Abaddon»: «Chaos»: Question: Is there going to be a nicer looking back end to UOX3.exe? Like with point and click options, etc?
«Abaddon»: Well, in general, I'll say wait for threading
«Abaddon»: A GUI of any sorts tends to be fairly intensive for CPU usage, compared to a generic console
«Abaddon»: Yes, there are plans for it, certainly on the Win32 platform
«Abaddon»: But it's not really high on our priority list right now

«Abaddon»: Heres a question: Is UOX3 going to try and follow OSI in its server or is it going to try and branch out a little?
«Abaddon»: Well, yes and no, I suppose. We'll have to keep in lockstep for the encryption obviously. But as far as features go, I'd say we'll probably end up going a separate route in many areas. It'll need to be evaluated on a feature per feature basis really
«Abaddon»: But I imagine you'll find many things in UOX that aren't the same, or don't exist in UO, and even some things in UO that we don't feel were good ideas anyway. Then again, it is for you we do this, and you do have some say in the matter

«EviLDeD»: Question: Is the Official Realms Shard ever going to be anything but an excuse for Devs to go round kill people?
«EviLDeD»: Well I have only killed one player on the shard so far and that was Boris, for whining at me ) However, OR shard is intended to build a strong world, provide the devs live first hand sight of what's going on
«EviLDeD»: right now it is running in debug mode, and has new tracking code in it that will make it even more laggy.
«EviLDeD»: Please bare with this, as were are tacking the functions that are causing the errors. other wise, no we don't just have OR to kill players..
«EviLDeD»: Btw what was your character name again

«Eagle»: Question: (Directed Towards Eagle) When can we expect to have the UOXDev.com website up, fully?
«Eagle»: it should be up in full dev mode by Wednesday
«Eagle»: but there will be a lot of changes
«Eagle»: as this page is for DEV related things a lot of "everyday" traffic will be directed towards stratics
«Eagle»: but past that it will be up Tue or Wed

«Abaddon»: is the OR server running the latest build 03 ?
«Abaddon»: No, it's certainly not
«Abaddon»: It's up to build 14 now, and it's working off some laggy source (in aid of us debugging)
«Abaddon»: You'll probably even see that fact when you login =)
«Abaddon»: But OR will be running off the latest round of fixes that we have (or debugging improvements)
«Abaddon»: It may not be stable (though we hope it is), and it will be a test of our critical systems
«Abaddon»: However, it will be more stable as time passes, we can guarantee that

«EviLDeD»: Question: So OR is running versions of UOX way ahead of ours?
«EviLDeD»: Not sure how to answer this one directly. Some troubles some was removed from the 07.02.xx release, and some was added, so to say thats its way ahead or not only time will tell..

«Abaddon»: on the build numbering system, will there be a (Build #) added to the name?
«Abaddon»: If you login to OR sometime, you'll notice that there is now a report based upon the build #, and that does get incremented when there have been any real changes
«Abaddon»: so when you login to OR, you'll notice straight away what build it is running
«Abaddon»: and I imagine, once the source has stabilized a lot more significantly, people will see it on their own shards as well

«EviLDeD»: could you please make some of those fixes available since the shard I'm running is in a terrible state.. anything even a small fix to some bug related stuff would be greatly appreciated !"'
«EviLDeD»: Strangler, as fixes are available that tackle issues that do stop uox3 from functioning they will be made available, and for testing sake at most times just ask Ab or myself for the most recent build and we can hook you up. But we don't warrant that it will fix anything and could very well make things worse, however we will do out best not to release things that do not work. This wont happen anymore if can be helped

«Abaddon»: "Will we be able to find more scriptability in things such as magic and spells? Say animations, sounds and all? Like what you can do with a trigger."
«Abaddon»: Yes, we intend to make more of it scriptable
«Abaddon»: Currently the action a person makes casting magic is scriptable
«Abaddon»: I hope to abstract out the animation and moving effects as well sometime, though I don't know how soon that may be
«Abaddon»: I hope to make the ores and ingots more scriptable for mining as well, but I'm not sure how quickly that will go in

«EviLDeD»: will player chars at any point get into their own separate file ?
«EviLDeD»: Yes I was working on that before OR decided to start crashing regularly. So I have turned to try to sort out why this is occurring as its annoying to you guys its annoying to me., but yes they are going into their own files.. and over the next number of builds possibly

«EviLDeD»: Question: Are you considering two versions of UOX> One which is true to OSI, and one which isn't? i.e. with new features?
«EviLDeD»: in one word - "no"
«Abaddon»: Our goal is to provide you with the tools you need to build your own shard. That's why we try to make things more flexible, to make it as flexible as humanly possible. And anyway, who wants a whole heap of OSI clones? =)

«Abaddon»: Will there be any capability of adding your own spells in the future?
«Abaddon»: That's certainly a possibility, yes, though a lot of it would need code backing, unless we can come up with a way to interpret the scripts and derive the behaviour from it (not completely out of the question, just long and time consuming)
«Abaddon»: We'd certainly like it, it goes hand in hand with our goal to provide you with as flexible a tool as possible

«EviLDeD»: "Might it be possible to specify a root directory for scripts, then it read all files in all sub directories? hehehe, little organization or something "
«EviLDeD»: yes this will also happen over the next number of builds, and has been planned.

«Abaddon»: «White_Knight»: Will we be eventually able to edit/create different looking items such as helmets, how weapons look etc?
«Abaddon»: I don't know of any solid concrete plans for such tools
«Abaddon»: The formats for the files are fairly readily available currently, but I don't know of any real plans for one
«Abaddon»: Most of the developers have their hands full working on UOX3 pretty much full time, so tools haven't been our priority
«Abaddon»: but there have been at least some experimental hacks from some of us, in some of these areas, but nothing remotely production quality (nor necessarily so anytime soon)
«EviLDeD»: To add to this, I would think that this would be a tool thing more over a server thing... So maybe one of the tool doods in here hear you! They know who they are )

«EviLDeD»: when the player chars get into their own file will the /acct command then be made fully functional ?
«EviLDeD»: in a word - "yes"

«EviLDeD»: «DPaladine»: is there any plan to add resmelting of armour and weaps in UOX3?
«EviLDeD»: Even though they just left (good timing)
«EviLDeD»: this is not planned, or at least in our immediate thought, resmelting in a sense of the Roleplaying genre lowers game economy in my opinion with mmprpg.

«Abaddon»: when will boats be fully implemented into uox?
«Abaddon»: Well, Zippy's been the boat guy, and last I heard, he believed they were fully functional
«Xuri»: or close.
«Abaddon»: If there are still problems, then pass them along to Xuri, myself or Zippy, and we'll try and track them down

«Abaddon»: when UOX is almost completely stable, what new features are first on the list?
«Abaddon»: Well, we've all got lovely ideas in mind, and we'll have to discuss it with each other
«Abaddon»: I know I've got a whole stack of racial ideas in mind, and plans to try and tie them with townstones. Then again, that may not be appropriate (though I'd love to work on it), it's something that needs to be discussed with others
«Abaddon»: Also, I'd like to see guilds expanded so that they can increase the number of guilds and members in total possible
«EviLDeD»: to add to this
«EviLDeD»: I would like to see a more player run economy, and a more real ad&d feel to rules and effects, to aid in the experience of role playing., which is why we are all here..
«EviLDeD»: maybe segregate player killers form people that don't want to be player killers.
«EviLDeD»: kinda rally shitty thing to join up to a shard cause you want to have some fun, and whammo dead. and looted.
«EviLDeD»: anyone else
«EviLDeD»: I guess not

«EviLDeD»: Question: How is the memory reduction going? So can we expect to have a large world with say a 64 Ram if everything goes well or will it still require a min of 128 Ram?
«EviLDeD»: Yes!!! This is something that I have been striving for and that most of the rest of the devs think I am mental about. however in all realize for shards over 20-25 players I would think that nothing less than 128mb of ram would be plausible, however up to 20 I think that and believe that uox3 should be MADE to run fairly stable on a low class machine for those TRUE player run shards.
«EviLDeD»: As for the progress, some of the changes made were kinda buggy, and not totally thought out so I removed then from the 03 build
«EviLDeD»: Ab has a bunch, zippy had made a bunch and we will be re implementing them one at a time to make sure that they work )
«EviLDeD»: anyone else to contribute on that one
«Abaddon»: Yeah, I have a few memory reductions that I have in mind
«Abaddon»: Some regarding to full spellbooks (they take a hell of an amount of memory currently)
«Abaddon»: I know that shards like having a lot of mages, and with all those mages having full spellbooks, it's a drain on the server
«Abaddon»: But I have to think that one over carefully (can play havoc elsewhere) though I'd like to get it in

«EviLDeD»: [19:26] can we disable theft and PKing ?? if so how? If not, is it in the future?
«EviLDeD»: Well I kind hinted to this earlier. I would like to see the ability at being a pk'r and not harm other people that don't want to be. might be lonely, but then again most like pk'g anyhow so maybe you would be so lonely, but this is a feature in my opinion and has a fairly low priority
«Xuri»: and thieving already is, by setting ROGUE 1 to ROGUE 0 (server.scp)

«Abaddon»: Is there going to be banker notes added in?
«Abaddon»: Well, it's a possibility for later on. EvilDeD hinted at a greater player run economy, and I guess that this would be part of it
«Abaddon»: But it's more of a nicety, a feature, and that really isn't one of our concerns at the moment, stability, memory reduction and performance are our higher priorities (and probably in that order, or so I'd think =)

«Abaddon»: Is there a plan to have another bug posting site available?
«Abaddon»: I'm not sure whether uoxdev will come back up with a system like keystone or jitterbug, it would be nice to have it there again
«Abaddon»: If worse comes to worst, I can always resurrect my static HTML page and try and update it as often as I can
«Abaddon»: We'd like a controlled mechanism over the bug reporting, but remember, when you do make bug reports, make them as detailed as you possibly can

«Abaddon»: will the spellbook still be regarded as a container ?
«Abaddon»: Not as it is now, if my idea goes through
«Abaddon»: the trouble at the moment, memory wise, is that it IS a container, and that each and every spell is an item in that container
«Abaddon»: Wasteful on memory, and performance as well. But it needs to be thoroughly looked at, and examined
«Abaddon»: If I removed it as a container, then you'd lose the ability to open a spellbook like a container (unless I can figure a way around it somehow). But there's always a price to pay for better performance and memory usage

«EviLDeD»: What about player defined gumps (well, the gumps in misc.scp)? Could players eventually use those through trigger or something?
«EviLDeD»: This is a tough one, as you can tell from our delay that it was a tough argument. Some say that it might be partially there, others say no. I think that player defined gumps should be more of a true script language related question (see previous uox3hoc logs for our position on the script language). And to me would almost seem to large a job for triggers. But anything is possible, and it might already be to a small degree.

«EviLDeD»: Will there be a way to access the GM queue from outside UOX that way tools can monitor it and people don't have to stay logged in to get queued. Instead the tool could play a sound or something else to summon the GM.
* EviLDeD waves at JM!
«EviLDeD»: Yes I in the true form of the xGM interface I would like to see that expanded to be more secure as well as more easily interfaceable with the server, so GM's don't have to be logged in to do typical things like answering pages or page cue, account admin etc.
«EviLDeD»: When this will take place is hard to tell. as all the features finally stopped getting in the true nature of the code started to show.
«EviLDeD»: and might I say that there are some serious things wrong that are no unavoidable . but this will be followed up on JM

«Abaddon»: Related in a way with the adding of spells, is there any intention of being able to add new skills?
«Abaddon»: That's actually one of the things I've done, experimentally. I've been able to add a few skills to the client MUL files, though that was in C++
«Abaddon»: I've got a VB App at the moment that reads/writes the skills info from skills and verdata, and will even write out the status of the blue button
«Abaddon»: When I get time I'll go back and visit it, allowing the user to rename them, or add some of their own. But it would require server side coding as well, potentially a lot depending on the skill
«Abaddon»: But it will be feasible in the long term

«Abaddon»: What are the possibilities that you can use different paperdolls for say an orc character?
«Abaddon»: Well, that's really a client side issue more than anything
«Abaddon»: There are ways to try and "trick" the client into believing it's something that it's not
«Abaddon»: but in reality, it's a virtually impossible task really, because the intelligence (or distinct lack thereof) is in the client
«Abaddon»: and that's not something we can control

«Abaddon»: Will races be more user friendly in the future? ex: ability to choose what you want them to wear and what weapon to start with?
«Abaddon»: Personally, I think they are quite nice and user friendly now
«Abaddon»: It might be possible to do that at a later date, but I'm more interested in making them as flexible as possible, like adding things such as the ability to specify which spells they can or cannot use, adding racial armour, things like that
«Abaddon»: But I don't imagine it'd be too difficult. It just doesn't really gel with what I believe is the goal of races. But if enough people want it, I guess it'll happen

* EviLDeD would like to thank everyone for coming to yet another successful #uox3 House of Commons meeting. As usual a log will be made available on the main websites, and for those that still had questions save them for the next meeting on March 5th, 2000 at 8pm est.. Thanks again!!

