First official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

# Third official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

#### February 21st, 2000

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Developer answer
Question
Misc

* EviLDeD would like to welcome everyone to the 3rd uox3hoc meeting. Please direct any questions to Xuri, and I guess lets begin
«EviLDeD»: First off I would like to address the last rash of crap on the message boards.
«EviLDeD»: There is no problems in the DevTeam there were some personal differences of opinions that made it public and they never should have. There is nothing to worry about. So please try to limit questions away from this recent set of issues

«EviLDeD»: Question: When and how will the 3D Client be implemented? How is the development coming along?
«EviLDeD»: The client is in the dev stage. There is no hard code at this moment. This project will be starting soon and has been side tracked to dig deeper into the problems of UOX3.

«EviLDeD»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> when will we see the next official release and what issues will be covered in it?
«EviLDeD»: At this moment we are in a tracing for some large bugs that seem to crash the server, as well as track down some memory issues, as for a definite release on the next official release that is hard to say. were going to try to deal with as many large ended bugs as possible.

«Abaddon»: <Cestle> is the feature freeze over yet?
«Abaddon»: Nope, not a chance. As EvilDeD mentioned with the previous question, there's a lot of large bug / memory issue type of thing that we doing our best to isolate and repair
«Abaddon»: We've had too many reports of crashing and instability, this freeze was designed to repair as many problems as possible, before implementing new features

«EviLDeD»: Question: When do you expect to have the script files converted into binary and the code to use it readily available?
«EviLDeD»: the reading code is well underway however crashes on OR have directed my attention towards finding a means to keep it running more stable before ripping hard code apart. Got to keep the users happy, as for the
«EviLDeD»: scripts being binary, some dev's are against the thought, so more talks about that will have to be done before that ever takes hold

«EviLDeD»: <Cestle> Who's on the script team? what has happened to the people on it?
«EviLDeD»: This is a good one, as it seems that's what the base amount of the shit on the message boards has been about as of late.
«EviLDeD»: right now the script team is Eagle, he came through when the old team was slacking off, and has told me that they are but a day or 2 away, so as that question goes Eagle is the script team..
«EviLDeD»: There was some issues that happened between me and another regarding scripts and I was hasty to select him over eagle, however in my own defence I wasn't sure that Eagle was coming back as
«EviLDeD»: communication isn't one of the strongest traits we both share.
«Eagle»: heh
«Eagle»: FYI: i am looking for others to help me just email me at eagle@kc.rr.com DON'T ASK ME IN IRC

«EviLDeD»: Question: Any chance we can get some hot females to work for UOX, it would bring more people to UOX? :)
«EviLDeD»: on this question well, come on there has to be something better to ask :)

«Abaddon»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> Can temporary fixes be released so as to make the server playable again ?
«Abaddon»: Well, temporary fixes are usually that. Temporary. A lot of the stuff we are working on now are the critical subsystems of UOX, and hence we are trying our best to rigorously test them all out before releasing any fixes per say
«Abaddon»: I know I've been working on some things that have taken a few days of work, and even then I'm not finished, or close to finishing with testing
«Abaddon»: I imagine if we find anything truly critical, we'll try and release these fixes if we can, but we make no promises currently.
«EviLDeD»: To reinforce what Abaddon's just said if we get a critical bug killed and its well tested a release will be made
«EviLDeD»: just when isn't determinable

«EviLDeD»: «Chaos»: Question: What is required to be on the "UOX3 Script Team"?
«EviLDeD»: I just talked with Eagle, and he said that he is going to post on the web some criteria laying out what's needed, and why we are looking for. Eagle will provide the url when its ready.
«Eagle»: well that's a good question but I have no set requirement , as with the dev team, but i will put applications up on the web tonight and make them available

«Eagle»: With the changes in the scripts what can we look forward too? Will it affect our current tools or worlds?
«Eagle»: well a lot of bugs are hiding in the scripts and none are uniform in nature so a lot of what we are doing is setting a standard for the scripts , you shouldn't lose and tool functionality as tools like shard ace PARSE the scripts but if there is any questions about that there will l be conversion tools if UOX doesn't do it its self

«Abaddon»: «Chaos»: Question: Is there going to be a nicer looking back end to UOX3.exe? Like with point and click options, etc?
«Abaddon»: Well, in general, I'll say wait for threading
«Abaddon»: A GUI of any sorts tends to be fairly intensive for CPU usage, compared to a generic console
«Abaddon»: Yes, there are plans for it, certainly on the Win32 platform
«Abaddon»: But it's not really high on our priority list right now

