Ryandor.com

I've been in discussion with certain people about a potential "Total Conversion" project for UO.

This would mean creating a whole new world, whole new character models, clothing, weapons, music, sound-effects, interface [skins], textures, etc. as well as, naturally, some custom features.

Now, to put it simply, I was wondering how feasible this is.

We have a given task we'd like to accomplish, and while a from-the-ground-up MMO isn't out of the question, a UO conversion was brought up as a popular and simple solution that could lend itself well to the creation of a quality gameplay experience.

I'd be very thankful for any input.

Thank you!

It is certainly possible, but compared to doing all that, coming up with a custom client and server is a relatively simple task, and give you a lot more flexibility.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Well, I'd like to say that we're more-than happy with UO's basic gameplay and feature-set, and it's also been quite successful. Attempting to create a game from the ground up will easily allow for a lot more errors in the gameplay-creation department, and also isn't really the task we'd like to be performing.

We're more interested in the actual construction of environments, characters, clothing, quests, etc.

It's possible, even feasible, as Sydius said. Using one of the open-source emus, you could add anything as far as plot or quests that you want. Character creation, combat, movement, etc. is all customizable in several current emus. Custom art has been around and understood for quite some time. You could, in theory, replace every piece of art, every landscape tile, every character model, every item graphic, everything in the game, but you're talking years of work. This isn't a weekend project.

I wish you all the luck in the world (as I'm sure everyone else here does), and would like to hear back if/when your project is completed. Just forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Quite possible project, but require to collecting teammates: artists, mapmakers, scriptwriters, webmasters... all of them must to working together and one must to know what another do - all this is need to proceed to coplete result. But if all of that options is existing, i believe that it is a deed of month-or-two. I by myself has managed a custom world, sities, dungeons, new quest and monsters. Imagive what a Team can made!

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"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

I think the project would be much more likely to survive if you work at it piecemeal, and not try to replace everything at once.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Naturally, the only way the few people I've talked to in person about this and I could hope to pull that huge team-building effort off well is if the game is set in a popular pre-established universe..

You'll probably laugh/smirk when you hear it, and you can likely guess.

Hmm... the point is that no one ( A.F.A.I.K. ) ever before tries to manage something like that. One are making new monsters... another making new world... third is making miscallenous graphical changes... but no one dare to change all of them. So i'm sure that an idea is worth a time. I cant quess the faces of UO-gamers when they will see absolutely new universe in their lovely UO engine, and believe that this project will be Very popular.
I wish you bravery to begin, force of will to not throw off on the middle and patiences to finish yours project, as it should be something especial! No doubts, every UO-gamer is dreaming for that what you dare to acomplish, in most or least measure!

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"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

Thanks for the enouragement, but, while I don't want to confirm it unless we actually decide to go ahead with the project, I think you'll laugh when I say what popular fictional universe we're going to try to recreate in UO.

BTW, "Location: Russian Federation, Moscow"
I'm from Russia as well

Whatever you decide, I hope you and your team enjoy yourselves.

If you do not already have a lot of experience with the things you will be doing, try biting off smaller projects first, just to see how difficult it actually is and to see if it as fun and worthwhile as you hoped.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

I am from Russia, Moscow too. You are surprised? То есть вы хотите сделать современное оружие и сотворить модель Москвы?

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"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

Now I'm curious. When do we find out?

I've already seen a very nicely done world based loosely on Anne McCaffrey's Pern, although only the map is based in that world. There are many shards with a Tolkein theme. But no one laughs at them... You're not doing the Smurfs, are you? Power Rangers? Teletubbies?

I think someone should do ?Wonderland? (as in Alice in Wonderland) and have a ?Felucca? version that is very perverted (like the game ?Alice?). Someone could do a ?Wizard of Oz? theme, too.

I am tired of Tolkein, though.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Hmmm... maybe they want to realize a game universe by books of Lukianenko "Night Watch","Day Watch" and "Twilight Watch"? That should to be cool!

_________________
"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

I do not mean to be rude, but I am going to correct your English a bit, just for the sake of education, and because I am bored.

In that sentence, ?realize? should be replaced with ?create?. ?Realize? is a tricky word, and you could, technically, use it in that sentence and have it be proper, but generally, that usage of the word is a bit too formal when you could just use ?create? instead.

?by books of Lukianenko? should be replaced with ?inspired by Lukianenko?s books? ? again, I suppose you could call what you wrote originally ?proper?, but the way you wrote it, it implies that they would use the books as instructions, as opposed to inspirational material.

?Should? should be replaced by ?would? ? again, not necessary for the sake of being proper, but I think ?would? carries your meaning better.

?to? in the last sentence should be replaced with ?, too, ? and moved to before ?would?.

I think, overall, this is what you meant:

Hmmm... Maybe they want to create a game universe inspired by Lukianenko?s books, "Night Watch", "Day Watch" and "Twilight Watch"? That, too, would be cool!

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

My English is a far, far away from ideal. Russian is much different contruction in all ways. After it, i encountering alot of troubles in writing rightfully and quick at one time. I'm like a second way more, so a lot of mistakes and odd constructions is very common in my text. For example, English "realize" in Russian means "get into life" or like so, what equal to "create" in some measure. But if you so bored, i can just post nothing more, because i'll require a lot of education to make my English well enough to avoid mistake-making. Of course i can understand you, but want to note that this very forum is a first one english forum that i visiting, so it's a first time when i'm rapidly writing so large messages by myself, without online-translator site (in fact it making much more mistakakes, than i am)...

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"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

Nevermind Syd's nitpicking, Xenoth, he doesn't mean it in a bad way. He just has a mind for details, that's all.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

He has a mind for details, and i'm explained the reasons. That not mean any angry or confuse from myself.

And i willn't an offtopic messages anymore.

_________________
"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

There is nothing wrong with the way you write; I was just assuming you were trying to improve it. I am learning Japanese, and I just love it when people correct me, but hey, I am a perfectionist. Oh, and I am a bit of an ass. Sorry for offending you, and for being off-topic.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Heh. You haven't guessed it.. I'm surprised. May be to obvious for you to guess. Tolkein may be somewhat the right direction though. Another hint is that there already is at least on MMO on PlayerWorlds that uses the same franchise.. But not the same world.. (*hint hint*)


I'm aware of Night Watch, being Russian, but I'm unfortunately not too big a fan of that particular style of Fantasy.


On this subject, the reason for choosing an very 'over-milked,' in some peoples' opinion franchise is because, a long time back, I was working on a single-player RPG based on the lesser-known (although they became more widely-known due to the, often considered awful, SciFi channel miniseries) Earthsea books in my free time, and.. really.. no one cared.. so I put it on indefinate hold because it didn't look like there would be much use for it and later lost all the data when my harddrive crashed. Also, there was no interest in assisting with the development online, so any game I would have made on my own would have likely been rather mediocre.

Star Wars?

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Robert Jordan?

Can we turn this into a guessing thread?

sure. haha. You haven't guessed it.

Star Wars and Tolkein are definitely the right direction.

I still hold that it's too obvious to realize..

Star Trek?

Harry Potter?

Akalabeth?

Serpent's Isle?

The other missing Ultima worlds?

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

nope.

I'll try to point you in the right direction by saying 'Pong.'

You ought to get it now.. although, if you do, I can't tell you .