 

[psz]

Fourth official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
Marc 6th, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

Abaddon: Okay folks, it's that time again. Welcome to #uox3hoc, I hope you enjoy it like you have all the other times
Abaddon: Tonight's topic will be general again, and our question takers this week will be Homey, and Xuri
Abaddon: So feel free to message them.
Abaddon: Let's begin, shall we?
Xuri: Wirebender: Question: Any word on when VERy .15 is to be released? If so will it have the promised features of adding items and icons in?
Xuri: Well that's not really directly related to UOX =) It's made by Cironian, and as far as I know he's still working on it.
Xuri: No idea when he'll be done though.

Abaddon: Majite: will there ever be a built in world chatting system?
Abaddon: Well, it may happen, for sure. But as it's currently a feature, it's not really our focus
Abaddon: Our focus is on ironing out the bugs and performance issues, increasing stability
Abaddon: And a world chat system like OSI uses is destructive to immersiveness and RP ability
Abaddon: We may end up using it though, but I wouldn't say for sure either way at the moment

Skyfire: LanceOfThebes: Is UOX4 really made by Cironian and why isn't it supported by anyone?
Skyfire: Cir and Kaerodoth were working on it but Cir ran out of free time to work on it.
Skyfire: I do not know the current state of that project, but from lack of news on it, i assume it is dead
Xuri: /msg Xuri or Homey with your questions, people =)

EviLDeD: Cy: what are some of the upcoming features like, memory usage, chars and items separate folders, and single item world saves, and how long will it take to get these put in?
EviLDeD: Well features we haven't thought much about except for our wild dreams. As for these other things single item saves, separation of chars, and items are all currently being worked on, a finish date is hard to say really but should be soonish.

Abaddon: Scruffy: Will spell editing and creating ever be part of uox? or is it already and i missed it?
Abaddon: Well, I seem to vaguely remember answering this in the previous #uox3hoc chat
Abaddon: But the situation has changed since then, so I can expand on it
Abaddon: Spell creation is very different from spell editing. We may one day be able to allow you to create your own type of spells, in fact, we'd like to, because it gives you finer control over your shard
Abaddon: Changing the behaviour of existing spells would require code changes, though it would be nice to one day have it scriptable, though that's a pipe dream at the moment
Abaddon: Since the last chat, however, I have been able to make the sound, static and moving effects scriptable, as well as whether it will make you a criminal or not
Abaddon: So if you wanted to change the sound it makes, or the sparkles to a flamestrike, it will now be possible, and it will be reloadable from the console as well

Abaddon: SC_Magicia: SO the question is Are the devs working on allowing UOX to be on multiple computers running one world...
Abaddon: EviLDeD tells me that we have it planned. but no, we're not working on it right now

Abaddon: Scruffy: What do you mean by moving affects? The necromantic spellcast vs. the normal spellcast?
Abaddon: By moving effects, I mean the type of effects used with explosion, and ebolt
Abaddon: You know the ones where the fireball scoots between you and the target?? Well, that
Abaddon: you could change it from a fireball to something else if you really wished to
Abaddon: Though only 4 spells in the entire spell system use it, but I can't remember which they are off hand

EviLDeD: JustMichael: When will the current UOX source be available for programmers again?
EviLDeD: This we are not sure about right now. Over the last year I have attempted to round the dev group around certain things, issues that were UOX3 future realted (even though seem to think that it is personal)
EviLDeD: anyhow very few thought this was the right path, and continued on,
EviLDeD: The source will be given out just as soon as some very crucial playability issues are tackled. as it was they weren't and never were going to be addressed
EviLDeD: from what I could tell, and this was my only really alternative (in thinking) We are not walking off with the code, we are not making a proprietary emu, just trying to get some much needed things done, and it wasn't happening the old way. Please accept my apologies to ANYONE that does not agree, but I feel (and hope other devs will back me up on it) was the best over all thing to do with it at this time.
Abaddon: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree
Abaddon: There are things that need doing that need to be done, and soon, and that's what we're working on
Ripper: i agree at this time for the record
Skyfire: I agree with Evil and Ab
Xuri: I agree with them as well *whistles and pretends to be a part of the dev team*

Abaddon: Delorim: Any thought to making different colored lights through /glow?
Abaddon: The only way to be able to do that, in the current system, would be to allow you to choose the type of light source that gets attached as the glowing item
Abaddon: Now, that's not particularly simple, and could run the potentiality of creeping in some nasty nasty bugs, which we all hate
Abaddon: If OSI had actually made a client with a selectable colour light source.... but ah well, they didn't, so we work with what we have
Abaddon: No idea when, or even if, it might happen, but it's not short term

Abaddon: Delorim: I haven't validated it, but is /setid buggy? (if it made functional again, no need for the above question)
Abaddon: Well, I haven't heard of any problems with it in the past, and I haven't encountered any problems with it myself, but then again, I've never really used it either
Abaddon: I'll have a look at the code later, see if there isn't something that can be done

Abaddon: LanceOfThebes: Who's decision was it to just let uox.stratics.com be the home base and put uoxdev.com to other uses?
Abaddon: Well, uox.stratics.com has been around much longer than www.uoxdev.com
Abaddon: So I've always considered uox.stratics.com to be the home of UOX
Abaddon: I believe it was pretty much a mutual decision to turn uoxdev to other purposes, because the communit wasn't really served by 2 sites containing pretty much the same type of information
EviLDeD: bah
Abaddon: And as the dev implies, it is likely to go to future use for the developers
EviLDeD: the truth of the matter is that someone decided due to his own reasons that uox3 was not a good emulator anymore, and untill it was eitehr re written, or the dev's(cough loosely implied EviLDeD) were changed would it evr go back to being a uox support board.
Abaddon: «Zane»: the idea of UOXDev is to be a DEV site (as the name denotes), uox.stratics was ALWAYS meant to be the home of UOX

EviLDeD: Cy: also on these memory usage, chars and items in seperate folders, and single world saves, how would these work, what would they offer their part in the UOX coding?, and like i said "how would they work", how would they offer good to uox?
EviLDeD: The over all benefit here would be 1) to isolate items, chars, and account related info to make deletions and correction more readily accessable
EviLDeD: 2) they are the same time would allow the over all size of the files to be shorter
EviLDeD: 3) provide more modular approach to the data
EviLDeD: = SPEED!

Abaddon: Delorim: Atric says: "when will gms beable to manipulate objects npcs are wearing",
Abaddon: Manipulating includes (from him): adding (which I think is done), removing, dyeing (see adding), and changing anything else
Abaddon: Well, I'll tell you right now, it's already possible
Abaddon: when it comes to using UOX (rather than coding), I'm a complete novice
Abaddon: but I was able to last night, remove things from an npc, add things on to them, and dye items they were wearing
Abaddon: so, unless I'm missing something (and it's possible), it's already in and working fine

Xuri: Scruffy: Npc's seem to walk on water if the spawner is too close to water are you going to fix the walking through walls and on water thing or do i have to script it? dont mean to be rude if it sounds like i am
Abaddon: I'll take that Xuri
Abaddon: I was given some walking changes the other day, which seem to resolve most of the known walking issues
Abaddon: walking underground works, as well as it seems to stop NPCs walking on water
Abaddon: as for the walking through walls, I don't think anyone here was able to duplicate it, without using vERY, but I could be wrong on that count
Xuri: Anyone have any more questions, better msg me or homey them now..

Abaddon: Corwin-son: any plans to keep the Linux version up to date with the Windows version?
Abaddon: Well, that's a real tough one for us
Abaddon: With Punt's departure, there are now no developers at all that really use Linux
Abaddon: Yes, we always endeavour to try and write as much ANSI C++ compliant code as possible, to reduce friction for Linux
Abaddon: but the simple fact is, none of us are Linux developers, so it's pretty hard to write for something you don't use

Abaddon: Tristan2: I'm using the all in one avalable at stratics and have a problem with tweak. The first page of gump works fine but second page is buggy. If you try to change one item manually it actually brings up the text entry field for the item bellow it. Any fix?
Abaddon: Yes, we know of it, and have for a little while. During the merge for the 70 series code, we received some changes to tweak, but they were incomplete, and thus buggy
Abaddon: But it hasn't been high on our priority list to fix, we've had much more pressing problems to try and resolve

Abaddon: JustMichael: Why couldn't read-only access to the source be given to other programmers? This would give more people access to hunt bugs but they would have to submit the fixes they find to the devs.
Abaddon: Well, personally, I don't know about others, but I have my views on it
Abaddon: We've made some fairly significant changes to the source in places, and there have been times we've even reverted back because of some bad stuff that's occurred
Abaddon: I believe we went up to build 14, then had to go back to around build 12, then work our way up again
Abaddon: There's a lot of stuff in the source that is extremely fluid, and we don't really want a buik of coders getting used to a particular function, or style, especially if it could go out of date, or become redundant

* Xuri looks around
Xuri: We back online?
EviLDeD: I think so
EviLDeD: that was sweet huh.
Xuri: hm yes. /msg me any questions people =) we're running out of questions *grin*

EviLDeD: Cy: also if there are new scripts writen , which i know there are some being writen, will they replace our already writen scripts? will we have to re write our scripts? how will this take place?
EviLDeD: At this moment there were a re write, and a new format, eithr way, there will most likely be conversion tools that will convert between the formats if there is a change, and or at least convert an existing world file to conform to any changes
EviLDeD: TO the best of our abilities. I would hope that they would be as much a drop in case as possible, but sometimes that cant be done ..

EviLDeD: Delorim Hows: Is there any plan to make make the source more compiler friendly? Or sticking with MSVC 6?
EviLDeD: At this point there is great cohesion between vc5, and vc6 Bwhahahahaha, as for other compiler, technically Ab answered this one earlier with the Linux question, we are able to develop for the platforms that we have, or are specialized in,
EviLDeD: When the source comes back out I would hope that it will be in much better shape to have legitimate, and functional ports to other langs with as minimalistic need to recode as possible.
EviLDeD: who knows.

Abaddon: Corwin-son: Any plans for adjustable AI for creatures? (ie: changes in movement patterns, agression, or combat tactics based on scripts, GM commands, or triggers)
Abaddon: That'll be very much a future thing, not short term at all
Abaddon: Decent AI of any sort is rather performance intensive
Abaddon: and a few other systems need to come online before that type of stuff can really be tackled
Abaddon: as for the way it'd be customisable.... no idea right now
Abaddon: And I won't suggest a system, because it may change a lot
* Xuri growls at chanserv

Abaddon: Delorim: How about fluxuating spawns? have a norm, then a flux amount? (sort of like the new shopkeeper stuff)
Abaddon: Well, I know I added a CALL member to the spawn regions a while back, but that actually needs some fixing up (it won't behave properly)
Abaddon: I imagine it would be fairly simple to put a fluctuation in, and make it scriptable, but it's not really our focus at this point in time

Xuri: ah.
Xuri: woh
Xuri: and Chanserv looked upon stratics.com and said "It is whole."

Abaddon: Tristan2: Will there ever be a way to set character restrictions upon creation ie. stat caps?
Abaddon: Some restrictions are automatically applied by the client (sum total of stats)
Abaddon: specifically for stat caps, they are a global and racial combination
Abaddon: We hope to one day have a better way of choosing your race on char creation, that's certainly true
Abaddon: but it really does depend on the type of restriction, some aren't particularly feasible, and some don't belong to the char
Xuri: no more questions?

Abaddon: Scruffy: can i get the average developer age for uox?
Abaddon: well, for current ACTIVE developers, it's 27
Abaddon: if my maths is right =)

EviLDeD: JustNobody: When can we strangle ChanServ?
EviLDeD: Well we are currently working on new code that should make the hand that we used to use to strangle chanserv a little more effective and more cabalbe of its job. So untill these bugs get cleaned out we'll have to wait.

