Ultima XNA- Who is willing to contribute?

[Valorian-Aeternum]

Hey guys!

I stumbled over a few software engineering posts, over people looking for a position... I was asking myself if it would not make sense to join forces in helping Zane finish Ultima XNA. This would be great for the whole community, cause a client highly customizable would be a thing to have in the next time.
Imagine this:

1. Higher resolution/ better fps ( implementation of existing projects could be a thing)
2. Implementation of UltimaLive(amazing stuff)
3. Easier animations for statics like moving vehicles ( carriages for example)
   
4. Implementation of simple shaders like for water and fog or spell animations
5. Implementation of .png instead of .bmp only- better graphics
6. Increasing of art.mul and other file sizes to add more stuff then ever before.
7. New layers for clothing
8. Really good server to client to resource connection... Need books ig or access to maps?
9. ...

Maybe it is just a dream and I am way to much into graphics to know what it will take, but I am dreamong of a point where we are free from the chains the client gave us for years, where we don't need annoying workarounds or suffer from restrictions.... I can provide a trailer for this project but all of you programmers would be needed to realize such a thing... Ultima XNA gives a very good base and if you remember Uo iris and other attempts that run out of people it would be cool to get one thibg not just running but improved and full of features. Could have fiddler on board for example or an improved mulpatcher.. whatever.

What do you think?

 

[Fireball]

It would be amazing to be released from the PITA, errr, I mean shackles, of the official client and I have been looking forward to switching to one that is "finished" to the extent that it works. Unfortunately these always seem to fizzle out, and with XNA which appeared to come to being in 2009 the same seems to be true. If it could be finished to the extent that it does everything the official client does then that would be a wonderful thing. If you can drum up enough interest to get a group together to complete it and then expand upon it I shall applaud you. And I shall use it for my shard!

I wish you the best of luck

David

 

[Voxpire]

The latest project named OrionUO is progressing extremely well, so we'll have a new custom UO client as a standard likely sooner than it would take to update UltimaXNA, though I believe UltimaXNA was updated not too long ago.

XNA development was discontinued by Microsoft a few years ago and doesn't officially support .NET 4.5+

 

[Fireball]

I have heard of Orion. Someone involved with it was testing it on my shard a year ago or so.

Didn't know you were involved. That's really great news!

 

[PyrO]

UltimaXNA would probably be better if it was ported over to the MonoGame, I tried it and got weird results. It may be just the shader that works different? Or other things so its not just a 1:1 port either. Probably a good chunk would have to be altered / rewritten to make it work. But it would work on linux aswell for the linux players

 

[gametec]

Everyone wants a custom client but no one wants to fork over the effort of paying for one...

If you're looking for a free alternative then Voxpire is right, wait for Orion... the only downfall to Orion is that I heard it was written in C++ and not everyone here can read or program that so editing it will be a huge learning curve for most of you.

UltimaXNA is C# above all and so it would be nice to get it updated and running, but its downfall is that XNA is not supported by Microsoft as Voxpire said and Zane is an attorney now (last I read his bio) and probably has very little, if any, time to work on it.

I, for one, would rather pay someone to make a solid C# rendition using UltimaXNA and Florescence as a guide. There are no downfalls with this, from a stability or working perspective, because anyone who takes on this contract is obligated to provide benchmarks before being handed over money. With that said, its a project that the paid developer can't just back out of the deal because they get lazy, bored, or preoccupied with life; which is the case for many of us who take on huge projects and they become left unfinished.

I had 2 developers lined up willing to do exactly what I suggested, but one wanted only $8,000 bucks and the other wanted $15,000 bucks U.S.D (United States Dollars). This is actually pretty cheap considering that both are senior level developers. However it is also cheap because you're asking them to rewrite a game from the ground up; I was actually asking them to not only rewrite the game but also rework the way the files are read for easier modification to the client.exe. When I say cheap I am talking from an overall perspective.

As individuals this would be really difficult to achieve because we are all at different pay grades, some of us retired, some of us unemployed etc. However collectively this isn't an impossible feat and we would be doing this as a team, not just individuals everyone would vote as to what gets put into this project and what doesn't. The downfall for all of you is that the end result will eventually become open source and revert to a community project once the entire thing is complete and working. Additionally it would be made to work and accommodate ALL clients making it backward compatible for every RunUO fork and revision. Those that don't like that piece don't have to contribute.

This is just an FYI, but it is still open for discussion and I'm only looking for 1-5 people who can contribute portions of 2000.00 or more to the project. All others are welcome to donate, but this is a business venture and not something that we can say "yes" today and "I don't think so" tomorrow; meaning that once you commit to this then we see it through or it never gets done; the developers will walk. Also payment wont be everything all at once. Depending on the developer and what they want to get paid, that payment will be broken down into benchmarks.

Each benchmark will be sent to us for testing and they will get out feedback and a check in return if we like what we see. If not we return the product, they fix it, and resend us the update and get paid.

 

[Thagoras]

So, I just downloaded Orion and had a chance to play with it some. I agree, C# would be preferred just so we could tweak stuff more easily ourselves but the client is pretty solid. If you can code in C#, you can debug in C. The compiling will likely throw me for a bit as I'm used to compiling in C#, even with Sharp Develop (which I recently had to get used to in order to get the region editor working with my maps).

A few issues I have with their client. They don't support more than 6 maps. Don't work with Ultima Live (that issue has been mentioned in their forum). I don't like the fact that you need to run a utility to create a config file for the client/server. It obviously uses some part of the UO client because it asks for the client version (though that MAY have to do with what server you're connecting to).

I don't know. I'd be willing to contribute to someone actually writing a client. I think most of us have the problem of time and good programming experience to do so ourselves. Word of caution about something like this. It will be pirated. Especially if the source code is available. Both the author and contributers will have to be ok with contributing to something which will be acquired and used for free. We'd only be contributing to the development of said client. Here again. I'd be ok with that. I think the UO community would benefit enough from having their own client that any piracy would only get more players interested.

One option could be starting a kickstarter page giving others to contribute the amount that they are able.