Post: #1

Hey all,

I have some questions regarding Sphere's development over the last 10 years or so... to give a brief background, I became part of the Sphere community somewhere in the ballpark of 2003 and was instantly addicted to developing/running shards. I became very well versed with the Sphere scripting language and core functionality, even wrote and/or assisted with some of the tutorials still on the Wiki today.

Anyway, I wanted to see if anyone who's been around long enough would be willing to give a quick timeline starting from the early 2000's to now. I'm curious about current/past project leaders and developers, version changes, milestones, etc...

In addition to that, can someone tell me a little bit about the history of the community script pack? I recently threw a copy of Sphere on a Windows 7 VM running on my home Linux box just to fiddle because I missed it so much! Anyway, I guess I wasn't paying attention and ended up downloading a very old (2011?) copy of the script pack, along with the last "pre-release" of the executable, which apparently is from 2013? I didn't really realize it at the time, so I went ahead and configured everything and fired her up. After realizing that things seemed a little outdated, I switched EVERYTHING to the nightly builds (script pack and executable).

Now, things seem much more stable and current (gargoyle creation, expansions and whatnot), but now, all that cool new stuff in the script pack that I configured (add-on folder) is gone (new jail system, quests, upgraded OSI style combat, skills, etc...).

I guess my biggest question is, has that stuff been abandoned? Or has some of it been hardcoded?

Also, please note that I have skimmed the changelog from 2013 to 2016 and have not yet actually focused on it. I was hoping someone could help me with my laziness and just tell me

Anyway, thanks for the info in advance,

-NW, formerly Maximus for those of you who might remember me.

Post: #2

The community script pack isn't much compatible with the nightly builds.
Around November 2013 the default script pack that comes with Sphere was given a major overhaul by RanXerox.
Also many things that were in community pack (like the OSI combat) now are hardcoded but selectable by setting the appropriate flag in the .ini.
Anyway, the biggest change is that now Sphere is open source.

Other major changes are the SqLite support, in fact the .add menu now uses it

Post: #3

Makes sense, and thanks for the reply. I was trying to decide whether to play with the nightly and the scripts from the Git OR the 2013 pre-release and community script pack. I can see there's not a lot of easy interchangeability between those two setups.

I have always had fun creating web/Sphere integration using MySQL, however, the latest nightly is throwing a lot of exceptions and debugging as a result of running MySQL inquiries and executions.

Post: #4

The scriptpack overhaul was not great and is being redone for months now on my end. SCP started after Pyromapes and I replicated the entire UO:R. UO:LBR, and UO:AoS combat systems in under a week. It sort of lit a fire in the community and we saw a huge amount of interest in sphere again. ShiryuX and I soon took over Development as Thomas slowly etched his way out and Nazghull disappeared. With both of us with a personal life, college, work, et cetera; we hired on a few people and had our lives take over for a bit. Ben has been handling it for a few years. I came back, but the new staff and I couldn't get along. I tried forming a new team, but just like any developer team, no one seems to have time to put into the monster 24/7 without getting a paycheck from it. After the arguments of OpenSource and non-opensource, it just became petty bickering between Ben and I. Eventually I just moved on again just to not cause another rift in the community and I am not sure what happened to the team I tried hiring in. I think Avatar stuck around, Xun sort of played Neutral. It is all in the past though.

Back on point, the combat system is what started the SCP project mainly. Problem with SCP is the same problem I see with sphere base packs. Too many hands in it. SCP got out of control. RanXerox was the one in there as well and it started to just become a mess with too much stuff leaned towards how his private server was built (stuff I am still ripping out of base packs on my end). Which seems to be a problem when too many people get into one script pack.

Sphere has had a lot of changes and has had developers coming and going. Since Torfo, Mr SugarCube (Thomas), and Nazghul left, it has sort of been promiscuous and slept with many developers. High Seas was a hangup for a bit there, but I think Matex finally handled that when I left the second time.

Not really much else has been going on with it. I have been here for a long time on and off, never really giving up. Always trying to contribute here and there to light a new fire in the community once in awhile. Honestly, if I am not getting paid I just sort of release whatever I feel like grabbing from my personal repositories and handing it to the public. Skul was another one who did the same and would release a lot of quality code whenever he had an itch. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good scripters, but contributions are minimal at best in comparison to where sphere started up till Kell and SephDragoon disappeared after R series.

