UOX3.org

I was around in 2007. I hung out in irc.freenode.org, #uox3, helped track down some bugs, helped Xuri make corrections to the Guide. Helped a fellow UOX3 newbie named Phao test his emulator, and he helped me begin to understand JavaScript. Are you still around Phao?

The UO bug bit me again a few months ago. I've played on OSI as well as some of my favorite player-run shards, both large and small, classic and custom. I've been thinking of what I might do differently if I gave world-building another go.

Some questions:

How much balancing control can UOX3 give me over skills and stats? Can I slow down skill gain, or disable or reassign stat gains to different skills?

Are there resources for learning how to create maps and items? Or are there resources that provide some already made maps and items for the emulator community to use? And have any new tools come along for quest gump creation?

What kind of hardware does it take to smoothly host a UOX3 shard? Or have any services come along that rent server hosting for emulator creators? (Yeah, long shot, but it never hurts to ask!)

Less importantly, is it possible to pull data from the server and use it in static or dynamic web pages?

I'd like to congratulate UOX4 (I mean 3) on its relatively recent upgrade! It's very satisfying to see this emulator getting better and better.

Posting some reference links to resources that have some of my answers, and some good ideas on game balance (more useful here than in Firefox's bookmarks).

Google dug these discussions up on the RunUO forums:

Map editors discussion
http://www.runuo.com/forums/server-supp ... itors.html

How to make a map from beginning to end
http://www.runuo.com/forums/faq-forum/6 ... g-end.html

More tips
http://www.runuo.com/forums/general-dis ... ditor.html

Some other stuff:

Duh, look here
https://www.uox3.org/downloads.shtml

Map-editing software and community
http://www.orbsydia.ca/

Over 20,000 posts on this UO map-editing forum
http://www.ryandor.com/forum/

Lots of UO map and art-editing software
http://ultima.lonet.cz/download.php

A one-man dev team's overview of well-balanced risk vs. reward
http://www.inmaniylem.com/index.php?tit ... nformation

A site that pulls live data (character locations, vendor prices)
http://www.player-realms.com/

What hardware/system do you need when creating a free server?

How to create your own dedicated game server, from http://www.xtremetop100.com

I created this guide because I received several emails everyday from people who are concerned about their server hardware / hosting hardware. I’m having a hard time answering all emails there for I’m creating this guide which I will continue to build on as time passes.

When you have choose a game emulator and are ready to start your own dedicated server. You should ask yourself one question though, are you going to host at home or are you going to rent a server at a data center?

A Data-Center has the technology to host any kind of server, isnt one server enough? then theres server balancing built in a server-cluster.

You can even rent your own rack server if you want.

So what kind of hardware should you use? Well don’t go and buy expensive server processors like Xeon or Opterons series (Dual Core).

These processors are dual core and are for servers but it doesn’t mean it’s the best right? But there are cheaper but better dual core processors/CPU, I would recommend that you have a look at Core 2 Duo (Dual core) or Kentsfield core which is a Quad-Core processor, both are released by Intel. How much RAM (memory) do you need? Well I would start with 2 GB RAM at start, and then upgrade when it’s needed.

Why pick Dual-Core or even Quad-Core servers?

It’s a new era, Dual-Core and Quad-Core are today’s news. This is a must. You will be able to run both the server emulator and webpage on the same server without any kind of problems. If you are going for a mmorpg server there’s plenty of emulators which supports multithreading. But mmorpg servers hold sometimes over 1000 players which require a huge CPU/processor power. That’s why you should pick at least a Dual-Core for your dedicated server but looking at the prices it tells me i should go with a Quad-Core CPU.

Why a gaming server?

Especially mmorpg server’s takes a lot of bandwidth, FPS servers are not as bandwidth hungry as mmorpg servers due to the low amount of players. The best with having the gaming server at a hosting company is that it usually has up to 10 different ISPs and up to 1000Mbit per line which will give your players an amazing gaming experience. They also have the latest server hardware technologies, so finding a Quad-Core, Core 2 Duo or the AMD X2 or Opteron series (Both Dual-Cores) should not be a problem. Most servers have RAID or using fast SAS storage (SCSI discs).

