My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard. I wrote some really terrible PHP and HTML, but it worked for 20+ years afterwards. Great memories!
I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO!
In any case, this is very cool.
Thanks for sharing!
For anyone wanting to try UO out, it's still a game with an active player base. There are 3rd party servers like UO Outlands, which gets closer to the original gameplay. Meaning very harsh in comparison to what most people are used to in today's MMOs. Players can just come to gank you and you'll lose your stuff, etc.
The server has 2500+ players logged in right now, so still very much active.
Great memories. The human engagement was more genuine to everyday in-person interactions than the current state of MMORPGs and even most Social platforms. The game was also great in how extensible it was. Too great in some aspects that allowed botting, but accessible enough that general public, coding novices experienced an "intro to scripting" to create sophisticated macros.
I've been looking for a localized (Spanish or French), mobile version of Ultima 4 (NES). Others too. Something similar to what was done with FF series by Pixel Remaster.
The game is currently only available via emulator.
Localized, text-heavy RPGs are a very easy way to "learn-while-playing" a foreign language, and reading as well.
> I worked on this project intermittently for 10 years, until recent developments in LLMs finally made it possible to complete this seemingly never-ending task.
I've been working on my own MFC C++ decompilation project. It's insane how useful LLMs are for this.
The UO emulator scene got me into network programming. I've never seen an online game capture so many ancillary/emergent/accidental gameplay mechanics as well as this, somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting economics, building, exploring that UO delivered. PvP and quest type stuff is probably a lot better in other games but it was still compelling and you could realistically play solo or in a group or casually interact with randoms and effortlessly switch between these as you felt like it.
Maybe there is some opportunity there? Very little going on in the mmo world now tbh. Wow, old school runescape, final fantasy online, not much else worth it.
Recently, I've enjoyed scripting for the TazUO game client in Python; it's a slightly older version of Python 3, but still far ahead of scripting in Razor or SteamUO. If you're looking for a quiet single-player shard to play around with, I've enjoyed Memento.
Posts like this are a great reminder that protocol archaeology is half software history, half debugging. The reconstruction work here sounds genuinely fun.
I liked the old Ultima saga, in particular from 5 to 7. Ultima 8 ... I did not hate it, but they killed off the old concept. Perhaps the old genre was meant to die anyway, but it was such a big difference from 7 to 8. While 7 is often the most praised variant, I particularly hated combat; it was much easier in Ultima 6. Either way it was specific for the 1990s era for the most part, which was pretty nice. (Ok - just looked up ... Ultima 1 to 5 actually was in the 1980s era; I thought it wasn't quite that old. Ultima 6 was released in 1990.)
My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard. I wrote some really terrible PHP and HTML, but it worked for 20+ years afterwards. Great memories!
I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO!
In any case, this is very cool. Thanks for sharing!
For anyone wanting to try UO out, it's still a game with an active player base. There are 3rd party servers like UO Outlands, which gets closer to the original gameplay. Meaning very harsh in comparison to what most people are used to in today's MMOs. Players can just come to gank you and you'll lose your stuff, etc.
The server has 2500+ players logged in right now, so still very much active.
Great memories. The human engagement was more genuine to everyday in-person interactions than the current state of MMORPGs and even most Social platforms. The game was also great in how extensible it was. Too great in some aspects that allowed botting, but accessible enough that general public, coding novices experienced an "intro to scripting" to create sophisticated macros.
I've been looking for a localized (Spanish or French), mobile version of Ultima 4 (NES). Others too. Something similar to what was done with FF series by Pixel Remaster.
The game is currently only available via emulator.
Localized, text-heavy RPGs are a very easy way to "learn-while-playing" a foreign language, and reading as well.
Would love to see this built !
> I worked on this project intermittently for 10 years, until recent developments in LLMs finally made it possible to complete this seemingly never-ending task.
I've been working on my own MFC C++ decompilation project. It's insane how useful LLMs are for this.
The UO emulator scene got me into network programming. I've never seen an online game capture so many ancillary/emergent/accidental gameplay mechanics as well as this, somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting economics, building, exploring that UO delivered. PvP and quest type stuff is probably a lot better in other games but it was still compelling and you could realistically play solo or in a group or casually interact with randoms and effortlessly switch between these as you felt like it.
Maybe there is some opportunity there? Very little going on in the mmo world now tbh. Wow, old school runescape, final fantasy online, not much else worth it.
This game was created before virtual currency and pay to win was a thing. The potential money is probably too corrupting.
I enjoyed Ultimate Online, back in the day.
Recently, I've enjoyed scripting for the TazUO game client in Python; it's a slightly older version of Python 3, but still far ahead of scripting in Razor or SteamUO. If you're looking for a quiet single-player shard to play around with, I've enjoyed Memento.
Memories.
I played T2A a little last year, great shard & peeps running it.
https://www.uosecondage.com/
Posts like this are a great reminder that protocol archaeology is half software history, half debugging. The reconstruction work here sounds genuinely fun.
sooo many memories.
got into it with Sphere (51 and 55) if my memory doesn't trick me.
was there ever a working port of the client for OSX ? would love to revamp it.
Well, props for that effort.
I liked the old Ultima saga, in particular from 5 to 7. Ultima 8 ... I did not hate it, but they killed off the old concept. Perhaps the old genre was meant to die anyway, but it was such a big difference from 7 to 8. While 7 is often the most praised variant, I particularly hated combat; it was much easier in Ultima 6. Either way it was specific for the 1990s era for the most part, which was pretty nice. (Ok - just looked up ... Ultima 1 to 5 actually was in the 1980s era; I thought it wasn't quite that old. Ultima 6 was released in 1990.)