Road to Odyssey
I started playing UO back in about 1997, and we had one copy of the game that three
of us shared. It was a neat experience because I saw MUDs being played by others, but
I didn't want to play a game that looked like a DOS shell all day. It was pretty amazing
to see logged in players running around the game world. I didn't play official OSI servers
very long, as I got annoyed with the player killers and Everquest came out with a no-
PVP game. When I heard of the UOX emulator, I was intrigued because I could make a
UO game that I could play in single player. I made my first server with WolfPack and
made it public for my local friends and I. I remember the boat system didn't work so I
had ferrymen at docks that would give you ride to Hythloth or other islands. I think we
were more excited about playing UO without paying the monthly fee.
I began this project in mid-2012, and like I eluded to, it wasn't my first. I had a couple
of servers in the past, and they were mostly cookie-cutter OSI shards. I go back as far
as Lonewolf and Wolfpack emulators, where I was the first to release a fully spawned
world for everyone to download and use. I had very little knowledge of Ultima lore other
than when I used to play UO in the late 90's. I had one server where I called my land
Sosaria but it was the Britannia map. I didn't know there was actually a difference so I
felt pretty dumb about that later on in life. When I discovered the Darkshard maps for
sale, I saw an actual Sosaria map that was all built. I quickly bought it and gave him
an FTP account to my home server so I didn't have to wait for a DVD.
Since this wasn't my first RunUO server, building up Sosaria was pretty quick. I had to
set some normal things I like where skill caps were at 1,000 and some other game
tweaks. I can't recall what those originally were. Anyway, I could finally turn on the
server and my friends and I played in it. They were excited with the new land and
dungeons. TIP: If you want to make a server, and your dreams are large, don't wait until
everything you dreamed of comes true. Get a base up and running and build onto it. You
will be a more content server admin if you can play while you build. If you are going to
wait until it is "perfect", chances are it will never see the light of day.
As time went on, I learned more about the client and how to add maps, rearrange maps,
add items, add sounds, basically change the client entirely. I used CentrED and
RadMapCopy to do much of that work. I hate having to make maps from scratch. I think
I only made the space ship and Dracula's castle from scratch. Everything else was taken
from some other sources and I just maybe redecorated them. TIP: If you like what some
other shard has (map, items, etc), download their client and take the pieces you want.
Hell, take my maps and content and make something brand new. We already unofficially
borrowed Richard Garriott's art, maps, and animations so there are no angels in the shard
emulation arena.
My goal with the map was to have as much decoration built into the actual map files,
and I am glad I did that. By the time I added the actual items you can interact with, it
was a huge amount. Some shards just go into the game and add decorations manually.
Mistake! It just makes a messy world that loads weird to players and when they control-
shift...hell...what a bunch of screen spam. I think maybe some shard owners do this
because A: they don't know how to edit the map or B: they don't want to host the client
software so they point you to it.
There ended up being 9 different lands to explore (10 if you count the Moon but who are
we kidding?). I reused the T2A map as the Savaged Empire. I wiped out Tokuno and
made the Isles of Dread (a Dungeons & Dragons module name). This consisted of islands
from the original Britannia map. Other than that, I think everything else is brand new
from my point of view. Oh, I forgot that when I had the Lodoria world map, it had
dungeons that were identical to either Sosaria or the Serpent Island (I forget which) so
I decided to take the dungeons from the original maps of UO and use them. I have them
in various areas but mostly Lodoria and the Savaged Empire. I am glad I did this because
A: it was easy and B: it is nice to travel to familiar locations...not everything has to be
brand new. I like going to Destard or Hythloth.
Once you pick a RunUO/ServUO version, you are best to stick with that version forever.
Some will claim you can do things to check your files against new files, but I would
challenge anyone to take my stuff and convert it to ServUO without ending it all with a
shotgun in your mouth. With that, people often wrestle with client versions. I
downloaded the version I wanted, and stuck with it. I had this plan even before I
modified it like I did. I added so much content to my client version that I had to expand
the memory the EXE can use to load so you wouldn't get virtual memory errors. It was
the extra animations that did it.
