Ultima Online Remade for 2009!

[Ravenal]

Hell ya it does, it'll even give you a bj if you slip it a 20....

ROFLMAO so hard that he caused the cat to faint.

 

[Sythen]

*slips connectuo a 20*

waiting! still waiting!!

*unzips pants*

... waiting... waiting... oh wait, I forgot connectuo was just a tease!

 

[HellRazor]

ConnectUO is super sexy! Not to mention easy.

 

[Lord_Greywolf]

I have been working on a game now since text adventures where out for the computer
it gre and grew as computers games did to

but it has never been finished, and never will be,
why
simple
because i do not have a:
team of 3d engine specialists (movements, combat, etc)
team of graphics artists
team of 3d model makers
team of testers (but those can be had easiely)
team of scripters
team of music writers
etc
and enough money to pay them all

you might be able to get the engine down by yourserlf, or maybe some playability, or some art, etc etc
but there is no way for 1 person to do it all, unless they have absolutely nothing else to do, and all the resources available to them
then given 2-3 years, they may have it done, but then, parts of it are 2-3 years old and all ready behind on other computer games

so i wish you luck, but if you have any kind of a life at all, it will be a hobby that will carry on for a long long time

 

[UltimaOnline2009]

I'm sorry, call me an ass but this is still the funniest thread I've read in a long time. Your bump mapping isnt working correctly, looks like the shadows are casting 100% correctly.

You image here....

Great copy paste from gamedev.... this technique is not truely softshadows(granted ppl call it that, its not true to the term because there is NO SUCH THING in 2d). I'm sorry if you don't agree, but there simply isnt.... the effect used is done with Convex Hull polygons which you have to create from 2d images. Iin UO with the complexity of the Convex Hull of any player or mobile this technique will be extremely slow and your shadow calculations will look terrible using this technique since one person will shadow the entire opposite side of the light shadowing them as shown in the picture below..

don't think i know what i'm talking about, look at MY sample here using the very same technique in XNA
http://www.fallingdownstairs.net/videos/engine-2d-5.wmv

You have a ton of work todo, sad but true, and i agree with SIeNce that you should focus on the client aspect of how the game works rather then graphics, those can be done later....

Maybe you meant concave hulls? And i'm probably not going to use it on mobiles.

I have been working on a game now since text adventures where out for the computer
it gre and grew as computers games did to

but it has never been finished, and never will be,
why
simple
because i do not have a:
team of 3d engine specialists (movements, combat, etc)
team of graphics artists
team of 3d model makers
team of testers (but those can be had easiely)
team of scripters
team of music writers
etc
and enough money to pay them all

you might be able to get the engine down by yourserlf, or maybe some playability, or some art, etc etc
but there is no way for 1 person to do it all, unless they have absolutely nothing else to do, and all the resources available to them
then given 2-3 years, they may have it done, but then, parts of it are 2-3 years old and all ready behind on other computer games

so i wish you luck, but if you have any kind of a life at all, it will be a hobby that will carry on for a long long time

Uhhhh... Please re-read the second line in this topic.

 

[SiENcE]

Hey we should't be too pessimistic. Years ago people where pessimistic for Iris too.

@UltimaOnline2009: You should focus on playability and speed. UO has fakes and lot of bugs in it you have to redefine. It's also very tricky to draw the world with all dynamics in a playable speed. Later you can focus on enhancing and adding gimmics.

After 2years and 4month, developed with 3 people, we are at the optimizing state of Iris2. After this phase we enhance the gfx more and more. But all gfx has a very low priority to us.

Nevertheless it's good to hear, more people thinking about a custom client alternative. We could learn from each other.

 

[nadious]

I have to say that I've been impressed with Iris2 so far. I had some issues at first, but those were mainly because of the way I had messed it up during the install. But, over the past few days... I've been playing around with it and I've even manged to do some mundane chores with it successfully: (IE: Trade skills, chop wood, etc.) It's nice to go out in the forest and chop wood... and feel like you are IN a forest.

I know it's got a long way, but it's something fun to mess with on a rainy afternoon when you don't feel like going out to actually hunt and kill stuff.

 

[SiENcE]

@Suil Ban: Yeah for a really good looking 3d part in Iris2 you have to customize your Worldmap. You have to adjust all uo mapbuilding bugs and it needs some changes to look good.

But i think the 3d part is for fully custom shard a nice option to create a new style.

The Gamemechanics stays the same as UO 2d, and thats why i think Iris2 in 3D is really different from most other 3D mmorpgs.

 

[Jeff]

Maybe you meant concave hulls?

