First official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

# Fourth official UOX3 House of Commons Chat

#### Marc 6th, 2000

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Developer answer
Question
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Abaddon: Okay folks, it's that time again. Welcome to #uox3hoc, I hope you enjoy it like you have all the other times
Abaddon: Tonight's topic will be general again, and our question takers this week will be Homey, and Xuri
Abaddon: So feel free to message them.
Abaddon: Let's begin, shall we?

Xuri: Wirebender: Question: Any word on when VERy .15 is to be released? If so will it have the promised features of adding items and icons in?
Xuri: Well that's not really directly related to UOX =) It's made by Cironian, and as far as I know he's still working on it.
Xuri: No idea when he'll be done though.

Abaddon: Majite: will there ever be a built in world chatting system?
Abaddon: Well, it may happen, for sure. But as it's currently a feature, it's not really our focus
Abaddon: Our focus is on ironing out the bugs and performance issues, increasing stability
Abaddon: And a world chat system like OSI uses is destructive to immersiveness and RP ability
Abaddon: We may end up using it though, but I wouldn't say for sure either way at the moment

Skyfire: LanceOfThebes: Is UOX4 really made by Cironian and why isn't it supported by anyone?
Skyfire: Cir and Kaerodoth were working on it but Cir ran out of free time to work on it.
Skyfire: I do not know the current state of that project, but from lack of news on it, i assume it is dead
Xuri: /msg Xuri or Homey with your questions, people =)

EviLDeD: Cy: what are some of the upcoming features like, memory usage, chars and items separate folders, and single item world saves, and how long will it take to get these put in?
EviLDeD: Well features we haven't thought much about except for our wild dreams. As for these other things single item saves, separation of chars, and items are all currently being worked on, a finish date is hard to say really but should be soonish.

Abaddon: Scruffy: Will spell editing and creating ever be part of uox? or is it already and i missed it?
Abaddon: Well, I seem to vaguely remember answering this in the previous #uox3hoc chat
Abaddon: But the situation has changed since then, so I can expand on it
Abaddon: Spell creation is very different from spell editing. We may one day be able to allow you to create your own type of spells, in fact, we'd like to, because it gives you finer control over your shard
Abaddon: Changing the behaviour of existing spells would require code changes, though it would be nice to one day have it scriptable, though that's a pipe dream at the moment
Abaddon: Since the last chat, however, I have been able to make the sound, static and moving effects scriptable, as well as whether it will make you a criminal or not
Abaddon: So if you wanted to change the sound it makes, or the sparkles to a flamestrike, it will now be possible, and it will be reloadable from the console as well

Abaddon: SC_Magicia: SO the question is Are the devs working on allowing UOX to be on multiple computers running one world...
Abaddon: EviLDeD tells me that we have it planned. but no, we're not working on it right now

Abaddon: Scruffy: What do you mean by moving affects? The necromantic spellcast vs. the normal spellcast?
Abaddon: By moving effects, I mean the type of effects used with explosion, and ebolt
Abaddon: You know the ones where the fireball scoots between you and the target?? Well, that
Abaddon: you could change it from a fireball to something else if you really wished to
Abaddon: Though only 4 spells in the entire spell system use it, but I can't remember which they are off hand

EviLDeD: JustMichael: When will the current UOX source be available for programmers again?
EviLDeD: This we are not sure about right now. Over the last year I have attempted to round the dev group around certain things, issues that were UOX3 future realted (even though seem to think that it is personal)
EviLDeD: anyhow very few thought this was the right path, and continued on,
EviLDeD: The source will be given out just as soon as some very crucial playability issues are tackled. as it was they weren't and never were going to be addressed
EviLDeD: from what I could tell, and this was my only really alternative (in thinking) We are not walking off with the code, we are not making a proprietary emu, just trying to get some much needed things done, and it wasn't happening the old way. Please accept my apologies to ANYONE that does not agree, but I feel (and hope other devs will back me up on it) was the best over all thing to do with it at this time.
Abaddon: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree
Abaddon: There are things that need doing that need to be done, and soon, and that's what we're working on
Ripper: i agree at this time for the record :)
Skyfire: I agree with Evil and Ab
Xuri: I agree with them as well *whistles and pretends to be a part of the dev team*

Abaddon: Delorim: Any thought to making different colored lights through /glow?
Abaddon: The only way to be able to do that, in the current system, would be to allow you to choose the type of light source that gets attached as the glowing item
Abaddon: Now, that's not particularly simple, and could run the potentiality of creeping in some nasty nasty bugs, which we all hate
Abaddon: If OSI had actually made a client with a selectable colour light source.... but ah well, they didn't, so we work with what we have
Abaddon: No idea when, or even if, it might happen, but it's not short term

