Squire System borrowed from RunUO 2017-10-22

[Izex]

Oh wow I'm glad you guys are keeping my Squire System alive! I know my account is currently registered as James Wolff here, but I'm MontegroXD from the RunUO forum. I've read all the comments here and just, wow, thank you all.

Sorry I haven't updated the system in god knows forever, some things happened, my own personal server went down cause my machine for it died and my friends sorta lost interest after a while, I hope to return to it one day, and that's sorta the beginning and end of that reasoning. I'm glad to see the system alive though and still in use! It honestly warms my heart.

I know sahisahi was wondering how I was doing all the way back in 2017, I'm answering a bit late but ho-boy a lot of stuff's been going on. I'm getting married next year for one! In 2019 my fiance and I got engaged but we decided to put it off till 2022 just in the hope that maybe the world will return to a bit of it's former semblance and hopefully we won't need our guests to wear masks next year. Wound up moving out of my parents back in 2016 to New York, moved back to Connecticut in 2019 and got my own apartment over here... Since my fiance and I don't have room for a separate computer we've been mostly playing on the Nintendo Switch, in a few more years we're planning on getting a house so hopefully around then I might take that opportunity to jump back into the UO game. Right now though we're comfortable as we are.

While I may not be working on programming projects for games and such, I'm working on other bits of software, mostly just tools to accomplish certain tasks automatically. My computer tech job has a helluva lot more automation in it than it did before, I've got certain programs set up to install the usual utilities I load onto client's machines, I've got software for compressing video files with no image quality loss, accounting software, etc etc. I'm keeping my skills strong and my mind busy. Hopefully some of the things I'm working on now and maintaining will help me find different approaches to working out the features of the Squire System I wanted to achieve before when I eventually return!

I can't provide any guarantees on how long that will be. My fiance and I plan our wedding in 2022, we also plan on having a kid a year or so after! I'm not quite sure what my life and workload will look like in the near future because of these things! My father always told me that once I marry my life turns to service my wife first and then myself, and when a kid enters the picture my priorities become my family's future before my own. While that may sound a little self defeating on a certain level, I understand what he's trying to communicate. I do hope to one day return to my roots of Ultima.

If someone wanted to pick up the system and improve on it themselves, I would be more than happy to give my blessing (of course as long as they make sure to credit my original work) no need to wait on this now 30 year old on his eventual return. I'm a little hesitant to give out my email in this day and age, and I'm unsure if that's against this forum's eula or not, but if someone would like to contact me directly for any reason, you could find me on Discord at Blues#0711

Glad you are doing well I have a small server and all the players really love your squire system! There have been some fixes to the code since I use a much newer ServUO version now but a lot of great work was put into it.

 

[MontegroXD]

Glad you are doing well I have a small server and all the players really love your squire system! There have been some fixes to the code since I use a much newer ServUO version now but a lot of great work was put into it.

I really am glad to hear it!

I stumbled upon this thread cause my friend wanted to know the difference between C++ and C#, and I wanted to show him the Squire System to give him a good idea of some C# I'd done so I went onto Bing and searched "Squire System Ultima Online" hoping to find the RunUO archive with it (I was at work at the time, and my backup of the system is on my home network's NAS).

I really can't express enough how exciting it was and awesome it felt to see you all still using the system and just chatting about how great it is. I started the project primarily to help solve the issue of a lot of smaller servers on RunUO who had a dwindling playerbase and figured this would help flesh-out the world a bit more, and secondarily it was to really crack in to a project that's larger in scope than the other smaller items and event stuff I would fiddle around with. I truly am proud of how well it turned out, and I'm absolutely humbled by everyone's praise.

Thank you all for maintaining and continuing to enjoy the Squire System, I'm honestly so happy.

 

[Anon the Felon]

I love this system.

Initially I used it fairly stock, but eventually it became integral to my diplomacy skill. Instead of squires, I have mercenaries that the player hires and befriends.

Thank you very much!

 

[MontegroXD]

I love this system.

Initially I used it fairly stock, but eventually it became integral to my diplomacy skill. Instead of squires, I have mercenaries that the player hires and befriends.

Thank you very much!

I'm glad to hear it!

That sounds very cool! I'm glad you were able to transform the system into something like that! I had an idea of something somewhat similar sounding for an eventual far off 3.0.0 release waaaay back when that I hadn't gotten to. It was going to still kind of be the Squire System in nature but applied to temporary NPCs you could hire like mercenaries. It was going to get WAY complicated with several plotted out personalities and pre-set skills and equipment, their priorities list would also reflect their skills as well. Part of their personalities was going to affect which commands they'd be willing to follow or ignore. This whole 3.0.0 idea would probably have been better as an idea then I could have executed. I'd eventually passed that want to somehow save the temporary squires that survived their hiring and have them reappear where ever I had them spawning. But, you know, life happened and I sorta fell off the project for a long while.

Off the top of my head I can't recall what I had plotted out to determine I had reached a 2.0.0 release, I think it was finishing the other magic circles which I had gotten stumped on. There was something about how RunUO had them scripted that wasn't meshing correctly, but oh well.

Thank you as well!