Mega Mod

[cherbert 12]

Unity is javascripts supported, so not need rewrite anything only add and wired. Javascripts is little outdated. Its old fashion programming. Syntax is out. Its not portable. If someone wants do some proper mod, so good luck. Its better to rewrite

 

Seriously?

 

Firstly.. Javascript is not outdated. Its pretty much the major scripting language on the web right now.

 

Secondly, because clearly you are confused, Javascript IS NOT JAVA.

[ByblosHex 18]

If you want to run your own Worm Unlimited server you're going to have to learn a little bit about computers and how to use them.

 

Unity is javascripts supported, so not need rewrite anything only add and wired. Javascripts is little outdated. Its old fashion programming. Syntax is out. Its not portable. If someone wants do some proper mod, so good luck. Its better to rewrite

 

This game isn't written in Javascript.

[ftoz 122]

Seriously?

 

Firstly.. Javascript is not outdated. Its pretty much the major scripting language on the web right now.

 

Secondly, because clearly you are confused, Javascript IS NOT JAVA.

Depending what y want to create. I am talking about larger game develop. See most new games, its base on engine with own scripting language. Because those scripts are game develop friendly. Someone can say, that is "hello world" language, its syntax is easier. If y want create arkanoid online, so maybe java is better. 

Edited October 31, 2015 by ftoz

[ftoz 122]

My problem with wurm is that i cant understand implementation layers. In my opinion its all mixed to one. So if someone want to read and understand it, spent almost whole live learning in mishmash

Edited October 31, 2015 by ftoz

[ftoz 122]

I also saw mods treads and dont understand, what that ppl doing. It seems for me some keen programmers want to destroy game by changing values, what they want. They call it ALPHA version? Its joke? Kingdom come is ALPHA version.

Edited October 31, 2015 by ftoz

[ByblosHex 18]

Java works because it doesn't depend on expensive development software and licensing it also works independently of operating system limitations and is almost universally compatible. Java is very affordable and flexible. These things are probably very important to a very small, almost no budget game developer who wants to retain ownership of their game and not sell it out to some big-name publisher for more funding.

Edited October 31, 2015 by ByblosHex

[Aldur 651]

Hi folks, just wanted to put in my 2 cents, after reading the thread.

 

1. Unity 5 is a great engine and probably the perfect choice for any small team for any type of game (including sandbox mmo). It would be definitely perfect option for Wurm game client, if it was feasible to redevelop it. Ask the devs of City Skylines, they had in-house engine for their first simulation game, it was developed for 10 years and ultimately they have dropped it, due to how expensive it was to maintain their own technology.

 

2. Developing a networked app is not the same, as being a networking engineer. Average developer can create a client-server application these days, using existing high-level communication libraries and eg. cloud deployment. He need not know a thing about DHCP, NAT, routing and even endianness. Same is true for most multiplayer games, when working with existing game engines, like Unity.

 

3. Doing any kind of overhaul for Wurm Unlimited would be a gigantic PITA. It would be easier to make a new game, which furthermore could be individually monetized, instead of relying on the shady "not disallowed" CodeClub policy of monetizing WU servers. Even small mods will be a challenge, at least until any modding api is created.

 

Disclaimer: I am a software developer with hobbyist investments into Unity engine. My opinions are my own, may be biased and are subject to change.

Edited November 1, 2015 by Aldur

[ftoz 122]

Big question is how to do terraforming with better landscape? Maybe also need to mod server matrix.

Edited November 2, 2015 by ftoz

[razoreqx 127]

I won't touch Unity. It's a breeding ground for sloppy programming and kids who think "Hello World" makes a game.

 

Now if you said Unreal, that might make me a tiny bit excited.

 

The thing is... Wurm's got a custom engine, and one that's undergoing a rewrite anyway.

 

Also, being a programmer for a while... languages tend to become simply machine dialects. I never understood all this hype to favor one or another. They're tools... yes, you want an appropriate tool for the job, but ultimately it's the skill of the wielder that determines success.

 

Agreed.  I wouldn't even think about a project unless it was Unreal 4 engine.  They're bringing the Garage Games "Torque" approach, for a affordable purchase model, for independent  developers.  

[Tux 17]

Regarding Unity I can give you my personal Gamers opinion on that subject

 

-My favorite games are created on Unity.

 

-Early Access projects done on Unreal are often very slow on updates while Unity projects (like Subnatuica) are often AND rich in features.

 

-Development for Oculus Rift using Unity is light years easier then it is on Unreal because the Unity team was able to see the future of VR which leads me to believe they are more innovative than Unreal Team is.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Tux

[silvertoken 0]

I can't agree with the statement I like the game so it must be a good engine.  Don't get me wrong I am seeing a lot of decent games coming out on Unity but most of those games started long before Unreal had plans to offer its engine.  Its not likely those companies will shift gears now.