Concave.... no please read Concave Hull vs. Convex Hull and stop trying to be a smart ass it is only annoying those of us that actually know what we are talking about.

Look i'm not trying to be a complete dick, i just wish you would understand things before you say you are doing something. 99% of the stuff you say you have and/or are going to implement don't apply to 2d.

EDIT: even using this on items/walls anything tilebased is going to kill someones machine, think about it, lets say you use it on dungeon walls. Thats roughly 25 tiles per frame you have to calculate this for, thats 25 convex hulls per frame at roughly 6 vertices per hull. Plus the render target calculations per light, not to mention you say you've added other things like bump mapping and blur.... thats to much. Especially when the engine mechanics arent complete...

150 vertices * numLights(roughly 2-3 per frame + global) = 600+-. I don't know about that. My demo I showed you had 4 lights casting shadows on about 25 blocks with 4 vertices each, but i did this on a high end graphics card and CPU. I managed to pump 60+FPS but what do you expect from a 280GTXOC.... I can tell you now, this engine will never be done because you are not going about it correctly....

 

[SiENcE]

@Suil Ban: I just explained it, because most people think that just turning somthing into 3d makes it look good.

 

[Lord_Greywolf]

Me and my team have been working on our Ultima Online engine which was started from a scratch

unless your team is a lot of full time employees, dedacated to the project, it will still take years to finish
Also would be nice to hear from some of them of the parts they are doing, and what their part does

the basic, 1st UO took a team of close to 60 people over 2 years to do, plus then beta testing and fixing
and they are still trying to fix it today
most computer games are that way, that are of professional quality, taking a large team a couple of years to do
most spend between 5-10 million on payroll for developement of the project

so realisticly, unless very very lucky AND very very good, a small team of part timers, would take many many years to finish a project of this size

using some one elses 3d engine helps to speed it up, but remember in your testing, 90% of your players will not have top end computers, so need to test on low end computers also (1 ghz speed with low ram), which is where many 3d based games go back to the drawing board on when testing
a major example was sim city 2000 - great graphics, could play on any maching - UNTIL - you got over 250k people in one of the big ass apartment complexes (which was easy to go in game)
then it bogged down to a crawl on even many of the newer machines
they only did testing on start up scenerios

so again i wish you luck, like i said before

 

[Draegen]

If EA cant get a decnet 3d Client for UO what makes you guys all that much better thena company that pays

 

[Jeff]

If EA cant get a decnet 3d Client for UO what makes you guys all that much better thena company that pays

What do you care if they try?

 

[UltimaOnline2009]

Concave.... no please read Concave Hull vs. Convex Hull and stop trying to be a smart ass it is only annoying those of us that actually know what we are talking about.

Look i'm not trying to be a complete dick, i just wish you would understand things before you say you are doing something. 99% of the stuff you say you have and/or are going to implement don't apply to 2d.

EDIT: even using this on items/walls anything tilebased is going to kill someones machine, think about it, lets say you use it on dungeon walls. Thats roughly 25 tiles per frame you have to calculate this for, thats 25 convex hulls per frame at roughly 6 vertices per hull. Plus the render target calculations per light, not to mention you say you've added other things like bump mapping and blur.... thats to much. Especially when the engine mechanics arent complete...

150 vertices * numLights(roughly 2-3 per frame + global) = 600+-. I don't know about that. My demo I showed you had 4 lights casting shadows on about 25 blocks with 4 vertices each, but i did this on a high end graphics card and CPU. I managed to pump 60+FPS but what do you expect from a 280GTXOC.... I can tell you now, this engine will never be done because you are not going about it correctly....

Geez, slap yourself, breathe deep, smoke a joint or whatever you do to calm down , ok you are right i'm wrong, no need to rewrite wikipedia here , and so even if we won't have soft shadows? So what? It doesn't mean the game won't be finished.

unless your team is a lot of full time employees, dedacated to the project, it will still take years to finish
Also would be nice to hear from some of them of the parts they are doing, and what their part does

the basic, 1st UO took a team of close to 60 people over 2 years to do, plus then beta testing and fixing
and they are still trying to fix it today
most computer games are that way, that are of professional quality, taking a large team a couple of years to do
most spend between 5-10 million on payroll for developement of the project

so realisticly, unless very very lucky AND very very good, a small team of part timers, would take many many years to finish a project of this size

using some one elses 3d engine helps to speed it up, but remember in your testing, 90% of your players will not have top end computers, so need to test on low end computers also (1 ghz speed with low ram), which is where many 3d based games go back to the drawing board on when testing
a major example was sim city 2000 - great graphics, could play on any maching - UNTIL - you got over 250k people in one of the big ass apartment complexes (which was easy to go in game)
then it bogged down to a crawl on even many of the newer machines
they only did testing on start up scenerios

so again i wish you luck, like i said before

Yes and that's why we're not going to waste our time doing things that aren't really necessary, and no, no one from whose working on this engine are registred on these forums if that's what you're asking, we also have lots of people who would want to build a map using our custom map builder for in-game items later (yes custom file extension, file encrypted with a key).

