Tying Torque2D to RunUO?
by jesusphreak · in General Discussion · 03/11/2005 (8:23 pm) · 4 replies
I don't know how many of you are familiar with the RunUO project. More or less, it started out as an Ultima Online emulator, but has now become a full-blown server system in C#.
The servers are VERY stable and you can support up to 1500 people on a single machine. Its not just your everyday emulator. Its a quality piece of work - and its open source. They consider it as having a "UO game layer applied to it", and you can realistically take the server code and rewrite it to support whatever else you are wanting to use on it.
So, I was thinking about taking Torque 2D and using it as my "game layer" and making the interface/client out of it. More or less, it would be a really nice "Diablo 2-esque" looking game.
The gameplay would likely be much different, but it would be a way for me to update the client and to learn a lot and do something cool.
I'm very aware that its much easier to get started in Torque2D than TGE. Please ignore the fact that I'm a complete newb, but how realistic/possible is this? Just as a start, lets say instead of writing anything new, just making a new client for UO to interface with the RunUO server using Torque2D. Realistic? Possible? Something that would take 2 years to do?
And then past that, whats the reality of designing a completely new game using Torque 2d as the client and RunUO as the server base?
Thanks
The servers are VERY stable and you can support up to 1500 people on a single machine. Its not just your everyday emulator. Its a quality piece of work - and its open source. They consider it as having a "UO game layer applied to it", and you can realistically take the server code and rewrite it to support whatever else you are wanting to use on it.
So, I was thinking about taking Torque 2D and using it as my "game layer" and making the interface/client out of it. More or less, it would be a really nice "Diablo 2-esque" looking game.
The gameplay would likely be much different, but it would be a way for me to update the client and to learn a lot and do something cool.
I'm very aware that its much easier to get started in Torque2D than TGE. Please ignore the fact that I'm a complete newb, but how realistic/possible is this? Just as a start, lets say instead of writing anything new, just making a new client for UO to interface with the RunUO server using Torque2D. Realistic? Possible? Something that would take 2 years to do?
And then past that, whats the reality of designing a completely new game using Torque 2d as the client and RunUO as the server base?
Thanks
#2
03/12/2005 (7:22 am)
Well, for code interfacing, Torque 2D is non-managed C++, not C#. Just thought that might be important if you were looking at leveraging off of existing code. If all you're doing is network interfacing, then you'll be fine as long as you know how and what information is being sent. 
Associate Melv May
T2D at the moment, doesn't provide any GUI Widgets for things like text input, it relies on the underlying platform for that. GUI's are position in (640,480) coord space but you can setup T2D's space to the same so that coords match. You could certainly create your own GUI widgets in T2D and I estimate for a good selection, you'd probably looking at around 2-3 weeks work in total. I'd love to see that done.
As an under/overlay to the stock GUI widgets (probably skinned) it would provide a fantastic suppliment or indeed for any HUD.
As for writing a complete new game, sure, that's exactly what it's here for. We've not got all the tools online and the ones we've got a more placeholders than the final ones but they are powerful and functional if not the best looking tools in the world.
What T2D does have now is a pretty stable and powerful set of features that can get you up and running very quickly. It's not difficult to get things on the screen and start experimenting immediately, that's part of it's charm. As you dig deeper, you'll find more and more cool things you can do with it. The learning curve isn't steep at all.
I'm just trying to give you as objective a view of T2D as possible here.
- Melv.