«Abaddon»: Heres a question: Is UOX3 going to try and follow OSI in its server or is it going to try and branch out a little?
«Abaddon»: Well, yes and no, I suppose. We'll have to keep in lockstep for the encryption obviously. But as far as features go, I'd say we'll probably end up going a separate route in many areas. It'll need to be evaluated on a feature per feature basis really
«Abaddon»: But I imagine you'll find many things in UOX that aren't the same, or don't exist in UO, and even some things in UO that we don't feel were good ideas anyway. Then again, it is for you we do this, and you do have some say in the matter

«EviLDeD»: Question: Is the Official Realms Shard ever going to be anything but an excuse for Devs to go round kill people?
«EviLDeD»: Well I have only killed one player on the shard so far and that was Boris, for whining at me :)) However, OR shard is intended to build a strong world, provide the devs live first hand sight of what's going on
«EviLDeD»: right now it is running in debug mode, and has new tracking code in it that will make it even more laggy.
«EviLDeD»: Please bare with this, as were are tacking the functions that are causing the errors. other wise, no we don't just have OR to kill players..
«EviLDeD»: Btw what was your character name again

«Eagle»: Question: (Directed Towards Eagle) When can we expect to have the UOXDev.com website up, fully?
«Eagle»: it should be up in full dev mode by Wednesday
«Eagle»: but there will be a lot of changes
«Eagle»: as this page is for DEV related things a lot of "everyday" traffic will be directed towards stratics
«Eagle»: but past that it will be up Tue or Wed

«Abaddon»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> is the OR server running the latest build 03 ?
«Abaddon»: No, it's certainly not
«Abaddon»: It's up to build 14 now, and it's working off some laggy source (in aid of us debugging)
«Abaddon»: You'll probably even see that fact when you login =)
«Abaddon»: But OR will be running off the latest round of fixes that we have (or debugging improvements)
«Abaddon»: It may not be stable (though we hope it is), and it will be a test of our critical systems
«Abaddon»: However, it will be more stable as time passes, we can guarantee that

«EviLDeD»: <ADurley>> Question: So OR is running versions of UOX way ahead of ours?
«EviLDeD»: Not sure how to answer this one directly. Some troubles some was removed from the 07.02.xx release, and some was added, so to say thats its way ahead or not only time will tell..

«Abaddon»: on the build numbering system, will there be a (Build #) added to the name?
«Abaddon»: If you login to OR sometime, you'll notice that there is now a report based upon the build #, and that does get incremented when there have been any real changes
«Abaddon»: so when you login to OR, you'll notice straight away what build it is running
«Abaddon»: and I imagine, once the source has stabilized a lot more significantly, people will see it on their own shards as well

«EviLDeD»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> could you please make some of those fixes available since the shard I'm running is in a terrible state.. anything even a small fix to some bug related stuff would be greatly appreciated !"'
«EviLDeD»: Strangler, as fixes are available that tackle issues that do stop uox3 from functioning they will be made available, and for testing sake at most times just ask Ab or myself for the most recent build and we can hook you up. But we don't warrant that it will fix anything and could very well make things worse, however we will do out best not to release things that do not work. This wont happen anymore if can be helped

«Abaddon»: "Will we be able to find more scriptability in things such as magic and spells? Say animations, sounds and all? Like what you can do with a trigger."
«Abaddon»: Yes, we intend to make more of it scriptable
«Abaddon»: Currently the action a person makes casting magic is scriptable
«Abaddon»: I hope to abstract out the animation and moving effects as well sometime, though I don't know how soon that may be
«Abaddon»: I hope to make the ores and ingots more scriptable for mining as well, but I'm not sure how quickly that will go in

«EviLDeD»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> will player chars at any point get into their own separate file ?
«EviLDeD»: Yes I was working on that before OR decided to start crashing regularly. So I have turned to try to sort out why this is occurring as its annoying to you guys its annoying to me., but yes they are going into their own files.. and over the next number of builds possibly

«EviLDeD»: <ADurley>> Question: Are you considering two versions of UOX> One which is true to OSI, and one which isn't? i.e. with new features?
«EviLDeD»: in one word - "no"
«Abaddon»: Our goal is to provide you with the tools you need to build your own shard. That's why we try to make things more flexible, to make it as flexible as humanly possible. And anyway, who wants a whole heap of OSI clones? =)

