U7 Online

[Daniel Burke]

Now wait for it, I know that it says in the FAQ that the folks here at Exult have no plans to make U7 online. So, this post is not about pestering them to do so. HOWEVER...

Who here has checked out U6 online!? - www.geocities.com/galleondragon
Wouldent it be so sweet if that could be done with U7?

Is there something about the nature of U6 that makes it easier to turn into a multiplayer online game than U7? Is it just a pipe dream?

[Wizardry Dragon]

You should look up the old Blackrock Project.

--------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer,
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

[Garrett]

U6O is definitely a proof of concept, it works and it's fun. It was arguably more work for them as they had to rebuild the engine from the ground up, while with Exult that is already done.

However U7 has an infinitely more complicated game world. More active NPCs, more animations, more everything. All this would probably take up more bandwidth to transfer effectively. Also the system specs will likely have to be higher due to all the new data being handled simultaneously.

And then there's gameplay. Mouse interactivity at the very least would need to be reduced; seeing an item teleport due to an unseen hand would be a little unnerving. But other changes might be necessary.

Blackrock is here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/u7o/

I haven't tried it myself, but from what I've gathered in previous discussions it was terribly slow. It might just be that their implementation was still rather rough, but perhaps some parts would need to be discarded in order to produce an effective online experience. Of course the question is how much can be removed before the world loses its lifelike charm, thus making the online experiment pointless in the first place.

Another possibility would be placing each town on a separate map (just like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and only transferring info for the map you're in. Since both players and NPCs are in more abundance in towns splitting those focal points up from the main world and aslo each other would probably go a long way to reducing lag, albeit at the price of a short delay when you enter the city limits.

[Mandragor]

I wasn't aware that U6O is Ultima 6 rebuilt, wouldn't that mean that
NuVIe should be finished by now?

[SB-X]

Yes, but we're just not working on Nuvie as fast as GalleonDragon works on U6O. U6O core feature development isn't finished BTW.

There's no reason U7 can't be given multiplayer support.

[Daniel Burke]

I like the suggestion of breaking up the game world into chunks. How do the folks at UO handle handwidth? (Apart from throwing lots of money at expensive server systems).
With U6O there are rarely more than 10 players on at any one time, and usualy only 3 or so. So I've never experienced a problem with lag. However I guess a U7O project would be considerably more popular with the ultima fans.

[Axel DominatoR]

Ultima Online world is divided into "statics" ( terrain, walls, caves, etc ) and objects/npcs and players. Statics are on the client and the only way of changing it is by downloading a new one ( or patch verdata.mul ). NPCs and dynamic objects are instead sent by the server. Map is divided by the server in chunks, too ( I don't remember if they are about 100x100 tiles... ). You can see this when you try to grab and release something between two tiles and you can't move it between two chunks.

[SB-X]

U6O only sends the players whats on their screen at any given moment.
They also only send certain objects.

[drcode]

UO sounds a lot like U7.

[Wizardry Dragon]

Garett - the client/server structure put most of the strain on the server, and they never used to have all that great a server before the team disappeared.

Runing a server on loopback and then playing for me was faster than Exult, due mainly to Exult's speed checking code. Not sure if that is the proper name for it, but I am sure you get the gist of what I mean.

If someone implemented NPC conversations as mentioned in another thread, it would be possible to make a 'cooperative' multiplayer U7, or Black Gate at least. Serpent Isle would be infinitely more tricky. It would be nice if the capability were put into Exult for us mod developers, at the very least.
--------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Developer,
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

[MV]

If someone implemented NPC conversations as mentioned in another thread, it would be possible to make a 'cooperative' multiplayer U7, or Black Gate at least. Serpent Isle would be infinitely more tricky. It would be nice if the capability were put into Exult for us mod developers, at the very least.

That I see being more fun than an instanced U7 multiplayer AKA U6O. At first it was fun enough, but in reality, it's just single player U6 that just happened to have other people playing the single player game at the same time that you could talk to.

Would make a great LAN game, especially if you could break the group up and have people doing stuff while some other people are doing something else with the story at the same time.

I see the possibility for breaking plots with that though, but surely eggs will take care of it. EG: Something will only be available to someone else when someone has done X.

[SB-X]

That was my suggestion here a while ago. I'm not interested in "U7O".

[Axel DominatoR]

IMHO an UO-like U7 is difficult to achieve, but not a multiplayer LAN-mode one. Something like the network engine used by Age of Empires would be not too difficult to implement. You have 2+ players connected ( one of which is the server that started the game and that will provide maps and savegames, etc ). Every client would send out to other players just the ACTIONS you do ( mouse click coordinates, button pressed ), then every copy of exult would parse all the informations. This way bandwidth consumption is really really low, and you can implement actions from other players like a sort of "interactive npc scripted sequence" to be parsed on-the-fly by the usecode interpreter. Sure, you must then implement some gui for connecting to other players and a text based chat, maybe... but reading about the "Solo mode" in the other thread, the "server" could use the Avatar, while the clients will be "Solo mode" pcs...

Just an idea... my two cents.

[Tumppi]

I have been learning some network programming myself, just to be able to integrate it wih Exult and be able to play U7 in lan with my brother, but since I have very little programming background other than little training, I pretty much gave up hope after a couple of months. I didn't even get anything good done, since as said, I'm not a programmer at all.

U7O wouldn't be cool at all, IMHO. Instead, U7 in lan would be the best thing since ANYTHING. Just being able to build your own places and houses, and clearing the world of items, tables, boxes and everything into your own houses and caverns would too much awesomeness to even handle!

But for the networking side, at least in theory, couldn't the client tell the server where you're hanging at the moment, and only load up couple of screens around the player, instead of the whole world at the same time. And it wouldn't have to be completely serverside now would it? Couldn't the client itself handle a pretty big amount of stuff that the other clients wouldn't have to know about yet? Much work to do yes, so just thinking of it, wouldn't it be nice to have an U7 fanatic here, with enough time and determination to do a, if not complete, at least a somewhat operational networking code.

Ive been playing around with exult for couple of years, always starting a new game, completing the required quests and starting to empty the world of stuff, that I pack into my own little house. I never get bored to it.

[Tumppi]

And I just noticed the nice date we have here today, 06.06.06 Sorry, just had to mention it! ^^

[T. J. Brumfield]

There are tools to run your own UO server. UO features very similiar gameplay mechanics and graphics. There are people who made tons of new graphics and have scripted hard-core changes into UO gameplay such as new races, magic systems, etc.

Given that UO already has both the rendering engine, the core game engine, and the multiplayer engine built in, the real task would simply be remaking the game world to something more like U7.

In theory I don't mind the larger world of UO, though the towns are missing any real meaningful NPCs. Leave the nice large stretches of country and dungeon, and just redo the towns.

There you go!