The client and server need to be assessed and you have to realize what you can and
cannot do with them. For example, the virtue system in the emulator was an incomplete
mess. Only some things worked and not very well. So I stripped that out of the game.
The other is the client. Learn where you are limited and accommodate for it. As an
example, you cannot add custom containers to the game and expect them to work right.
So, you have some choices. You could avoid adding new containers. You could add new
containers and watch them stack items funny...forever. You could do what I did and
start using the ClassicUO client as I find it handles custom containers better.
Because my friends and I didn't really "play together", I wanted a single-player style
environment. I wanted to make a character and be able to go through all of the places
by myself. I wanted to play the game on my schedule, and so did my friends. One of
them always became a tamer so he had virtual friends. The one thing I did was change
the ratio of hit points, stamina, and mana toward their primary attribute. This was the
simplest change to help with a single-player setting. I could leave the stat caps alone
but 100 strength gives you 200 hit points. It may seem like a lot, but an ancient wyrm
will still tear you down quickly. The other nice thing about this statistical approach is
that you can change it at any time. You can't readily do that with stat mods themselves,
meaning you can't globally change a stat cap on everyone that has characters created
already...or not as easily.
I always liked the 1,000 skill cap instead of the 720 (or whatever it is). Many people will
say, "play this shard because it has an unlimited skill cap" or "I hate skill caps because
I want one character that does it all". I can appreciate those modes of thinking, but I
wanted a system that promotes character archetypes. With 1,000 skill points, you have
enough to make a good fighter, wizard, thief, druid, assassin, priest, etc. Playing these
archetypes allow you to enjoy the game differently with each one. If you make a wizard-
tamer every single time, you will never get to experience the other stuff in the world.
Stuff like making your own Frankenstein's monster or sneaking through town and
poisoning your assassin marks. It means you won't step out of your comfort zone and
try an alchemist murder that is on the run surviving on all of his elixirs.
Continuing on with tamers, I don't think any shard out there has ever stopped the fact
that tamers can run through the dungeons and slaughter everything with their wyrms.
My game is no different. First, you have to work to get there in taming and the other
animal skills. So I feel that if they get that good at taming, then plow through the
dungeons. Do you have fun doing it? That is all that matters. So I took a bit of a different
approach and moved some of the niceties of taming toward the non-tamers. I created
the henchman system so you can hire virtual friends to go with you. They are as good
as your character is, but you can give them supplies like bandages and potions...and
they will use them when needed. You have to give them a cut of the loot, but at least
you can get some help if you want it. It also looks very Baldur's Gate-ish when you have
a couple of adventurers following you around.
There are also other things in the world that supplement this. You could get a monster
that is bonded to you by doing some quest-like things and saving up some gold. You
can build a golem or a robot. You will never have the versatility of a tamer, but at least
you can enjoy some of the benefits. Necromancer's "summon undead" spell has been
greatly improved where they can summon a very powerful ally that stays in the world
much longer than on the original servers. The same goes with magery, as I increased
their summon timers and also gave them the ability to have a more powerful summon
based on their evaluate intelligence.
I would visit other shard's websites, and I would see what features they were bragging
about and determine if I liked it or not. If I liked it, I had to create my own interpretation
of it but it was nice to get these ideas from other sources. Some that come to mind are
the golems you can build and what you can do with the "magic trap" spell. Those ideas
came from other shards. Most recently, I took some ideas from Outlands where I have
mountless dungeons and they inspired me to make almost all of my gumps consistent
looking. Not like theirs, but consistent. I should have done that sooner because "["
commands can be annoying and I think they can be a turn-off. It is also just lazy user
interface design.
Some things about the skill system bothered me. First, my client showed all of those
gargoyle skills and spellweaving in the list. They didn't work well or at all so I wanted
them gone. I forgot the program I used but I was able to strip them right out of the client.
