I haven?t tried RunUO, and will never try it. It?s against my principles to use any program that takes itself that seriously and yet is written in a language like C#. Repeat every M$ pro-C# rhetoric you?ve ever heard to me, and I?ll point out that even they admit it?s not meant for full-scale ?serious? applications such as a CPU-intensive server. True, any player-made emulator is not expected to be commercial-quality, but at the same time, its creators give me the impression that they think they have unleashed the greatest thing since mashedtaders.
As for Sphere, I liked it ages ago when I first came on the scene (before it was called that). I quickly switched to POL when I found out about it, and then quickly gave up on it too. POL is, in my opinion, still the best ?non-programmer? emulator out there if you are seeking customization.
I won?t go back to Sphere because of its staff and its in-ability to do everything I want. I won?t go back to POL because I don?t know who the staff is practically and it still doesn?t do everything I want.
For anyone who is worth their salt as a newbie coder, I would highly recommend UOX (the pre-scripted version that UOXC was based on) simply because it?s very easy to get into the guts of. True, it?s messier than my grandmother?s house after new years, but at the same time, it was written by very (in my opinion) novice programmers so, as a result, it?s easy for any novice programmer to work with. As for all the bugs and crashes, it doesn?t take long to track them down and fix them. I fixed approximately 90% of the bugs I could find in it within a combined time of approximately 10 to 12 hours (source will be available on my site if anyone is interested). Not much harder than C#, but a lot more potential since you can literally rewrite the whole thing.
Now for those amongst you who are true caffeine-blooded programmers, I think the only solution is to write your own. I?ve seen some very good ones written by programmers in their free time from scratch. The problem is that anyone who is a good enough of a programmer to write a good enough server usually gets a good job and a life in the real world before they can finish it.
I have seen a few, but not many, which support what I would consider ?critical? core features such as file-mapping and multi-threading. Those two things alone would make a server out-perform anything available now by 10 fold. Assembly-level compression routines and VFS would give all that extra memory and CPU to something beneficial such as advanced AIs (can anybody say ?neural networks? and ?genetic algorithms??).
I know how to do everything said above, but I don?t know how to organize such a project and even if I did, I have a full time job as a chemist that leaches enough of my brain power as it is. What little time I have left over is spent almost entirely with my girlfriend. In the end, I may know everything I need to in order to write the code for such a project, but I?m still just a hobby programmer who doesn?t know the fundamental design strategies of a major project. That is, after all, where every server I have seen gets hung up ? they start coding on a poorly-thought-out design and organization.
Which reminds me, I should be working.
Byebye.
You?ve now heard form the peanut gallery. *expects many harsh replies disputing everything I said, which I might add, really did come out of my ass*