Abaddon: JustNobody: With the new scripts will we be able to use hex or decimal values interchangeably? Have values default to being decimal and if it is preceded by an 'x' then it is a hex number.
Abaddon: Well, it's possible, I suppose
Abaddon: I don't think it'd be that hard to implement, I believe
Abaddon: but not sure on a timeframe for that either

EviLDeD: Tristan2: Any way to get involved with developement other than HOC?
EviLDeD: at this point in time the existing devteam is working out well. I'm sure that we will be looking for help and to build the group again in the near future but at this time, HOC is about the best means to get ideas out, and we are never against taking in code to look at.
Xuri: either that, or pay me $400 j/k
EviLDeD: the cvs code is a good place to start, feel free to continue to use that code base to work with etc, when things are completed the cvs, and the closed source will be merged with best ability minimizing the noticable differances.
EviLDeD: hey yea, valid non jailing CC info with name, exp info would be accepted )

EviLDeD: LanceOfThebes: Will you ever make it so that people have to sleep, eat and go to the restroom?
EviLDeD: I would love to see this happen, give it an edge finally. We have alot of immersing ideas, as do a lot of others that will be adopted to ensure that the UOX experience will still remain the best experience.
EviLDeD: so with that I pass control back to Abaddon, and say good night.
* Xuri coughs "optional" *cough*
Ripper: i have ideas too

Abaddon: well ladies and gents, thank you all for coming tonight
Abaddon: We hope you find it a success, I know we do
Abaddon: Thank you for your continuing support and feedback, it all makes it a better project

 

[psz]

Fifth official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
May 7th, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

EviLDeD: Welcome to another session of the UOX3 House of Commons Chat. We have been tending to things in RL, and virtually, as you have probably noticed by the lack of the last 3 meetings.
EviLDeD: We are back on schedule, and things should resume to the almost normal stream we were before the brief holiday.
EviLDeD: Skyfire has volunteered to take your questions this session, so please direct your question to him. And Thanks for coming.
EviLDeD: «Boris»: when will UOX totally blow sphere right out of the FUCKING water!!?!!?!!? what new features are going to help accomplish this?
EviLDeD: Well, we already don't?
* Xuri ponders "what water"
Abaddon: I'd agree with that
EviLDeD: As for features, there are MANY new ideas getting worked in, and kicked around. so to give you a list would be like telling you what your xmass presents are before xmass. Or heunika (apologies for my misspelling)

Abaddon: «Chaos»: When are we going to see the next townstone phase, if its not already on a shard somewhere?
Abaddon: This is one of those easter eggs we were talking about
Abaddon: We've been kicking around a lot of ideas, but none of our plans are much more than fluid at the moment
Abaddon: but yes, we'd like to see townstones progress further if possible, it is on our list of things to look at and long term goals to improve
EviLDeD: Wait till you see what app does have in store
EviLDeD: App= Abaddon
* EviLDeD kicks himself out

EviLDeD: <Hanse> How far along is multithreading?
EviLDeD: Hanse, I have a complete threading model laid out that I have verbally shared with the other devs, I have gone as far as to code up some routines that after being tested well will be put into uox3. We are well ahead in the threading area of the server, however implementation has been halted due to obvious
EviLDeD: changes in thinking, and method in the source code.

Abaddon: «Boris»: do the ntrigrs.scp work? cause some people say theirs work, but i cant get mine to work? what is wrong? eh
Abaddon: Well, to my knowledge, all triggers now work
Abaddon: I don't personally know off hand of any that don't, but I could be wrong
Abaddon: if anyone knows they do work, then please get in touch with me if possible, so I can have some clear directions on how to make them work
Abaddon: if the general consensus is that they are broken, then I guess we need to take a look at it :>
* EviLDeD agrees with Abaddon. Never kicked around with triggers, much except for cooking

Abaddon: «Boris»: ab: are you planning on starting coding classes again anytime?
Abaddon: If I honestly thought that I would get a reasonable number of people turning up regularly, I would probably try and start them up again
Abaddon: Because, the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to others
Abaddon: Now.... if I could regularly get 4 or 5 people in one place for 30 or 60 mins, then sure, I'd consider starting it up again
Abaddon: But you'd need to get those people before I'd consider it again :>
Abaddon: If anyone is interested, please go through Boris
EviLDeD: )
Abaddon: He asked the question... so he gets to do the leg work :>
Skyfire: hehe
Abaddon: And for those who are asking me already, it's C++ teaching

EviLDeD: «Org»: Question. I'm wondering when the current problems are going to be fixed before new additions are added.
EviLDeD: Org, this is something that has been an ongoing issue with the DevTeam, this is also much of the reason that many have moved on to what they consider better, and greener EMU's (Mooooo). We feel that critical problems, should be FIRST and foremost. Killer features, and other extras have a low priority in the DevTeam. However not forgotten.
EviLDeD: I think that Ab will agree were are nearing a point that a lot of how you have known UO'g will change.
EviLDeD: But in simple answer to your question we have always been working on important things and pass up features often.
Abaddon: Oh yes, very much so
Abaddon: I've passed up dozens of killer ideas, for the sake of trying to get this thing more stable
Abaddon: We all want to see it strong, stable and fast
EviLDeD: Passed up doesn't mean thrown out! So don't think that any ideas that have been external and great have been forgotten because they haven't

EviLDeD: «JustMichael»: When will people be able to delete and accounts to their shard without screwing up all the accounts after the one they added or deleted?
EviLDeD: This is a VERY important issue, they way that the accounts are coded in the first place was ridiculous, and how the item/chars were linked was even more daring. However code styles wern't stable enough to support the true benefit that the hash tables made available
EviLDeD: pair this up with almost terrible account code you have our problem. There is a fix on the horizon. I figure over the next few releases you will see this bug gone. Cause a bug this truly is

Abaddon: «Skywise1»: Any chance of getting a RemoveNPC trigger command for Triggers? Great for Quests...
Abaddon: Sounds like a nice idea to me
Abaddon: But as we've been saying, a lot of nice ideas have been put on the back burner for other issues
* EviLDeD agrees with Abaddon
Abaddon: If you can give me the details of exactly what you want, then I might be able to get around to looking at it sometime
Abaddon: But no promises on a time frame, sorry

EviLDeD: [20:28] <Skyfire> THIS IS A BUG (could be a question): «GM_Death_afk»: *Sir* there is a well know bug of peoples char accounts being ruined by getting attacked after they are already ghosts and then losing their backpacks permanently. This is now effecting over half my users, any address of this issue would be extremely helpful.. as yet I have no solution to the problem
EviLDeD: This is something that you will find repaired when the account issues that JustMichael asked about earlier. This problem is heavily tied to the same systems, thus it doesn't work.
EviLDeD: and to reinforce that this is on the IMPRITIVE to fix lists.
EviLDeD: Imparetive
Skyfire: IMPERITIVE
(As an aside, spell checker says Imperative)
EviLDeD: blah
Skyfire: yea

Abaddon: «Ripper»: when will you change the pathfinding walking in combat for npcs? It really could use a change. Any thought?
Abaddon: Well, I think the pathfinding issue you have Ripper is actually WP related, not UOX related
Abaddon: I know we fixed a major pathfinding issue a couple of months back, it turned NPCs in combat from mindless zombies who couldn't walk anywhere to intelligent creatures (or relatively so)
Abaddon: However, as with all systems, I'm sure we'll go back and have a look at it sometime
Skyfire: WP walking works fine. This was an older UOX bug (about 4 versions ago)
Skyfire: fixed by the dev team

EviLDeD: «JustMichael»: Any chance of getting a NPC Rectangle and NPC Circle that use the NPC's current position for the centre?
EviLDeD: Good idea JM. I think that with some of the upcoming changes that this request will be taken care of.

EviLDeD: «Adooziewop»: Q: For the uninformed (me), what ARE the major issues being worked on at the moment?
EviLDeD: Ado, on this one please read up on back LOG of previous HOC meetings, we have been asked what's on the horizon a lot, and we have done our best to explain it to some level. A lot of work explaining it here would be saved if you would please have a look at the previous logs at http://uox.stratics.com

Abaddon: «Boris»: when will NPC running be added? if it already is.. how do i enable it?
Abaddon: The framework for it is in there, that's for sure
Abaddon: However, somehow a while back a partial implementation was actually removed
Abaddon: It's on the back burner, like other things, but a variable speed of npcs would be a nice thing :>
Xuri: Hm.
Xuri: NPCs already run. excuse me for interrupting.
Xuri: just add RUNS in npc.scp for that npc
Xuri: and it will run (in combat)
Abaddon: I know

EviLDeD: «morphius»: Any time frame on when auto account creation will be fixed or where I can get a CGI script to do it?
EviLDeD: doh.
EviLDeD: Well anyhow he can read it later.
EviLDeD: When accounts gets fix autoaccount creation will get fixed with it. As for a CGI, I have an undocumented, and unsupported DLL that works on IIS/PWS webservers that will facilitate account create. As for other CGI alternatives, I am also looking to make a suitable replacement for *nix webservers, like Apache, however this wont be happening to soon, unless serious interest is displayed.

EviLDeD: «GM_Death_afk»: is there any current workaround for the ghosts dying / losing backpack (stats change as well as far s i can tell)?
EviLDeD: At this point there really isn't much that we can do. As its a pretty nasty bug were always looking for a way to fix it. I have said many times before that we will be fixing these account, char related issues over the next number of builds. Keep your eyes open.

Abaddon: «RevolutionShadow»: Question: Anything under development or currently in place that would allow someone to set an NPC's path? Such as listing a set of coordinates for the NPC to follow. Something along the lines of an NPC Schedule, as seen in Ultima 7.
Abaddon: Well, if you want a faster way to cripple a server's speed, I can't think of one :>
Abaddon: Perhaps as a long term goal it might be worth considering, but as it stands right now, it's not really feasible

Skyfire: if( chars[c].npc && chars[c].runs && chars[c].war ) // Ripper 10-2-99 makes npcs run in war mode or follow (Ab mod, scriptable)
Skyfire: extmove[12]=dir|0x80;
Skyfire: grr
Abaddon: well done Sky :>
Skyfire: wrong button!
EviLDeD: whohoo, coding lessons in the meeting
Skyfire: hehe
Abaddon: If there's any more questions, you might want to ask them now

EviLDeD: «Boris»: Ab, now that i got around 10 people, will you be starting those lessons?
EviLDeD: Talk to Abaddon later.
EviLDeD: Well seeing as that is the last question.
* Connection reset by peer

 

[psz]

Sixth official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
August 6th, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

Welcome to another UOX3HOC Chat
We know it has been a long time since the last, and we do apologize
Tonight's meeting is pretty open, there's no specific topic
If you have any questions, /msg the QuestionBot in the form /msg QuestionBot !qadd My question to add goes here
and please, don't spam the bot :
Okay folks, ask away!

Sephiroth: Question 2: "Are any drastic script changes going to take place relatively soon? or even at all?"
Sephiroth: I'll take this I suppose
Sephiroth: I'm currently in the process of overhauling the existing scripts into a new system, which is basically the same as the current but cleaner.

Abaddon Who are the key players in the UOX Dev Community and what are they working on now?
Abaddon: Well, actually, that's a very good question
Abaddon: Recently the UOX Development Community has taken a big step forward
Abaddon: As of now, EviLDeD and I are the 2 server coders
Abaddon: EviLDeD is also the head of the project as it stands
Abaddon: Recently, we created some more teams within UOX3 itself
Abaddon: Decius now heads up our newly formed Tool Development Team
Decius:
Abaddon: He has a team of 9, and they will be endeavouring to bring you new tools soon
Abaddon: Seph is the head of our Definition Team and our Script Team (currently the same, soon to be split)
Abaddon: however, as of the moment, we have no Documentation Team (though we're still looking for one)
Abaddon: Decius, why don't you tell us who's in your team, and if anything's coming soon?
Decius: ok. Well as Ab just said currently there are 9members
Decius: They are not just Americans, which will mean we could theoretically code
Decius: 24hrs a day to bring you guys tools
Decius: As they encompass most of the world
Decius: As for tools well we are open to suggestions there are 2 tools currently in dev
Decius: One is a Serial compactor which is coming out soon, this tool renumbers the SERIAL values in items.wsc and chars.wsc
Decius: because as we all know the number doesn't ever get reset when you delete stuff.
Decius: The other is a little hush hush till i get my head around the idea.
Decius: As for members not many made it here today.
Decius: If your a member and your here speak out now, damn it
Decius: All tools will be open source along with an OCX i wrote before heading the team
* Sephiroth notes that since it's moderated that is impossible
Unseen: Hehe, I'm helping with any database related stuff with tools.
Unseen: And whatever other skills I can muster up
Decius: Aside from that I guess I'd better mention I'm not a complete vb newbie at least i hope not. I've programmed a few things for UOX now.
Decius: Anyway Seph you want to take the floor?
Sephiroth: I'm heading up the script\definition team, Unseen is gonna be helping a bit too =).
Unseen: Absolutely
Sephiroth: Also, some questions have come in concerning what I said earlier (at least that's how I understand them) the Definitions are like current scripts, they handle item's and npc's mostly.
Sephiroth: The new scripts I'm not real sure yet, still haven't gotten a lot of info on them, but they will be based on jscript and I believe allow for some of the things hard coded now to be scripted.
Sephiroth: A reminder, if you're referring to a previous question, please point that out . Also, I'm still looking for Definition writers, and scripters, Email me at [email protected] for any applications\info.
Sephiroth: I'm done unless Unseen has anything to say.
Unseen: Nope
Sephiroth: Also, the new definitions will be done script side here within the week, since EviL isn't here I'm not real sure how long til it's done code side

Is housing going to be worked on soon, or are other priorities coming first?
Abaddon: That's a very good question, and in actuality, I do have an answer, shock horror :>
Abaddon: Yes, housing is definitely being worked upon. We do have things that are considered more critical
Abaddon: But housing is definitely being worked upon, when it's complete it'll be a much cleaner system from a code perspective, and from an end user's perspective too
Abaddon: It is part of our revamp to the source code, which is progressing well, and hopefully we'll be able to make a big general release within the month
Abaddon: But as it stands at the moment, there are still a number of issues being dealt with
I'd like to mention, just in case anyone thinks this, I am not the Chaos that made CGMT =)

Any chance of adding an option into GM tools to change the command prefix for those of us who use 2.0.0 and greater?
Decius: That is an immense possibility, but can only be possible with tools we created. Unless other developers see fit to release code to use to change there tools.
Decius: A lot of the tools such as CGMT were released a long time ago
Decius: and the dev's for those have not been heard from since and without there source it will be impossible to change.
Decius: Although in the future the Devteam will i hope come up with a new GM tool to beat ShardAce, CGMT and Accomplice.
Unseen: Most tools still being supported support selectable prefixes, the others....like Decius said, no source, no luck.

