Swampdog

This is actually something I was wondering about as well as I prefer Ootii's third person motion controller and adventure camera setup. Once I got more into making changes in my setup, I had planned to ask the same thing. Thanks for the info. Bookmarking this for when I am ready to swap out.

Any progress update?

Any update on this? When we chatted a couple of weeks ago to get my licenses sorted out in the new APanel you indicated there would be new UMA stuff the next Friday.. As seems to be the norm, that Friday has come and gone without a peep out of you guys. Any update would be greatly appreciated.

I would say UMA2 but would be willing to deal with them being UMA1 if they are already done. We were led to believe there was going to be a lot more than what has been released but we are going on 2 years with very little to show for what was promised. Don't really want to wait another 2 years. Hopefully the new stuff is a little better quality. To be honest, at this point I really regret buying the Developers Package.

Any chance we are going to see any more of the assets we were promised when we purchased the developers pack released? It has been a year and half since it was purchased and we haven't even seen anything to the extent of what we were promised.

The problem with using what is out there, out of the box so to speak, is that they run client-side. They will probably all work fine but the problem is when they are run on the client, they could be more easily hacked. While it may not be impossible to hack an authoritative server, it is a lot harder if the server is controlling the AI, physics, collision, etc. That is why it would be awesome to be able to at least set up a plugin to control the asset, similar to what the GM folks have been working on for UniStorm. Would be great to have something similar for RAIN or some of the other more popular AI systems.

I think if you run something outside of what they are developing, you'll probably want to develop a plug-in for it where you can control it server-side (authoritative). Otherwise you open yourself up to cheaters being able to manipulate the AI a lot easier. I'm curious what everyone is using for AI myself. How many are planning on just using stock AI, RAIN, or other AI systems and how you are integrating.

I'm still waiting to see Atavism deliver which makes me really hesitant to buy in to another alpha test. There are so many things that are shown in the Atavism videos that were there when I bought in back in January that is non-existent in the program. Why should we buy in from another video on another product? And $200/285? Why should we pay that for a non-existent product on promises when there are already voxel products available for under $100? I agree with the other comments here as well.. How well has it been tested? What type of load has it been tested with. I'm sure it will run better than EverQuest Next with only one or two players on it. How did your terrain compare in size? How many were logging into the EverQuest Next server compared to how many logged into the AtVoxel world? I think it is great that we will get to see it in action in the NeosLand alpha, but that doesn't help us now. While it might be worth it once released, personally I don't think a promise of what it might be is worth what you guys are asking now. You can compare it to a $100k product all day long but the truth of the matter is, most of us are indie developers and are comparing it to what we can get in the Asset store for $100. And with those products, we pay our money and get the product immediately. We aren't paying for a promise of something that isn't finished yet...

Awesome.. Thanks for sharing some stats.

Thanks Jacques.. Still hanging in there to see how the next couple of months go.. Btw, is that wiki up yet? *hides* Just out of curiosity, what are more realistic numbers regarding the user base between those looking for an engine and those looking for a kit? I know I'm looking for both with the engine being a bit more of a priority since I can code my own plugins. But from talking with your customers what kind of percentages are you seeing both ways? Seems that most of the people that I've talked to are leaning towards engine but the 99% number that was pulled out of the air has me wondering how many are actually looking for more of a kit with a lot of the programming already done for them.

To be honest, I'm not sure what expressing what you are looking for to developers during an alpha test gives you the feeling that anyone here feels any more entitlement than they already have as license holders. I think I've expressed a couple of times in the thread that I'm glad there is a clearer roadmap now. I just wish some of the things were in a different order so a firm foundation is there regardless of what the end user needs are. From what I'm gathering from the other posts in the thread, that is what others are expressing too. The Atavism team is building plugins for all this other stuff so the only thing that really isn't built for the core foundation stuff is the terrain collision/authoritive movement stuff. Building an editor for plugin developers is all fine and good, but most developers already have mono/visual studio/whatever other development tool they prefer to use. All they really need is documentation on how the plugin system works. The editor could really probably come a lot later in the timeline. Armed with that they can get started on both plugins specific to their games and/or plugins to make available to the Atavism community. Sorry if you feel that is a sense of entitlement..

I was wondering about this kind of stuff as well since it is already available to the point that they have made videos showing things that aren't done I would have thought a lot of that stuff would have already been in the engine and not really need much more developer focus. I had been, and still am a little, wondering if it might be better to just look at source from all the emulator projects and just develop my own packet/authorization system based off them. But I'll hold off for now and see how the next month or two go. I really wish the core foundational systems were done already. (To me the core system would have been client/server, terrain/collision, and plugin systems as everything else is pretty much built on top of that..) The other stuff is nice but the rest are just plugins.

lol.. Yeah.. I'm planning on doing same using NGUI. Although I can understand needing a base gui for some. The main thing I was looking for with Atavism was the network layer and I really wanted the grid based building system. I like that they are building other things that I can use from the beginning, but hopefully there will be hooks to where we can unplug their systems to plug our own into the system when we have developed them. From the looks of it, all of their stuff is being built with plugins, so hopefully that is the case.

