web update request..

[ZrnecX]

hi, nothing against POL, i like it, my fav server is using this, but i have read "POL is the most flexible and customizable UO emulator around."... compared to runuo, this si simply not true...

maybe you can ramove that line...

[Yukiko]

That line is the opinion of the author of the introductory page for POL. You are free to disagree with it. In some ways you may be correct. I will say one thing in ServUO and RunUO's favour, they have implemented more of OSI features than POL but that was never POL's mission. As far as I understand it POL implemented as many of the client features as possible but left the more advanced, script side features to each shard developer as can be witnessed by the myriad of POL scripts and shards that have been created over the years.

I tend to agree with the versatility of POL but as I said you are welcome to your opinion.

[ZrnecX]

It wasnt meant to insult POL, i like POL and best shard i played on is on POL (Endor) Most custom shard i ever seen. But im very sure its pretty "doable" in runuo without much problems.. OSI features are negligible, im talking about "customizable"...

How about eScript editor, is there any good scripting tool? (with Intellisense or code completion?) VisualStudio is great editing tool for c# AND RunUO shards.

"POL implemented as many of the client features as possible". I can recompile RunUO core and edit all the packets, add & remove them, thas allows me to do the same.

[guialtran]

the pol is not more flexible, it is simpler, and slower.
but it can be faster, if you turn off the reading of the script and create everything in C ++
so it is also difficult to program.
taking advantage of the fact that c ++ supports structured programming
You can program in c language or assembly or binary
using blocks of code.
This way you will no longer need the garbage collector that C # has, which creates multiple pointers tables to test the valid references.
and also you will no longer run the code on a virtual machine like C # does.

in pol in we use the Notepad ++ editor that compiles a code slower than C # but is quite friendly.

[Yukiko]

Oh I agree that Visual Studio is a great editor for C# and that there is no "intelligent" editor for eScript. However that is not a black mark against POL's versatility. At the time when POL came into being I don't think C# was a popular or even usable language. So Eric Swanson created the eScript language which is loosely based on Pascal which was the most mature, popular, language at the time except maybe for the C programming language. I will note here that RunUO took advantage of an existing language with pretty good tools at the time to build an emulator but POL/eScript predated C#. The copyright states the year as 1993. Also influencing Eric's design for POL could have been the popular, (at the time) UCSD implementation of Pascal which used a "virtual machine" that interpreted a compiled pseudo code from Pascal source code. That last piece of info is not relevant to the versatility of POL but does imply a higher level of security than is the case for native compiled code running on the system's CPU. I only mention it to give some background to what I think was Eric's mindset. Pascal was the language being thought at many major universities even as late as the early 2000s.

Visual Studio is written by a commercial entity, Microsoft, to support their languages, one of which is C#, and the managed code base that comes with it. RunUO and ServUO simply took advantage of Microsoft's work. Eric created the virtual machine, the compiler AND the eScript language. I am certain if Eric Swanson had the financial backing that Microsoft had he would have gone on to create a very nice development environment for eScript. Maybe not but we will never know.

There is another significant difference between C# and the eScript/POL environment. C# is a "general programming language" as you know. While eScript could be a general purpose programming language, the POL environment is a specialized set of functions specifically written to emulate an UO server. That makes a big difference when programming in eScript. It simplifies the coding experience when writing scripts. There is extensive online, and downloadable, documentation for POL's functions, objects, methods, configuration files, and script types.

I also must make the case for the learning curve for individuals new to programming when comparing eScript to C#. There is a steep learning curve for C#, much more so than eScript. I have told the story of one of my sons, when he was 15, with no prior programming knowledge, wrote a script for an in-game piano, that when double-clicked, displayed a gump of songs that the player could choose from and played the canned UO song. I think it only took him a day or two to create the initial script and maybe two more days to finish it. And he had never seen a source code listing of any kind prior to then. Yes I believe he is smarter than the average but I also believe if he had started with C# it would have taken him longer than a week to even get a basic script written.

So back to the editors available for eScript. I grant there is no Visual Studio type of development environment for POL/eScript but there are a number of code editors that are great for eScript. Among them are SciTE, Notepad ++ and Ultra Edit. They provide code highlighting and code folding and other useful tools. The reason there is no "intelligent" eScript editor is because no one has written one. As I understand it plug-ins can be written for Visual Studio. Perhaps someone with enough knowledge could even write one for eScript that could take advantage of POL's numerous specialized functions.