If I manipulate my scripts now will I regret it and have to redo them after you make your changes? Are they that drastic I guess I mean?
Sephiroth: This depends what you are doing really.
Sephiroth: If it's adding a few items, it's easy enough to convert those over to the new system without worrying about item numbers\difficulty learning, it's really quite similiar (and the item numbers are quite flexible).
Sephiroth: Rewriting the damages of every weapon would be something you'd have to do over, although I'm basing all my damage and armour values off stratics.
Unseen: I always follow stratics for my work
Decius: Also my script editor supports current and Seph's new format and has renumbering and publishing facilities to fix scripts to new format.
Decius: Blatant self plug
Sephiroth: =)

Will UOX be multi-threaded in the future?
Abaddon: Yes, it certainly will be
Abaddon: If you can find previous UOX3HoC chats, you'll know that's a yes
Abaddon: There are a number of issues with threading though, and they each need to be dealt with
Abaddon: From what I understand, a few have tried threading without much success, but we believe we know how to deal with that
Abaddon: So yes, it's certainly on the agenda, no doubts of that
Xuri: Speaking about the previous chats...I'll update uoxdev.com with the previous ones soon. (and this one too, eventually

What are the major differences between UO and UOX?
Chaos: Thats a little tricky, but I believe this question means OSI style of gameplay and UOX
Chaos: With UOX, as a shard admin, you have the potential of making your own items, your own monsters, etc
Chaos: Its really limitless with what you can do, but of course, you can always make the game OSI style.
* Sephiroth adds in There are utilities out there that permit you to change the map if you so desire.
Chaos: All the resources can be found at www.uoxdev.com, and you can always get customized scripts =)

Is any one going to document all the features in uox, there are tons of undocumented features, commands etc in the source
Abaddon: Well, that's why we're looking for a Documentation Team
Abaddon: Yes, we want to document a lot more, and I'm working alongside Evil to document the source a lot better as well
Unseen: I'm hoping to organize a lot of the features and functions (not source)

What about the notoriety/monster aggression? also, will the new system of scripting be interchangeable with the current system? cut/paste form old to new, vice versa
Sephiroth: I'll take part 2 here.
Sephiroth: Most of the new Definition system is the same as the old style. Most of it is just a rewrite for cleanliness and bug killing. The only new part is SECTION ITEM # is replaced with [itemname], and a few new commands.
Sephiroth: Decius' script editor will auto change the item numbering part for you.
Abaddon: As for monster aggression, that's being worked on
EviLDeD: Ill head the first part of that answer up
EviLDeD: Notoriety will be changed a lot over the long term, as it stands now it is very one sided in many ways.
EviLDeD: As for aggression I am not sure how to answer that question possibly re submit that question with a little more specifics

Could you give us some information on what new features are coming to UOX3 in the future?
Abaddon: Well, we plan a lot really
Abaddon: I can't really go into a lot of specifics (why spoil the surprise? but I can tell you the general stuff we've been working on
Abaddon: Magic has taken a fair degree of revision, it's a lot neater now, we think you're going to love it
Abaddon: Weather's been fleshed out and updated, and we'll be adding support for the seasons (in our own special way)
Abaddon: Townstones are likely to change, combat's going to be neat, and accounts... well, there's a nice surprise there, that one I'm not going to spoil :>

Will you open for more programmers on the main dev team anytime soon?
EviLDeD: YES! However time is of the essence here, we are working to set up a system that will help secure the best team possible.
EviLDeD: There is going to be an application process, and of course a screening process, and not withstanding that all fixes, and enhancements that are
EviLDeD: considered to be good for the long term of uox3 it will be considered.
EviLDeD: so in short answer to that quest yes we will be taking in 3 more coders when the time permits.
EviLDeD: I suggest all you super coders and idea makers start getting all your ducks in a room, and quaking a song, cause soon we will be looking

I plan on making my own noto system that combines with monster aggression, is the coding going to prohibit this or will the scripts alone allow this to occur? Sorry if that is awkward
EviLDeD: The new coding will most likely prohibit ANY hard coded changes that you might make. As for the script as we flesh out the system more we can better answer that, but at this stage I would like to say yes this would be something that we are keeping in mind
EviLDeD: and that will most likely be very configurable on the whole.
Xuri: Just a note to any newcomers...To ask a question, /msg QuestionBot !qadd Your-Question-goes-here

Any chance of making it so we could use the old uo noto system in uox, this could be turned on or off?
Abaddon: Well, you could go in and code it I guess
Abaddon: If you are prepared to put the time and effort in to code it, then go ahead
Abaddon: But we feel that is not good for the future of UOX3, so it is not likely to go into the main development strand
Abaddon: However, with the Scripting system we're planning to put in
Abaddon: It may be feasible via that mechanism

When and where will there be a new official page for UOX3?
EviLDeD: As soon as it gets completed. The new home will be www.uox3.net, and will deal with everything related directly with uox3. As the main systems of this website are finished it will be made live, I hope that this would have been last month, however life is as life does and is busy as always.
EviLDeD: so keep your browser pointed to www.uox3.net and look for the new website soon.. sorry for the delay.

Are there any UO Client emulators?
knoxos: okay I guess that's my part
Chaos: hehe
EviLDeD: Yes there are, and knoxos the creator of one might wish to talk a little about the emulator
EviLDeD: now its your part.
knoxos: thanks, yes there is a new UO client emulator on work, it is the only GNU i know of and it is written in java
knoxos: I hope one day it will come with it's own graphic files, so the emulator community will be free. So you don't have to have the offical client anymore to play UOX
knoxos: Currently you can view the static world in graphic world, and logon to an UOX shard and walk around in text based mode.
knoxos: There is still a lot do, but a lot has been done already tough...

Are any new trigger tokens/methods gonna be coming our way such as the ability to wear items that fire triggers?
Abaddon: Highly unlikely, truth to tell
Abaddon: The trigger system as it stands is just not worth the time and effort to invest into it
Abaddon: We're hoping to supplant the trigger system with a much more powerful and flexible scripting system
Abaddon: Having said that, we're trying to at least tidy up the triggers (not adding more) for a new release, so that you're not abandoned during the transition period

Also to follow up previous question will wearable items be able to directly modify stats and skills such as a Necklace of Treasure Hunting that gives +20 cartography or similar, you know where I'm coming from?
Abaddon: This doesn't really affect the trigger system so much
Abaddon: As it stands, all stats can be modified by a particular item, but not skills
Abaddon: Depending on demand, we'll look at adding skill modification, though it is distinctly possible

I was told by several people that all noto/monster aggression changes could be done within scripts and not have to alter the code at all, is this true? could i make a daemon aggressive to a blue and not a red? (example)
Abaddon: Well, as it stands I don't believe that is possible
Abaddon: There are a few standard template AI's in the code
Abaddon: but we're hoping to extend the system greatly with the Script system, so you will have final and ultimate control in that regard

Are you guys privately funded or you doing all this for the pure joy of doing it while working a steady job (do you people ever sleep... hehe)? rock on either way, I just don't see how you guys can script and code 24/7 and still afford internet connection, hehe
Decius: For me its love, anyone else?
EviLDeD: well thanks for the thought. no we are not paid, and yes for what ever sickness that this might elude to we do this all for nothig but the feeling of having even just one message like this one to make it all worth while...
* Sephiroth coughs -Now Accepting Donations
Abaddon: For fun, for learning, and to alleviate boredom :
Sephiroth: wanna help out the cause, donate EviL a low GB hard drive so he can run his shard
Abaddon: It's nice to be part of something big
Unseen: I enjoy doing it, though some members of my family don't
Decius: They come to repossess my phone tomorrow
Xuri: I'm doing it (doing what?) because I can't sleep, really.
* Sephiroth secretly takes all the funds and stashes them away from the other devs\scripters
Sephiroth: oops......
Decius: hehe
EviLDeD: we're not angels wither so send all donations for the devteams, payable EviLDeD, and I will see that the funds make it to the respected team.
EviLDeD: or maybe I will just start up a TeamGetTogther fund, where we can all play baseball and bbq shrimps, and get drunken
* EviLDeD wonders if he said that out loud
* Xuri heads off to put a lot of pay-banners up on his site
Sephiroth: drunked!!!!!!

Can you implement a script token known as No-Drop, so you can add high items requiring the user to earn it, not to get a million and give to newbies
Abaddon: It would be nice wouldn't it?
Sephiroth: bwuahahahaha
Abaddon: We'd prefer it to be a part of the script system, though I don't think there'd be all that much harm in putting it in
Abaddon: It's a nice idea, and... hmm, I can think of some other applications, yes... Okay, it looks like it could be a goer

Can Decius be both good looking and intelligent? by Dices
Decius: Yes I can!
Decius: Can I add Egotistical to the list
EviLDeD: Well that is only relevant to how much liquor is consumed over a brief period of time, balanced over the amount of visible like and bar smoke, with bad music on in the background, and is only augmented by the number of peanuts still in the bowl as opposed the on the floor.
Decius: you know it
Sephiroth: the answer is c
EviLDeD: )
Xuri: hehe..
Decius: Isn't the answer 3.2134?
Sephiroth: only on Wednesdays
Decius: Seriously i love these guys!!!
Decius: oooh and Cameron Diaz and Jeri Lynn Ryan

Is it just me or are you guys the greatest people ever and are the Sphere people really Nazis or are they just mean to people who ask questions about things that require thought to respond about?
EviLDeD: Not sure how to take this one, as I know Westy, and nix, very well and well I have no ill towards them or sphere in any way however if they are anal then I cant really comment. We try to answer all that we can if we can, As the only true way to determine what's needed or not needed etc is to hear from the people that use it.
Decius: here here
* Sephiroth apologizes, but he must duck out, someone drink a pre-hoc beer for me
Sephiroth: thats post-hoc

Is any of UO's files copyright? If so, why haven't we all gotten sued yet? =P
EviLDeD: Because we are small fries so don't act like a big potatoes and everyone will be a-ok
Decius: Also its because we don't charge that OSI/Origin whatever don't pick on us as much as they might like
Decius: After all can they sue us for a percentage of nothing?
Decius: Questions is what I do!
Xuri: And UOX itself doesn't violate any copyrights...no UO files are used IN UOX3.