That was kind of what I was thinking too Count.. There are so many other things that may be totally custom in our games. It would be nice if we could at least work on that stuff while other stuff is being built. I don't necessarily need hooks into quests or combat to work on my trader system (planned to be similar to the trader in the text based DragonRealms game).. I don't really need an editor as much as I need a plugin skeleton containing the empty required function structure and some basic documentation. An editor will be nice later for plugins that will hook more into existing systems, but there are some that wont. Even those that do, being able to get started on base code for our custom systems would be nice.

Thanks for confirming.. What was confusing me is the dates you have on your roadmap and projections you gave when the voxel might be finished were kind of coinciding. That was why I was asking for clarification.

So now we don't have to purchase the terrain system? *puzzles* What are the features of this system? Is this just stitching and paging or is this a complete terrain system? Is it the voxel terrain that you have been talking about or something else? So looking at roadmap, no plugin development support until after March 1? Will this support be introduced with the quest update? Or are you talking further down the road? Since we are looking at another two months out (at least) for this, what tools will be in place to deal with pre-existing terrain? To be honest, I'd really love to see a little bit more regarding what you guys plan for this. What type of process are you looking at? How will it work? This is kind of a combination of points 3 and 4 on your roadmap. Is it safe to assume that there will be an editor tool which we will use to initially export navmesh files to the server. What happens with Voxel-based terrain? Those colliders would need to be updated on the server as well in order to authorize players to move within modified areas. What happens if an area is updated by the developer? Are those voxel changes/meshes stored somewhere that they may be reapplied? Will this be done via a server configuration file? For example with the WoW emulation servers, they use .conf files for both the authorization servers and world servers (Configuration files for TrinityCore project).. Would love to see something similar used here. And for the base plugins that you guys use, it would be awesome to also have a "custom" choice. For example, if I were to write a plugin to use Mega-Fiers/Mega-Daz in my login/character creation system I would be able to choose custom instead of Vanilla or UMA. I would just need to set the option for custom and then uncomment a parameter for custom plugin file name. Same for combat AI, skills, or any other plugin if I were to write my own or obtain one from another developer for those systems. Just a suggestion.

Based on the most recent roadmap, I have some comments, questions, and concerns. 1 - As easy as Sooms made it sound that making the server authoritative, I was hoping to see this earlier than four updates out. And you mentioned authoritative as far as terrain. Will this also include combat, quests, and other items that need to be authorized server-side to deter cheating? I know we want the server to control/maintain movement, but it should maintain these other things as well. Does it? Will it? 2 - Quests. I'm hoping the layout in the Atavism window for quest creation is just a placeholder and that we have a block (similiar to what we have here for messages) to create the quest dialog. Here is the database struct used by one of the WoW emulation servers to give some ideas on quest information they store and process. I'd love to see documentation like this for Avatism someday soon lol.. I don't get the whole taking development time for quest only item support. The solution is easy and doesn't require development time at all. If an item is quest only, the game designer only defines it to drop as a quest reward (either off the quest mob or as a reward option upon completion. The database table for quests just needs a field for rewards and anything specified there can be rewarded. Quest only items just need to not be defined to be dropped/show up anywhere else. Would love to see some more information on why this would merit mention as something that needs to be done on the Avatism roadmap since rewards should be a standard part of the quest system. 3 - Does the terrain system come with Atavism or not? From the roadmap it looks like we are getting a full stitching and paging terrain system on March 15th but elsewhere you have mentioned that we would have to purchase it. If we have to purchase it elsewhere, why is it listed as an update? *puzzles* 4 - I'm assuming the item duplication comment on trading is to ensure they don't get a quantity other than what is in their trade window and nothing to do with the unique flag in the item database, correct? Things I'm not seeing mentioned on the documentation: 1 - Plugin development tools/documentation 2 - The whole building system (which was one of the things that drew me to Atavism and is in the videos to pull people to the engine).. The building grid, building houses/buildings.. 3 - Crafting system 4 - Unistorm integration that was mentioned in another thread here on the forums 5 - Player guilds/clans (I'm assuming this is probably something that could be a plugin we could develop based off of the grouping system if it isn't one that is included.) 6 - Wiki/overall documentation system 7 - Other assets in which integration will be provided Also, one thing I'm wondering is with UMA functionality built in, how will support of it be maintained? Might it be better to switch it to an integration plugin where we can flag whether we want vanilla, UMA, or custom character creation? In following Fernando's UMA developers skype group it sounds like there have been some updates/fixes to UMA that some folks there are waiting for you guys to update Atavism to be able to use. What is Atavism's gameplan for maintaining updates to asset integration where you use a third party tool?