EDIT: First stable version of the water with weaves (water titles planned to be changed to better ones, reflections planned to be added soon)

(for some odd reason it won't display on my computer http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/7361/39829931tj1.png just in case someone else has the same problem)

 

[SiENcE]

(yes custom file extension, file encrypted with a key)

And where is the key ?

A water with weaves is nice, but you get problems with the boarders unless you change the static water maptiles.

 

[Jeff]

Geez, slap yourself, breathe deep, smoke a joint or whatever you do to calm down , ok you are right i'm wrong, no need to rewrite wikipedia here , and so even if we won't have soft shadows? So what? It doesn't mean the game won't be finished.

First, i'm calm, I've been calm through this entire thread. If you read my comments in a non-calm fashion perhaps you are the one who is not calm... but seriously i really can't stand it when people use buzz words to get noticed.

 

[Acronis]

Wow thats nice, I hope you're using C++ and plan to make it work in Linux as well as Windows. Add some razor like features built in, make those settings easy to backup (Ex: xml file) and think you will be a hero amoung UO players.

 

[Jeff]

Wow thats nice, I hope you're using C++ and plan to make it work in Linux as well as Windows. Add some razor like features built in, make those settings easy to backup (Ex: xml file) and think you will be a hero amoung UO players.

He already said it was C#

 

[HellRazor]

Concave.... no please read Concave Hull vs. Convex Hull and stop trying to be a smart ass it is only annoying those of us that actually know what we are talking about.

Look i'm not trying to be a complete dick, i just wish you would understand things before you say you are doing something. 99% of the stuff you say you have and/or are going to implement don't apply to 2d.

EDIT: even using this on items/walls anything tilebased is going to kill someones machine, think about it, lets say you use it on dungeon walls. Thats roughly 25 tiles per frame you have to calculate this for, thats 25 convex hulls per frame at roughly 6 vertices per hull. Plus the render target calculations per light, not to mention you say you've added other things like bump mapping and blur.... thats to much. Especially when the engine mechanics arent complete...

150 vertices * numLights(roughly 2-3 per frame + global) = 600+-. I don't know about that. My demo I showed you had 4 lights casting shadows on about 25 blocks with 4 vertices each, but i did this on a high end graphics card and CPU. I managed to pump 60+FPS but what do you expect from a 280GTXOC.... I can tell you now, this engine will never be done because you are not going about it correctly....

See, its just like the old days when you needed the very best machine to play an OSI game!

It will be funny when we are all using our supercomputers with 10 terrabytes of RAM, virtual reality 3D hologram graphics and our zillion gigahertz processors to play UO!

 

[Ravenal]

lol i find it very interesting that all they are talking about is getting shadows, light source stuff working, getting water weaving, and transparentcy to work... I am sorry but this is not the first step of making... Do you have animations working correctly, can you drag and drop items? Can you double click, is the game your making actually PLAYABLE, or is this all Oh look, I finished this, oh Look I finished this part woopy doo... Like what SiENcE said you should be focusing on making things that are not gfx purpose or special effects right now, and focus on strictly playable... Because what if down the road... You add all these badass gfx stuff, and run into problems? Like eat up all the FPS up to the ballgame? Keeping the FPS mininum, CPU usage, and GPU usage down is the key to a successful game... If you ever notice, most games heres a big example... Stargate Worlds, finally after like three years with a team of about 20 people, finally are now in beta stage of Stargate Worlds. Thing is, they didn't start with GFX Features right off the bat, the first thing they did was getting Camera Functionality, Animation, GUI implantion. And so forth... After all that was IN, they started upgrading the GFX and then improving their code to optimization...

See I also made a flaw in my former codes for Genesis... I was worried about making things pretty, and worried about making things quick and fast. Making things eaiser for user friendly... And the fact is... Thats now not the goal. The goal is to make it WORK, stable, and make the true functionaility of Genesis a working program, even if it was Crappy GUI... Then from there on, optimize the code, make things faster, and improve the GUI functionaility to make it more user friendly and more understanding... Remember, good programmers follow "KISS"! (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID)!