Client Upgrade Team is *Back*

Waldoff

Administrator
Staff member
The band is back together - and we even have a few more members.

This summer we are hoping to make a huge push towards upgrading SoD to the Underfoot client. I am going to be very clear: This is going to take a long time. You will notice that as a theme throughout the post. If you lack the ability to be excited for a long period of time, come back in months. Unless you want to blow all your excitement now, in which case read ahead.

Here is a very abridged list of things we get in the new client:
  • Packetloss Bug, Poof
  • Nvidea Clipping Bug, Poof
  • Radeon Users get Target Rings
  • Brand New UI - Smoother, Faster Running, Better in All Ways
  • A TON of /cmds move into the UI. Styles become clickable Combat Abilities.
  • Around 450 New Item Models. Everything from Kick Ass Lava Swords to House Building Stuff (No shit we can have you build a house if we want to).
  • Around 300 new NPC Models. This includes a ton of new awesome looking models, as well as upgrades to Dragons, Rats, Bats, Skeletons and tons more.
  • 150 Brand New High Definition zones for us to use.
  • A really awesome atlas feature that lets you zoom around the game world in the map screen.
  • The Target of your Target displays in your target window
  • Leadership Abilities including Raid Leader Mob Flagging (big arrows shows up above mob), raidwide main assist, and lots more.
  • Shit tons of available AAs that frankly I have no idea what we are going to do with.
  • Hugely improved graphics. Shadows on everything, you can see your breath when you walk into a cold area... yeah its pretty awesome.
  • Casting a portal makes... a fucking portal! That you walk through! And can see where it goes beforehand by looking into it!
  • A much more robust server, less lag, less crashes, less everything you hate.
  • Sounds are no longer just annoying horribleness, you can hear your friends while in combat, use emotes with voices in them, and the music is actually not terrible.
And tons more. That is just what I came up with off the top of my head in the five minutes I took to write it. The new client is basically a brand new game, with the features you would expect from a newly released MMO, that will have all of SoD's content.


But this will take a ton of work. We are at the very least, many months away. Still, we have made a few huge strides in the right direction, namely four things that were extremely technically difficult. Yet now with the technically difficult things in hand, we have to basically recode our entire game to be compatible with the new client. This is a HUGE undertaking, and as of now we are a team of around 8. We have 9 years of SoD history to port over.

At some point this forum will be where we ask you to post bugs you find with the new server in beta. For now, I am going to ask the rest of the SoD 3.0 team to post in this forum whenever they have a second with fun or interesting things that are happening so far with the upgrade. You will likely see a lot of me here, too, especially since I am not as robust a coder as the rest of the team and enjoy doing PR. Think of it like a blog! While I am restricting new threads, you are more than welcome to reply to the status updates or whatever else we put in here. I also hope to post requests for help on things that players can pitch in on, such as graphic work and string replacement for the new client.

I hope that this does two things: 1) Lets everyone follow our progress and be as excited as we are, and; 2) Hopefully show how much work is being put in, and thereby explain why less content related work will be going on in game.

The current team:
  • Slaariel - Script Converter Guru and The Only Girl Dev
  • Jumbers - Nocturnal Code Dude of Great Repute, Hardware Guy and Repo Manager.
  • Olive - Actually a girl. Tells Jumbers after 30 hours of being awake to go to sleep. A farmer (not a joke) and a coder.
  • Taryth - New Guy - Has Big Code Chops. Laughs at Buttbot in the 3.0 channel *every time*
  • KLS - New Client Expert from EqEmu! Rode to SoD on his White Horse to help us reboot 3.0. Give many thanks.
  • Meyers - Will code something at some point for sure. Semi-colon expert.
  • Zaela - Mistress of all things Lua.
  • Buttbot - Changes what we say in the 3.0 channel into phrases with the word "Butt" in them.
  • Me, Woldaff - Attempts to make up for his complete lack of applicable skills by making over excited posts to try and drum up attention.
  • More to come, especially as the GM team comes aboard once a beta is in place.


TL:DR Summary: We are upgrading to new client. This is going to take a long time. We will post cool shit on this forum, feel free to reply. Be excited.
 
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for rockin.

What else is there to say?
 
I'm rooting for your whole team there, Waldoff! By the way, a question I've been pondering for ages -- will the upgrade mean SoD will eventually be put back on the EQEmu server list? It would do wonders for attracting new players, but I'd be surprised if the matter weren't already set in stone one way or the other by now...
 
I'm going to need a new computer to run SoD after the upgrade, and I cannot fucking wait!!!!

You guys are awesome!
 
where can I find the system specs required for SoD 3.0?

will the method to install on linux change?
 
I made my above post, and then went walking around the house trying to move forward in my day. I had to come back and post again because the excitement is boiling over!

I have to keep remembering, patients young grasshopper...
 
I am glad to hear, no, I am downright jazzed to hear, about this. I look forward to seeing the final product. GL, TeamSoD3.0.
 
Holy shit this is awesome. I'm new to SoD but played on Live somewhat recently (like within the past year) so some of the client limitations were frustrating. I've come to accept them as the price that must be paid for the awesomeness that is SoD, but the idea of having the best of both worlds? HOLY SHIT!

I had been holding off on donator status because I wanted to make sure I continued to play and also b/c of budget issues irl, but I'll be converting to donator status shortly to at least symbolically show support for this (yeah, yeah, I know you guys aren't getting paid for your work on 3.0).

Once (if) this gets to a point where crowd-sourcing becomes possible I'd also love to put some time in to help.
 
And tons more. That is just what I came up with off the top of my head in the five minutes I took to write it. The new client is basically a brand new game, with the features you would expect from a newly released MMO, that will have all of SoD's content.

I assume that the rez dialogs (yes/no confirmation) will also be available with the new client (not necessarily when it launches but eventually possible)?

Edit: Distracted at work from excitement after reading the OP Waldoff. Boy, this is gonna be awwwwwesommmmme.
 
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I'm rooting for your whole team there, Waldoff! By the way, a question I've been pondering for ages -- will the upgrade mean SoD will eventually be put back on the EQEmu server list? It would do wonders for attracting new players, but I'd be surprised if the matter weren't already set in stone one way or the other by now...

We have tech in place that would allow us to have two login servers both directed at SoD. This way we can have our own private login for those who want quick access, while being back with the eqemu crew and on their login as well.

But there are technical issues that need to be overcome. Basically, in order for SoD to work with the changes that were made in the client between 2002 and 2011, our patcher is going to do a lot more of the work as compared to using passive string files in your eq directory as we do now. This means that in order to log into SoD and play, the patcher is going to become required each time you boot up.

I am not sure how that will interact with the eqemu login. I would love to be back in cahoots with eqemu, and would love to be on their login. I am hoping we find a technical remedy where we can be on both logins, without having the people joining from the eqemu one unable to interact with our SoD specific content.

One idea thrown around is creating a patcher for eqemu that incorporates all the custom servers, where you can check a box, click "activate SoD" or "activate hidden forest" and log in right away. But this sort of solution would take collaboration with the other eqemu custom servers, and we simply are not far enough to reach out to them to talk about it yet.
 
This gives a good idea of the changes: http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=ClientFeatures

We are shooting for Underfoot right now, but upgrading to RoF is possible afterward.

Remember, they are talking about things being addition to Titanium. We are a few clients BEFORE Titanium. Lots of stuff they are taking for granted we do not have. We have been focusing on content creation, while eqemu has largely been focusing on client implementation and optimization. We have a long way to catch up on that front.
 
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