I couldn't get rid of skills in the middle of the list, just the end of the list. Since I hate
seeing useless skills in the list, I decided to make them into something again. This was
years before some other shard broached this area. Now they handled it differently than
I did for the most part. They tried to add some benefits to having the skills. I went the
other approach and made the world "need" those skills again. I made a system that
would make items unidentifiable at times. I made some potions appear as unknown so
you have to sip them like the very old days of UO.
Detect hidden had very little application, so I incorporated a secret treasure system.
Many people take this skill now just to find treasure randomly on the dungeon floor.
Forensics was greatly expanded to a more morbid skill where you dig up graves in
cemeteries and make potions from dead creatures. One good at this could become a
grandmaster undertaker. Camping was another one that needed some help. I like the
idea I eventually came up with, where you can setup a tent and basically have your own
portable tavern. I often take this skill because loot gets heavy and this skill really helps
you offload it instead of having to head home.
Because camping turned out well, I focused on the fishing aspect of the game, and with
that...boats. I set the boat's holds to fit a certain weight which is based on their size.
Otherwise there wasn't really any reason to buy a bigger ship in a game with a low
population. When your skill in fishing is high enough, your boat will have a hatch door
that goes to a lower deck. This is a public area (described later) where anyone going into
their lower deck will go to the same lower deck. It makes the fishing skill a much more
versatile skill. I have a character that does this and it is nice to park a boat near a
dungeon. I can return to the boat and go below deck to rest and/or log out...or drop off
treasure. It turned out to be a neat little element because if your friends went down into
your lower deck, and you dock the boat with them inside, they will pop out at some
beach when they leave the lower deck...like they were abandoned at sea.
Some spells needed help as well, and mostly due to the slow rule changes made to the
game over the years. Magic lock had very little use so I incorporated that one shard's
idea of locking creatures in an iron flask. A flask you dump out later and the creature
attacks stuff. This spell also locks dungeon doors for a short time, which can be handy.
Resurrection was another spell I had to tweak. In a single-player environment, this spell
does you no good as you can't resurrect yourself. So I changed it that you can cast it on
yourself ahead of time. Nightsight is only as useful as your client's light levels, however.
I get that people want to see everything all of the time, but you really lose something in
the world's ambience of the use of lighting when you filter it out. Torches light the halls,
fire elementals glow, and your magic candle lights your way.
As I stated in other articles, this game was designed around old Dungeons & Dragons
methodologies. In UO, traps never hurt us enough to be scary. So why have them? They
would only really get you if you had 5 hit points left after a fight and opened a chest
without checking it first. So I didn't use the UO traps in this game (other than
mushrooms, stone faces, and container traps). Since traps are more dangerous, I had a
heart and made the exploding mushrooms strange colors and glow so a player can avoid
them better. You can't see the glow with light filters on...can yeah...huh? Most of the
traps, however, are random hidden traps that move around the dungeon so you never
know where one is going to be and when. I grabbed my old Dungeon Masters Guide and
came up with some fun traps that will piss you off...and that is the point. You are
supposed to hate traps and not consider them a mild inconvenience. So now your coins
might turn to lead, an item might vanish from your hand, your potion bottles might
break everywhere, or you might get teleported all the way across the world.
I didn't like UO treasure. I thought it was pointless. Treasure map chests were fine, but
those crates you would find in Despise had a torch and a loaf of bread. Don't you feel
like a mighty adventurer to vanquish evil and be prized with a torch? I wanted loot. Not
treasure...loot. I want to find chests and crates and throw open the lid to see what is in
there. I want to shuffle through the box and take the things I want and leave the rest. I
want to feel like I am exploring a dungeon with monsters AND treasure. I don't want a
requirement be that you have to kill something to get something. If a thief wants to
sneak around and pick locks on chests...fine. That is what a thief does. So people may
think I have a lot of treasure in the game but it is mostly loot. You need to want the stuff
in the box for it to have any value to you. I myself only take things that help my character
archetype. If I am a wizard, I don't take the lock picks. If I am a fighter, I don't take the
magic scrolls.