 

On your second point this goes hand in hand with my first point...  Just because the projects you have seen so far are slow doesn't mean anything is wrong with the engine itself...  It could just be bad developement team.

 

Oculus Rift support is fully available in Unreal and its an automatic plugin now.  All you have to do is turn on the stero features in your game.  I checked the numbers on sales of these headsets and they just topped 100K sold last year.  Thats a drop in the bucket when you compare that to what Bethesda did with Skyrim selling more than 20 million copies.  I think we will see more Oculus Rift as the demand grows but I still think it will stay small for quite some time.  If you don't develop your scenes correctly you can make people dizzy and sick.

 

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Oculus_Rift

 

In the end neither Unity nor Unreal are geared to work as an MMO which this game is.  Could this game be rebuilt as a single player game in using the engines?  sure but your standing on copyright then.  Could those engines be used to create an MMO?  Probably but your going to have issues which large scale clusters without modifying the lower source code.  Either would make a decent client.  Me personally I am an Unreal fan but I spent months evaluating both products and built a few prototypes in both.  I found Unreal had a lot more features I could customize and direct access to source while Unity was very restrictive on what I could change unless I paid for a source code license.  I spent more time dealing with work arounds than actually working on my prototype.  I'm also a big fan of blueprints since I find once you learn them they are much faster than writing up code and fixing typo bugs

[Griffith 362]

wu modding seems to be very user unfriendly...

and then a patch comes and erases all your mods. it would help its popularity

to prioritize end user modding friendliness. but an engine rewrite is

not necessary. most players cant code, but many can at least import mods.

 

and that goes for having your own server also, it should be relatively painless.

if you want to sell more copies, that is.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Griffith

[silvertoken 0]

yea thats going to mean a full API to really achieve that.  Minecraft has been promising one for how many years now?  MCP is just a way to decompile and make the code more readable.  They ended up scripting most of the changes which is something I am thinking of doing myself for my own mods to avoid having to redo everything. Forge is the real API right now around Minecraft until Mojang actually finishes a real one.  It works well but took a while before the community created one.  There is a mod loader out already but it uses byte code replacement which is not something I am looking for but may use his base code to get my mod loaded not sure yet since I really want to wrap up any work I do seperate and just hook those classes back in through some API calls.

 

https://github.com/ago1024/WurmServerModLauncher

[Tux 17]

I can't agree with the statement I like the game so it must be a good engine.  Don't get me wrong I am seeing a lot of decent games coming out on Unity but most of those games started long before Unreal had plans to offer its engine.  Its not likely those companies will shift gears now.

 

On your second point this goes hand in hand with my first point...  Just because the projects you have seen so far are slow doesn't mean anything is wrong with the engine itself...  It could just be bad developement team.

 

Oculus Rift support is fully available in Unreal and its an automatic plugin now.  All you have to do is turn on the stero features in your game.  I checked the numbers on sales of these headsets and they just topped 100K sold last year.  Thats a drop in the bucket when you compare that to what Bethesda did with Skyrim selling more than 20 million copies.  I think we will see more Oculus Rift as the demand grows but I still think it will stay small for quite some time.  If you don't develop your scenes correctly you can make people dizzy and sick.

 

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Oculus_Rift

 

In the end neither Unity nor Unreal are geared to work as an MMO which this game is.  Could this game be rebuilt as a single player game in using the engines?  sure but your standing on copyright then.  Could those engines be used to create an MMO?  Probably but your going to have issues which large scale clusters without modifying the lower source code.  Either would make a decent client.  Me personally I am an Unreal fan but I spent months evaluating both products and built a few prototypes in both.  I found Unreal had a lot more features I could customize and direct access to source while Unity was very restrictive on what I could change unless I paid for a source code license.  I spent more time dealing with work arounds than actually working on my prototype.  I'm also a big fan of blueprints since I find once you learn them they are much faster than writing up code and fixing typo bugs

 

I hear what your saying and I understand I am just saying as a gamer my personal experience has been the second I see 'Unreal' I think slow development cycle and limited game play while the opposite is what I think when I hear a project is on Unity. I base that not on just one experience with a game but several.

 

Regarding VR for Unity for over a year its been literally as easy as dropping a camera on to your play space.

 

Regarding sales lets me clear on a few things. Without question not but just about 3-4 years ago Unreal was king what I am suggesting here is that there is a huge titanic shift happening in gaming specifically because of Unity 4.0 and higher

Edited November 3, 2015 by Tux

[ftoz 122]

I am playing now with torque3d and its amazing. Y can get game like halflife till one month without any deeper programming. All is completly free. Engine, assets, code parts. Nice. I also implemented oclus rift into torque3d and run well on my samsung 3d tv. 

