Iris2.de

Ok, as long as I am German, it is no problem for me to say it in English, because we are on a world wide web.
As a tester of iris2 since a few weeks I feel the necessity to raise some little "incident".

1.) I am familiar with the iris2 wiki and so on, but up to now there is no really good installation manual for the game and for all what is needed for this.

2.) Iris2 works on several OSes, I already have seen that there are graphical problems, e. g. a change of the resolution and changing the refresh rate frequency(v) does not work very well.

- I have a machine running Win 2000, is there a need to have it tested on this? Actually I have an installation on an Win XP machine.

3.) Going deeper into the problems I have with the graphics, and that is also an incident for getting more documentation:

- What is LUA and what is it needed for?
- What is ORGE and what is it needed for?
- How to you as the developers handle with problems that I have?

4.) Currently I have installed UO - Mondains Legacy for Iris2. Is there also a need to test it with other UO versions?

I would like to have the answers here, or if done in the Iris2 wiki. I am also willing to support the wiki with screenshots and enhancement in general if you want me for this.
I hope to get the answers here and not only by posting any links for more details.

Thanks in regards,
Pascal.

Hi =)


we tried to put all things necessary into the README, what do you feel is missing ? we'd appreciate if you would create a wiki page explaining step by step how you got it to work,
we will then put that onto the navbar on the left side of the wiki.


no idea about what win versions have been tested, maybe sience knows more =)


LUA is a scripting language, large parts of iris are written in lua to encourage customising (e.g. shards implementing custom network messages, artists trying out materials and models, maybe even users writing their own shortcuts and hotkeys, like improving the npc shop dialog, all those are possible without needing to recompile, so no development environment is needed for those, just a simple texteditor will do just fine.)
OGRE is a 3d engine, we use it to render the graphics,
it handles particle effects, character animation, character shadows, etc and also supports advanced materials including shaders, but we don't use them yet.




we have setup a bugtracker so it is easy to report bugs, and for us to keep an overview of what is still todo and what has already been fixed, and to collect info.
As to what services/support you can expect from us, please consider that none of us gets paid for this, and we do it in our free time, which is sometimes rather limited, so most bugs will probably not be fixed right away.
also regarding graphical errors such as treetops being misplaced and pieces of furniture showing through the wall or too high, please keep in mind that iris2 is a 3d-viewer for a 2d-game which only has pseudo-3d-data in the map-files that is originally supposed to be viewed from an isometric perspective, we don't make the maps you can view with iris2, we only make the viewer, and some positions in those maps are incorrect for viewing in 3d, even if they appear correct in the 2d-iso perspective.
also we don't have models for all the thousands of things that exist in the uo world (like furniture), so when there is something we don't have a model for, the original 2d-picture is rendered onto a billboard in 3d, its better than nothing, but it will show through other stuff depending on the camera angle.




hmm its not the uo versions that have to be tested, but maybe playing on different shards is interesting, some shards have instructions on which uo version you have to install, and some might even provide custom data.


screenshots and wiki contributions are always welcome, just uploaded the screenshots you sent me, and also an installation tutorial in the wiki would really be appreciated.
If you don't want to write a turorial, a short description of how you got it working would be a good start, and might help some people with installing proplems.
Its rather hard for us to write such a thing to be comprehensive for users new to iris, as we have been working with iris for several months now, so some not so obvious things will seem rather natural to us, sorry for that.

hope this helps, have fun =)

ad 1.) the README does help indeed. I think you used the *n*x-conform CR-LF codes. It would be nice to have this a little bit finer, e.g. conform files for different OS - or simply a PDF file.
ad 4.) Give me the information about other shards and how to connect to them.

It is no problem for me to de-install and make a new installation for writing a manual. on my Win XP machine.
I also just could make an installation on my other machine with Win 2000.
You will get any information from me, I know the problem how to write an installation manual.
The most interesting thing for me is what is to be tested.

Pascal.

to connect you have to edit the shardlist in data/config.lua
(a tutorial for that would also be good, as would a list of shards with info if it works, or not, and whats the problem if not)


http://www.vetus-mundus.de/
http://www.welt-pergon.de/
http://www.metropolisshard.com
http://pangaea-world.dk
for example,
there are also some on
http://uodev.de/
i don't know any shard in detail though =)

We should indeed change the LB from unix to windows Linebreak, becouse all linux/unix editors can decide which LB is used, but many windows editors can't.
Just for WIN dummies you know.

Installation manual:
http://iris2.de/index.php/InstallationManual
This is still to be tested.
FAQ and some other things have also been corrected in the wiki.
As long as there is no answer about installation tests, I won't do anything.
Could you please tell me an other shard except vetus-mundus.de. that works?

info about what problems you encountered on the shards we gave you would be helpful

See the installation manual for this, there is already additional info.