Really, the history can be summarized as: It was once great with tons of bugs. Now it is super efficient but crap because everyone sort of left or has been hiding behind guest status and not involved as much now. Sphere used to be something more for supporting all aspects of UO and promoted customization. Now it has become more EA and can support heavy customization, but doesn't advertise it as much now as in comparison to when you and I came around.

---

@DarkSun84, hard code doesn't completely reflect what that combat code Pyro and I did. Not even close. It has some of the formulas, but there has always been issues with the pvp aspects with the hard coding and casting, fight swings, et cetera, and how it all worked. Unless you all seriously rip apart our code and implement every little thing, it is not up to par, nor does it mimic anything more than the formulas we used. SCP doesn't even have the full combat code if I remember right anyhow. I read the revisions, it is getting there for UO:R handling, but not quite. I can release the code again if needed. It is sitting on my external. My combat code has just become way more advanced than anything that was done when we did that, otherwise I'd have just stuck with what we did. It is accurate to this day minus the changes EA did with special abilities, spells, and minor skill edits (which we didn't add regretfully).

Post: #5

Khaos, thanks for chiming in. It's good to know the details of what's been happening. If I were a bit more handy on the back-end, I'd love to contribute. I think I might learn. My old buddy and I want to build a shard that's completely unique in every way, including animations and maps. We fired up CentrED on my windows box and he's been adding stuff left and right.

Our first move was ServUO, but I have a deep sense of loyalty to Sphere (plus, prior knowledge) so we switched and here I am again. It's funny, I was just recovering images from an old hard drive and found a screen shot of my 1,111th post on the original Sphere forums, and apparently I joined July 11th, 2002. Man that was a LONG time ago.

Anyway, I'd hate to see Sphere become a dying project. Once I become more familiar with all the updates over the last 10 years and a bit more familiar with the hardcoding, I may offer up some help if needed.

OH, who's got control over the Wiki? It's outdated. I'd like to help with that too, maybe in the near future.

Thanks!

-NW / Maximus

Post: #6

Omg! It is you Maximus! <3

Welcome back!!! <3!!!!!! *tackles* It has been forever since I have seen you!!!! How are you??! Everything going okay?!

Sphere won't die, and if it did, the source is open now for someone to pick up if it goes completely in the ground. Xun is working on cleaning a lot up in there now to make things easier to find and logics to run better. Soon as I am done with these script base packs, I am returning to do some development work and get it running faster and cleaner as well if possible. Enough dev's come back, maybe I can convince everyone to clean the profiler and build a virtual cpu in it and bounce back all the packets to simulate multithreading. Never know! ^_^ Think my optimism is a bit too high right now.

Hehehe. Welcome back though.

xoxoxo

Post: #7

(02-28-2016 04:01 PM)Khaos Wrote:  Omg! It is you Maximus! <3

Welcome back!!! <3!!!!!! *tackles* It has been forever since I have seen you!!!! How are you??! Everything going okay?!

Well that escalated quickly lol! It's been like 10 years since I've been on here and you actually remember me?

In any case, things are good. I showed back up after digging up old hard drives and coming across random little images and icons and whatnot and one of them was the sphere exe icon, and I was like holy crap, I've gotta see what those guys are up to these days.

Years ago (maybe 2006-2007 ish), ShiryuX and I started a shard that was never finished and I wish I had all the old files for it, but I don't lost in several moves/reformats/ex-girlfriend throwing my old laptop out on the curb for the garbage man to collect while I was away for training, those kinds of things

Good to be back!

Post: #8

Yes, I remember everyone who was on here!!!! I've been watching Sphere since Gray and TUS, and started getting involved in 55I!!! Memory is like an elephant most days! There are very members who were active a long time ago I don't remember anymore.

Awwww so sorry to hear! Contact ShiryuX! He is still around. Leave him a PM and see if he still has the files!

Post: #9

Good ol' 55i... where I started haha. I did PM him, he's still lurking. I've gotta see if he still has the patch client that he made with our logo and all that.

Post: #10

^_^. He should answer when he can. He normally does if you bug him. Not sure he does. Him and I haven't talked much since we both left Sphere Development.