[masaykh 4]

there is project  called IKVM

JVM on top of .NET

it translate JAVA to .NET

 

and who realy want to do something?

or only empty talks?

[ftoz 122]

Look at wurm now. They change almost everything, what is no important. It is good mask for new ppl to pretend that wurm is still on develop and get some money from ppl. Dont know what sence has translate java to net. Java was bad choice for this project. If y want to play similar game as wurm with real 3D graphic, so LIF is good choice and now mayor changes with dx11 release. I am little lost in fog now, if I start new playing, LIF is number one, but its same theme and philosophy as wurm. I dont want waste so many time at similar game. I would like to add hand to some new project with fresh energy, with fresh ideas, with fresh team. If someone only want to rebuild wurm, so I expect talking first goal of project. I dont want put my time to game develop, which is only money make lost game. Maybe empty talk is better than empty work.

Edited November 22, 2015 by ftoz

[Webba 257]

I tried to avoid commenting on this as I am not a professional developer(at least by job description) but it has seriously got to me reading the whole thing. The language the game is written in is not important, every language has pros and cons and most mainstream languages can be fast/efficient if correct practices are followed for that language. As far as going on about your favorite engine and why it is great, wurm has a very unique way of managing worlds/maps it is not at all simple to port it to an existing engine, in fact you would probably have to rewrite so much of the core engine logic that you just end up with a custom game engine and the rendering engine from whichever one you have chosen, and then all you have achieved is splitting the mod community so that you can have a different rendering engine(which btw is something that the wurm team are working on anyway). I feel that wurm could be significantly improved with much less time consuming efforts towards optimization rather than converting to a new platform and most likely having a less optimized engine than currrently. 

 

I  am not a huge fan of java, but I certainly see its strengths when it comes to modding. I like c#.net a lot but don't feel that if you can use c# you have any excuse for not being able to learn java and you loose mac/linux support for using .net in some cases. As far as javascript goes: its not outdated, I have no idea where you got this idea from but it is now supported on almost every browser and used by most websites, and node.js/io.js are becoming bigger and bigger. Despite the fact that javascript is a language with a huge community for support I personally don't like using it for large projects as I much prefer statically typed languages as I find it easier to read through large sections of code and follow varibles and find errors, but that is how I like doing things and I respect other people's opinions may well differ. Finally sure a C based server that is well optimized would be much faster, but unless wurm goes huge you have 2 choices: (1) game changes and new content, (2) a couple of years of what seems to the average gamer of no progress whatsoever and then suddenly a big change which makes the game a bit less laggy and takes 4 months to finish bugfixing. I'd imagine most people playing the game would rather option 2.

 

TLDR: switching engines is most likely more effort than it is worth, stop being that guy who reads about a new language/engine/framework and instantly saying OMG WE MUST USE THIS

Edited November 23, 2015 by Webba

[Tokeiito 12]

It was very entertaining reading. Huge respect for cherbert, for his polite answers to that scripty kid. Tux please do not stop writing. I am not entertained enough yet.

[ftoz 122]

Webba, ye if devs want to continue work, simply need java (not javascript, i also dont know, what is different and why), rewriting to another c++ engine do LIF. But look at around. Its not about best engine, its about what game need. This game need something what can easy render 100+ ppl battle scene. Java engines are simple baby vs c++ engines or maybe dying. Y can see many java games running online in browser, but not as format as wurm. I little saw around and found that probably best 3D java engine is that http://jmonkeyengine.org. If wurm want to continue the way, must add more ppl to solve its problems, not to run out. It will be good to start implement such engine to want alive. I red some forums tread, saw some game on it, but its not enough powerful as modern c++ engines. It not accelerate on new gpus and the question is how much point percent do JME3.1 vs current engine, but it will be big step in develop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh7uo2gxLdA .If someone hope that anyone imp it, y can wait for couple years to get same performance as current c++ engines. Develop of whole engine is longer than all wurm develop. Any meaningful optimalization on wurm engine is simply kamikaze and empty work, which JME developers solved 10 years ago. If y like it, so do it. But y dont forget the GOAL, if y want waste time on anatomize engine or get working battle scene.

Edited November 25, 2015 by ftoz

[Webba 257]

Wurm isn't 3d #themoreyouknow, the world is made in such a different way to most others you'd have to rewrite the entire game to use any engine. Also rendering engine does not need to be in the same engine as the client or server logic.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Webba

[Aldur 651]

It's not that easy to rewrite entire, complex game client to another engine, even if theoretically it offers better features and higher performance. In fact even things, that seem obvious and simple, like model importing, would most likely not work out of the box, requiring converting and lots of manual tweaking inside new engine.