I would almost rather it be proprietary and part of the internal engine. If we are able to write our own plugins to do it, that also means it would be easy for people to have the information and develop cheat programs. I understand that will most likely happen anyways, but why make it easier on them.. lol

I think the WoW private server projects do it that way.. The projects I have played with have a vmap extractor application that compiles when you compile the server source. It basically pulls all the world map files and creates server-side files to deal with collision detection. I have all the code for it but it is all C++ and based on Blizzard's map formats. So a lot of conversion would need to happen to get it to work with Java and Unity terrain files. I'm curious to get more info about the voxel system too. Glad to hear they are already saying it is already authoritative on the server. Still wish they could get us into some beta testing with it or at least be able to demo it.. Hopefully we will have more info after they powwow this weekend.

I wonder how well that will work with the voxel terrain since we will be able to set up areas that players can change.. Although the only thing I'm looking at for that is the ability to set up mine claim sites where players can dig mines for ore/gems or possibly clearing and leveling a building site. Other than that, any other terrain editing will be a GM/dev function in my game world. But still curious about taking care of the collision stuff and saving changes.. I did notice some voxel related tables while I was looking at the databases. Wonder if they are planning to store the info in the database?

Along the same lines as the issue tracker, how do you guys currently report releases so we can grab them? Announcement forums? Emails to license holders? Other? All of the above? I ask because of a post in Chia's thread about plug-in documentation where Neo mentioned a release this coming weekend containing the UMA stuff. Any other stuff expected in that release too Neo?

What is the process for bug reporting? I'm wondering if maybe a private repository should be set up. That way, not only would those who have purchased the option with code be able to be granted access to the code (just shut off ability for them to update any production branches), but there would be a built in mechanism where we could all report bugs and see the status of bugs in the issue tracker. Also some git/svn setups come with wiki support which would allow those with access to update documentation. If you don't want to set up a repository on one of the public sites (like github or sourceforge), I have been looking at some self-hosted options for my own stuff. For git, GitLab looks to be a nice github clone.

I miss the days of early EQ when people had to know their class and know how to work together as a team. Today it seems like the majority of players have no idea how to manage their agro. We always had a pretty solid group whenever we went out.. Gear was a factor, but not everyone could solo effectively. MMOs today seem to have taken the social element out of the game and all classes seem to be able to solo. Great for those with weird schedules or crappy connections, but overall I'm not sure it has been good for the games. Getting a core group together to venture down into Old Sebilis was always a blast... Ahhhh. The memories.. lol

Any word on when we might have the start of a documentation wiki? I think it would be useful both for plug-in developers and Atavism kit users building their worlds. For plug-in developers, db structures, table relations, plug-in template along with info on file requirements/locations both on the client and server side would be useful. For users, a more detailed information guide would be handy. For example, one where it covers a vanilla installation and then one which outlines places you need to change if a different server name / different startup instance / etc would help. (I attempted to use my own names the first time I installed and evidently I missed something in a file or within the client somewhere that needed changed..) Another thing that would be handy for kit users would be a more in depth run down of creating things, both in the Atavism asset in Unity as well as within Unity itself. For example, what does one have to do to add a new NPC? The PDF document goes through the database part in the Atavism client interface, but what do we need to do to actually add the creature to our files? What files are required and where should they go? Remember, not all of your users are going to be experienced with Unity. Plus it would be good to have documentation specific to the file layout you are recommending. Same thing with items. What files are required and what edits have to be made to the files within Unity to get them to work? I had a heck of a time with the prefab for my item while following along with the item and loot PDF. The only prefab in my resources\items folder was example item which I had no idea what to do with it. I ended up finding the sword prefab in the characters\knight folder and copied it's two files into items but it still wouldn't let me drag it into the equipment display field. I then found the equipment display folder and duplicated the two sample files within the folder and renamed to match my item name. I guessed at how to deal with the file info in Unity. It let me pull it into the field but now in game I'm unable to loot when my NPC drops the item. Plus items are not displaying on my avatar or the NPC. Also, I'm noticing that I have the ability to add other stuff but from reading release notes I don't think any of that is working. Would be nice if once something is brought live for testing, if a wiki page was added for that particular plug-in / core system. Sure it is alpha and things are bound to change, but I think we might be able to get more people doing more testing if we could get more documentation. Video tutorials are a bit harder since you need to produce them and then people get confused when they see an old video talking about something that has been changed. A wiki, however, is a living document that could (and should) be changed when changes are made. At any rate... Just a thought during my moment of frustration as I wipe everything to start fresh again.. lol

Ditto on the crafting support. I can only hack and slash / quest so much.. My only complaint with most of the games I've played is the things that you create crafting are garbage compared to the majority of the drops. In my opinion, crafted gear should be better than any common gear of the same level that drops off normal mobs. Dungeon and raid drops should be better of course. I would love to have the ability to craft items that when applied to dropped armor and weapons it upgrades their stats.. Similar to what WoW (and I think maybe EQ) did with gems. I vaguely remember EQ's system of using the water table looking things but I haven't seriously looked at EQ since about the time WoW was released. I would also like to be able to create crafting recipes that modify the appearance of armor / weapons..