Iris2.de

I would like to know if the need of having installed the official mondain's legacy client is due to a lack of a complete GUI of the game. If the answer is yes, in that case, it could be possible in the future play without using absolutely nothing of the original game?. I wonder also if in that case it could be possible make commercial legal non-official shards to play in them with an hypothetical future version of iris2.

hi,

It's discussed several times in this Forum. Please use the search function.

here:
http://www.iris2.de/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1110

http://www.iris2.de/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1126

http://www.iris2.de/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1142

Short Answer:
- you need a lot of artists (and money money money) for recreating all the content we currently use from uo (grannys, gumps, art).

b.regards

Thanks and sorry. You're absolutely right about searching before asking (is what i always say).
I've read all the threads and most of the links in them. I'm specially happy to see projects like http://media.freegamedev.net/. I agree the community must do an effort to join all the efforts. I wonder if some of the work done till now could be seized for the Iris2 project. For example to seize the 3D models done by the Scourge project. I don't know because i'm not a programmer and don't know well your project yet. But what i really want to do is help this specific project first. I can do 2D and 3D models. I'm admin of a spanish speaking community of gamers with about 1.500 members and i think i can get 10 or 20 people to help with art design. I'm also collaborator of some other communities focused on free software and could be easy find a couple programmers to help too. Of course this people will not work all the time, you know, free development style. Perhaps with that help and seizing some work already done in other projects the idea of get a completely free and independent game (in 2 or 3 years) is not so crazy, isn't it?
First thing i must know to start help is what to do. It would be great if you could tell me specific and little tasks that i can move to my forum's guys. It's called "delegate work".

I'd like to talk with somebody of the project at IRC if possible. I've been today at #freegamer channel but nobody from Iris2 was there. Just tell me the place and the time and i'll be there if you want.

I'm not at freegamer irc. Only ghouly and hagish are sometimes there i think.

We have our own irc at:
irc://zwischenwelt.org:7777/iris

If you join we can talk about it.

i'm in a hurry.

cu

_________________
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hi =) ghouly=ghoulsblade=me , i usually idling around in both #freegamer at freenode and #iris on zwischenwelt (will be back in about 6 hours from now, don't have internet until then, but this is today only), if i don't react, type my name and my irc client should start blinking.

about being independent from the mondains legacy download : the tricky part is human models (male/female) and animating all equipment parts with them.

the need all need walk,run, riding_slow,riding_fast (mounts are really common in ultima online), and at least one bashing attack anim, preferabbly also bow/crossbow anim.
one or more spellcasting anims would also be cool, but the attack anim would do if that is too much work

the equipment as well, there are tons of different armor types and pieces (leg parts, breast armor, arm-protection, gloves, helmet, all in various forms : platemale,ringmail,leather,studded,bone-armor...)

also weapons : dagger,sword,axe,hatchet,spear,staff,cleaver,bow,crossbow,
scythe,

also
horse, giant beetle, a dragon-like thing (chimera),ostard, and a giant-bird-like thing (hiryu) are very common "mounts" that players ride on.

then there are various monsters, orks, ogres, trolls, ettins, elementals (rockgolem like, liquid like, or swirling tornado like), various forms of giant insects : spiders, ants (workers, fighters,queens, in red and black skin each), beetles, scorpions,
gargoyles, demons, imps, lizard-men, rat-men,
flying eyes, skeletons, ghosts, liches, undead-mages, ghouls, flesh-golem, flying-eyes, kappa(turtle-man-like-demon)
brigands, mongbats (like mini-gargoyle), Minotaur, Mummy
slime, plant-monster (like a walking pot with 4 feet and a mouth at the top), werwolf,unicorn,kirin,snake

various animals : cat,dog,rabbit,birds,frog,rat,sheep,Squirrel,walrus,cow,bull,hart,hind,bear,cougar,wolf,

since nearly anything can fight, they should all have attack and get-hit anims, and a dying anim (with death pose seperate at the end if possible)

hmm as you see, becoming independant from the uo models would be quite a bit of work, even for a minimal set.
Do you think you know enough artists to make this possible ?

Ideally the models should be put under a license that allows other projects/people to use them and/or make derivates, but i'm starting to give up hope on that one, as i'm getting the impression that many artists want to control where/how their work is being used, but it can't hurt to ask =)

My only real fear about a project to remake the models like that is that it could uncharacterize UO as a game, making it just another copy of the many MMORPG in the market.

UO has a very distinct look in it's base because it tries to have equipment that is not fantasy looking, but almost always historical. You can see it easily in the armors e shields. Of course, some very fantasy looking (mostly ugly, because of the low quality of many EA Games paperdoll images) have appeared in the lastest expasions, but the base of the game that has been around for so many years don't looks like that. One of the reasons that many shards try to revert to a more classic look, before AoS and SE.

I would also point the cause of the RP shards, which make a great portion of UO shards, especially in Europe were they easily domain the scene.

Last of all. This post doesn't means you should be purist, just notice what th game looks like, but one of UO most incredible characteristics is that every server can be customized and changed to the extreme, making every one of the sort of a new MMORPG on their own. This has keeped much of UO play base over the years and is one of the things that most atract new players, maybe especially in Europe were RP shards are very common, but also worldwide.

i don't think the exact models are what makes uo characteristic, the character models aren't that wellmade, and replacing them by something that can use newer technologies like reflective materials for weapons, normal and specular maps, and maybe even specialized shaders like fur might give them a much better look than the rough old models.

there's not really a need to change the "type" of armor etc. The new models can look very similar to the old ones from ml, there's no copyright for the shape of a sword or armor.

From your first paragraph i think you didn't understood what i was trying to say.
What i say is that UO has distinct style because it tries to make his items look like their medieval counterparts, instead of creating strange fantasy shapes in his models.

i personally think it's very useless to talk about this. you and we don't have the manpower todo anything on character models.

if you have the manpower, we wait until you can present us 10-20 models (uo has about 1350 different models (monsters/chars/equipment) ) .

then we can speak about the style. sorry but there where so many people over the years saying, hey it would be cool to make an own game or i want to help out.

but nearly 99% of the people we never saw again.

about medieval style : that's what i meant, and how i understood it.
if you find the manpower to make such models, they can look medieval, no need to make them fancy fantasy style.

What i meant was that the models from mondains legacy use an old model format that doesn't support current technology, but we can load formats that do support them. So even by recreating the old models in the medieval,realistic,non-fantasy style, there are lots of possibilities to improve them visually, e.g. making them more detailed etc.

sience : yep, it's probably useless, haven't heard anything from the person who started this thread for a while, so it's probably yet another goner.
But since this is a forum, it can't really hurt to talk. It's not exactly flooded anyway so that you'd have trouble reading all of it.

Ok,it's exactly what i was talking about.
I was just saying that because some 3d artists really like doing those weird shapes, and a thought that maybe a team that would develop for Iris could end up doing the same.

BTW, i'm trying to learn blender to help the project. But to not any great sucess by now.

There are a lot of Blender Tutorials on the Web.