A great Web hosting company is HostGator. Host Gator is one of the biggest web hosting companies around with excellent hosting and pricing. When looking for server emulators please try to search on Google... I will try to continue updating this guide when i have more time.

Best Regards
XtremeTop100 staff

That last paragraph might have paid advertising in it, so have some good sense (and cents) and Google around for server hosts (and remember that while a few player-run UO shards do boast 1000+ simultaneous players, one would be lucky to break 50 concurrent users during the peak of their existence, and the vast majority never even reach the double-digit mark).

I had no idea regular web hosts were serving up MMO emulators. But I have even less of an idea how to go about asking a host for such services, considering that some people claim it's a legal gray area (even though it's been a decade and you never see EA going around shutting down emulators).

"Hey, customer support? Yeah, how much to put my UO emu on the internets? What? You don't know what Ultima Online is? OMG WTF come on, Britann-- Hello? Hello? Did you just hang up on me?"

Don't have much time (lunch break nearly over), but I'll post what I know:


Combat balance can be adjusted VERY easily as long as you have a spreadsheet, some time, and an understanding of the hard coded combat engine. My shard has an entirely new balance to the combat system designed to enhance Player vs. Monster combat (as my shard is small). It is much more difficult than stock uox3 (as my players generally are in the 80--100 skill range), and the monsters are balanced such that an armored GM swordsman can't go to the orc fort -eat a pizza- and come back and found 150,000 orcs dead and only 5 hp damage to himself.

Skill modifications can be done via JS, as long as the skills are NOT hard-coded. For example, I took some non-used Samarui and expansion skills (such as bushido, etc.) and converted them to roleplaying skills for my shard: Listening, Character Judging, Perception, Spot, etc.

The downside and more complicated is editing client files to display the skills properly as well as your custom items. Editors exist for editing the *.bmp static graphics for the item names and also the skill names.

Changing the gump graphics and backpack graphic of a sword to another sword is rather a simple procedure of replacing the *.bmp files. Making an un-used weapon like a samuri weapon or armor and converting it to a medieval sword by changing the gump *.bmp, backpack art, and linking it to a longsword video is a bit more daunting but not that difficult. I can't remember where I got the utilities though.

Understand that by the terms of service you are unable to distribute client files (*.mul, etc.) If you want to tow the law, you can legally send your raw custom content like *.bmp files over to your friends, but you can't send the complied *.mul files as they contain copy-write materials. At least that is how I understand the terms of service, so read it yourself if you are worried.

I guess you could send them the *.bmp files and have them hack their own files.

------------------------

Creating new maps is a pain. I've tried and never started again. Think of a 25MP high-end digital camera. That's 25 million pixels. Basically -if I recall correctly- the UO map is the same size. Each pixel being a world tile. You have to hand paint each pixel with color-indexed colors in order for the processing program to convert your indexed *.bmp into a world with elevation changes, etc.

Even though the idea is fairly simple, to get a large world would take YEARS (I'm not kidding) to do by yourself. Best idea is to have a group of friends help, or do a SMALL world.

Then you have to use Xuri's world builder to build your static buildings (which is a blast by the way) and then "Freeze" them or you are going to have lag issues. This will take a lot of time too. I prefer to just add buildings and decorations in the current Britannia instead.

A newly created world shouldn't be against terms of service, as the compiled file won't contain any copy write material, so that is a plus.

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Servers:

I ran it just find on a Pentium 4 single core 2.0ghz machine with 512MB of ram, running the server off of a DIAL UP connection AND a client on the same single core machine. I had up to two friends playing at the same time. Obviously we had lag in towns, but that was mainly because of the dial up.

I moved to a Pentium D with 2GB of RAM and could easily run 4 connections with one connection being on the same PC as the pentium D and the rest scattered between local area and DSL.

Again, the bottleneck was the DSL.


