Ryandor.com

As I am gearing up the most effective way to dabble away my time, I have considered doing a client/server for UO grapihcs (2d).

My thought would be an interesting hobby/learning for people, getting back some of the exploratory days of the early emu times. This wouldn't be confined to being a UO emu. In fact, it wouldn't be designed for the UO client (the client would be developed with the server). So basiclaly, just the base data sets would be used (and mainly as a jump start).

The other interesting aspect perhaps to one, is the ability do develop so that it would work well on both Windows and Mac OS X, with minimal coding and "ifdef".

Anyway, wondering if there was any interest.

I would be very interested, though I am a bit cought up in my own project to be of much help.

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

Ok, interested and have the time to work on it *grin*

Well, the harddrive in my Dell died again (second time for that Maxtor drive, doesn't speak too much for them. Getting dell on the phone was another whole story).

Anyway, so with that, all my old source is now gone. Time for fresh start anway.

I didn't get any response before, so I assume there isn't a lot of interest. Therefore I will focus on my own priorities.

Will be looking at SF I guess for a forum and cvs, etc.

Actually I thought it was a good idea, we need more projects but I just don't have time for anything.

About Dell...they did the same as Gateway and Micro. Build great computers then try to make cut backs to save money and its costing them their reputation and their business. That's why I've started building my own PC's 5 years ago.

I think all the different parts companies have that "Planned Obsolesence" down pat now though. Even the parts from once reputable companies like Gygabyte seem to fail after only 4 years.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

Pretty much Dev.
My old company was pretty much exclusively a Dell reseller. My current employer deals in HP and IBM.
None of them manufacture their own parts anymore for the most part everything is outsourced. The thing with Dell is that they buy everything on consignment and they buy stuff that hasn't passed more rigorous testing, hence the higher rate of failure. Warranty support is great because it is the only thing that keeps them in business.
While IBM and HP have less failures their RMA process gives me fits and I am an authorized partner and service provider.
The problem with building your own (commercialy) is that you become the party responsible for warranty support and even though everyone has an OEM builder program they will happily let you join they won't do squat for you. Then there is the fact that I can buy anything retail online for half the price I can buy it wholesale (which I am then responsible for collecting tax from the customer on).

I know how you feel punt, I've seen so many bad maxtor drives out of Dell. It's pretty embarassing when you sell a customer a new server and within the first month 3 hard drives, 1 stick of RAM and the motherboard all have to be swapped out.

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This space for rent.

I can amke graphical work if there will be that sort...

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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 do not think that you will find very many developers here, except, of course, when it comes to maps. As far as I know, we (punt and I), are the only serious C++ programmers that visit these forums. There are a few higher-level programmers (Xuri, and a few others), but I am assuming you want nothing higher-level than C++ involved.

Since you plan to support the UO graphics format, I am assuming replacement graphics, however nice, are not your biggest priority until some kind of engine is in place. There are a few graphics people around, though; certainly more than there are programmers.

If you want idea people, though, I am sure we all think we have the best ideas and plenty of them here.

As for Dell: I never understood why they sucked so much, but they always seem too slow/instable considering the list of parts in them. My cousin once bought a nice Dell, 2Ghz with 1GB of RAM, and it was much slower than my 1Ghz with 256MB of RAM. Never did figure out why; even the graphics card should have been much superior to my VooDoo 4?

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

Wow. I'm a 'higher-level programmer' O_o

As for Dell - the fact that they come preinstalled with a lot of memory resident programs might contribute to the slow down. First thing I did when I got my Dell laptop, was to repartition the entire harddrive and reinstall Windows.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

High-level is a relative term that means, "Degree separated from the core of the system." Insofar as programming languages go, assembly is considered the lowest-level language. Compared to Java, C++ is a low-level language, but compared to assembly, it is a high-level language. I used the term high-level to describe you because I know punt programs in C++ and you passed your Java exam (I hope?).

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

Yep. Got an 'A' But it was the introduction class, nothing advanced.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

I'm definately interested, but my programming skills are so far behind yours that I'm afraid I can't be of much assistance other than to help bug test or to assist with technical aspects of the client, as I have a pretty good understanding of how the various client files work.

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-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Well, I have always choosen to restrict the graphics files for the sake of of identifying areas to reduce work load. Otherwise it becomes overwhelming, and understanding my own attention spans, life expectations, others interest, etc. I know anything else isn't overly realistic.



However, the same side of it, I am not overly inclined to fill compelled to utlize very client file, or implementation. My goal isn't a corperate server to potentially attract every possible user for maximize money gain.


So, I guess I see it this way. I am looking at doing a small scale client/server project. One that can utilze existing graphics (I have no issue of different formats, as long as they can be easily populated) or have a source of obtaining graphics relatively quickly and painlessly (not requiring a signficant investment in graphics programs). I personally believe the actual artwork can be upgrade at later dates.

Emulation is interesting, but I find it be also a dead end. One is always "following", and forced to live in an environment that was imposed by others (design wise, not one of yours, as well as ones "derived" understanding of those contraints). They design contraints may not be applicable given the fact there may be different goals, critieria, etc.


So, that is something I have a personal interest in. I agree, if I was aware more of coding hobby forums, that would be a better place to post this.