Abaddon: Well folks, seems there aren't any more questions for us tonight
Abaddon: Thank you once again for making UOX3HOC a success
Abaddon: it was really good to see you all here, with so many questions
Abaddon: And thanks for helping us test Qbot 0.1, it had never been tested before :
Decius: I luv Dices!
Abaddon: Thanks all for coming, and have a lovely day
Abaddon: If you have any further queries, message us when we unmoderate
Abaddon: And remember, Decius is your Tool Dev Lead, Evil's your Project Lead, and I'm just a busy body who has too much time on his hand

 

[psz]

Seventh official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
August 20th, 2000
Legend

Developer answer
Question
Misc

Questions
When will the next update release? (Kazuki|Shard, 1 votes)

Where's Seph!? (LeeKwan, 1 votes)

Will there be more Holiday Items like Tree Deeds. (JohnnyRingo, 1 votes)

When is UOX going to do the 1.0 release? (TailSpin, 1 votes)

What major changes can we expect to see in UOX in the near future... and with that, when will UOX start pumping out the releases like they used too? (TailSpin, 1 votes)

Who are the current developers on the dev team? (TailSpin, 1 votes)

I've heard tell that Cironian is going to branch back off with UOX and do his own thing... any truth to that? (TailSpin, 1 votes)

What recent features have been added to UOX? (Lucus, 1 votes)

Will you be adding programs to make custom weapons like Lightsabres. (JohnnyRingo, 1 votes)

Will we possibly see added support for automatic NPC-driven quests in game? (Rayin[TCE], 1 votes)

Since my shard is almost done, when you update UOX3 will I have to redo everything on my shard? (Kazuki|Shard, 1 votes)

Why don't we get the web stuff a little more organized... one second its uox.stratics.com then its uoxdev.com now I hear its going to be something else... why not just stick with one and STAY.... uox.stratics.com sucks, and then uoxdev.com alright I guess, but now another site (TailSpin)

Will UOX not be adding stupid shit... IE: IRC servers to their emu? (TailSpin, 1 votes)

"the web thing will be awesome and I'd like to add, "when will it be up" hehe and just to say that I am back! *evil my wub bucket :" by Cy with 1 votes

Welcome to yet another UOX3 House of Commons meeting. This weeks topic is A users view into what is wrong, or right with UOX3. A talk about what things UOX3 could be
Questions tonight will be handled by the QuestionBot again. Any questions you want, message the bot in the format of /msg QuestionBot !addq Your question goes here

When will the next update release? (Kazuki|Shard, 1 votes)
Abaddon: Well, I imagine we could release a version tomorrow or the day after
Abaddon: We have a few minor fixes (tailoring and the murder bug) which we will put in, and make a release of
Abaddon: We might be able to make a few other fixes as well, depending on time frame

Where's Seph!? (LeeKwan, 1 votes)
EviLDeD: If we told you , we would have to kill you.

Will there be more Holiday Items like Tree Deeds. (JohnnyRingo, 1 votes)
Abaddon: Both EviLDeD and myself would like to see more of these particular items for players
Abaddon: We don't know when it might happen, we have rather full plates as it is
Abaddon: But yes, it would be a nice touch I think
EviLDeD: Let just see what the fat elf brings this year.. ho-ho-ho

When is UOX going to do the 1.0 release? (TailSpin, 1 votes)
EviLDeD: This has been a popular question. I think that we have a game plan that would have uox3 1.0 release comming out on Dec 31, 2000. Might even be at midnight.. Who know, however we are striving to make this date.
Zippy-: Oo spooky.
EviLDeD: the real millenium
EviLDeD:
Xuri: Real is what you want it to be..*mutters*

What major changes can we expect to see in UOX in the near future... and with that, when will UOX start pumping out the releases like they used too? (TailSpin, 1 votes)
Abaddon: Well, as we made mention to in the previous chat, we certainly have a lot of things on our agenda
Abaddon: Scripting is the obvious one, it'll be much more powerful and flexible than it is now
Abaddon: Accounts have been worked upon, but we won't spoil that surprise
Abaddon: You'll be happy, most of our systems have gotten a major touch up. There's some nice magic stuff in the wind, as well as changes to many other things, like races, and weather, and all that wonderful goodness :>
Abaddon: As for pumping out releases.... well, we're aiming for quality, not quantity
Abaddon: Yes, we aim to get back to regular frequent releases, but we want to make sure they are GOOD releases
EviLDeD: The schedule that I was hoping to conform to would be an update bi-weekly
EviLDeD: however this is a very time permitting thing.

Who are the current developers on the dev team? (TailSpin, 1 votes)
Abaddon: Right now, it's just EviLDeD and myself
Abaddon: we're the only 2 coders who are working on the UOX3 source base, which as you can imagine, makes it kind of tough at times :>
Abaddon: However, EviLDeD has been working on an application form, because we would like to take on a few more coders (3) in the not too distant future
Abaddon: But we would like quality, not quantity
Abaddon: For all those who are interested, please brush up on your C++ and your UOX3 code, it'll help, trust me :>

I've heard tell that Cironian is going to branch back off with UOX and do his own thing... any truth to that? (TailSpin, 1 votes)
EviLDeD: I myself have not heard this but in the current state of affairs I imagine that I would be one of the last to hear. If this rumor is true that I bid all the best to Cironian, adn his team and hope that he can pull off what a lot of others have tried and not succeeded. This project started way back with a guy names Jagermister(sp), and was passed along thelines to cironian, etc. It has taken a long time to reach its current standing
EviLDeD: Another quality emu to compete against just makes the community stronger, and better on a whole as long as its done with respect, and honor so to speak. I speak for myself in this response, Ab might feel diff, but that's up to him to detail
EviLDeD: so in short I wish him luck in any endeavours he partakes in. Him = Cironian

What recent features have been added to UOX? (Lucus, 1 votes)
Abaddon: Well, there haven't been. That's what the current standing feature freeze is about
Abaddon: However, we hope to lift the feature freeze condition in the next few weeks or so when we make a big release
Abaddon: Until then, you'll just have to be a little patient
EviLDeD: I was thinking when 1.0 releases
EviLDeD: the freeze will be over.
EviLDeD: but no guarantees

Will you be adding programs to make custom weapons like Lightsabres. (JohnnyRingo, 1 votes)
EviLDeD: Well I am not up to swing on all the current events, but the Official uox3 ToolTeam was started and is head up by Decius. The goal of this team is to create tools such as this.
EviLDeD: Eventually I would like to think that there will be 3rd party tools that will replace images, and or add images, as well as streamline their exchange from server to client.
Zippy-: There are already a few tools that can add various things to the muls (like items, or houses) floating around....
Zippy-: if you know a little VB, you could play with Decius' OCX for art.mul.
Chaos: Also, there are a TON of scripts that have neat little items in them, you can find the scripts from www.uoxdev.com

MACHINE REBOOT

EviLDeD: Well personally I think that uox has developed a community spirit all on its own, long past uo's demise as you put it, uox, and sphere, and other emu will live on and survive past as they are evolving, and capture the true heart of the gamer. I think that we will continue long past the *cough* demise of UO

Will we possibly see added support for automatic NPC-driven quests in game? (Rayin[TCE], 1 votes)
EviLDeD: If I understand this question correctly, the answer would be yes. AI will be scriptable, so technically the mind's the limit here. If you are talking about in game pre made (hardcoded) quest npc, I guess if a good and solid enough script (story line) for the quest, and the npcs was provided and was passed putting in a defined set of hardcoded quester NPC could be possible.

Since my shard is almost done, when you update UOX3 will I have to redo everything on my shard? (Kazuki|Shard, 1 votes)
Abaddon: The simple and quickest answer to that is really... no
Abaddon: Tools will be provided to migrate across any macro level changes, and UOX will handle the micro level stuff
Abaddon: QuestionBot: Is monster AI coded into the client, or within UOX itself? On this line, do you foresee any improvements in monster behaviour while in combat? (Tom, 1 votes)
Abaddon: It's coded into UOX, most certainly
Abaddon: and as to answer your second question... think Olympic motto type stuff... "faster, higher, better"
Abaddon: Yes, I foresee it
Abaddon: (for those that don't know, I'm Australian, so it was... I guess... kinda nationalistic :>)

Why don't we get the web stuff a little more organized... one second its uox.stratics.com then its uoxdev.com now I hear its going to be something else... why not just stick with one and STAY.... uox.stratics.com sucks, and then uoxdev.com alright I guess, but now another site (TailSpin)
EviLDeD: I have to agree, as do a lot of others about the state of uox.stratics.com. uoxdev.com is the best source to obtain information on most facets of uox3, from tools, scripts, exe's, humour etc.
EviLDeD: as well as other emulators closely related to the uox project.
EviLDeD: the other site that you are hearing about would be www.uox3.net. This sites goal is to provide a tight, and informative resource for things directly related to the Official uox3 DevTeam. Schedule, release dates, etc.
EviLDeD: This site is not completed to time restraints. However will be up as soon as a few of the core components are completed.

Will UOX not be adding stupid shit... IE: IRC servers to their emu? (TailSpin, 1 votes)
EviLDeD: Well. Stupid shit was harsh. to answer you though "No there will be no stupid shit like irc servers added". However give Sphere and Westy due credit the idea behind the irc server is a sound one for questers, and people that wish to deal the mechanics for characters that are in game. or to possible send commands to the core etc in a irc chat room.
EviLDeD: it is a solid idea, however not one that uox3 will be adopting anytime too soon

"the web thing will be awesome and I'd like to add, "when will it be up" hehe and just to say that I am back! *evil my wub bucket :" by Cy with 1 votes
EviLDeD: Once again as soon as I get a hard drive and get all back set up and running. give or take a couple weeks. I like to have things working as well as I can before pulling down my pants and showing my ass... )
EviLDeD: On behalf of the Official DevTeam I would like to thank all of you that attended tonight's meeting. Without your feedback and support there would be no real reason to do any of this.. We look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. Sept 3, 8:00pm mst (gmt -7)
EviLDeD: Feel free to linger around, there is coffee at the back of the room.....

 

[psz]

Eighth Official Chat
Monday, 4 September 2000
EviLDeD Welcome to the (I think) 8th UOX3 House of commons meeting..
EviLDeD This meeting we will be taking in general questions, or suggestions, reports. And will be a short meetings.
EviLDeD If abb would broadcast the question bot instructions we can begin.
Abaddon if anyone would like to ask a question, please msg the qbot in the form of /msg QuestionBot !addq Your question goes here
Abaddon (Please note that I actually was not here due to a power outage, and my responses were added post HOC)

Questions
When will dolphins be able to swim???? (Knuckles, 1)
Are you developing any programs freely, and if you are, what will the features be? (Knuckles, 1)
Hey-would it be possible to make a program that will make uo 3-d? (Knuckles, 1)
What are you working on right now on uox? (Knuckles, 1)
When will Build 20 be released? (Dreoth, 1)
When will www.uox3.net be up? (Knuckles, 1)
Will there be any new tools for creating new worlds? World Forge editor is great, but I get lost seeing only so few tiles at once... (Laocourn_Gauddemus, 1)
I've heard some things about NPC AI scripting in the forums, but could you give more info on that? (Laocourn_Gauddemus, 1)
There has been talk of bringing several other script, umm, engines, in (i.e. POL and others) what are the exact details on how this will affect how we can customize a shard? (Lump_The_No-Legged_Gamer, 1)
Will necromancy be scripted in to work more like normal spells? (Dreoth, 1)
Will monsters get an AI boost more = to OSI's current pathfinding? (Dreoth, 1)
Will races be workable with npcs so that aggressive npcs with the same race as a player won't attack that player and attack others? (Dreoth, 1)
Will the regionspawns be fixed where it won't overspawn if you have to restart UOX? (Dreoth, 1)
When will dolphins be able to swim???? (Knuckles, 1)
EviLDeD Well it was just told to me that Thyme is rewriting some code for Xuri, of which might or does have support for flying, and swimming.
EviLDeD It is not a high priority at this point for us, but will be soon. So basically either until we can get to it, or merge with Thyme's code for Xuri (of course thyme permitting)


Are you developing any programs freely, and if you are, what will the features be? (Knuckles, 1)
EviLDeD Please stay on topic. I am not sure what this question means.


Hey-would it be possible to make a program that will make uo 3-d? (Knuckles, 1)
EviLDeD This would be a question better put towards the ToolDev team, however none of them are here. SO my standard answer to this is "Anything is possible, just how long it takes"


What are you working on right now on uox? (Knuckles, 1)
EviLDeD Current I am working on finishing up account operations, as well as some network tweaking. I am not exactly sure what Abaddon is working on, however I believe that there are some pretty kewl things coming from him soon
Unseen I'm working with Seph to change over the .scp files
Abaddon I'm working on integrating a preliminary Scripting engine, and reworking a lot of major subsystem code. That's when I have free time (haven't had much recently)


When will Build 20 be released? (Dreoth, 1)
EviLDeD Not exactly sure, as time permits, and issues resolved it will be released.
EviLDeD Sorry for how vague that was, but not sure.
Abaddon (Note we are aiming for a fortnightly release of builds, between the HOCs. However, the build NUMBER will depend on feature additions and bug fixes)


When will www.uox3.net be up? (Knuckles, 1)
EviLDeD Gawd! I hope Frigging soon. I have been offered help however the help that has been offered is of the unix/linux variety, uox3.net is an IIS website, and is being developed with com, and asp. so really It will be up as soon as I get the finishing touches up on a couple systems finished.


