Post: #28

Long time Sphere user and limited developer.

I think Sphere, back in the 2004ish days, was by far the superior GAMEPLAY experience. Bug or not, casting and melee were extremely clean, fun, balanced, etc. Also, the iconic "move while casting" or 'Sphere Casting' defined UO for me. Sphere casting is how the game was meant to be played. There is a debate whether Sphere casting was ever actually part of OSI, regardless, it is by far more skill based. One of the only games, especially mmo, that I've ever played - where you could take on multiple people and gear not playing a factor.

On the other hand, development / representation side RunUO beat it any time of the day. Especially for anyone looking for an OSI-esque server. Even when RunUO's core was closed source, a developer could do far more, and much more sophisticated systems that resembled a professional product.

I don't know much about Sphere Servers return (SphereCommunity) but I did find this thread through some searching for the old Sphere. I am currently (dragging out) a project through RunUO, essentially recreating the Sphere experience but in the RunUO shell.

I have considered pulling out my floppies to copy over my old Sphere 55i files and throw up a server, but I feel there won't be much interest. RunUO has taken over big time, especially with RAZOR / client versions. I still have 2.0.3 on file, but it is no where near as accessible as the new 7.x.

What's the status on the bigger Sphere projects? I'm very interested in getting an up to date server running, which is why I've been nipping at this RunUO project for quite some time. The issue with my project is my experience. I'm not a programmer, and though I've been learning and learn quickly, it still takes a considerable amount of time to do relatively simple tasks.

If anyone would like to join me in developing my project further or working together to push a Sphere project, let me know. I have a strong mindset for game development and would really like to put it into a project that will see the light of day. I can do anything from programming (may take some time depending on scale / difficulty), to designing combat systems, economics / monetary systems, interfaces (gumps), and so on.

Nice to see Sphere back in the UO emulator space.