On my current i7 rig with Vista x64 and 6GB ram, I can easily run 3 clients (one on Vista, and two on two seperate Windows 7 Virtual Machines with 1GB ram a piece) AND the server while having a friend logged in via DSL. This includes my spreadsheets, Xuri's world builder, music files, and *.pdfs that I have open as GM aides.

The bottleneck now is the DSL AND the slowness of my hand moving the mouse and switching from one client to the next!!!!!!

In short: I would NOT hesitate to run Uox3 as a server for up to 5 users on a slow Pentium II machine with 256MB of ram. Your bottlenecks will be the internet connection AND your hard-drive (load up times and world save times will increase/decrease depending on your disk drive IO and RAM speed). With a modern dual core/ quad core PC as a dedicated server, I have no idea what your limit will be. With all that crap loaded on my i7, Uox3 was taking hardly ANY resources from my rig.

If my link hasn't expired you can see a pic. of my desktop here:
http://www.uox3.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1792



Whew! Now lunch is over. You are lucky/unlucky that I type fast!

Excellent, tonight I'll be able to sit down and spend a bunch of time reading, as opposed to repeating this morning's Google marathon. I was actually hoping I might get a lengthy and detailed reply from someone, so thank the virtues for your typing speed!

The point this morning was to pile up a bunch of material for tonight, so I haven't read any of it yet. But I can already tell you that I'm going to need to world-build from the ground up. I logged into my default UOX3 shard this morning, walked around empty shops and rolled ideas around, and realized that's what I want to do.

To keep myself from going insane, or worse, losing interest (check out those priorities), I'm going to need to know the best way to have three completely separate shards on my computer, with completely different data directories.

While it may seem like I'm spreading myself thin, I really just want to break different types of development work into three separate places. Owing to the way my head works, this should help me to retain interest long enough to start hitting milestones.

The first (default) shard will be fully set up, decorated, and spawned using the resources available in the download section, allowing me to dive right in without going insane and think about broad balance issues like skills, stats, and the economy. Initially, I will not focus on graphical content on this shard.

The second (test) shard will start off fully decorated, but will be used to practice developing edits to the existing map and artwork. Later, it will also allow me to practice importing selected changes/additions/fixes to the default shard. Additionally, all NPCs and spawns will be set up and placed by hand on this shard.

The third (development) shard (may cause map-making insanity) is where I will learn and practice world-building, literally from the ground up. Alternatively, I'll get lucky and find maps made by somebody else that are exactly what I have in mind (I'm not counting on it, but it could happen).

Stranf, now that I've had time to read your post, I'm even more thankful for your time and help. It's good to know that I could run my server on my own computer for at least five people (let's face it, that's a lot of people for an average personal shard). When (if?) I decide to go beyond the LAN, this will be useful.

However, most shards on personal computers are probably run more like multiplayer servers that schedule their uptimes, not downtimes. If my ideas turn into an enjoyable project, then I would actually like to secure hosting for a persistent server, if possible and affordable. The bandwidth should be affordable, at least. Shards with slow skill gains are a niche attraction.

If the map and image editing will take years (months with a team perhaps), then statistically, with real life and all, the odds are against that side of a project succeeding. That's no reason not to start. But it's another good reason to keep that part of the project on its own shard, where it will be less likely to bog down the rest of the project. (I'm unsure of the best way to go about this, as I'm unsure how renaming the UOX3 directory might affect the installation.)

My initial 2007 project (that died with its hard drive) was to be a heavily quest-based, solo or LAN party variant, where friends could play through the original Ultima series of story-lines (essentially a series of remakes using UO for the engine). Phao helped me to wrap my head around quest-based NPCs, and I started learning how to make gumps. The concept was designed to be distributed out as a local server, not centrally hosted and persistent; and it would have used default maps and art.

Looking back, I think the decisions not to design for persistence, and to avoid original artwork, I think those decisions were based on fear of learning new things. The graphic work seems daunting, but I'll never know whether I can enjoy it if I don't give it a try.

Who knows, after years of hard work, 4 or 5 players may thank me. Maybe even 6! Well, okay that's pushing it.

