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Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

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Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#81

Post by eclipticplane »

squidleon wrote: post #19
haolez wrote: post #18

UO was the only game that I've ever played where you had "commoner" players. A lot of players failed to scale up, or to obtain top notch equipment. But the game was fun even for underpowered players, so they kept playing. The really powerful players were famous, like celebrities. It's very different from modern games, where each player looks like the fantasy version of a Marvel super hero.

This is such a good observation. UO had a real economy and social hierarchy because power wasn't handed to you. You could spend months as a fisherman or tailor and still have a meaningful experience. The gap between a grandmaster swordsman in full plate and a guy selling fish at the Britain bank was enormous, and both of them were having fun. Modern MMOs are theme parks where everyone gets the same ride (with pay per…

Core memories of carefully setting my fisherman on a boat with `ezmacro` before I got ready for school. I'd come home to either a boat full of fish (to later cook into fish steaks), or be dead from a player killer who found my boat and killed my macroing guy to try and steal the boat.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#82

Post by mkehrt »

MisterTea wrote: post #79

This must be an omen given how I just this week watched a bunch of the Majuular videos on youtube (Highly recommend them) about the Ultima series of games, particularly Ultima Underworld The Stygian Abyss, and Ultima VII and VIII. That lead to me buying Underworld and VII last night on GOG as feel like I missed out on something wonderful in the 90's (Also need to grab System Shock and Crusader no remorse.) My brother…

Ultima Underworld is a fantastic game.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#83

Post by reactordev »

tarellel wrote: post #27
reactordev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a legendary blacksmith was the whole point. Where crafting was the end game state for crafters. The gear produced was max durability, max dmg, max armor rating. The furniture for your castle had to come from someone, somewhere. The whole point of the game was to live in this fantasy world, not beat it. There were no quests. No antagonist. Just good and evil and everyone in between. For once I wish a studio woul…

UO Outlands has been pretty popular for a few years. They’ve implemented a lot of custom aspects (specialties), craft, new dungeons, land, as well as weekly quests and events. My brother and I play it a few hours a week. It’s incredibly popular for the nostalgia and its player base seems to be pretty consistent. It reminds me of early UO where your exploring, learning, and dying a lot. And there tends to be players e…

A decade or more ago I ran a custom shard with a custom map and world. There was no “map”. No guide. No quests. Tons of dungeons and bad guy areas. Shops. Towns. Etc. I also contributed to RunUO. I’m a fan of UO:Renaissance. I still have the CD and the old statics files.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#85

Post by doctorwho42 »

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #63
haolez wrote: post #18

UO was the only game that I've ever played where you had "commoner" players. A lot of players failed to scale up, or to obtain top notch equipment. But the game was fun even for underpowered players, so they kept playing. The really powerful players were famous, like celebrities. It's very different from modern games, where each player looks like the fantasy version of a Marvel super hero.

yes, this really nails it. UO didn't chase "endgame content" which, imo, is the bane of today's multiplayer games. Designers expect everyone to max out and reach the end of the road so everyone is the same in the end.

> to reach the end of the road...

This is honestly the best way I have ever heard this described! It really is that 'end of the road' feeling that I get, once I have experienced a large chunk of the game loop, that has me disconnect from games and feel hollow.

This is probably why I keep going back to huge modpacks for Minecraft with a friend. It is so open and expansive, with so much to do, that you never really feel like it's the end... You just feel like you have had your fill, until next time.

I personally only got to watch my older brother play UO, and then he brought me into the launch of WoW which was a pivotal experience. But the end game always felt like it falls flat.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#86

Post by elevaet »

Cool, nice work!

I've been building a MORPG version of a kind of Ultima 3.5 on the side in spurts for the last 5 years using Go, postgres, and React on the frontend. Top view tile graphics, old school keyboard control/commands. It's pretty janky still, but I hope to do a Show HN at some point.

I think I need to take some inspiration from you and partition the world into sectors, I have a n^2 scaling problem right now as there are more PC and NPC in the world.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#87

Post by jdwithit »

Very cool work! This is giving me a big nostalgia hit, as a LONG time ago (when UO was a current game ;) I maintained a C++ UO emulator called UOX3. To be clear I absolutely did not initially develop it or even write any particularly large or difficult features. I just took over maintaining the codebase, taking patches and cutting releases, managing the community, that sort of thing. The original author decided to step away and I had apparently been enough of a busybody in the tool's community that he tapped me to lead it for a while. I also helped some Canadian guy with money, hardware, and bandwidth to burn run a private server based on UOX. Both were delightful experiences and I learned a ton.

In hindsight I am very glad Origin was not overly litigious and didn't send the FBI to my house for "hacking" their game.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#89

Post by sanex »

simlevesque wrote: post #20
haolez wrote: post #18

UO was the only game that I've ever played where you had "commoner" players. A lot of players failed to scale up, or to obtain top notch equipment. But the game was fun even for underpowered players, so they kept playing. The really powerful players were famous, like celebrities. It's very different from modern games, where each player looks like the fantasy version of a Marvel super hero.

I think you'd like Arc Raiders.

It seems to scratch that same itch for me for some reason. The constant inherent danger, the different skill levels of raiders mixing together and yet people have fun and lose their stuff and it's a blast to play.

Re: Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting

#90

Post by nzeid »

haolez wrote: post #34
squidleon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a good observation. UO had a real economy and social hierarchy because power wasn't handed to you. You could spend months as a fisherman or tailor and still have a meaningful experience. The gap between a grandmaster swordsman in full plate and a guy selling fish at the Britain bank was enormous, and both of them were having fun. Modern MMOs are theme parks where everyone gets the same ride (with pay per…

If starting from scratch, what would an MMO need to replicate that? I've experienced it first hand, but I can't grasp why it worked well like it did.

UO didn't have a global concept of a level. You had a maximum number of points per character, which you allocated to skills by doing the corresponding activity. This is how you can skill cap your character without killing monsters or players.
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