Will there be any new tools for creating new worlds? World Forge editor is great, but I get lost seeing only so few tiles at once... (Laocourn_Gauddemus, 1)
EviLDeD I have made a note of this, and I will mention it to Decius as soon as I see him next, unseen as well has heard your plea and will most likely talk with Decius about it.
EviLDeD Let me intervene here Mr_Fixit is working on one, currently he has a rough beta out that lets you add statics, if I find the url I'll pass it along =)


I've heard some things about NPC AI scripting in the forums, but could you give more info on that? (Laocourn_Gauddemus, 1)
Unseen I've had a few people ask me about that on my shard. But I just use lots of speech.scp and ntrigs.scp
EviLDeD To skip being repetitive, prior HoC logs might be of more use in answering those questions. I do not follow the forums very often.
EviLDeD NPC AI will be ultimately scriptable with the new script engine when it finally get massaged into the code and released.
EviLDeD I am not sure if this is what you were talking about , or what unseen was talking about, but I think that best answers both
Chaos- Seems we get an NPC AI question every time =) I believe Abaddon previously stated that the AI will be changed a little, but I'm not certain.…
EviLDeD Yes to be fully scriptable
Chaos- Yea, that's what he was telling me about =)


There has been talk of bringing several other script, umm, engines, in (i.e. POL and others) what are the exact details on how this will affect how we can customize a shard? (Lump_The_No-Legged_Gamer, 1)
EviLDeD We are not using anyone's scripting engine, we decided to use a very broad and supported engine in the form of JavaScript. From Abaddon's premi tests he seems satisfied that it will be rock solid.


Will necromancy be scripted in to work more like normal spells? (Dreoth, 1)
EviLDeD Hmm, I remember talking with Ab, and I think that eventually skills, and spells will be completely scriptable.
EviLDeD So not sure what "normal" spells infers but I think that the new system when put in place will satisfy you question.


Will monsters get an AI boost more = to OSI's current pathfinding? (Dreoth, 1)
EviLDeD Well it is my goal to at the barest minimum support ALL things osi. But this is where it stops.
Weazel I think he means like will monsters be smart enough so you cant just pump em full of arrows behind a rock =)
EviLDeD Barest minimum, the way that we have been developing uox3 as of late of you haven't seen the progression is to make it a full customizable, no limit server engine that just happens to support UO on a perfect level (or as close to perfect as the powers that be at OSI deem allowable)


Will races be workable with npcs so that aggressive npcs with the same race as a player won't attack that player and attack others? (Dreoth, 1)
EviLDeD Well that is a little detailed in an explanation but I have seen some of the things Ab has been working on and I think that you will be certainly enlightened..


Will the regionspawns be fixed where it won't overspawn if you have to restart UOX? (Dreoth, 1)
EviLDeD This will be the last question unless Abaddon gets here in the next couple minutes
EviLDeD I have to be running due to Real Life issues.
Unseen UOX Devs aren't allowed to have lives
EviLDeD We have known about this one for a while. Thanks for reminding us. With the new account char/item system including regions, and etc this will be taken care of automatically.
EviLDeD So I guess inadvertently the answer is yes.

 

[psz]

Ninth Official Chat
Sunday, 17 September 2000
Abaddon Okay folks, welcome once again to the Ninth Official UOX3 House of Commons Chat
Abaddon There's no set topic for today, so it's basically anything goes. Same deal as last HoC, all questions are to go through QuestionBot
Abaddon Please add your questions through /msg QuestionBot !addq Why do we use a bot you ask?
Unseen points to the QuestionBot in a Vanna White style
Abaddon And also feel free to peruse the questions already there, and vote for the questions that you most want answered
Abaddon So, let's get started, add those questions now!
Xuri Welcome to the newcomers..../msg QuestionBot !addq to ask questions.

Questions
What are the main fixes/updates to this build? (Dreoth, 3 votes)
With the new script system will it be possible to write AI scripts which can be assigned to NPCs ? Will it be also possible to write scripts for quests and link them with AI scripts ? (Fred777, 1 votes)
What's the official way contributing to uox3? (Knoxos, 1 votes)
Can we expect to see any new skills soon? (Jin, 5 votes)
Will there be any planned releases that will fix rain in dungeons? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
I realize PvP isn't a priority for UOX but will you ever make a precasting feature available? (Jin, 4 votes)
When will the Dev Team be accepting new members, and what sort of criteria/experience are you looking for in an Official Developer? (Thyme, 2 votes)
Any ETA on the huge release we've heard about *probably not but worth asking =]* (Dreoth, 1 votes)
Further elaborating on the fact that the new script system will allow single AIs assigned to each character, will it be possible to randomize the AI? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Why has the quote of the week been the same for 5 years on the UOX.dev page? (Jin, 1 votes)
When with the line-of-sight issue in caves be fixed? (Unseen, 1 votes)
Can you send more than one picture for the UOX3 pic contest? (Jin, 1 votes)
Can we ever expect to see people be able to get in bed? Now that would be handy! *grin* (Jin, 1 votes)
Will the new system simplify GUMPs? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
What are the main fixes/updates to this build? (Dreoth, 3 votes)
Abaddon Well, first and foremost amongst the new fixes will be a fix for the "It begins to rain" problem. I know a number of you find it incredibly annoying, and at the moment it's only quickly suppressed. However, a full fix is forthcoming, so rejoice, lag will get better :>
Abaddon There'll be a few combat and magic related fixes (no real details as yet), so basically it'll be a 19b release not a 20 release


With the new script system will it be possible to write AI scripts which can be assigned to NPCs ? Will it be also possible to write scripts for quests and link them with AI scripts ? (Fred777, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, this falls very much in my department, as I've been working on the Script Engine here
Abaddon What we envision at the moment, for a first initial (but not complete) implementation is an event based system
Abaddon So you can write a script for an item/char for when they're attacked, or when they use a skill, or any number of events (around 25 or so at the moment)
Abaddon A full and complete API will be provided as well (over 100 functions), so there really is a lot of room for expandability!
Unseen The old scripts (.scp) are now know as definitions. They are A LOT more detailed, a lot easier to manage, and have a lot more info
Abaddon At it's simplest, we ran a test script the other day which fired when a person stepped on an item
Abaddon The script fired, the person was teleported, the person emoted, and they had sparkle effects around them
Abaddon Which, I believe, is more than you can do with the current triggers (but I could be wrong)
Unseen it is
Abaddon Please note, that this can be assigned to an individual item or npc, or a class of them via the data files (old script files)
Abaddon So each character can have their own AI


What's the official way contributing to uox3? (Knoxos, 1 votes)
Xuri Basically it's this: All code goes through EviLDeD or Abaddon. So if you have some code you feel would gain the UOX3 community to have in UOX3, you send the code to them.
Xuri Of course, no bad code goes in, should be un-necessary to mention :>


Can we expect to see any new skills soon? (Jin, 5 votes)
Abaddon Well, we'd all love new skills, I know, but first and foremost we need to finish up the skills that already exist
Abaddon Also, I don't think most people realize what new skills would require. It would require updates to the clients file, a modification to one particular packet (rendering any unmodified clients useless), and a few other niggling things
Abaddon So it's not a simple solution, but it's something to investigate for the future


Will there be any planned releases that will fix rain in dungeons? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Xuri A partial fix for that will be the rain-lag fix for 19b that was mentioned earlier.
Xuri The means to do the other part of that fix is already there, by setting up the weather in the regions for those dungeons.
Xuri Each region in regions.scp should have a WEATHAB # number which is connected to the various section numbers in weathab.scp - and that is the file you need to edit if you want to disable rain in dungeons.


I realize PvP isn't a priority for UOX but will you ever make a precasting feature available? (Jin, 4 votes)
Abaddon Well, basically, the majority of this feature already exists in UOX
Abaddon I've had some requests to take it out actually :>


When will the Dev Team be accepting new members, and what sort of criteria/experience are you looking for in an Official Developer? (Thyme, 2 votes)
EviLDeD Well I guess that one was saved especially for me. Really there are 2 things holding the process up. one lack of time(as I need to get a good set of questions etc, hashed out with abaddon, and the fact that it is to be an online app that I just haven't had time to throw together.
EviLDeD The criteria and experience I would have to say would be of the moderate, to advanced c/C++ levels, understand a good portion of how things work in UOX3, and if nothing else will be able to work along Ab and myself, and the rest of the DevTeam harmoniously
EviLDeD The most important I guess would be liberal amounts of dreamer with coder to back it up.. and to have some fun along the way.


Any ETA on the huge release we've heard about *probably not but worth asking =]* (Dreoth, 1 votes)
EviLDeD Yes very worth asking, and as I have mentioned before in previous HoCs, the plan is to have the BIG release you kind of sarcastically point at is destined for release Dec 31, 2000. A kick off to the new millennium


Further elaborating on the fact that the new script system will allow single AIs assigned to each character, will it be possible to randomize the AI? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Abaddon The simplest answer I can give to that is: The AI randomization will come from your scripts, not from the code
Abaddon If you want it to behave randomly, write it that way. If you want it linear, write it that way
Abaddon We're putting the tools back in to your hands to do things as you want them to be


Why has the quote of the week been the same for 5 years on the UOX.dev page? (Jin, 1 votes)
Xuri What can I say... Hm mm errhmm uhm...ho hum.... I like it bleh I'll change it


When with the line-of-sight issue in caves be fixed? (Unseen, 1 votes)
Abaddon We have people working on the walking code at the moment, and I'm sure that *hint hint* they're working on the Line of Sight issues as well
Abaddon So no idea on a time frame, but it is being looked at


Can you send more than one picture for the UOX3 pic contest? (Jin, 1 votes)
EviLDeD I have been considering that. One of the reasons that I put the limit on the number of image submitted for a given category was to stop only images coming in for just one category. Well at least try to limit it, and get more people to submit to the other categories as well.
EviLDeD I will makes changes, that will allow you 2 images per category. My thought to you though is if you have more than 2 images in mind could they possibly be made to fit in with one of the other categories available.
EviLDeD Hope that helps. its not a lot, but its something


Can we ever expect to see people be able to get in bed? Now that would be handy! *grin* (Jin, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, one of the things that UOX3 aims for is a mature real experience
Abaddon I guess beds have their place in that, but we don't want to degrade the image or maturity of UOX3
Abaddon The whole LSD thing caused numerous problems with very young people want more "drugs" in game, to go with LSD and smoking
Abaddon LSD and smoking were not put in just for that, I believe they were put in for a reason (though we're regretting LSD now, by a long long way)
Abaddon If we thought that adding beds could be done with maturity and not cause problems, then we'll look into it
Abaddon But if it's just another thing to cause the maturity level to drop, then I doubt it
EviLDeD LSD I think was put in so there was a way to hack into buildings.
EviLDeD Was just coded poorly
EviLDeD And of course effects everything, and one


Will the new system simplify GUMPs? (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Abaddon That's another aspect of the Scripting Engine, it will be responsible for custom user gumps and actions based upon button presses and what not. But that may not make the 1st release of the Scripting Engine (being complex and all that :>)

 

[psz]

Tenth Official Chat
Monday, 2 October 2000
Abaddon Okay folks, welcome to another UOX3 House of Commons Chat! There's no set topic tonight, so it's general open season stuff. It would be nice if you read the previous Logs to get up to speed (www.uoxdev.com)
Abaddon All questions are directed and controlled through QuestionBot, if you want to add a question, type /msg QuestionBot !addq Your question goes here
Abaddon So, let the questions begin

Questions
Do you plan to add a delay between potion uses? or could you tell me how I could do this? (Thaliq, 1 votes)
Will the spawn.scp issue be dealt with for the next release? (BoardQuestion, 2 votes)
When do you plan to release the new system (in other words, how many more releases?) (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Will there be a uox4? (Gul, 1 votes)
All I have is UO, no T2A. Will UOX3 still work? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Spellbook opened as containers POLL (GodLike, 1 votes)
I am very interested in modifying NPC behaviors, does UOX3 provide a good..uh.. "NPC smartification" process? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Any word on Runebooks? (GodLike, 1 votes)
Any word on having a super-user friendly map editor like Starcraft in with UOX3? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Is UOX3 user friendly in the sense that any 'newbie' could load it up and start their own shard? If not, what sorts of things would they need to learn, and where would they find them? (Maraxion, 6 votes)
Does UOX3 support IPX network play? (TaleBearer, 2 votes)
Are you going to help/support the shards ? (angelic_t0rmet, 2 votes)
What's been the biggest problem in trying to emulate UO so far? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
When UO2 is finally released, will the UOX team switch to that, or continue working on the UO1 UOX? (TaleBearer, 3 votes)
Do NPCs slow down a server as much as a player would? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
How about the player vs. player part…Will you allow shardmakers to implement their own rules/systems of Player killing? (angelic_t0rmet, 1 votes)
Are people using UOX able to make their own objects and assign custom actions to them, like say a potion that kills the person who drinks it automatically, or polymorphs? (Maraxion, 1 votes)
Can new spells be added by the person running/programming the UOX shard? (Maraxion, 1 votes)
I just installed the newest version of uox3. I have an old version of uox3 as well. What I want to know is, what files do I need to transfer into the new uox3 directory in order to keep the structures and such that I built on the old one? (Duskwalker, 1 votes)
I know this may be a silly question But I haven't been keeping up with Uox for awhile, but does the latest client with UO, work with uox? (Alton, 1 votes)
Do you plan to add a delay between potion uses? or could you tell me how I could do this? (Thaliq, 1 votes)
Abaddon I'm not up to date on my alchemy, so I don't know if there are any further delays involved with them, if so, please mail me ([email protected]) the information
Abaddon or send it to me after the chat's over with


Will the spawn.scp issue be dealt with for the next release? (BoardQuestion, 2 votes)
Abaddon I know this one is an important one for most of the shard ops, and as such it will be dealt with soon. I haven't had a chance (due to RL commitments) to have a good long look at it yet, but I hope to this week
Abaddon I'm hoping that we can fix this particular issue for the next public build


When do you plan to release the new system (in other words, how many more releases?) (Sir_Fawnpug, 1 votes)
Abaddon Basically, it'll be ready when it's ready, and not before hand. How long this will take, I don't know, I can't put a finger on it, but I do want you to know that things are progressing very nicely
Abaddon We're achieving the goals we wish to, and the Script engine is coming along nicely, having resolved an issue with it earlier this week


Will there be a uox4? (Gul, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, hopefully we can kill this question off once and for all. No, there won't be a UOX4. Yes, there once was a UOX4, but it didn't have the capabilities of UOX3. Yes, UOX3 will come along a long way, and we're hoping to get out of beta into a real release number by the end of year


All I have is UO, no T2A. Will UOX3 still work? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Xuri UOX3 works with any version of UO that is supported by Ignition. And Ignition supports all T2A and non-T2A versions of UO above 2.0.0.


