Quote: If anyone out there has the dynamic0.mul or dynamic0.bkp (server savegames) or regions.txt (spawn definitions) or resbank.mul (resources definitions) files from the original Ultima Online servers, circa 1997-2003, I’d be very grateful if you could send them to me. It seems very unlikely that the original dynamic0.mul or dynamic0.bkp files are truly lost, since they were surely backed up in multiple safe places.
These files would be extremely valuable to produce a highly accurate reproduction of the Ultima Online world content.
My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard. I wrote some really terrible PHP and HTML, but it worked for 20+ years afterwards. Great memories!
I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO!
In any case, this is very cool.
Thanks for sharing!
Similar experience, I helped to build the website, manage the forum installation, and overtime the people running the shard invited me to also code for the emulator they were running.
I was 12-13 at the time (late 90s/early 2000s), I can't remember the emulator anymore, very likely it was POL, and the concept behind the shard was to be as close as possible to the official servers before UO:Renaissance so we worked quite a lot to make it look and feel as T2A. I learnt a lot, later when RunUO came out and became a bit stable (circa 2003) I helped to migrate what we had done within POL to C# code for RunUO, had to learn a lot more to keep up.
The other people working on this shard were all in university studying CS, or already had jobs as programmers, I was the kid who could write some scripts, I believe having this experience was pivotal for me to later become a professional. My first job in a real tech company even came from a recommendation one of these guys made when an internship position opened.
In a way I probably only have my career because of UO and private shards.
> My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard
Mine too! My second one was changing the map (remove static items, add new islands and buildings, etc), and my third one was changing verdata.mul to add new animations and item graphics.
Playing Ultima Online on an unofficial POL server literally got me into IT. I was studying to be an accountant before that.
I had a similar experience. Back then gamers were an outsized part of the online community, so if you wanted to build a site that got some actual use and engagement, building to that audience was a good strategy. And of course, it helps when you are part of that audience.
Recently, I've enjoyed scripting for the TazUO game client in Python; it's a slightly older version of Python 3, but still far ahead of scripting in Razor or SteamUO. If you're looking for a quiet single-player shard to play around with, I've enjoyed Memento.
The UO emulator scene got me into network programming. I've never seen an online game capture so many ancillary/emergent/accidental gameplay mechanics as well as this, somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting economics, building, exploring that UO delivered. PvP and quest type stuff is probably a lot better in other games but it was still compelling and you could realistically play solo or in a group or casually interact with randoms and effortlessly switch between these as you felt like it.
Maybe there is some opportunity there? Very little going on in the mmo world now tbh. Wow, old school runescape, final fantasy online, not much else worth it.
All of them (except Eve) feel too much like WoW reskins to bother with. This is personal opinion but the feeling probably reflects why they have 1% (estimated by ChatGPT) of WoW’s subscriptions.
> I worked on this project intermittently for 10 years, until recent developments in LLMs finally made it possible to complete this seemingly never-ending task.
I've been working on my own MFC C++ decompilation project. It's insane how useful LLMs are for this.
For anyone wanting to try UO out, it's still a game with an active player base. There are 3rd party servers like UO Outlands, which gets closer to the original gameplay. Meaning very harsh in comparison to what most people are used to in today's MMOs. Players can just come to gank you and you'll lose your stuff, etc.
The server has 2500+ players logged in right now, so still very much active.
I've been looking for a localized (Spanish or French), mobile version of Ultima 4 (NES). Others too. Something similar to what was done with FF series by Pixel Remaster.
The game is currently only available via emulator.
Localized, text-heavy RPGs are a very easy way to "learn-while-playing" a foreign language, and reading as well.
Great memories. The human engagement was more genuine to everyday in-person interactions than the current state of MMORPGs and even most Social platforms. The game was also great in how extensible it was. Too great in some aspects that allowed botting, but accessible enough that general public, coding novices experienced an "intro to scripting" to create sophisticated macros.
Posts like this are a great reminder that protocol archaeology is half software history, half debugging. The reconstruction work here sounds genuinely fun.
I liked the old Ultima saga, in particular from 5 to 7. Ultima 8 ... I did not hate it, but they killed off the old concept. Perhaps the old genre was meant to die anyway, but it was such a big difference from 7 to 8. While 7 is often the most praised variant, I particularly hated combat; it was much easier in Ultima 6. Either way it was specific for the 1990s era for the most part, which was pretty nice. (Ok - just looked up ... Ultima 1 to 5 actually was in the 1980s era; I thought it wasn't quite that old. Ultima 6 was released in 1990.)
UO was the only Ultima game I played. I got into programming doing Sphere and RunUO emulation as a kid without ever knowing about the long history of Ultima games. Assuming that all of the brilliance of UO was architected in a few year span of development. Now looking back at the series seeing all the foundations is incredible. Overnight success 20 years in the making.
Quote: If anyone out there has the dynamic0.mul or dynamic0.bkp (server savegames) or regions.txt (spawn definitions) or resbank.mul (resources definitions) files from the original Ultima Online servers, circa 1997-2003, I’d be very grateful if you could send them to me. It seems very unlikely that the original dynamic0.mul or dynamic0.bkp files are truly lost, since they were surely backed up in multiple safe places.
These files would be extremely valuable to produce a highly accurate reproduction of the Ultima Online world content.
My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard. I wrote some really terrible PHP and HTML, but it worked for 20+ years afterwards. Great memories!