From a personal note, I find the implementation itself intriguing. I realize the stregnths and weakness of the two classical approaches to Object Oriented design. On is the "derived" approach, the other is the Use approached. It is reflected in the languages (C++/Java/C# are more the derived approach with Objective C/Smalltalk being more the use approach). To me, it would almost as interesting to implement both.

For those who are not sure they understand the two approachs , consider the two old "cop approachs". There was a TV show, called Knight Rider, where the main "good guy" had a car called KIT that he used to get all sorts of gadgets/approachs. This is a use approach (not a derive, the human is a class, and it uses helper classes, all in their native form).
Now compare that to Robocop, where the human is "derived from" to make a cyborg so to speak. Anyway, probably a bad example, but the best I could think of.

At any rate, yea, long rambling, that summarize I need to find a software hobby forum, to see if there are those interested, capable (subjective, not looking for experts, it is a learning experience for all), and willing.

So let me get this straight..

You are wanting to create a server/client that uses UO 2D graphics...

So the end result would be a new game, not emulating UO, but just 'using' the graphics?

Also, by saying "using UO graphics" we should probly assume you mean using the same 'kind' of graphic types and formats that UO has.. to keep from stepping on any legalities

If thats what you mean, I may be interested. Im not real fluent with C++ much, but I have books here that I have been meaning to crack open.. I have Visual C++ 6.0, and Visual Studios 2003... just about any other program needed.. or can get easy.

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Forget what you know, know what you forget.

IBM is just as bad with loading you down with useless crap. HP is probably the best of the 3 as far as that goes. But anyway, this has nothing to do with punts thread and I don't even remember how we got off on the hardware tangent so I will shut up and go away now.

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This space for rent.

Microsoft is giving away the Visual Studio Express 2005 edition of VC++ (along with all of the other Visual Studio suite products) for free, so long as you download them sometime between now and next September. I would highly recommend this version of VC++ -- it is a major leap forward from 6.0, but requires a separate download/installation of the Windows SDK for it to compile native (as in not requiring the .NET framework) code.

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

Isn't "use" the same as "has a" or "shares a", which is, well, intrinsic to all of those languages, anyway (well, not so much the "shares a")?

A hero "has a" fancy weapon (the car), or the hero "is a" fancy weapon (the governor of CA), but then, maybe your example just confused me.

If that is the case, I cannot imagine very many classes that do not implement "has a" to some degree (singleton templates do not, I suppose), and most well-designed OO code uses some degree of "is a" as well.

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

Of the two approaches, both are intermixed. It goes more the underlying philosophy on the fundemental approach to solving the problem. They are not exclusive, and neither is wrong/right.

One can see this in the frameworks. QT, it is fundementally a subclassing off the framework classes to use (although again, one isn't "FORCED" to). But that is the primary philosophy that is evident on who the classes are structured, and used in examples. Now compare that to OpenStep (Cocoa), where there framework is expected to be "used", and rarely derived from (again, one can, just not the fundemental philosophy). This same philosophy is represented in the languages, just not as extreme.


At any rate, as to the others posting:

I am looking at generating a UO style game, no question. Not an emu (for it doesn't have to emulate, as it isn't using the client). But the style, etc, yes.
I do believe a fundemental format of data should be choosen so one could reuse the UO data sets in some fasion (either directly or indirect). There are no legality issues, as the only thing being distributed is the code that is generated (the user of the code would provide the data sets, and that could be from their UO copy, or some other source).

I do expect it to be a evolution process (so the first version would probably be more like the first version of UO, and evolve). Mainly trying to limit the problem set to what is being bitten off. I see the project of developing it as important as the actual product itself.


As to the development, anything afte VC 6 would be fine (VC 6 has too many issues). Personally, I would use mingw if on windows, but that is me (it is the most common denomitor to ensure code generated works on all without ifdefs). But as I stated as much, I also support the concept of parallel projects, where two implementations of the same design (say one in Objective C, on in C++, or Java) going on the same time.

It is totally an issue of biting off small chunks at a time. Do not try to make a MMO, or even a game, or hell, even an interesting chat program. Instead, make your goal simply to display a window -- once that goal is accomplished, give yourself a pat on the back, write it up in a nice change log (so you end with a huge list of minor accomplishments to motivate you later), and come up with a new project -- say, loading a graphic into that window. Seeing a monumental project like a MMO as nothing more than a series of very small and trivial homework assignments, makes the job much more approachable. Of course, you still have to plan for the long-term and make sure you do not go down any dead-end roads (where you would have to change so much code to fix/enhance something critical later, that it would not be worth doing), and generally avoid writing more than a hundred lines of code you cannot test, whenever possible.

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

I'd love to see a client that uses the UO graphic files that actually worked. Right now there are a number of clients in development but none of them are really fully functional or usable on a shard.

If I ever found a client that was as good (or better) than the OSI client I would definately move to that, it would be cool to be able to get past some of the client limitations to have features like an unlimited map size, unlimited numbers of equipment/tiles/art, etc.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Just to clarify, the client I am referring to would be a client to work with the server that would be co developed. Again, it is not an emulator, either the server or client. Sooooooo, I don't think it would be what you are talking about (for instance, "that actually worked" would not be in the context of emulating the UO client . It may have similar features, it may not. It also would be doubtful if it had the same protocool with the server).

If you make a UO-like client, you should try to keep in mind the possibility of replacing the graphics with 3D alternatives at some point in the future -- it should be easy, so long as there are no places where the map looks okay from the normal perspective, but weird from the opposite.

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