sunsvortex

This is what Warlander has now - LINK

LMAO OK IM not going to go down that road. That argument can be found on every game development forum in existence. But on the second part. There are some options. First, let me say that under no circumstances would I support going Unity. Period. I have no love of Unity. I set up Unity to run like an MMO had people log in, run around for a bit. From my point of view its a complete no go. To run any game like Wurm.......its just hasnt got what it would take to run an environment like wurm. Its optimizations are horrid to non existent and I could go for hours on rants against it and the only thing i would successfully do is piss myself off. Its a great platform for a lot of games....NOT MMO's. That being said - There is no reason that Rolf couldnt farm out a rework of Wurm, and give the dev team that did it a nice royalty off the first x number of sales not to exceed x amount. They would have no rights to it and Rolf has little to no risk and gets to explore a whole new area. If it does good great, if it doesnt then at least itll put a nail in that coffin at a very low risk. Meanwhile current dev team keeps on track and there is no spreading things thin or going too far out on limbs.

Your right, when it comes to what either is actually capable of. It matters though about literacy rates, support, ease of use, popularity, all these things can be summed up under industry pressure as it is the industry that decides these things, not CC not me not anyone. The industry does, and the biggest fish in the pond always wins, whos the biggest fish in the pond? Microsoft. Support levels for Directx are exponentially better than Open GL. How many driver issues can you identify in the tech problems section, how many times does someone say -Disable GLSL and try. So saying there is no industry pressure is just patently false. There is enormous Industry pressure, not just on support but from popularity, tools available, ect ect ect ect ect. Im not even remotely trying to push one or the other, just looking at it very objectively and from an ROI point of view. If you want modding to be as successful as possible, then it stands to reason you want to reach the largest audience available. The largest audience available would be to have support for both JVM and .NET, but it doesnt look like thats possible so if forced to choose why wouldnt you choose the more popular, why wouldnt you choose the one with the most support, why wouldnt you choose the one with the best literacy rates, why wouldnt you choose the one that has tools integrated in nearly every development platform available on the market. All im asking is why not. what could it hurt to explore it.

He is just coming strictly from an ROI (Return On Investment) point of view. It makes sense to start this way,and I am 100% certain that Warlander as well as others, will push hard to get Linux/OSX support out asap. My question was simply staying in the same ROI vein as it seems there are many more people literate in .NET /C/C++ than Java. So if you want your products to reach the largest audience possible then, due to industry pressure ect ect ect, from a strictly ROI point of view, there is a lot of merit in continuing down the windows road. Which would mean a C++ version with DirectX and .NET support.

Unfortunately thats a quote from Rolf, Top of page 3 Frequently Asked Questions thread.

Since WU is windows only, does it make sense instead of eventually adding Linux /OSX support, using the limited resources to add in .NET support. Seems to me you would increase the reach of modding and make it more attractive overall. Many Many ways to do it, piecemeal, baby steps just whatever. DirectX could solve a lot of issues, .NET API's would also be attractive to a large number of people. Surely something like this has been discussed at some point in time in the WU discussion.

Rolf Who in staff is supposed to be doing this? I am assuming it will be different than the Wiki????

IM hoping that a bit more work on shaders will advance it quite a ways. A well done shader reallllllllllly makes a difference. As well as rework the textures or maybe just add new ones. Sunflow has a rendering system written in Java, and its really nice - photo realistic. So like you said java is not really the issue, its the use of OpenGL and writing a good shader aint no easy peasy thing.

Thank you. And yes I have some ideas to squeeze a bit more out of it. Just was very curious as to what its actually capable of in its current state or its state upon release.

Dont expect to be able to reach that level, want to know how cloose to it I can get through the WU client. At least some kind of something, ballpark. Clearly alot is gonna depend on how well i do the graphics, but i would like to have an idea of how far is actually possible. EDIT Actually let me reword, it might make it easier. On a scale of 1 to 10 - 1 being the current state of Wurm Graphics and 10 being the vid posted above, where do you think the top out will land after the new rendering system?

