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Has anyone kept current with the tools orbsydia is developing? Should I start looking at UO Landscaper instead of dragon? How about the new world forge, is that usable yet? I plan on continuing work on my map again, but it needs updating and i'm wondering what the best route is.

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Yes. I've been working on UOL scripts all last week. It's come very far ahead (yes I know I said not too long ago I wouldn't hold my breathe for UOL, but I wasn't up to date, a lot has changed). Right now it can do pretty much everything Dragon can do, plus a few more things, but it still isn't finished. There are some bugs and features DK is working on still, but right now it looks like mostly getting the scripts done. I have no idea when it's going to be a public release.

The new WF is still in development, although there has been public releases of it. The latest I think is 89? I'm not working on the WF project and I haven't talked to Punt so I don't know where he is on it and I haven't kept up as closely.

Depending where you are at, you can probably continue working on your map with Dragon. I haven't talked to DK yet about a conversion utility but it should be doable to convert your Dragon map to a UOL terrain map (the altitude map is generated from that). You will have to redo all your altitudes but your basic map design you'll be able to convert. UOL uses 2 8 bit images, one for terrain and one for altitude.

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http://forum.orbsydia.com/showthread.php?s=c778b1acf81b76a3b93fc73ccaed312e&t=1507

::drools::

looks like dragon's days are just about over to me. I'm ready to embrace UO Landscaper. mmmm 3-way transitions, auto cave entrances, cave ceiling and floor.

I can't wait.

And behold, non-blocky NW coasts! No worldforging required!

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that was possible with uocoast a long time ago (used that instead of mod 11's coast generation). unfortunately just for -5 to 0 transistions. does uol higher non blocky transitions, too?

I never saw uocoast work any better than original dragon scripts. You have to look at it from all sides. My scripts work better. Show me screenshots if I'm wrong, because last I remember uocoast was shit.

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UOCoast always worked fine for me...might of missed a spot here and there but no worse than the single pixel errors of Dragon/Photoshop/not paying attention.

UO Landscaper should be 100x better since its been under development 100x longer than any of the other programs. UOCoast was written in less than a month. We'll have to take your word for it being better since its not availible for download.

Speaking from years of EMU/UO Community experience and being the first world Developer for Orbsydia, I have YET to see any one tool that could do it all. If they have finally made one that actually works pretty good then I applaud them but wouldnt start throwing away all my other Dev tools just because its rumored to be better. Again though I will be very happy if someone finally pulled it off after 7 years of waiting.

Dev Viperrious

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UOCoast works fine if you consider original Dragon coasts to be fine. I don't. UOCoast is an ancient program, and it's programmer decided to stop with so/so instead of working further. Darus also got to a certain point of completion with Dragon before he lost interest in it. Now I am not knocking either (ok, not too hardly anyway). Since I've been around since when editing the map was just a wish, I was VERY GREATFULL TO HAVE THESE TOOLS, fully finished or not. Lest anyone think my egos grown totally out of the room; As I have said the mod11 coasts were not perfect, they were the best I could do given the limitations of both Dragon and the game client, and if you weren't too lazy to fix them in WF produced a superior result. UOL just took away the WF step.

You can take it from me, not because I'm an Orb core team member, but because I am probably the only person in the world who knows the ins and outs of transition scripts (anyone else who does know is keeping it to themselves). I spent a lot of time doing scripts for Dragon. The mod11 scripts aren't just some changes or upgrades, I gutted the scripts. I actually took the time to go through all 256 possible combinations of A/B and find out what each one does.

In it's present state (and Dragon's present state) UOL is capable of doing a lot more than Dragon for 3 reasons. 1st is dual 8bit images. We are able to have 256 different terrain groups AND a seperate altitude map. The 2nd reason is 3+ way transitions. The 3rd reason is we can do limited second passes that allow things like what you saw in the water screenshot.

Why isn't it released right now? DKnight is adding some more features and doing bugfixes. He's recently changed from almost everything being hardcoded, to almost everything being configureable by the end user, and by gui to boot.

The other reason is scripts. While it has all the capability to do all kinds of really cool things, it can't do any of them without the scripts. DKnight has a slick transition editor gui that will allow everyone to make their own new transitions if they wish, but it's still a lot of tedious and boring work. Dragon has been out for I forget how many years now, and who has released new scripts for it? A handful of people, most of them done by yours truly. Who is going to get the scripts done for UOL? Once again, yours truly. I've got about 80% of the transitions that Mod11 does finished. We've also got a few done that Dragon doesn't do, such as the caves under mountains in 1 pass, with entrances. I just came up with a new template, and hopefully if DK gets it into the transition wizard, it will speed things up and make it easy for the rest of you to get off your butts and do your own transitions, but for now it's me and my editpad lite. Right now I'm trying to get all the basics done before I move, which is going to be sometime next week.

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UOL sounds pretty cool, if half of what you say is true.

I wouldn?t completely nock UO Coast, though ? I?ve made several maps using it and never once found a single bug. But then, I have never even downloaded Dragon, so it might just be something different that I?ve been doing.

I?m also working on a new project for converting maps. Dropping TSMC for the fourth time and now I?m working on a project that will be even more simple than TSMC, but much more capable than anything in development right now (that I?m aware of). No details until it?s done, though! I?m working on the base code right now (re-usable class libraries that I will be using in a number of future programs) which will take me approximately 16 hours to finish. After that, I estimate that it will take me 8 to 12 hours to write this new program (less than a month development time = sucky program, just think what less than half a day will mean!).

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