General questions for setting up a POL Shard

[MikeB]

Hi Guys,

Firstly please bare with me. I have a basic coding knowledge and understanding of servers but after trying to dig into setting up a UO server for a few days I would just like some probably basic questions answered:

1. What is the relationship between the client and server versions. If you install a server say pol099 this is just an UO server emulator, will any client version work on this? are patched clients neccisary? (say I have an install of UOGold or Third Dawn for example). Are there compatibility documents anywhere?

2. I come from a Zulu Hotel Scandinavia background but have participated in many of the shards that have come off the back of that series. If I wanted to recreate that experience could somone give me and overview of the files I would require and how to attain them (I think I always used to run third dawn)

3. What are the advantages of using POL over RunUO (as far as I can tell RunUO is just a C# based emulator which if you turn off AoS should replicate the pre-AoS server style?)

If anyone has the time to reply thanks alot in advance!

Mike B

[Yukiko]

Disclaimer:
Please keep in mind that the opinions expressed by myself are my own opinions and may not reflect the opinions of the POL developers, other POL users or the inhabitants of the planet Vulcan, which does still exist despite J.J Abrams apocryphal attempt to rewrite the history of the future. Also, I am not the brightest candle on the shelf and may not be totally accurate in my assessment and comparison of POL to RunUO. Plus, I am an old dog and I don't learn new tricks easily. Thus I have never quite grasped the C# language and am partial to eScript as it closely resembles an older language I do know and understand, eg. Pascal. Finally, I am quite biased toward POL simply because I have been programming in eScript off and on for close to 12 years now and have no experience with RunUO.

Normally I would not do what I am about to do but since I have addressed the POL vs. RunUO question in other threads I am going to post links to those threads. I prefer to actually answer questions directly but I guess I'm just getting lazy in my old age. : )

POL versus RunUO threads:
http://forums.polserver.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4935
http://forums.polserver.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4959

How to start a shard - Might be outdated a bit but will probably be of help.
http://forums.polserver.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1178

As to Zulu Hotel scripts, there are versions of ZH shards posted in the Custom script releases forum. Some might be for earlier versions of the POL Core. I can't remember if anyone has posted a ZH scritset converted to Cores => POL 0.96.

I think the current Distro is based on ZH partially if I remember correctly.

I hope the info I link to will be helpful.

[MikeB]

Thank you so much for those answers. Not wishing to come across as lazy myself I spent alot of time lurking on this forum attempting to gather information to make headway into setting up a shard.

I would like to say, while I was waiting for a response I have managed to get a RunUO shard up and running (T2A). It was an incredibly easy plugin and play and I am reasnobly comfortable looking at the C# code that I could make minor modifications.

The thing that is really bugging me is it seems impossible to get a Zulu hotel shard style applied to that server which is why i'm still interesting in POL there are no scripts it appears that I could apply to make it seem more Zulu Hotel like. The ores are all like Valorite and Verite rather then the old Zulu Hotel based ones I knew and loved.

I will try following those links you gave me the one about setting up a server seems really good and hopefully it will work (although it doesnt look as simple as setting up the RunUO one was)

Much apprechiated!

Mike B

[Yukiko]

You have hit upon the one place where POL is lacking and where RunUO does shine. That is the ease of set-up. As you have discovered you can get a RunUO shard up and running pretty much right out of the box without having to mess with config files and other niggling things that POL requires of the developer. This is also a sore spot that has caused much heated debate on the POL forums. So, not wanting to start the debate again, I will say that I can almost guarantee you that if you take the time to set-up a working POL server you won't be disappointed with the flexibility and versatility of the POL emulator. I cannot speak from experience regarding RunUO's flexibility but I have been told by those who have looked at RunUO that POL is the more versatile.

I suspect that if you know eScript and C# you might be able to write C# code for RunUO that would operate similar to Zulu Hotel shards but not knowing all the capabilities of RunUO I cannot say for certain. So I would say, learn how to get a POL server running and then look for ZH scripts that work with the latest POL Core.

[MikeB]

Thanks for the reply,

Again I am aware due to doing alot of browsing before posing my question that the debate between the two emulators and which is superior has been thoroughly covered. I was more interested in my specific use case of: I want to run a Zulu Hotel shard and which is best for that. Which I believe is a different enough question than PoL vs RunUO.

I will have another go at getting a PoL server up and running and hopefully can find some scripts somewhere that are compatible with the latest version of Core099. However I have noticed that other Zulu Hotels shards which are currently still running like Zulu Hotel Italia are PoL095.

Is there much updating or incomptability of older version of Zulu Hotel scripts with the latest versions of PoL are they likely to need upgrading for each new version of PoL?

Worse case senario as you mentioned I would have to reply replicate what seems like quite extensive changes and scripts that Zulu Hotel had in place.

Thanks,

Mike B

[Yukiko]

Is there much updating or incomptability of older version of Zulu Hotel scripts with the latest versions of PoL...?

Yes. The differences and changes made to the POL Core from POL 0.95 to versions > POL 0.95 are significant. You can find a list of core changes in the corechanges.txt file contained in the Core ZIP file.

Three major changes that were made are:
1. multi-map (realm) support.
2. a complete rewrite of the magic system which gives more control to the scripts for spell casting etc.
3. improved map handling which eliminated many bugs affecting character movement in the world, ie. eliminted "holes" and issues with ladders.

There were many more changes and improvements but those are the major ones that come to mind.

are they likely to need upgrading for each new version of PoL?

That's difficult to say. I started scripting POL around version 0.92 so understand I have no experience before that. However, up until POL 0.96 most of the changes to POL Core didn't require much script modification. With the release of POL 0.96 a new parameter (realm) was added to most of the functions that referenced locations in the world. That required adding that parameter to those functions. Then ofcourse the magic system changed and all scripts that involved casting spells needed to be upgraded to take that into account. Basically, you needed to rewrite much of your magic scripts to work properly with the new system because many of the checks to determine the legality of casting which were originally handled by the Core were now to be handled by the scripts. Since the release of version 0.96 things have stabilized and are much like they were before and major script rewrites haven't been necessary. I assume that unless EA makes some major change to the UO universe that things won't change too drastically and updates to scripts will be minimal with new releases.

It was a major job updating older, pre 0.96, scripts to handle the new features but it was worth it.

Keep in mind that you can always run the older 0.95 Core with ZH scripts and not bother to update them to the newer version of POL. You won't have multiple map support and you'll not benefit from some of the flexibility of the new magic system but you will have a Zulu Hotel shard. POL 0.95 is technically no longer supported by the developers but you can post questions in that forum and someone will usually respond. You will have to find out which client versions will work with 0.95 Core. The newer ones won't log-in to the earlier POL Cores.

I hope this has been helpful.