"POL implemented as many of the client features as possible". I can recompile RunUO core and edit all the packets, add & remove them, thas allows me to do the same.

Your comment does not change the fact of my statement and what you said is obvious. Of course you, or anyone, can edit, manipulate packets etc. for ServUO/RunUO. It is open source. The same can be said for POL or any other open source piece of software. I fail to see the point.

It is fairly obvious you like RunUO/ServUO, Microsoft's C# managed code environment and their commercial integrated development environment, Visual Studio. That is great. When I need to edit C# or C++ that is my default editor as well. I just thank God I do not have to edit or write C# code for POL.

Finally, I looked at your list of posts here on the POL forums. You have made four (4) posts as I write this reply. Two (2) of them are from 2010 regarding an issue with uoconvert and the last two (2) were to complain about the opinion of the author of the website and to complain about the fact there is no IDE like Visual Studio for POL/eScript. If you are that concerned about the "poor POL shard developers" not having a tool similar to Visual Studio then maybe, since you seem to be so talented with C#, you could create one for us or perhaps a POL/eScript plug-in for Visual Studio. Or do you just feel the need to come to our forums and complain about POL? You are free to do so of course. I have plenty of complaints about POL and I voice them, sometimes to the chagrin of the developers but then again I have been developing in the POL environment for sixteen (16) years and I have just a few more posts than you ZrnecX.

My apologies for the tone of this post but I just do not understand the need to complain about something that you clearly have no interest in using. I find C# terribly cumbersome to learn and program but I don't go to the ServUO forums complaining about their choice of a development language. In fact when I have posted on their forums, except for one time, I try to be helpful. The only time I posted what might be construed as a negative post had to do with potential copyright and intellectual property violations relating to Carl Hamilton and his Dark Shard project, not about ServUO.

[ThisIsMe]

I will say this about POL vs ServUO and its predecessor.

If you want a shard that is out of the box OSI/EA/Broadsword, call it what you like, ServUO is a great choice.

If however you like to tinker or take the road less travelled to create something fairly unique from essentially an idea you have in your head or on paper virtual or otherwise, I'd choose POL.

ServUO has a great set of pre fabricated stuff for you and he'll even their custom release forum is chalked full of goodies that I actually reference and source for ideas, If that is what one is after and having a majority if not all the work done for you and one is not interested in deviating greatly from the official servers, it's fantastic.

In terms of your complaint about the "most flexible emulator", I'd take issue with this. It's not particularly clear to anyone what is and is not, ServUO certainly has their ducks in a row and sure often there are times I wish more was done on POL in terms of packets and the ilk, but to my knowledge if we're talking about flexibility I'd say the possibilities are fairly equal. Flexibility is not what has been done but what can be done and barring Vita NexCore and UltimaLive which are as I understand it not actually a ServUO server but a modified version of it, when we are talking ServUO, runuo and POL, they are at least on par on the possibilities of what they can do.

I'll close with this, if one is a fan of an Apple like product where it "just works" and the features are given to you on a platter, ServUO is your bet. However if you want to tinker because you have to tinker to get the look and feel just right like you can do on Android, POL is a great option.

I use both platforms for different things (I mean in this case ServUO and POL but similarly I'm an Android user first but an Apple user as well.) I believe both have their good, bad and ugly sides and there are definitely arguments to be made on which to use.

In terms of editors, I personally use scite, it's speedy and lightweight and yes it offers auto complete if again you're a tinkerer, there are tones of hidden settings and the auto complete I use isn't exactly what your after there might be a more robust form that uses all the selected language's functions instead of what has already been typed out in the current file.

I know that piano script making kid well, 16 years later he's still slaving away. I assure you if I were to have written that in C or C# it likely would not have happened, it sounds like a small triumph and in the grand scheme of things it was but it was my first foray into the unknown and it turned out well enough to get me interested.

[atreiu]

i'm coding POL many years in notepad++ with code completion and don;t feel any problems or inconvenience but it also because of my compile tool from signature.

author please tell me what can Runuo and can't POL or what there easy to do than in POL?
i don't know runuo so just interesting because of i think that POL is one of most customisable emulators and in some cases his simplicity is affect on that.

I can recompile RunUO core and edit all the packets, add & remove them, thas allows me to do the same.

of course this is harder than manage packets by dinamically compiled POL scripts. and yes, in POL core it's easily can be done too. so please argument