«Abaddon»: Will there be any capability of adding your own spells in the future?
«Abaddon»: That's certainly a possibility, yes, though a lot of it would need code backing, unless we can come up with a way to interpret the scripts and derive the behaviour from it (not completely out of the question, just long and time consuming)
«Abaddon»: We'd certainly like it, it goes hand in hand with our goal to provide you with as flexible a tool as possible

«EviLDeD»: "Might it be possible to specify a root directory for scripts, then it read all files in all sub directories? hehehe, little organization or something ;)"
«EviLDeD»: yes this will also happen over the next number of builds, and has been planned.

«Abaddon»: «White_Knight»: Will we be eventually able to edit/create different looking items such as helmets, how weapons look etc?
«Abaddon»: I don't know of any solid concrete plans for such tools
«Abaddon»: The formats for the files are fairly readily available currently, but I don't know of any real plans for one
«Abaddon»: Most of the developers have their hands full working on UOX3 pretty much full time, so tools haven't been our priority
«Abaddon»: but there have been at least some experimental hacks from some of us, in some of these areas, but nothing remotely production quality (nor necessarily so anytime soon)
«EviLDeD»: To add to this, I would think that this would be a tool thing more over a server thing... So maybe one of the tool doods in here hear you! :) They know who they are :))

«EviLDeD»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> when the player chars get into their own file will the /acct command then be made fully functional ?
«EviLDeD»: in a word - "yes"

«EviLDeD»: «DPaladine»: is there any plan to add resmelting of armour and weaps in UOX3?
«EviLDeD»: Even though they just left (good timing)
«EviLDeD»: this is not planned, or at least in our immediate thought, resmelting in a sense of the Roleplaying genre lowers game economy in my opinion with mmprpg.

«Abaddon»: when will boats be fully implemented into uox?
«Abaddon»: Well, Zippy's been the boat guy, and last I heard, he believed they were fully functional
«Xuri»: or close.
«Abaddon»: If there are still problems, then pass them along to Xuri, myself or Zippy, and we'll try and track them down

«Abaddon»: when UOX is almost completely stable, what new features are first on the list?
«Abaddon»: Well, we've all got lovely ideas in mind, and we'll have to discuss it with each other
«Abaddon»: I know I've got a whole stack of racial ideas in mind, and plans to try and tie them with townstones. Then again, that may not be appropriate (though I'd love to work on it), it's something that needs to be discussed with others
«Abaddon»: Also, I'd like to see guilds expanded so that they can increase the number of guilds and members in total possible
«EviLDeD»: to add to this
«EviLDeD»: I would like to see a more player run economy, and a more real ad&d feel to rules and effects, to aid in the experience of role playing., which is why we are all here..
«EviLDeD»: maybe segregate player killers form people that don't want to be player killers.
«EviLDeD»: kinda rally shitty thing to join up to a shard cause you want to have some fun, and whammo dead. and looted.
«EviLDeD»: anyone else
«EviLDeD»: I guess not

«EviLDeD»: Question: How is the memory reduction going? So can we expect to have a large world with say a 64 Ram if everything goes well or will it still require a min of 128 Ram? :)
«EviLDeD»: Yes!!! This is something that I have been striving for and that most of the rest of the devs think I am mental about. however in all realize for shards over 20-25 players I would think that nothing less than 128mb of ram would be plausible, however up to 20 I think that and believe that uox3 should be MADE to run fairly stable on a low class machine for those TRUE player run shards.
«EviLDeD»: As for the progress, some of the changes made were kinda buggy, and not totally thought out so I removed then from the 03 build
«EviLDeD»: Ab has a bunch, zippy had made a bunch and we will be re implementing them one at a time to make sure that they work :))
«EviLDeD»: anyone else to contribute on that one
«Abaddon»: Yeah, I have a few memory reductions that I have in mind
«Abaddon»: Some regarding to full spellbooks (they take a hell of an amount of memory currently)
«Abaddon»: I know that shards like having a lot of mages, and with all those mages having full spellbooks, it's a drain on the server
«Abaddon»: But I have to think that one over carefully (can play havoc elsewhere) though I'd like to get it in