I was surprised that there is still an active community around UO!
In any case, this is very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Similar experience, I helped to build the website, manage the forum installation, and overtime the people running the shard invited me to also code for the emulator they were running.
I was 12-13 at the time (late 90s/early 2000s), I can't remember the emulator anymore, very likely it was POL, and the concept behind the shard was to be as close as possible to the official servers before UO:Renaissance so we worked quite a lot to make it look and feel as T2A. I learnt a lot, later when RunUO came out and became a bit stable (circa 2003) I helped to migrate what we had done within POL to C# code for RunUO, had to learn a lot more to keep up.
The other people working on this shard were all in university studying CS, or already had jobs as programmers, I was the kid who could write some scripts, I believe having this experience was pivotal for me to later become a professional. My first job in a real tech company even came from a recommendation one of these guys made when an internship position opened.
In a way I probably only have my career because of UO and private shards.
> My first real programming achievement was building a website for an Ultima Online shard
Mine too! My second one was changing the map (remove static items, add new islands and buildings, etc), and my third one was changing verdata.mul to add new animations and item graphics.
Playing Ultima Online on an unofficial POL server literally got me into IT. I was studying to be an accountant before that.
I had a similar experience. Back then gamers were an outsized part of the online community, so if you wanted to build a site that got some actual use and engagement, building to that audience was a good strategy. And of course, it helps when you are part of that audience.
I enjoyed Ultimate Online, back in the day.
Recently, I've enjoyed scripting for the TazUO game client in Python; it's a slightly older version of Python 3, but still far ahead of scripting in Razor or SteamUO. If you're looking for a quiet single-player shard to play around with, I've enjoyed Memento.
The UO emulator scene got me into network programming. I've never seen an online game capture so many ancillary/emergent/accidental gameplay mechanics as well as this, somehow all the 3d MMOs seemed to downgrade a lot of the interesting economics, building, exploring that UO delivered. PvP and quest type stuff is probably a lot better in other games but it was still compelling and you could realistically play solo or in a group or casually interact with randoms and effortlessly switch between these as you felt like it.
A few of the older 3d MMORPGS did try to instill some of those mechanics. Examples include:
1) Asheron's Call (which had a very active mod scene and now an emulator scene). I don' think the servers are nearly as popular as UO though.
2) Shadowbane (this one was heavily guild based but it was fun being a bit of an outlaw and PvPing random people and guilds).
Maybe there is some opportunity there? Very little going on in the mmo world now tbh. Wow, old school runescape, final fantasy online, not much else worth it.
> Wow, old school runescape, final fantasy online, not much else worth it.
What about
- Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR),
- The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO),
- Guild Wars 2 (GW2),
- EVE Online,
- Black Desert?
All of them (except Eve) feel too much like WoW reskins to bother with. This is personal opinion but the feeling probably reflects why they have 1% (estimated by ChatGPT) of WoW’s subscriptions.
This game was created before virtual currency and pay to win was a thing. The potential money is probably too corrupting.
> I worked on this project intermittently for 10 years, until recent developments in LLMs finally made it possible to complete this seemingly never-ending task.
I've been working on my own MFC C++ decompilation project. It's insane how useful LLMs are for this.
Are you using LLM in an automated way for this? Also, local or cloud?
For anyone wanting to try UO out, it's still a game with an active player base. There are 3rd party servers like UO Outlands, which gets closer to the original gameplay. Meaning very harsh in comparison to what most people are used to in today's MMOs. Players can just come to gank you and you'll lose your stuff, etc.
The server has 2500+ players logged in right now, so still very much active.
I've been looking for a localized (Spanish or French), mobile version of Ultima 4 (NES). Others too. Something similar to what was done with FF series by Pixel Remaster.
The game is currently only available via emulator.
Localized, text-heavy RPGs are a very easy way to "learn-while-playing" a foreign language, and reading as well.
Would love to see this built !
Great memories. The human engagement was more genuine to everyday in-person interactions than the current state of MMORPGs and even most Social platforms. The game was also great in how extensible it was. Too great in some aspects that allowed botting, but accessible enough that general public, coding novices experienced an "intro to scripting" to create sophisticated macros.
> After 10 years of on-and-off work
That is truly honorable perseverance
Memories.
I played T2A a little last year, great shard & peeps running it.
https://www.uosecondage.com/
Posts like this are a great reminder that protocol archaeology is half software history, half debugging. The reconstruction work here sounds genuinely fun.
sooo many memories.
got into it with Sphere (51 and 55) if my memory doesn't trick me.
was there ever a working port of the client for OSX ? would love to revamp it.
Well, props for that effort.
I liked the old Ultima saga, in particular from 5 to 7. Ultima 8 ... I did not hate it, but they killed off the old concept. Perhaps the old genre was meant to die anyway, but it was such a big difference from 7 to 8. While 7 is often the most praised variant, I particularly hated combat; it was much easier in Ultima 6. Either way it was specific for the 1990s era for the most part, which was pretty nice. (Ok - just looked up ... Ultima 1 to 5 actually was in the 1980s era; I thought it wasn't quite that old. Ultima 6 was released in 1990.)
Did you ever get into Ultima Online?
UO was the only Ultima game I played. I got into programming doing Sphere and RunUO emulation as a kid without ever knowing about the long history of Ultima games. Assuming that all of the brilliance of UO was architected in a few year span of development. Now looking back at the series seeing all the foundations is incredible. Overnight success 20 years in the making.