Abaddon: Delorim: I haven't validated it, but is /setid buggy? (if it made functional again, no need for the above question) :)
Abaddon: Well, I haven't heard of any problems with it in the past, and I haven't encountered any problems with it myself, but then again, I've never really used it either
Abaddon: I'll have a look at the code later, see if there isn't something that can be done

Abaddon: LanceOfThebes: Who's decision was it to just let uox.stratics.com be the home base and put uoxdev.com to other uses?
Abaddon: Well, uox.stratics.com has been around much longer than www.uoxdev.com
Abaddon: So I've always considered uox.stratics.com to be the home of UOX
Abaddon: I believe it was pretty much a mutual decision to turn uoxdev to other purposes, because the communit wasn't really served by 2 sites containing pretty much the same type of information
EviLDeD: bah
Abaddon: And as the dev implies, it is likely to go to future use for the developers
EviLDeD: the truth of the matter is that someone decided due to his own reasons that uox3 was not a good emulator anymore, and untill it was eitehr re written, or the dev's(cough loosely implied EviLDeD) were changed would it evr go back to being a uox support board.
Abaddon: «Zane»: the idea of UOXDev is to be a DEV site (as the name denotes), uox.stratics was ALWAYS meant to be the home of UOX

EviLDeD: Cy: also on these memory usage, chars and items in seperate folders, and single world saves, how would these work, what would they offer their part in the UOX coding?, and like i said "how would they work", how would they offer good to uox?
EviLDeD: The over all benefit here would be 1) to isolate items, chars, and account related info to make deletions and correction more readily accessable
EviLDeD: 2) they are the same time would allow the over all size of the files to be shorter
EviLDeD: 3) provide more modular approach to the data
EviLDeD: = SPEED!

Abaddon: Delorim: Atric says: "when will gms beable to manipulate objects npcs are wearing",
Abaddon: Manipulating includes (from him): adding (which I think is done), removing, dyeing (see adding), and changing anything else
Abaddon: Well, I'll tell you right now, it's already possible
Abaddon: when it comes to using UOX (rather than coding), I'm a complete novice
Abaddon: but I was able to last night, remove things from an npc, add things on to them, and dye items they were wearing
Abaddon: so, unless I'm missing something (and it's possible), it's already in and working fine

Xuri: Scruffy: Npc's seem to walk on water if the spawner is too close to water are you going to fix the walking through walls and on water thing or do i have to script it? :) dont mean to be rude if it sounds like i am
Abaddon: I'll take that Xuri
Abaddon: I was given some walking changes the other day, which seem to resolve most of the known walking issues
Abaddon: walking underground works, as well as it seems to stop NPCs walking on water
Abaddon: as for the walking through walls, I don't think anyone here was able to duplicate it, without using vERY, but I could be wrong on that count
Xuri: Anyone have any more questions, better msg me or homey them now..

Abaddon: Corwin-son: any plans to keep the Linux version up to date with the Windows version?
Abaddon: Well, that's a real tough one for us
Abaddon: With Punt's departure, there are now no developers at all that really use Linux
Abaddon: Yes, we always endeavour to try and write as much ANSI C++ compliant code as possible, to reduce friction for Linux
Abaddon: but the simple fact is, none of us are Linux developers, so it's pretty hard to write for something you don't use

Abaddon: Tristan2: I'm using the all in one avalable at stratics and have a problem with tweak. The first page of gump works fine but second page is buggy. If you try to change one item manually it actually brings up the text entry field for the item bellow it. Any fix?
Abaddon: Yes, we know of it, and have for a little while. During the merge for the 70 series code, we received some changes to tweak, but they were incomplete, and thus buggy
Abaddon: But it hasn't been high on our priority list to fix, we've had much more pressing problems to try and resolve

Abaddon: JustMichael: Why couldn't read-only access to the source be given to other programmers? This would give more people access to hunt bugs but they would have to submit the fixes they find to the devs.
Abaddon: Well, personally, I don't know about others, but I have my views on it
Abaddon: We've made some fairly significant changes to the source in places, and there have been times we've even reverted back because of some bad stuff that's occurred
Abaddon: I believe we went up to build 14, then had to go back to around build 12, then work our way up again
Abaddon: There's a lot of stuff in the source that is extremely fluid, and we don't really want a buik of coders getting used to a particular function, or style, especially if it could go out of date, or become redundant

* Xuri looks around
Xuri: We back online? :P
EviLDeD: I think so
EviLDeD: that was sweet huh.
Xuri: hm yes. /msg me any questions people =) we're running out of questions *grin*

EviLDeD: Cy: also if there are new scripts writen , which i know there are some being writen, will they replace our already writen scripts? will we have to re write our scripts? how will this take place?
EviLDeD: At this moment there were a re write, and a new format, eithr way, there will most likely be conversion tools that will convert between the formats if there is a change, and or at least convert an existing world file to conform to any changes
EviLDeD: TO the best of our abilities. I would hope that they would be as much a drop in case as possible, but sometimes that cant be done ..