OK warlander, I have to know what you think on this, dont avoid answering Do you think the WU Client can, after you finish the new rendering system or even in the "near" future be able to render something on the order of this. Please answer, be vague, just let me know what you think might be possible using this quick vid as an example. Im not suggesting using Unity landscapes, just using the vid as an example. Just put me in the ballpark,. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=9&v=J6bnH_ZPYlU

Indeed. If your anywhere near the west coast you can have my knarr. Allready gave most everything away expecting to spend all my available time on WU. Its the only thing I havent given away at this point. If you want it you can have it. Just let me know. Edit - West Coast Xanadu

This is exactly what we are hoping will happen. But I think I saw a post where Rolf stated no workshop stuff...so I dont know. IM hoping it meant not now but in the future, at least thats what I am hoping. Which is why i put most of the graphics stuff, in the "a bit later on column". And welcome back from retirement Quick Edit - Yes its a good idea, I completely misread your post. This should work for the majority of items. Just need to do some initial checks to enforce certain mods being installed and then reject clients that do not have the appropriate mods.

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMlKmELIhgY [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZLILV18ut8

Hey war, is the server DB ODBC compliant or is it handmade?

Just an FYI -DynamoDB went down over the weekend and crashed netflix , IMdb and quite a few other sites. They were down in excess of 12 hours. A lot of thier servers are run out of VA, so US ping times should be outstanding. And just my own thoughts...even if it would run on it, I wouldnt do it. But thats just my opinion.

Edit - Yes Previous retracted thanks to Hussars and Warlander. Im new to the Steam way of doing things.

It will be you and other devs that make all of it possible. I want to do the asset creation, maps, models, gameplay, - making it possible for us to quickly import these items and get them on a live server is what will make this realistic for everyone. And the more people that can do this the better WU will be. SO its success lies in your hands, and as far as im concerned..its in good hands. Make this happen for us Warlander, I think everyone agrees - you most certainly can do it. And thanks for runnning through all the threads answering Q's. Its incredibly nice to see a dev do that.

Ty guys, but it was my son who actually came up with it. He was flipping through channels and landed on a Sons of Anarchy add/promo thing and said, you should do that dad, name your server Suns Of Wurm...so I thought hey that works. So all credit to Tristan for that one.

Once unlimited is out and we have source available, ill be doing a private server. I have been talking with a lot of people outside of the general Wurm community and they have all expressed interest in a more macabre type of game. Using Wurm Unlimited as a base im going to be modding it in such a way as to create a style of Wurm where skills are not the be all and end all of the game; where the feel of the game leans more towards SALEM, H.P Lovecraft, Hellblazer ect ect ect. So exactly what does that mean? Initially it means graphics upgrades, to the extent WU can handle them. (Terrain)The introduction of two new character professions - Witch and ZealotGreatly expand on AlchemyNew spellsGreatly expand on taming and its associated mechanics.Perma Death -Burn witches at the stake to remove the toon from the game.Hybrid PVP/PVE system in which no character can attack you directly, with the only exception being Witches. They can be attacked directly by anyone, but cannot attack back or initiate combat. (Assuming a permutation of the code can be done like this without breaking everything. Otherwise this exception will be removed and there will simply be no direct pvp between anyone.)Expand on overall gameplay such as having reasons to build those walls. Massive mob incursions in waves not an overall high density of mobs.At this point in time there are no plans to tweak skillgain upwards, however giving the server Epic curve is not out of the question.Extensive use of Halloween mobs already present in WO, and later on adding more. ---------A bit later on--------- New graphic models for clothing / armor,Higher poly mob models and possibly char modelsExpanded assets - Trees, Walls, Roofs, Bushes,ect, and New assets. Now all this is of course based on a hell of a lot of assumptions -however - After speaking with a number of other interested people, enough to where I think its feasable to attempt this project, A few have offered to do some work on it so I thought I would post some basic info here and see if anyone would like to get involved. I really dont expect this to be very popular within the current wurm community, however there may be a few interested in it, so it cant hurt to post it. If your interested in getting involved send me a forum mail and Ill give you some more info and an email addy for further information and questions /collaboration. Clearly not much can be done till release except get ready, so until then . A bit more Info Server hosting will be a very expensive but professional hosting company with full time 24x7x365 network and server monitoring. D&R second to none as no one wants to loose thier stuff they have worked so hard on. Monetization - only enough to cover the cost of hosting -otherwise I just dont care about monetizing it - unless those that are helping to develop it - all would like to, - but in that case Ill do a cash shop and they can sell stuff through there. Id rather keep it to donations and maybe a monthly 5 to 10 dollars or just whatever, like I said I dont care about monetizing it. Its just another layer of aggrevation.

