Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online

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Strong rec swozey · 2018-12 · on “Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players”

I'm loving this UO talk, I just found this Postmortem by GDC published in Sep 2018 (so I think it's new? I've never seen it) [this video] This is a much watch if MMOs fascinate you. They're very transparent. Absolutely great video. edit: Oh my god they bring up FlyGuys prostitution ring..

Recommends chongli · 2020-04 · on “Custom Game Engines: A Small Study”

Fun fact: the word "shard" in this context was coined by the dev team of the first major commercial MMO, Ultima Online, as an in-universe explanation for why the game world was split into multiple servers. If you're looking for an exemplary server architecture for MMOs, look no further than UO. That game came out in 1997 and supported worlds with thousands of players and millions of persistent objects. Players could build their own houses within the game world, decorate (and later design) them to an incredible degree [1], and have other players visit (welcome or not). Players could run their own shops within their homes and sell their own hand-crafted, signed goods (weapons, armour, clothing

Recommends codetrotter · 2022-10 · on “Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?”

> While not rioting in real life, it feels familiar. The Ultima Online postmortem session from GDC 2018 has some similar stories about in-game protests. The stories in said session are quite entertaining, and there is a lot of other interesting information too in the session. The whole thing is worth a watch. [this video]

Recommends NegatioN · 2023-04 · on “Database “Sharding” came from Ultimate Online?”

In a similar vein to the "War Stories"-clips, (even though I never played Ultima,) their Ultima post-mortem from GDC is a great watch too. [this video]

Recommends ksec · 2024-08 · on “Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)”

Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online [1], I think that goes into the origin of Shard. ( Sorry I didn't save down the time like but it is an interesting video for those into UO ) And if you do a search on HN you will see plenty of other links about UO and sharding. [1] [this video]

Cites Raph_Koster · 2018-12 · on “Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players”

I was the original lead designer on Ultima Online and the key designer of this system. A few notes, because this article has MANY inaccuracies. 1. Ultima Online wasn't even in development for three years total. An early prototype was February to September 1995, done by Rick Delashmit. Starting late August and early September 1995, the core team showed up. We showed the game at E3 in spring of 1996 in alpha form. We showed it in beta form at E3 in the spring of 1997. And we launched on Sept 26th, 1997. The ecology was in the alpha test, and was removed during the beta after being rewritten by an engineer who didn't really like or understand it. 2. "Not many players know about" this is false.

Cites stuu99 · 2022-03 · on “Leaked stolen Nvidia cert can sign Windows malware”

Signed binaries use will come into being with trusted computing, they are embedding Denuvo in the operating system, aka future compilers will allow game companies and companies like autodesk to sign their exe's and the exe's if cracked can be added to a list that windows 11 can force update the bios to add these cracked exes to a list that will refuse to run. That's the gist of trusted computing they are building an alternative internet/mainframe computer inside yours that they only have access to. Where have you been the last 23+ years? The videogame industry has been stealing PC games since 1997 with ultima online. Hear it from the dev's themselves. Don't think MMO's killed local PC games?

Cites stuu99 · 2022-03 · on “EU Buried $400k Study Showing Piracy Have Almost No Effect on Sales (2017)”

>This is a bad example because Steam's DRM is notoriously terrible You don't grasp Valve and the industry has already won any game where the networking code has been pulled out already acts like DRM, any client-server app requiring username and login accounts, or has some piece of code living on some remote server, means you no longer own your own stuff. Valve and the rest of the computing industry is boiling you all slowly. AKA look at this list of games from crackwatch. [LINK] You'll notice more and more games are "online only". Diablo 3 is literally diablo 2 /w drm, they wanted to kill piracy. Starcraft remastered, and reforged require internet to play, that means we've lost the battle. T