Dear adventurers,
It’s time for some news. A lot of things happened recently, so I will try to sum it all up in a short news announcement post.
First, we are welcoming a new staff member : Hades. Among his various skills, he will focus on world creation. His knowledge of Ultima Online will allow us to bring more balance in the game, especially with end game content. We are also planning more social areas and more interaction between players, so veterans can chat and help new players more easily.
Welcome Hades ! Thank you for joining the team.
Another topic that needs to be addressed is about all the crashes that happened recently. It seems we have been able to find out what exactly is happening. Without the opportunity to analyze crash logs, because such logs are generated only when there is an actual crash linked to errors in a script, it wasn’t an easy task to determine what was wrong and causing a “stack overflow” error. After testing things and discussion with Hades about it, it seems the problem is coming from one of our staff menus. Good news is this will be solved with the newer version of our server and meanwhile we can avoid using that menu to avoid triggering a crash. Configuring vote stones and invasions (daily invasions in Britain Graveyard e.g.) is actually using that staff menu.
The server upgrade from JustUO to latest ServUO version will allow to be fully compatible with the newer ways to handle menus in game (including all other windows, gumps and UI additions).
A big change we also introduced recently : recipe crafting.
With all the things going on, I hadn’t taken time to properly describe how this works.
As a new player, you will start crafting with very few options. You can only craft a couple items in each profession. Besides you can only harvest and craft default resources. For example, being able to craft an Ebony Elven Bow will require you to find an “Ebony resource recipe” and an “Elven Bow crafting recipe”.
- A resource recipe allows you to harvest that type of resource and to craft items by using that type of resource.
- A crafting recipe allows you to craft that type of items.
How will you find recipes ?
By many different ways :
- through crafting and especially accomplishing bulk order deeds (BODs)
- By fighting monsters, wherever the type and difficulty.
- By doing Master of the Arts champion
- By purchasing recipes from other players.
Feedback and server upgrade
A few days I was asking for feedback because work on server upgrade is slowly getting there. Down from 1.100+ errors to only 84 errors today, that was a lot of scripts and errors to rewrite.
The objectives of such an upgrade have multiple reasons and implications.
Our latest relaunch took a copy of the code that had 10+ years old. To be exact, server code is currently based on JustUO, a project similar to ServUO emulator, where I was one of the team developers. Meanwhile, JustUO was closed by its owner and most of the work was taken over ServUO admins. Therefore it is better and basically mandatory to update our core scripts to the latest version of ServUO. 10 years later, UO Classic Client has changed a lot and some packets are managed differently. 10 years later, most newer release of custom scripts and addons aren’t compatible anymore with old 2015 JustUO. 10 years later… we can do such much more when speaking I.T.
Upgrade is nearly ready and will go live after a time of public testing. To avoid issues like last time, when nobody could interact with NPCs anymore, the patch won’t be pushed on production server until we know it’s 100% okay.
But what will change exactly ?
Planned patch note, but still subject to change :
- taming BODs are now included in the new way BODs work
- Additional BODs : tailoring, inscription, alchemy, …
- New resources : Corundum, Nexus and Titans. All three coming as Metal, Stone, Wood, Scales and Leather. Corundum requires 125 skills, Nexus 130 skills and Titan 135 skills. It is only possible to achieve these higher skill levels by equipping +X skill items.
- Recipe crafting : according to feedback received, a more detailed version may be adapted. It was intended at first to allow new recipes only though making BODs, in the way it was made on Legends of Aria.
- Skill Masteries and many other features included in recent Ultima Online Publishes
- High Seas complete expansion : boat fighting and quests related to the expansion
- Time of Legends complete expansion
- Endless Journey complete expansion
- Vita-Nex Vault : a custom framework which provides 100% working version updates of our current invasion system and vote system. In addition, it also includes instanced dungeons, set items, power hour system and an IPL (installation/patch/launcher) system which are going to be used to provide more custom end game content.
So thanks a lot for your patience on this all. Thanks a lot for your feedback. Thanks a lot for enjoying the Shard. It is so great to be there and be able to work on this with Hades.
You all have a lot of fun !
-Tharmine.
Server News 2024-04-11