Request: Networked

[Aldo]

Hm...
Its possible to make exult run in multiplayer mode over internet/ethernet ?
I dont know if this makes sense, but, with a networked engine we could play as iolo, a friend as the avatar, and another one as tseramed... and so on...
what do you think?

[Wizardry Dragon]

There was a project that sought to make a multiplayer Ultima 7, called the Blackrock project. I am unaware of its status however.

- Wizardry Dragon

[drcode]

How would the plot work? Would the person playing Iolo be able to wander off and do things separately? Or would he just be an observer, with the Avatar controlling everything?

[PanSola]

Iolo will be able to fire crossbow bolts at the Avatar during combat mode.

Whenever the Avatar "borrows" something, Iolo will be able to ask "Is this virtuous?", as well as have the choice of leaving the party and fire crossbow bolts at the Avatar (as opposed to doing so while in the party, in which case the Avatar can't fight back).

During other times, the player controlling Iolo will just observe.

[Wizardry Dragon]

Don't forget, you get to sing!

- Wizardry Dragon

[Dominus]

Come on, we do have a FAQ on purpose...

If you want multiplayer, set up one of the VNC ports and let your "guests" take over your mouse actions

[Ares]

or code it yourself?

[Aldo]

yes, i could code it, but i dont have the experience in the actual code to do any good work... its much easier for the actual coders to setup this than a newbie to the engine...

[Dominus]

Code is not the main problem here.
As Dr.Code said, as long as no one comes up with a plausible plan it is no use to code. You need to know the goal for it to work.
Everyone wants multiplayer in todays games and that works for shooters and campaign games (the regular name has fled my brain right now, I mean games like Command&Conquer). But for plot-driven games it doesn't make sense (at least no one came up with something that makes sense).

[Ares]

the name your looking for is "real-time stratagy"

I see your point. You could remove the plot

[Wizardry Dragon]

And then what would we be left with?

- Wizardry Dragon

[Ares]

Running around killing things, with your friends.

[Gradilla Dragon]

HA! What a silly idea. The whole point of the game is lost.

Go play UO instead, buddy.

[Ares]

UO got boring, way to quick.

[Dupre]

If you turned U7 into a multiplayer game, wouldnt it be basically like playing UO? ( except with U7 graphics ).

[Wizardry Dragon]

UO *is* just U7 with multiplayer. Haven't you seen the original? They just jazzed up the graphics a bit and made the worldmap bigger.

- Wizardry Dragon

[Dominus]

Actually it is u8 with multiplayer and a big map.

[Wizardry Dragon]

AFAIK, the U8 engine handled heights differently (you could jump and climb and such).

That didn't make it into UO. So either they used U7 (completely possible), or they cut it out of UO (also entirely possible).

- Wizardry Dragon

[Aldo]

Mantain the plot, but alow the other party members to help.
Lets say that the avatar needs to get a item in moonglow, and another one in trinsic...
well, send iolo and spark to moonglow and go with the rest to trinsic

in the current scripts this doesnot makes much sense, i know,
but, once the studio is completely ready, it will make possible to someone create a mod capable of dealing with interconected scripts (wich makes you need to solve 2 or 3 things at the same time)

[Wizardry Dragon]

That's definately a feature to consider for the future, but perhaps not now.

It would be forward thinking to set up a multiple client functionality and leave that in for such a future possibility.

- Wizardry Dragon

[Colourless]

UO was based on the Ultima 8 engine, at least the very first proof of concept versions were. Also at about the same time, Origin were working on 'Crusader 3' which was also supposed to be multiplayer. Additional, the Ultima 8 engine (specifically No Regret IIRC) was ported to Windows by Jason Ely.

The U8 engine is far more flexible that the U7 engine. You may not realize it, but it true.

-Colourless Dragon

[Wizardry Dragon]

Not with Exult now!

Dr. Code: We can make the engine do whatever we want

- Wizardry Dragon

[Colourless]

You've obviously never attempted to do anything with Exult's code

-Colourless Dragon

[artaxerxes]

> Mantain the plot, but alow the other party members to help.
> Lets say that the avatar needs to get a item in moonglow, and
> another one in trinsic...
> well, send iolo and spark to moonglow and go with the rest to
> trinsic


Now maybe THAT indeed would make sense but with a plot that already kinda supports that, like U6's plot. Everyone must go and fetch at least 1 map piece and one virtue stone + rune. Or stuff like that...

Artaxerxes

[Wizardry Dragon]

It is entirely possible to work that into a story like that of my addon

Colourless: Those weren't my words, they were Dr. Code's
I had a bit of a chuckle at them, too.

- Wizardry Dragon

[Tristan de Inés]

>The U8 engine is far more flexible that the U7 engine. You may not realize >it, but it true.
>-Colourless Dragon

Yes, jumping and climbing is cool (after applying the patch) and U8 has a pretty good physics engine, making items bounce of the ground and walls. I also remember those little balls you could push and they would roll around on the floor hitting other balls.

And the more realistic water allowing stuff to be thrown in is also cool. (As long as you don't fall in yourself)

And then there were those (not so cool) moving platforms...

Hey, these would make interesting features to implement into U7

Moving platforms for example... make some chunks have a looping "animation" built into them, causing different "frames" of the chunk actually being on the map per game tick.