This is my announcement to the world that I am beginning my own UO emulator (for about the 12th time). No promises, since I have a horrible track record for getting things done (and by horrible, I mean deplorable).
The goal of the project are as follows:
To be complete platform independent
To be stable
To be fast
To be completely and easily customizable
To be easy to use
To be well-designed
To be open-source
To be simple
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Pretty standard list of desires for any project, eh?
To achieve platform independence, I will be taking advantage of a number of cross-platform libraries for doing any OS-specific task (such as multithreading or GUI management). I will not be writing any platform-specific code.
To achieve stability, I plan to have a well thought-out design that takes advantage of many standard practices, which eliminate potential memory leaks. All code incorporated into the server will have the requirement to be exception-safe, as well.
To achieve speed, the entire server will be written in C++ with the potential for some inclusion of assembly (but only if it is extremely well tested and restrained to the CPU-demanding portions of the code).
To achieve customizability, the server will have a standardized set of core functionality, which will emulate the way UO functioned around the release of T2A. The server itself will be completely usable without inclusion of any scripts (only minor configuration files). However, to make it completely customizable, any function may be overloaded by a script easily, and all functions will be callable from the scripts. This includes anything from the minor details of how a skill works to overloading the entire packet pump (although this would not be recommended!).
To achieve ease of use (especially for newbies), a simple GUI will be used which will make setting up and maintaining a server very easy. Configuration and script editors will also be included as separate programs.
To achieve a good design, all details of how the server will work are being worked out before any coding takes place. This is a simple but often overlooked principle.
While the server will be open-source, no submissions of code will be accepted unless they meet an extremely rigid requirement list. This is to prevent ?too many fingers from being in the pudding? as Dev put it.
To achieve simplicity, the design will be geared towards getting the job done well and without bugs, but with scalability in mind. There will be no inclusions of ideas or systems which were not present at the release of T2A (or around that time) on the official servers. While anything will be possible to customize, that will be left up to script-writers to achieve separately.
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Well, I suppose that sums it up.
I probably won?t finish it, but I?m going to give it a go anyway!