«EviLDeD»: [19:26] can we disable theft and PKing ?? if so how? If not, is it in the future?
«EviLDeD»: Well I kind hinted to this earlier. I would like to see the ability at being a pk'r and not harm other people that don't want to be. might be lonely, but then again most like pk'g anyhow so maybe you would be so lonely, but this is a feature in my opinion and has a fairly low priority
«Xuri»: and thieving already is, by setting ROGUE 1 to ROGUE 0 (server.scp)

«Abaddon»: Is there going to be banker notes added in?
«Abaddon»: Well, it's a possibility for later on. EvilDeD hinted at a greater player run economy, and I guess that this would be part of it
«Abaddon»: But it's more of a nicety, a feature, and that really isn't one of our concerns at the moment, stability, memory reduction and performance are our higher priorities (and probably in that order, or so I'd think =)

«Abaddon»: Is there a plan to have another bug posting site available?
«Abaddon»: I'm not sure whether uoxdev will come back up with a system like keystone or jitterbug, it would be nice to have it there again
«Abaddon»: If worse comes to worst, I can always resurrect my static HTML page and try and update it as often as I can
«Abaddon»: We'd like a controlled mechanism over the bug reporting, but remember, when you do make bug reports, make them as detailed as you possibly can

«Abaddon»: <GM-Strangler|Busy> will the spellbook still be regarded as a container ?
«Abaddon»: Not as it is now, if my idea goes through
«Abaddon»: the trouble at the moment, memory wise, is that it IS a container, and that each and every spell is an item in that container
«Abaddon»: Wasteful on memory, and performance as well. But it needs to be thoroughly looked at, and examined
«Abaddon»: If I removed it as a container, then you'd lose the ability to open a spellbook like a container (unless I can figure a way around it somehow). But there's always a price to pay for better performance and memory usage

«EviLDeD»: What about player defined gumps (well, the gumps in misc.scp)? Could players eventually use those through trigger or something?
«EviLDeD»: This is a tough one, as you can tell from our delay that it was a tough argument. Some say that it might be partially there, others say no. I think that player defined gumps should be more of a true script language related question (see previous uox3hoc logs for our position on the script language). And to me would almost seem to large a job for triggers. But anything is possible, and it might already be to a small degree.

«EviLDeD»: Will there be a way to access the GM queue from outside UOX that way tools can monitor it and people don't have to stay logged in to get queued. Instead the tool could play a sound or something else to summon the GM.
* EviLDeD waves at JM!
«EviLDeD»: Yes I in the true form of the xGM interface I would like to see that expanded to be more secure as well as more easily interfaceable with the server, so GM's don't have to be logged in to do typical things like answering pages or page cue, account admin etc.
«EviLDeD»: When this will take place is hard to tell. as all the features finally stopped getting in the true nature of the code started to show.
«EviLDeD»: and might I say that there are some serious things wrong that are no unavoidable . but this will be followed up on JM

«Abaddon»: Related in a way with the adding of spells, is there any intention of being able to add new skills?
«Abaddon»: That's actually one of the things I've done, experimentally. I've been able to add a few skills to the client MUL files, though that was in C++
«Abaddon»: I've got a VB App at the moment that reads/writes the skills info from skills and verdata, and will even write out the status of the blue button
«Abaddon»: When I get time I'll go back and visit it, allowing the user to rename them, or add some of their own. But it would require server side coding as well, potentially a lot depending on the skill
«Abaddon»: But it will be feasible in the long term

«Abaddon»: What are the possibilities that you can use different paperdolls for say an orc character?
«Abaddon»: Well, that's really a client side issue more than anything
«Abaddon»: There are ways to try and "trick" the client into believing it's something that it's not
«Abaddon»: but in reality, it's a virtually impossible task really, because the intelligence (or distinct lack thereof) is in the client
«Abaddon»: and that's not something we can control

«Abaddon»: Will races be more user friendly in the future? ex: ability to choose what you want them to wear and what weapon to start with?
«Abaddon»: Personally, I think they are quite nice and user friendly now
«Abaddon»: It might be possible to do that at a later date, but I'm more interested in making them as flexible as possible, like adding things such as the ability to specify which spells they can or cannot use, adding racial armour, things like that
«Abaddon»: But I don't imagine it'd be too difficult. It just doesn't really gel with what I believe is the goal of races. But if enough people want it, I guess it'll happen

* EviLDeD would like to thank everyone for coming to yet another successful #uox3 House of Commons meeting. As usual a log will be made available on the main websites, and for those that still had questions save them for the next meeting on March 5th, 2000 at 8pm est.. Thanks again!!