If you can't tell from playing this game I made, I will tell you that I have no love for player
killers. Never have. It is why I quit UO so many years ago. But...I have PVP turned on
in this game...so...I like the danger of a player being able to hurt another player. Not in
the way the player killers state, but more of a group adventure way. I think it provides
more danger when you go with your friend into a dungeon (with his white wyrm) and
you get into a fight where the wyrm's breath hits you too because you were close to the
monster. Or your friend accidentally runs through your fire field. Plus if you want to
have a friendly face-off with friends the game lets you do that.
This game is not player killer friendly, however, for a few reasons. First, the world is
ginormous and it has over 100 dungeons to explore. I will admit that 70 of them are of
sizeable adventure, where the rest are smaller (one level) areas of interest you may run
across...but still...that is a ton of places to go and no one would ever find out where you
were. Secondly, "public areas". I have a few of these and they are non-PVP areas for
players to go. These include the tavern, inn, or bank...along with a handful of other
areas. I wanted to be able to run to the bank, drop off some stuff, and stand in there
safely while I run in the kitchen to check on dinner. Lastly, "invulnerability potions". I
use these mostly for corpse retrieval but just take a swig of this when some guy feels
like whacking you just cuz. Then you can walk by him and wave as you head to safety.
The public area idea was mine, as no other shard tried doing this. They complain that
the player base is small so their solution is to make the map smaller so people run into
each other. Screw that! I like walking around a huge land. It isn't like UO's land of
boredom. You will run into a fight with something...maybe a giant or a dragon. You
could be going through the forest and a huge magic gate opens and you are face to face
with a balron. I have so many dungeons that I forget where they are so if I am doing a
land crawl, I could stumble onto a dungeon and go in it...just cuz.
But, I wanted to have a situation where you could run into your multi-player friends so
I devised this system where if you go into the bank, it is the same bank everywhere. This
proved to work well with only 3 people online. I would see my friends in the bank quite
often...and it didn't matter what city I was in. To digress a bit, this actually all started
with the Thieves Guild. I wanted a Thieves Guild in every city because of things like the
Thieves Guild role-playing game or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I made one guild and
I thought...shit...I don't want to make a bunch more for each city. So I had the doors go
to the same place and lead back to where you entered. Then I used this code on banks,
taverns, and inns.
After I came to this realization about public areas, there was something I maybe would
have done differently. If I had this idea sooner, I may have had just one giant city that
was central. So imagine there are 9 different lands but they have a city in each one. All
you would see from the land is the city walls and city gates. Once you went in, you were
in the same city as everyone else. Basically one giant public area. But...I already had
the cities built and I just left them be. This is when I decided to have cities rotate stock
round in their stores. This worked out pretty neat because if I wanted to buy something
from a mage, but the Britain mage didn't have it, I would run to Moon to see if they were
selling it. It is a bit of a simulation on goods, stock, and availability...especially in a low
population world.
To go back in time, before this server, I did have a shard where I wiped out every town
with CentrED...except Britain. I built forests over where the cities where and it is as if
they never existed. I even got rid of the roads. This had the desired effect of everyone
having to go to one city because there weren't any others. Just another tip for those that
are annoyed with spread out, small player bases.
I found some dude's "graphic update" package, where it basically had new animations
to replace the current creature animations. I don't remember where I got that now, but
it had a ton of graphics that were basically new to UO. If you are a game player, you will
recognize them from games like Diablo or Warcraft. They may not be "in line" with classic
UO graphics, but that ship sailed when EA put Third Dawn monsters into the 2D
client...so I grabbed them and ran with it. I replaced only a couple of monsters. The
succubus, centaur, beetle, kirin, skeletal horse, and swamp dragon...because EA's
looked dumb. The others I loaded up into free slots and either made new monsters with
them, or I randomized current monsters to have various appearances. Skeletons are an
example of this randomization. This is why I had to do the memory hack on the client,
because it would no longer load with all of these new animations.