EviLDeD: Delorim Hows: Is there any plan to make make the source more compiler friendly? Or sticking with MSVC 6?
EviLDeD: At this point there is great cohesion between vc5, and vc6 Bwhahahahaha, as for other compiler, technically Ab answered this one earlier with the Linux question, we are able to develop for the platforms that we have, or are specialized in,
EviLDeD: When the source comes back out I would hope that it will be in much better shape to have legitimate, and functional ports to other langs with as minimalistic need to recode as possible.
EviLDeD: who knows.

Abaddon: Corwin-son: Any plans for adjustable AI for creatures? (ie: changes in movement patterns, agression, or combat tactics based on scripts, GM commands, or triggers)
Abaddon: That'll be very much a future thing, not short term at all
Abaddon: Decent AI of any sort is rather performance intensive
Abaddon: and a few other systems need to come online before that type of stuff can really be tackled
Abaddon: as for the way it'd be customisable.... no idea right now
Abaddon: And I won't suggest a system, because it may change a lot
* Xuri growls at chanserv

Abaddon: Delorim: How about fluxuating spawns? have a norm, then a flux amount? (sort of like the new shopkeeper stuff)
Abaddon: Well, I know I added a CALL member to the spawn regions a while back, but that actually needs some fixing up (it won't behave properly)
Abaddon: I imagine it would be fairly simple to put a fluctuation in, and make it scriptable, but it's not really our focus at this point in time

Xuri: ah.
Xuri: woh
Xuri: and Chanserv looked upon stratics.com and said "It is whole."

Abaddon: Tristan2: Will there ever be a way to set character restrictions upon creation ie. stat caps?
Abaddon: Some restrictions are automatically applied by the client (sum total of stats)
Abaddon: specifically for stat caps, they are a global and racial combination
Abaddon: We hope to one day have a better way of choosing your race on char creation, that's certainly true
Abaddon: but it really does depend on the type of restriction, some aren't particularly feasible, and some don't belong to the char
Xuri: no more questions?

Abaddon: Scruffy: can i get the average developer age for uox?
Abaddon: well, for current ACTIVE developers, it's 27
Abaddon: if my maths is right =)

EviLDeD: JustNobody: When can we strangle ChanServ?
EviLDeD: Well we are currently working on new code that should make the hand that we used to use to strangle chanserv a little more effective and more cabalbe of its job. So untill these bugs get cleaned out we'll have to wait.

Abaddon: JustNobody: With the new scripts will we be able to use hex or decimal values interchangeably? Have values default to being decimal and if it is preceded by an 'x' then it is a hex number.
Abaddon: Well, it's possible, I suppose
Abaddon: I don't think it'd be that hard to implement, I believe
Abaddon: but not sure on a timeframe for that either

EviLDeD: Tristan2: Any way to get involved with developement other than HOC?
EviLDeD: at this point in time the existing devteam is working out well. I'm sure that we will be looking for help and to build the group again in the near future but at this time, HOC is about the best means to get ideas out, and we are never against taking in code to look at.
Xuri: either that, or pay me $400 j/k
EviLDeD: the cvs code is a good place to start, feel free to continue to use that code base to work with etc, when things are completed the cvs, and the closed source will be merged with best ability minimizing the noticable differances.
EviLDeD: hey yea, valid non jailing CC info with name, exp info would be accepted :))

EviLDeD: LanceOfThebes: Will you ever make it so that people have to sleep, eat and go to the restroom?
EviLDeD: I would love to see this happen, give it an edge finally. :) We have alot of immersing ideas, as do a lot of others that will be adopted to ensure that the UOX experience will still remain the best experience.
EviLDeD: so with that I pass control back to Abaddon, and say good night.
* Xuri coughs "optional" *cough*
Ripper: i have ideas too :)

Abaddon: well ladies and gents, thank you all for coming tonight
Abaddon: We hope you find it a success, I know we do
Abaddon: Thank you for your continuing support and feedback, it all makes it a better project