Spellbook opened as containers POLL (GodLike, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, I was interested in getting the responses from shard ops, but so little of them seemed to even care about the possibility, so I've basically decided for them.
Abaddon The ability to open a spellbook as a backpack will be taken out at a later date, and the more efficient utilization of spellbooks will be put in. It most likely won't make it into the upcoming build, due to the fact that Gunther is unable to code for us, and Thyme is very busy, so I'm going to have to spend a fair bit of time bug fixing, rather than adding niceties
Abaddon But perhaps the build after that


I am very interested in modifying NPC behaviors, does UOX3 provide a good..uh.. "NPC smartification" process? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Xuri Hum. Well there aren't really that many ways of modifying the NPC behaviour RIGHT NOW. But that will change when the new scripting engine (which is very cool (shameless copy of Ubiq)) arrives.


Any word on Runebooks? (GodLike, 1 votes)
Abaddon To be honest, I haven't had a look at rune books, though I have been told they're rather useful. I'm not sure exactly on how they are implemented on OSI, but I'll have a look at it when I get the chance, and see what can be done. No promises though, we want to nail the bugs and get a new version out first if we can :>


Any word on having a super-user friendly map editor like Starcraft in with UOX3? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Xuri Hm. Well. Currently there's WorldForge, and another tool I know is being worked on though that one is not near being released at the moment (I THINK). Oh and there's a 3D Map Editor which is great when it works but unfortunately is very buggy and crashes a lot.


Is UOX3 user friendly in the sense that any 'newbie' could load it up and start their own shard? If not, what sorts of things would they need to learn, and where would they find them? (Maraxion, 6 votes)
Abaddon Generally, UOX is user friendly enough that any one can pick it up and run it with little difficulty
Abaddon There's a plethora of tools (ShardAce, Xuri's WorldBuilder, and others) that make the life of a GM much simpler
Abaddon There's extensive documentation with the download package and online, and the boards are active and generally response time is pretty good
Xuri As well as several setup "guides" which guide you through the setup of UOX3 step by step.
Xuri (sorry Ab
Sephiroth also, there are usually people available to help you in the channel #uox3 on this server.


Does UOX3 support IPX network play? (TaleBearer, 2 votes)
Abaddon No, UX3 doesn't support IPX network play, because the OSI client itself does not
Xuri It does however support TCP/IP network play ;P


Are you going to help/support the shards ? (angelic_t0rmet, 2 votes)
Xuri Yep. Already do that, and will continue to do so in the near and far future.
Unseen If you want, private message me exactly what you mean by that
Xuri If you run a shard you can get support in #uox3 channel here on stratics network, as already mentioned.
Xuri Or you can go to the message boards at www.uoxdev.com and state your questions there.


What's been the biggest problem in trying to emulate UO so far? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, early in the days (when I didn't code, I didn't know about it), I imagine the hardest part of the process was getting all the packet structures correct and working, that would have been no mean feat
Abaddon Nowadays, the hardest problems we have are bug fixing, and deciding on particular implementations of things. i.e. Do we do things the OSI way, or our perceived better way?
Abaddon I mean, in what other emu could one smoke? (albeit it for RP effects :>)


When UO2 is finally released, will the UOX team switch to that, or continue working on the UO1 UOX? (TaleBearer, 3 votes)
Abaddon Not an easy question to answer, for a number of reasons. For one, at the moment, the entire coding team consists of myself and EviLDeD. There are a few freelance coders, who help us out occasionally, and do submit fixes and what not.
Abaddon But starting an emu from scratch wouldn't be easy, that's for sure, and one of the big questions would be "Would people even want it?"
Abaddon Not to mention the fact that in the next 3 months I graduate from University, so I'm going to have to earn an honest living, kind of takes a big hit out of my free time :>
Xuri Nooo


Do NPCs slow down a server as much as a player would? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, it depends on what particular aspect you're talking about. NPCs have to be intelligent to a degree, and the server generally does all the calculations for them (who they attack, where they walk, things like that). So it takes a fair degree of CPU time, which a PC would not do.
Abaddon However, a PC takes a fair amount of network bandwidth, which NPCs don't impact on at all. So the more PCs you have, the faster the connection you'll need
Abaddon However, there's nothing stopping someone writing a supremely intelligent NPC that logs in like a PC would :>
Chaos- A side note that I've learned from my experiences, don't set the NPCSPEED settings in server.scp too low, you will experience serious lag, and the NPCs move a little too fast, best setting I've seen is 0.6
Unseen Big difference though as Ab explained; PCs=server and bandwidth hit, NPCs=only server hit


How about the player vs. player part…Will you allow shardmakers to implement their own rules/systems of Player killing? (angelic_t0rmet, 1 votes)
Abaddon Certain aspects of the PvP stuff is controllable, in that the number of murders before going red is controllable, and you can decide on whether animals are gray or not
Abaddon But generally, the rules are coded into the server. You can control whether a region is guarded or allows aggressive magic, and the abilities of a region's guards. But other rules are controlled by server code (which is freely available :>)


Are people using UOX able to make their own objects and assign custom actions to them, like say a potion that kills the person who drinks it automatically, or polymorphs? (Maraxion, 1 votes)
Unseen You can currently script quite a few functions into items. The new scripting system be worked on will allow even more functionality
Unseen I'm also working on a custom item maker that will (hopefully) make creating custom items with various abilities easy to make
Unseen I've seen people do some pretty cool stuff with the current Trigger system
Xuri And that trigger system is nothing compared to what's coming.
Unseen Of those two, I've seen the polymorph before
Unseen Yes, the new system is MUCH more powerful


Can new spells be added by the person running/programming the UOX shard? (Maraxion, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, as it currently stands the only way to change the behaviour of the spell is to alter the server's code. Due to a limit in the packet format, you can't rename spells (to my knowledge)
Abaddon But you can fundamentally change the way they behave. With the scripting engine that we're working on, we hope to be able to allow you control over the behaviour of the spells, and allow you to reload the code while the server's still running, so you can change the behaviour of a spell during the shard's execution, without having to stop


I just installed the newest version of uox3. I have an old version of uox3 as well. What I want to know is, what files do I need to transfer into the new uox3 directory in order to keep the structures and such that I built on the old one? (Duskwalker, 1 votes)
Abaddon It would really depend on just how old a version you were using. Your world files are chars.wsc and items.wsc, so all you should need to copy is chars.wsc, items.wsc and accounts.adm
Abaddon Those 3 files are the only crucial ones. HOWEVER, if you used modified scripts, you'll have to transfer them too
Chaos- Oh, for the shard admins: I feel an archive should be saved, like a simple ZIP file. Whenever you make changes. Always comes in handy down the road.


I know this may be a silly question But I haven't been keeping up with Uox for awhile, but does the latest client with UO, work with uox? (Alton, 1 votes)
Xuri Well, there's only one answer to that; Yes. Make sure you have latest ignition.cfg though.

 

[psz]

Eleventh Official Chat
Monday, 16 October 2000
Abaddon Okay folks, welcome to another UOX3 House of Commons Chat
Abaddon I think this makes it number 11 now, and they've all been a success
Abaddon Tonight's topic isn't set, it's just an open topic. So if you have any questions, submit them through QuestionBot via /msg QuestionBot !addq Your question goes here
Abaddon So, let the questions start rolling in

Questions
For those of us with lower end machines or modem connections than wish to host a shard,.. what are the best ways to reduce lag/slowdown? (GodLike, 1 votes)
Can UOX be modified to allow use behind a firewall? Right now it won't work since it requires that you put the machine's IP in the config file (MithDragon, 1 votes)
UOX3, the server emulator, is still in development? (I'm out of touch) (Loon, 1 votes)
Will using uox screw up your osi game? (Lady_Erica, 1 votes)
Will the Linux version be made available again on the uoxdev site? (MithDragon, 1 votes)
Will we ever see a young system implemented in uox? (PoseidonXIX, 1 votes)
Are you thinking of adding a possibility of making new command levels by easy manual configuration? (PoseidonXIX, 1 votes)
I've heard there's a way to replace the .wav files in UO with custom ones. Any plans to make this process as easy as with the WarCraft II sound editor? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
I am unfamiliar with UOX3, but C++ is the current language that we can use to add personal scripts? (Loon, 1 votes)
What's the deal with all the client crashes? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
I am familiar with Sphere, and I would like to know the best way to integrate into UOX3, scripting and such. (Loon, 1 votes)
When can we expect the new script engine? (Antitheus, 1 votes)
Can UOX ever be matched up to be just like regular UO or when precasting took place? (Xmyth, 1 votes)
How much processor power does NPC AI gobble up? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Will the new "trigger" system require more or less cpu/ram? (TWIG, 1 votes)
Can we got a "lock, decrease, increase" function added to our stats? Similar to the way the skills are set up (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
When are you guys going to make the houses more secure so that people cant loot them unless your doors are locked? (HellSaviour, 2 votes)
Recently I've been Running a complete world, All dungeons, All cities, Vendors etc, etc I set it up to save every 20 mins, Only problem is When this Save starts the world completely becomes frozen, Currently I'm running a Win98se with 256mb of ram and a amd 800 any ideas what may be causing (BoardQuestion, 2 votes)
What does OSI think about UOX? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Any way to implement flight into UOX? I've seen mongbats over oceans and mountains before… (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Another housing question: I can open chests from directly under them in a two-story complex. Anyway to fix this? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Is it possible in the future to add a "poison resistance" skill?? (TWIG, 1 votes)
I'm obviously in the dark, but does the UOX3 have their own client? And if not, do they plan on making their own? (Loon, 1 votes)
How would one make magic resist work with poison as well? (TWIG, 1 votes)
How long, do you estimate, will the UOX3 project, be around? (Loon, 1 votes)
How would one make magic resist work with poison as well? I mean, would I need to do some c coding? (TWIG, 1 votes)
I'm interested in getting involved with UOX3, but I have not the slightest experience with C++, what program/learning method would you suggest to learn C++ for this type of thing? (Loon, 1 votes)
I've worked with Sphere, and there is a thick-line between the source (hard-code) and the editable stuff (scripts,etc.), however in UOX3 it seems like there is a gray area, the UOX3 is source is totally open to revision? (Loon, 1 votes)
For those of us with lower end machines or modem connections than wish to host a shard,.. what are the best ways to reduce lag/slowdown? (GodLike, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, we do have to cater to low end machines. Your best bet on a low end machine is 2 things. First of all, don't run the client on the same machine as the server
Abaddon That's just inviting lag (OSI have yet to write a truly CPU efficient client). For the next suggestion, your best bet is to set NICE to 0 in server.scp


Can UOX be modified to allow use behind a firewall? Right now it won't work since it requires that you put the machine's IP in the config file (MithDragon, 1 votes)
Abaddon UOX as it currently stands does work behind a firewall. I guess most people miss the point of the entries in uox3.ini
Abaddon Those are the valid list of shards that show up in the server list. Those IP values in there are the points that you end up relaying to.
Abaddon You could, for instance, enter into a shared agreement with another shard, and by doing so, you can put their IP in your uox3.ini, and they can put your IP in their uox3.ini
Abaddon Thus, you can relay between each other. Free advertising of sorts
Abaddon Because of this, the IP value in uox3.ini must point to a valid connection accepting server. I don't see how it's all that hard to put the firewall's IP in instead of your local IP
Abaddon And it also allows varying access to your shard. An internal LAN listing, a public internet listing, and a local one
Abaddon And only if you have the right location will you get through