 

I do however agree, that Wurm is riding it's own engine well past it's expiration date and that Wurm 2 should've been started right after 1.0. On the current gaming market, there is no hope for this game at it's current state, when better quality sandboxes start to sprout, even from general purpose engines like Unity.

 

There is talk about major client engine updates coming to Wurm in the future. It's definitely possible to evolve any engine to the AAA level, but I know (from second hand) how expensive such effort can be and I don't think CodeClub has enough resources to pull even one A from it. I think it's a wasted effort.

 

If Wurm stands out at something, it's the rich sandbox environment and effort should be put into improving that area and what shadows it - like dated GUI interface and limited GM tools to run community events. Nobody complains about graphics, when slaying dragons and enjoying impalongs.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Aldur

[ftoz 122]

Right Aldur, its hard work most larger game teams are 100+ ppl.

But I dont understand any talks about wurm engine updates, talking about high budget. Yeee, if they want to improve current engine, it will cost probably much time and money. Some ppl should wake up from wurmmania and see around with clear mind. What work wurm team will do for many next years on engine, y can now download as jme3 and get 10+ years java engine develop for free. Now its big time for opensource. Its strange, how can exists similar projects like windows vs linux, unity vs torque and one is free and second very expensive. Simply do them ppl with different GOAL. Old idea "what is expensive, must be better" quickly die. I agree with idea "best work comes from love and invention". We usually want to pay for our work, when we lost love and invention. I think, that wurm devs are in that situation. Ok. It is big question for them. which GOAL to choose. If they want to hold step in graphic, if they bring another mechanism or if they want nothing more. Opensource-projects partially solve it. Who want end with this project then leave, but project still go on. See now, how many invention is there. Its hard to hold step with AAA games. Y can see many game, which are hyperreal digitalized, its graphic lost light, because all are same look. In my opinion wurm can go different way, but things which are done should be playable and more tested. Its big disappoint, when someone do nice dragon anim and y cant see it. Y cant hold step with graphic as such game as skyrim. I my opinion wurm can go different. I suggested library branch, which was connecting current wurmpedia into game. That crashed in some reason. I never seen such factor, usually I must overclick many boring noninteractive texts. I can imagine, what will be if sever maps will be only ingame with many differences and signatures and updates, if there will be books of players history with many signatures. If all wurmpedia will be divided into books. I couldnt get easy acces to info, y had to play it. It could get extra feature, which many ppl enjoyed.  Now i can almost everything read without play and everything send without deliver and main game die by it.

Edited November 26, 2015 by ftoz

[ago 470]

I bet the devs really needed advise from someone who does not know the difference between Java and JavaScript and who's to lazy to spell out "you".

 

The programming language does not matter that much when switching to a different engine. The effort needed to switch is close to starting from zero. The client is mostly graphics engine, sound engine, gui and communications. 1 and 2 are replaced, 3 needs massive rewriting and its probably easier to start from scratch. The part that stays almost unaffected is communications. But that's probably something that can be recreated in any language in a short time.

 

There are many different aspects like expected lifetime, features, available tools that play a much bigger role then reusing a couple lines of code.

[Luceat 38]

A rewrite is just a waste of dev time for no tangible benefit.

 

About the modding community - I'd say it

On 11/3/2015, 9:49:42, Griffith said:

wu modding seems to be very user unfriendly...

 

and then a patch comes and erases all your mods. it would help its popularity

 

 

to prioritize end user modding friendliness. but an engine rewrite is

 

 

not necessary. most players cant code, but many can at least import mods.

 

 

 

 

 

and that goes for having your own server also, it should be relatively painless.

 

 

if you want to sell more copies, that is.

 

I can agree that the server setup could be made easier.

 

You may want to look at agos mod loader which has the exact property of not having the mods overwritten by patches.

 

 

On 10/31/2015, 4:06:25, ftoz said:

I also saw mods treads and dont understand, what that ppl doing. It seems for me some keen programmers want to destroy game by changing values, what they want. They call it ALPHA version? Its joke? Kingdom come is ALPHA version.

 

is natural for the first few mods to "only change a few values". In fact it is the building blocks of bigger mods and may be inspiration for a community API of some sort. Some may be a bit hacky (like my mod) but they are a means to an end. 

 

What would you call a piece of software that is not thoroughly tested?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha

 

TBH, I'm not sure we would benefit from the recipient, assuming sufficient qualities, recovering said lack of understanding.

 

But, let me try to get this straight:
1. You don't want to change a few values "however you want" because it will destroy the game

2. You want a complete rewrite of the game, changing pretty much every "value" of the game, as that will save the game?