Here is a very interesting one I found while looking around that might interest a few people. Just sharing findings, not trying to undermine anyones attempts at creating thier own generator. This would probably be a good place to start with terrain generators. Its old School, but The way its done made me think of wurm which is the only reason I downloaded it and took a look at it. The walkthrough is hilarious and really good. Its really worth it to go through that. It only takes about 3 minutes and walks you though all the things to get you going making maps. Its so old school in its appearance it makes me wonder if CC doesnt use it now. Its called LT3D. Pricing is free for standard edition and 34.95 US for Pro edition. Not bad at all really, and comes with a free full featured 90 day eval for Pro Edition. If your interested in learning about Terrain Gens, this is not a bad place to start. It makes each individual map separately and has them tabbed as ill show on down with some screenies. May be worthwhile, take a look and see what you think about it. Its also 32 bit so if your on an older machine. Screenies Heightmap Water Map Specular Normal Map Texture Map 3D view inside completed map There are a few more maps it creates and you can edit along every step. Its worth the download and to spend a few minutes looking it over. Now I havent used this at all I just ran through the walkthrough to get a feel for it and see what it could do. The sceenies are from the walkthrough map. The end result looks a lot like wurm graphics and with a bit of tweaking would probably look a bit better.

Which is why i am hoping that Rolf or another dev will answer the question instead of people like us.....the ones who dont know the answer to the question. I am talking to Rackspace about hosting options and it looks like ill be spending anywhere from about 400 to 700 a month on a server depending on hardware, service, and D&R options. I think its clear if there is any chance at all that those updates can in some way be auto pushed, then I have to come up with some way to intercede and stop that from happening as my server will be heavily modded and there is no guarantee at this point in time that any update that CC puts out will not immediately and irrevocably burn my server to the ground. SO Ill need a test modded server that I can drop any updates on and make sure nothing blows up. Ill also need to know how the updates are going to be distributed, specifically for private servers. I cannot allow auto updates of any kind and as long as I know how the updates are going to be distributed I can engineer a way to stop any auto push.

This sounds like full circle time -so people buy the standalone version or try one of the private servers. Vast majority of which (If im to believe what i have been reading everywhere else) will have skill gain tweaked upwards. People bounce between private servers going up and down and sideways, stand aloners get lonely and incentivised so they flock to WO. They play for a week and leave because the skill gain is too slow and there is no insta gratification. Rolf meanwhile sees this and looks at other successful private servers, sees that a common theme is faster skill gain so increases the skill gain on WO. Odd way to go about things since people have been asking for faster skill gains, at least 10 times a month for years. Why not just increase skill gain and advertise as an MMO on steam? No extra dev time needed to split between what is now essentially 3 games WO PVP, WO PVE and WU and whatever incarnations it brings about with its "modes". You just have to wonder, all this business about WU bringing people into WO seems really far-fetched and reaching at best. While some very short term results can be expected, it just seems really unrealistic to believe that WU will have anything but a net negative affect on WO. I have yet to see any logical explaination of why kids in the range of 9 to 17 are going to want to go play a game that makes things harder on them. Where after they have played on a private server or on the standalone and are used to increased skill gains and insta gratification, they are going to say OH WOW, WO is 1000 times better, Im going there. Really, dont answer me, answer honestly, to your self, do you really think anyone is going to say that?

And a hosted server?

How will updates to WU work. You stated that Updates will hit WO first then go to WU. ....HOW? Specifically Hosted Servers? Placed somewhere for download and installation ?