Teaser shot from upcoming expansion

[Falkor]

Just two example mobs of what is to come -- me on a horse, and the new dragon that will replace our current red guys. Even after the patch, don't expect to see everything at once. It will take a while for us to utilize all the new animations and items being added to the game. We haven't even touched the surface of the last patch's goodies yet!

teaser.jpg

New horse and dragon

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All the horses will be new, as will most of the dragons, and a stable of new rideables will find their way into the Pines.

[KawKawKaw]

Very cool stuff!
Kaw...

[Lambretta]

Can't wait... Looks great

[Neidling]

Hi Falkor !

I agree with Lambretta & Kaw : great job !

2 questions now :
1) When do you think the extension will be ready ? (just asking...),
2) No problem with the horse, but concerning the dragon (which is nice, too), do you think a many-dragons-champ (the end of Coldblood for instance) will stay "readable" and fluid when many of these will be present on the screen ?
And are you sure many nice but complex animations like these won't bring lag into the game ?

Thks.
Neidling

[Falkor]

I'm hoping to have it finished in the next couple of weeks. All the hard work is done; the rest is just fine-tuning and polishing to make sure it all works like we want it to. Don't forget, granite and sand will then stack and work with commodity deeds.

The dragon is identical in size to the existing one, except maybe slightly larger wings. The new animation has the same number of "frames" as the old, meaning it places the same load on the client to render. All animation is done on your computer so the traffic to/from the server also remains the same.

Some of the new animations are on the large size but still nothing that will really tax a modern computer. UO was created when computers ran at 200 mHz and had 64 megs of RAM. Now we run 10-20x faster and have 20-40x the memory so even the most basic PC will be able to handle anything we can do with UO.

[Neidling]

Thank you for this answer, Falkor.

"200 mHz and 64 megs of RAM"...
Oh my !..., souvenir souvenir...
I even remember when we played Ultima III on a good ole Apple II !

[Mesmerize]

Looks like it is gonna be very cool. can't wait!!