UOX3, the server emulator, is still in development? (I'm out of touch) (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon It's definitely still in development, and it's kicking along strong. For those who have been out of touch, your best resource currently is www.uoxdev.com
Abaddon You can find logs of previous chats, a number of boards, and links to tools and other downloads


Will using uox screw up your osi game? (Lady_Erica, 1 votes)
Xuri Nope At least not any more than can be fixed Do a backup of login.cfg and that's the only file you'll need to have to log back on the OSI shards.
Xuri Oh yes, if you use WorldForge, backup your .MUL files.
Xuri (statics0.mul, staidx0.mul and map0.mul)


Will the Linux version be made available again on the uoxdev site? (MithDragon, 1 votes)
Abaddon The Linux version is, as always, packaged up as source
Abaddon UOX3 is open source, meaning that the source is always available and free to everyone
Abaddon All flavours of Linux to my knowledge come with their own compiler
Abaddon Windows does not. Thus, we tell the Linux users to compile up their own version. Libs and other things are different from machine to machine on Linux, so for best performance, it's best to compile it yourself
Abaddon Makefiles are included with the source distribution


Will we ever see a young system implemented in uox? (PoseidonXIX, 1 votes)
Chaos- heh
Abaddon We've not exactly had an overwhelming request for a young system implementation
Abaddon With the rapid skill gain generally seen on PR shards, and GMs much more readily available, it hasn't really been a huge request
Abaddon If we do receive a large request for it, then obviously the community would want it. But as it stands, no, there aren't any plans in the near or middle term future for such a system


Are you thinking of adding a possibility of making new command levels by easy manual configuration? (PoseidonXIX, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, one of the things we.. ahem... forgot to document with the last devupdate.txt was the addition of a command called 'setcommandlevel
Abaddon This is currently restricted to account 0 and command level of 5 or above
Abaddon So it is now possible for you to strip people of GM or Counselor privs
Abaddon But it also means that you can more meaningfully use the commands.scp as intended
Abaddon The commands.scp allows you to define what clearance value a certain command has
Abaddon Anywhere up to 255. So you can now more reasonably reallocate commands to more levels, and by using account 0, allow you to set people to different levels
Abaddon A more intuitive and useful system will come along at a later date however


I've heard there's a way to replace the .wav files in UO with custom ones. Any plans to make this process as easy as with the WarCraft II sound editor? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Xuri That is something that will have to be done either by the Tool Dev team (when a new lead dev for that team is assigned) or by a "freelance" tool programmer, as it will not be a part of UOX3 itself but instead external tools like WorldForge etc. (Goes under Client-editing
Xuri Keep the questions coming in people, here's how: Questions are submitted by /msg QuestionBot !addq Your question goes here


I am unfamiliar with UOX3, but C++ is the current language that we can use to add personal scripts? (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, scripts as they currently stand are either trigger based or essentially definition files. We do have that new powerful scripting engine in the works (and it's generally getting better by the day)
Abaddon However, the main server of UOX3 is entirely written in C++, and that is freely available for general download
Abaddon Remember that any changes made need to be made public if requested. So it's more a case of the entire server is available for customization, not just a script or two, here or there


What's the deal with all the client crashes? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, client crashes depend almost entirely on the shard itself
Abaddon The mistake that many novices make is dumping huge numbers of items and characters in a relatively small area
Abaddon This, generally, causes the client to kark it. We have been working on making the network aspects more bandwidth friendly, and I believe that Thyme's walking rewrite he's working on will help to reduce it greatly
Abaddon I've also found an optimization or two in some of the send routines, and I hope to have them in the next build. I've noted certain magic crashes in the past, and I've also been working on improving those as well
Unseen I have historically found a common cause of crashes is bad items or too many items
Chaos- I also find magic usage causes client errors quite a bit


I am familiar with Sphere, and I would like to know the best way to integrate into UOX3, scripting and such. (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, your best source for anything UOX3 related would definitely be www.uoxdev.com
Abaddon The guides there, as well as the docs that come with UOX itself, explain a lot of things (even though they still need work)
Abaddon Scripting's fairly simple and self describing, just open up some of the scripts and you'll see it
Abaddon But your best bet is to just give it a whirl


When can we expect the new script engine? (Antitheus, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, as always, the best answer will be: when it's ready
Abaddon Due to a lot of RL stuff happening to me recently, I haven't been able to spend the time on it I should have
Abaddon However, remember we're documenting the engine heavily as we write it as well
Abaddon I believe we've got around 150 API calls for UOX3 planned, and are up around the 30-35 event mark now
Unseen Documenting?.....going to have a heart attack
Abaddon So it's certainly coming along, we just need to ensure that you have the best resources available to you, and that the first release of the scripting engine should be a useful powerful one


Can UOX ever be matched up to be just like regular UO or when precasting took place? (Xmyth, 1 votes)
Abaddon It's not so much a question of can, but should
Abaddon I think it would be fair to say that a number of things that OSI have done have... disappointed a number of users in the past
Abaddon We personally don't feel that OSI necessarily has the best way of doing things, and so we do have our own customizations
Abaddon However, one of the aims we have is in giving you, the shard op, the set of tools to make it whatever way you wish
Unseen In terms of item weight/cost/etc... we try and match as best we can, but the scripts are open to customization
Abaddon Some things realistically would be hard to make scriptable, but we're going to provide you with an extensible scripting language, and as you have access to the source... you can always change anything to your heart's desire


How much processor power does NPC AI gobble up? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon It depends on the intelligence of the particular AI
Abaddon Most of the AI doesn't usually take all that much processing power
Abaddon We're working on ways to reduce the power needed, even still. However, with the upcoming script engine, a lot of the power needed will highly depend on the scripter
Abaddon We're going to allow you to write NPCs to be as smart, or as dumb, as you wish them to be


Will the new "trigger" system require more or less cpu/ram? (TWIG, 1 votes)
Abaddon This was kind of answered in the prior question, in some ways
Abaddon Yes, it'll need more memory (I'm guessing a few MB more), because the script engine will be doing it's own garbage collection, and resource maintenance, and what not
Abaddon That does take some memory. However, the increase in requirements won't be terribly huge at all
Abaddon It depends on the scripts you write, when it comes to CPU utilization


Can we got a "lock, decrease, increase" function added to our stats? Similar to the way the skills are set up (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, that depends. There's no intuitive client mechanism for doing so, as it currently stands
Abaddon From a server perspective, it's probably not all that hard really, but the interface the client has to work through may be a bit kludgy, I don't know
Abaddon If enough people scream and rant for it, then of course we have to look at it


When are you guys going to make the houses more secure so that people cant loot them unless your doors are locked? (HellSaviour, 2 votes)
Abaddon Housing implementation, as it currently stands, is a tad messy. We want to clean up a lot of the implementation details involved in housing. Once that's done, then certainly we'll be working to improve houses even further
Abaddon We understand housing is a critical aspect to a PR shard, and that a lot of people want it
Abaddon So once we clean it up, then we'll look to extending it


Recently I've been Running a complete world, All dungeons, All cities, Vendors etc, etc I set it up to save every 20 mins, Only problem is When this Save starts the world completely becomes frozen, Currently I'm running a Win98se with 256mb of ram and a amd 800 any ideas what may be causing (BoardQuestion, 2 votes)
Abaddon Well, every 20 minutes is a bit harsh. If you think about it, OSI only really save once a day :>
Abaddon Yes, the time required to save things is very large, and we would like to reduce a lot of it. But remember, the shard is essentially frozen for a very good reason. It ensures world consistency
Abaddon The other option would be to take a snapshot of the world as it stands (doubling memory requirements during a save). Not much fun there either
Abaddon Basically, you just have to wait until the world finishes saving. Otherwise you could run into corruption issues


What does OSI think about UOX? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon Who knows what they think? I certainly don't
Abaddon In essence, OSI put a clause into the TOS for T2A that people cannot play on a PR shard, without risking getting their account banned
Abaddon Now, they cannot track whether you play on PR shards or not, not without doing something invasive to your machine.
Abaddon And a number of people on PR shards well... just didn't like OSI shards any more, so they don't even have an account still :>
Unseen I haven't used OSI in over a year myself


Any way to implement flight into UOX? I've seen mongbats over oceans and mountains before… (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon That will be coming in soon, as part of Thyme's walking rewrite. It'll also include swimming NPCs


Another housing question: I can open chests from directly under them in a two-story complex. Anyway to fix this? (TaleBearer, 1 votes)
Abaddon That's a bug with range checking issues, I'll see what I can do to fix that for the next build


Is it possible in the future to add a "poison resistance" skill?? (TWIG, 1 votes)
Abaddon Adding skills requires client and server modifications
Abaddon However, reusing an existing skill to your purpose doesn't. So it may come under an aspect of magic resistance
Abaddon Other skills have been reused by UOX (Spirit Speak is more a language skill)


I'm obviously in the dark, but does the UOX3 have their own client? And if not, do they plan on making their own? (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon No, UOX doesn't have it's own client. Yes, EviLDeD has plans for a client, though I'm not sure where that currently stands


How would one make magic resist work with poison as well? (TWIG, 1 votes)
Abaddon It would be something more like a generic resistance skill, as compared to magic resist or poison resistance
Abaddon So when you were poisoned or attacked by magic, then it would do a skill check, as compared to just magic attacks


How long, do you estimate, will the UOX3 project, be around? (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon As long as there are people willing to code and support it
Xuri Until #uox3 freezes over!
Abaddon It's now been going for over 3 years
Abaddon It's had it's rough patches, sure, but I myself have been involved for over 12 months now (makes me one of the longest coders, right Xu? :>)
Abaddon I can't foresee it dying any time soon
Xuri Correct. :>
Abaddon Crikey, even the uoxdev.com message boards are active. 6000 posts in a period of 2 months or so, and only 250 registered members or something like that
Abaddon I'm almost always writing a dozen posts a day or so, in response to questions
Xuri As for those that cry out "What about when UO2 comes!?"
Xuri ..
Xuri Most likely the same people who cried out when EverQuest /AC came.
Abaddon There's a large impetus on UOX, and it would take a hell of a lot to grind it back to nothing
Xuri UO2 Won't be the end of UO, and it won't be the end of UOX either.


How would one make magic resist work with poison as well? I mean, would I need to do some c coding? (TWIG, 1 votes)
Abaddon Yes, it would involve C coding
Abaddon Essentially, you'd scan quickly through the source, find where a player is poisoned. Do a simple skill check on magic resistance based on poisoning quality
Abaddon If the skill check passes, then you resist the poisoning. If not, you get poisoned, and your skill slowly grows
Abaddon That'd be basically what you need to do


I'm interested in getting involved with UOX3, but I have not the slightest experience with C++, what program/learning method would you suggest to learn C++ for this type of thing? (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon Well, for Windows people it's much easier. Grab a hold of Microsoft Visual Studio if you can (preferred tools of the dev team :>)
Abaddon It has colour syntaxing and a few other niceties in there
Abaddon As for learning C++... I was entirely self-taught, for the most part, so I just say get in and get your hands dirty :>
Abaddon You should be able to find some web resources that have much more gentle introductions than the UOX3 source
Abaddon And when it comes to programming questions on UOX3, I'm almost invariably always in #uox3, so I'm free to answer most questions uox3 related
Abaddon And even some general coding ones


I've worked with Sphere, and there is a thick-line between the source (hard-code) and the editable stuff (scripts,etc.), however in UOX3 it seems like there is a gray area, the UOX3 is source is totally open to revision? (Loon, 1 votes)
Abaddon Yes, that's true. The entire source for UOX3 is available. Every aspect of the server is controllable via source, and it's all in the source files downloadable
Abaddon We're hoping to implement the powerful scripting engine soon, so that it reduces a lot of the source modification / recompile / run necessity (already got JS script reloading working mostly)
Abaddon If you download the source for UOX3, that's everything involved in the builds we release. We don't hide a thing
Abaddon The only caveat is this: If you make modifications, and run a shard with them, you need to make those source changes freely available if asked for them

 

[Storm33229]

I absolutley refuse to read all that! I demand you give me a summary!

-Storm

 

[psz]

UOX in the early days. Includes coolness and suckage.

 

[David]

*waves at psz*

Hey buddy!

 

[Joeku]

psz is cool.

 

[XuriDabur]

You're missing at least 5 HoCs, psz ;P

 

[psz]

This was from the UOXHelp.CHM file for UOX .72 (I think) pre-19, Scripts 36.

Not at home to verify, but I *THINK* that's the version I got it from.

Now I just need to find my T2A discs to install and see how far along the old shard actually got...