If my link hasn't expired you can see a pic. of my desktop here:
viewtopic.php?t=1792

"The Respectable Hineas, the Humble and Proud, Grandmaster Bu"

PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION OF POSSIBLE GOALS

--OR--

NEWBIE BRAIN DUMP LOL

In the beginning, I'm going to set up a stable, moderately balanced and unoriginal shard. Without reinventing the wheel, I'll decorate, spawn, and populate my world using community-made worldfiles and spawns. I'll focus on major bug fixing, and broad balance issues with skills, stats, and the economy. This may include changes to NPC behavior and spawns, but doesn't include major additions in those categories. (Those are to be handled on a separate test shard, where art edits will also be taking place, and more things will be going wrong in general.)

From there on, goals will become increasingly advanced.

An ongoing consideration will be the need to find affordable hosting. I'd like to leave my shard running persistently to attract alpha testers, but can't devote my personal computer to hosting my shard all the time.

Initial goals include:

(1) Noting (and fixing if possible) server-crashing and client-crashing bugs, reporting code-related bugs to the server devs, keeping track of bugs already noted or fixed by the community, and determining how difficult bugs may be avoided until fixed.

(2) Noting minor bugs, including those introduced by shard development, reporting them to the server devs when necessary, and determining how to fix or avoid my mistakes.

(3) Determining ways to improve account and character stability. For instance, my first (admin) character led a short existence, as he had to be overwritten by the community's default worldfiles in order to fill the shard's cities and towns with basic decorations, doors, and signs. I need to determine how future characters could survive a world-reboot!

Intermediate goals are all related to game balance:

(1) Stat and skill gains will be slower and more challenging (yes, alienating potential players), but in the long term, I'd like to consider a reward system based on character-growth milestones (see further down) that rewards account loyalty.

(2) Stat gains will assume a meaningful relationship with skills, and many of the skills that do not use resources will have their stat gain disabled (yes, alienating potential macroers).

(3) Skills that are useless will be made useful, and in some cases have more relevant stat gains assigned to them, or even become replaced by new and original skills that are useful (or at least entertaining).

Around this time, goals become more advanced, or impossible:

These advanced goals will return some importance to "roads less traveled" in Britannia, or any facet.

(1) Speed should be determined by the server if possible (no speed hacks), and mounts should be allowed for travel, but very inconvenient combat vehicles.

(2) The economy will become more dynamic, town vendors will become more specialized, and bank accounts may become regional, in order to facilitate the introduction of trade routes.

(3) As a consequence of trade routes, magical travel will become limited, AND/OR the value of trade goods will be lowered when they are transported by magical means (possibly this could only affect a special class of item designed specifically for trade routes).

(4) As a compromise for nerfing UO's gate travel free-for-all system (alienating the remainder of potential players), I'd like to introduce skill(s) or rewards related to exploration! There are many ways to design exploration-based rewards, so this would take a lot of consideration.

But wait! There's more (maybe):

(1) This one will probably turn out to be a bad idea. But I'd like to think about introducing a system that rewards character growth (as mentioned above), either with items, or abilities, or decorative perks, or even offline skill gain or new skill system inspired by tech-trees, whereby some skills can be "unlocked" by increased proficiency in lower-tier skills.

This weekend (starting Friday morning), I'm going to need to make my shard public, so that I can go install UO and Razor at another house, and see what the lag is like. I'll post details in a new thread.

I hope someone who reads this thread will be able to answer some of the questions Stranf didn't get to. And please, don't hesitate to answer just because you happened to read this thread weeks or months after it was posted. I guarantee you that someone will benefit from your insight. It doesn't have to be me.

Starting with that new thread, I'm also going to start posting here under a new name. I have been a recurrent UO subscriber and member of OSI's, EA's, Mythic's official UO community since opening a charter account in 1997. I plan on researching official spawns, and have no desire to take even a slight chance on ever getting an account terminated because of a harmless world-building hobby (in other words, better paranoid than sorry).

Yeah, i'm still around, why don't you come back to #uox3 on freenode?