Hi everyone, I'm a relative newcomer to programming (more into art) so bear with me here. First out, I want to say that this project is amazing - okay, it doesn't quite look like a finished article yet but the progress is rattling along at breakneck speed and I'm very impressed by how much such a small team has achieved. Kudos to you guys, and keep up the good work.
Now, I was intriuged by someone's suggestion on the test shard thread that Iris could be used alongside RealUO as the basis for an open-source MMO project. I can appreciate that it's not your aim and I wouldn't dream of trying to steer you guys away from making what is a UO client first, but I've got a few questions I was hoping you'd be able to answer anyway.
Ghoulsblade wrote:
"The UO servers as well as the fundamental way of organizing data in UO are not suited for anything but near bird-perspective due to missing object hierarchies, so while it is a good platform for games with bird-perspective, it is not suited for MMO mainstream players, who expect to be able to see mighty walls and mountains in the distance.
While the architecture of iris would be a good basis to create a project that is not limited to birds-perspective, there are several other problems with the "standalone mmo-game approach" :
a) a whole new server and network protocol would have to be created."
What I'm interested in is, basically, what this actually means. Firstly, you've said UO is not suitable for anything but near birds-eye perspective, but you've already got screenshots of your client playing the game in essentially third-person perspective:
http://www.iris2.de/index.php/Image:200 ... 08_813.png
http://www.iris2.de/index.php/Image:200 ... 29_188.png
and to a lesser extent:
http://www.iris2.de/index.php/Image:Iri ... 26_888.jpg
What exactly are the limitations preventing the game from being displayed in this way? Have I misunderstood something?
Second, what does 'missing object hierarchies' mean, and what ramifications does this have?
Third, why would a whole new server and network protocol have to be created? Can't Iris already display RealUO servers in 3D? Doesn't this mean that, to make an MMORPG, you'd only need to update the graphic models of Iris and the programming of the RealUO worldserver? (I know that's not a small undertaking, but that's not the point)
The reason I ask this is because you guys have inspired me to take up art again, and if I can get a bit of spare time and get back into practice I'm willing to try and replace some of the standard UO item graphics and therefore help make this game fully independent from UO. Or maybe run a seperate sister project that provides game art compatible with Iris that you guys can use if you want, and other people can access too. I just want to know the full possibilities achieveable before I start. Just so, y'know, I don't get any false hopes.