Ryandor.com

A brief history of UO emulation as I understand it:

The Shattered Legacy:
UOX, Fuse

This is the age where extreme programming and hacking is required to get any semblance of a UO server up and running. The whole community was barely acknowledged; half because most of us were still happy with the official thing, and half because of the complexity of and learning curve of using the software available at the time.

The Second Age:
TUS, POL, UOX derivatives

This is when things began to roll, and people began to make fully-functioning servers. Still largely ignored on the whole, but development of much-easier-to-use software made it much easier to get into the community and do something fun with it.

The Third Dawn:
Sphere (from TUS), UOX3 (from UOX), POL, UOX derivatives, numerous ?from-scratch? emus.

This is the age of Paigelore and SmithysAnvil, I would say, heh. This is when things began to be customized, and the idea of running a server that resembles a professional server began to become a reality. Customization of maps, gumps, etc. was still new, but on the rise.

The Age of Shadows:
Sphere, UOX3 and derivatives, POL, UOX derivatives, RunUO

Customization came into full-swing and people began to have access to easy-to-use programs for customizing almost all of the content in the game. A lot of bickering went on, though, and we saw the two most dominant community sites shatter into a thousand pieces that you see today.

Now:
RunUO and derivatives, UOX3 and derivatives, POL, UOX derivatives

With RunUO taking the dominant share of favor in the emulation community, and it?s open-sourcing, the rest of the emulators are beginning to fade into ancient history. Most of the ?greats? in the community are long gone, and the rest of us don?t really have anything to talk about anymore. The peak of the community involvement is long-since dead and all we have now is an old game that leaves all of us feeling let-down.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Doesn't have to be that way.

The reason why RunUO quickly became such a success, and the reason why the rest of the community is pretty much in shambles, is because RunUO got the backing it needed to realize it's potential. Coders, Scripters, etc. gathered around a single UO Emu (yes, it is, no matter what they claim. If RunUO isn't an "UO Emulator" then the rest aren't either.). Sure, there were some pretty damn good brick-layers at the bottom, but we're not talking about 2 guys doing all the work here. Community effort is the keyword.

Then look at the rest of the "scene". So quiet you barely dare speak in case you're arrested for disturbing the peace. Small groups of hopeful developers, all doing "their thing". But without the extra resources (more developers, more scripters, more users - in that order), they'll never grow beyond "small hobby project supposed to offer something 'different'".

Everyone breaks off to do their own version, following their own visions. Which is fine, and commendable. Only problem is 9/10 never get out of the starting blocks, but remains there always having that "potential" hanging over them. I've lost count of how many "Project is on the backburner right now, a lot on my hands, etc. Don't worry, it's not dead." messages I've seen. Famous last words.

Nice summary of the UO Emu scene btw. Though you forgot Sphere in the "Now" section.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

Oh, yeah. Was a quick draft.

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

It was Greyworld which became Tus which became Sphere and I thought Fuse was the first followed by UOX in hot persuit but it was CFuse that actually came out with the first "stable" server that had a huge memory leak. So while you could play you would have to reboot after about 3 hours due to the huge lag.

It was still fun though

The UO Community started crashing when all the old timers left leaving all the younger people to take their place. UOX was the place to be once upon a time till the developers started jumping ship for other projects.

UO could be a killer training ground for up and coming programmers but there are just to many meglomaniac's running around anymore. People like Damian, Ryan and Phantom killed 70% of the fun with their stupidity and nonstop infighting. I still think its a sexual thing between Ryan and Damian, its all about who wants to be on top is all.

UOX was fantastic because they shared their knowledge with "EVERYONE" which was also part of what killed it. To many fingers in the code kept dicking it up.

Just in this forum alone we have enough experts in all fields of EMU creation to make an EMU that would blow RUNUO (into the ground) out of the water and make Sphere look like the monolithic dinosaur that it is....

Real life is another huge killer of the EMU world too, unless your in school living with mom and dad you really dont have time to work on such time consuming projects......

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

My unofficial UO Emu Timeline:
http://www.uox3.org/history/timeline.txt

Jaegermeister's Ultima Offline eXperiment was the first. UOX2 and Fuse were probably developed somewhat at the same time, but UOX2 was released first.

UOX(in one variation or another) and Fuse were the two "big ones" for a while, and grayworld didn't really put up a fight when it comes to popularity until it evolved to TUS. *shrug*

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

Hmm Thought Capella was the first to break the code and create a client connection tool? I actually still have it some where on disk.

Yeah Grayworld blew ass till after version 10 when you could actually start it up without crashing your computer. I played with versions 3 and up. The "Full World" file for 55i was my creation, its actually the small version, the original was 18 megs in size. Look for one of my easter eggs "Sweetmusic"

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"