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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:43 pm 
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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.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 4:18 pm 
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The uo world basically consists of two types of objects: statics and dynamics

statics are stored at the client so the client know where every static of the world is.

dynamics are send by the server. a player will get the objects in his near environment (probably changing the size of the send area in a server is not this hard).

but here comes the problem. both, statics and dynamics, are small pieces. the whole world is build out of small lego-like parts. there is no information if ie. 3 walls next to another belongs to the same building. so there is no logical grouping of parts into bigger objects. but this whould be needed to make good lod and that lod needed to make a nice far-view.

at the moment we try to display a larger amount of ground and probably important statics (like walls?) in the distance. but so far this is very experimental.

therefore 3rd person view is possible but with a very limited view distance and thats not very beautiful.

to overcome this problem a different world architecture whould be needed and this will probably result in a lot of big changes in the protocoll, server, objects and mapfiles.

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:15 pm 
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Another thing that, I think, is really important, is that a bird-eye perspective don't allow the player to look too close at the 3D models and textures. That mean that models don't need to have a high polycount and that textures don't need to be higly detailled, and that mean that the overall needed work for the same graphic quality is greatly reduced.

I don't know your skills in 3D artwork, but if you plan to replace every UO granny model, even in low-poly, it really is a huge amount of work.

PS : sorry for my crappy english.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:59 pm 
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Thanks for the explanation - I see the issues with 3D now.

Also, my idea for a project would theoretically involve replacing every model and item as the eventual end goal, but I'm not so dim as to think I could do it all myself. However, I do honestly think you'd find a lot of contributors to a project like that provided you (well, I) showed commitment to it, because artists know that in this case their work isn't just going to vanish when the project goes under. There's already a working world server and the client is in a playable state, so their art goes straight into the client and appears immediately. It's not like the typical MMO team recruited online, where someone does some art for a few months and then the whole thing folds and the art never sees the light of day. And because your client looks pretty swish in motion and is improving all the time, add a nice GUI onto it and it'd look very professional indeed. At that point, even professional artists might be willing to contribute some time or the odd model to the database - which in turn just makes it look better and gives it even more legitimacy.

I was just throwing the idea out there, really. As I said, I've got work to do at the moment (university student), but I'll give some more thought to the project.

I'm curious about something like an inventory system, though. One of the biggest weaknesses with the current UO GUI sytem (in my opinion) is the paperdoll, because it looks painfully dated compared to more modern efforts (World of Warcraft - http://www.azzor.com/gallery/img_one.php?pid=70 ). To me, the ideal starting point would be to convert UO's item graphics into the kind of item graphics used by WoW - i.e. everything fills a tile thats 1cm by 1cm, which would let you upgrade the rather tired-looking sprites that UO uses.

You wouldn't bother with a paperdoll either, you'd just use a render window showing your character (obviously wouldn't look too great at the mo though). The advantage of the 1x1 tiles is just that they wouldn't take that long to do (so you might find more people willing to do them), but they'd both update the interface of UO and replace the previous artwork. But could this be done and still work with the current RealUO system?


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:26 pm 
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Some Artists are already working o n some new Item Icons.

If you wanna take a look of the need-list:
http://www.iris2.de/index.php/Iris-Testshard#Inventory

regards


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:10 pm 
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Well I'm up for trying to help you guys with some graphics for your server to help me get into practice, so I'll try and start work on some graphics for you according to those specifications when I've got this work out of the way.

That having been said, the examples that you 'like a lot' are tiles, like the WoW-type inventory uses. That kinda quality isn't really possible to do with the UO-style sprites as they're just too small, so perhaps someone could think about how viable the inventory system I suggested above would be? No hurry particularly, I'd just be interested to know.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:31 pm 
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Yes thats true. This are Tiles. But we also want to create a new GUI as you can read here:
http://iris2.de/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1149

UO:KR uses also Tiles and most modern shards support this network packages too. So i think we should try this.

Changing or modifying UO Art is also strictly forbidden and thats why we want to create our own Iconsset.

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