I would rather have the new monster graphics than to take the old fashion route of just
using the same monsters over and over while only changing their color. How many
different colored water elementals can you fight before you are sick of seeing them? I
used pretty much every available slot I could for monster and animal graphics. I literally
ran out of numbers to use. You can't go over 1,000 for body values. Don't fool yourself
if you think you can. You may think you succeeded...but watch them fight. Are they
doing their animations or just standing there fighting stiffly. If they are not doing their
animations, you probably put them in a body value over 999. Put them in a lower body
value and you will see them move around again. That was another tip...but it really
depends on your client version.
You can't drive yourself nuts about game balance either. Don't get me wrong, it is an
important element, but some things are out of your control. As an example, games often
put on their boxes that this will give you X hours of gameplay. They played it from start
to finish so they have an average. So if it is 72 hours of gameplay, and someone plays it
for 12 hours a day...every day...then they are done with it in 6 days. If you play it for an
hour a day...you have over two months of gaming fun. It is not much different for UO
shards. I created this game to be approached by my gaming time. So if someone jumps
into my game and plays for 12 hours a day...every day...they are going to amass more
wealth sooner. If they reach what they determine as their peak...and they are bored with
this game...there is nothing you can really do. Tell them "thanks for playing?" I try to
tell them to try another character type, but then they look at you with a puzzled look of
"why in the hell would anyone not want to play a tamer-mage?" If you have players like
this, please try not to roll your eyes too hard...you might strain them.
I think the quest system in UO was pretty good, there is just a trade off with complexity.
They are involved, but because of that...there are fewer of them and they are all the
same every time. No matter what you do, quests have the same elements that make
them quests. Kill stuff and/or get stuff. I chose the simple quest route with not much
complexity. The upside is that they are very random and they could send you all over
the many worlds to do them. This randomization I built into the game was important to
me. I wanted to be surprised when I played the game. You can't do that if you know
where everything is.
Now I do have some involved quests as well, but again, only a few. These mostly revolve
around Ultima lore and although they are static in presentation, they are random in
execution. You will probably have to get stuff but it will be in a random part of the world.
The biggest one I think is the Bard's Tale recreation quest. I remember in the 80's, I
played a lot of the Bard's Tale. When I saw someone playing Ultima, I thought that it
was pretty cool because they had Skara Brae too and you can finally explore outside of
the town. Again, with my youthful ignorance, it wasn't the same Skara Brae. That still
stuck in my mind, however, so I made the quest in my game. At first, it was supposed
to be a trap of sorts that one of my friends fell into. They accidentally got stuck in Skara
Brae and they were pretty pissy about it. Another friend of mine heard about this and
ran into it on purpose. I now find myself making characters and going to Skara Brae on
purpose because it is a good place to go and get some gold and artifacts.
I like my prisoner system I came up with. This was designed to give you a sort of super
boss that you can fight on your time and hopefully on your terms. You may find a crystal
ball with a trapped prisoner inside. I put some heroes and villains in them randomly so
you could fight Tiamat, King Arthur, Elric, or the Grim Reaper. There are 24 currently
and you can add to the list in the scripts. They have you getting some items to free them,
and you have to free them inside some random dungeons...but at least you get to
decided when you want to face the creature. So if you play this in a multi-player
environment, this gives a system where you are not camping for these boss fights
because players control them. Killing them is reminiscent of champion spawns, as you
get some neat items and coins drop all around you in explosive victory.
Character customization was important to me since UO had a cool system of dressing
your characters and dye tubs. Many games don't have these graphical options, even
newer ones today. So I wanted to have better access to item appearances and dyes. I
focused a lot on robes, by adding a bunch of different ones. They only look different on
the paperdoll, but the pixel size of UO wouldn't warrant a much different looking robe
