Era Accuracy
From T2A WIki : An Ultima Online The Second Age reference archive
Era Accuracy is the ultimate goal of UOSA. Because T2A encompassed several patches and several eras within itself, a specific "target date" has been chosen for replication. The target date was decided to be November of 1999.
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Introduction
The developers of UOSA have obtained era accurate information, in order to reverse engineer the mechanics of T2A, through several means:
- Analyzation of the UO Demo
- Archived Stratics Pages and other websites
- Old UO Newsgroup Posts
- (Potentially) Screenshots that can be verified to be accurate to the era
- Player Recollection and Testimony (This is the least-trusted form of evidence on UOSA.)
Because UOSA is tied to a strict target date, there are certain things which the UOSA mechanics are automatically exclusionary to. Trammel would be an example of something that is automatically excluded from UOSA. The target date of UOSA predates trammel by a few months.
Current Era Accuracy Notions
This section is intended to give a concise list of all era accurate notions that have been conceived but not yet implemented. This list is not by any means complete. If you think there is something missing, please add it.
Undisputed Changes
These are changes that are considered undisputed and can be claimed and held to a high degree of certainty.
- Item Prefixes - i.e. "a long sword" instead of "long sword" (Demo-verifiable)
- Disguise Kits - Disguises currently last forever if you die once and wear off instantly if you die twice, they should last 2 hours no matter what. [1] [2]
- Recalling in Britain Sewers - Britain Sewers should be considered part of t2a. It should be possible to recall to anywhere in t2a just by entering the sewers from Britain. [3]
- Items & Public Containers - Items should be able to be placed in public containers.
- Bank Boxes - Bank boxes should have a weight limit like any other container. [4]
- Fishing Poles - Fishing poles should be equippable along with any other weapon at the same time. [5]
- Delucia Spawn - Three shepherds should spawn outside of Delucia. [6]
- Server Lines - Derrick mentioned the possible emulation of server lines. [7]
- Brambles/Rocks/Saplings - These objects used to be impassable during the T2A era. However, making them impassable on the server would cause the client to rubberband. A potential solution was presented, the solution of manually adding a non-static bramble/rock/sapling over every bramble/rock/sapling in the world and make them impassable in order to prevent the rubberband effect. [8]
- Water Barrels - A wise man once said, "Give me water barrels, or give me death!" [9]
- Stats - Stat Locks should be removed and starting stats should be a total of 65. [10]
- Skill Gain - Skill gain should have a skill "pool" depending on server population. The amount of people using a particular skill should determine the rate at which it gains. [11] [12]
- Housing System - Players should be able to place strongboxes. Certain other things regarding the housing system are inaccurate. [13]
- Resurrection with Penalties - Players should be given the option of instantly resurrecting with stat loss on death. [14]
- House Banning - A player attempting to enter a banned house should be bounced back from the steps instead of being teleported under the sign. [15]
- Monster Spawn Rates - Spawn rates in general should be increased slightly. [16]
Uncertain Changes
These changes are less certain than the above ones and may have some history of debate on the forums. Some of these changes may be obscure ones that never had enough evidence to be completely demonstrated. This section also may include changes that have only recently been brought up on the forums for the first time. Bear in mind that the changes below will be stated as fact, however, they are still subject to a degree of uncertainty.
- Blackthorne Bank - There should be a "secret" bank near Blackthorne's castle. The original poster of this thread had a hard time finding any hard evidence confirming this bank's existence, however, another person posted and corroborated his recollection. [17]
- Player-Written Books - "Lengthy player-written books will actually begin appearing all over Britannia on NPC shelves after a certain amount of time has passed." [18]
- Single-Letter Names - Names with a single letter and a space after them should be valid. For example, the name "a " should be a valid name. Currently, the server ends up renaming you to, "Generic Player," if you give your character a one-letter name.
- Locking Down Bones - Player's corpses that decay into bones should be able to be locked down or secured in a house. [19]
- Locked-Down Items - The May 11, 2000 patch notes state: "It is no longer possible to lock down items on the steps of other players' houses." This is evidence for the notion that it may have been possible to lock items down on the steps of other players' houses prior to this patch.
- Monsters Polymorphing - Some monsters (Dragon, White Wyrm) should have a small chance of casting polymorph. [20]
- Gating Monsters - There has been a lot of debate in the past about whether untamed animals and monsters should be gatable. There was a lot of different evidence in favor of both sides of the argument. It's hard to say whether this debate has been settled. [21]
- Stackable Items - Stackable items shouldn't be able to be locked down. [22]
- Telekinesis & Boat Holds - Possible to telekinesis boat holds.
- Eating Mushrooms - The rare items page on an archived stratics page speaks of a rumor pertaining to mushrooms: "When eaten it allows you to polymorph into a monster. You will stay that way for days." [23]
- Follow & Guard - Follow & Guard operate by strange mechanics in the demo. [24]
- Telekinesis - It was claimed that telekinesis just acted as a long-range double-click in T2A. [25]
- Hide Repair - It has been claimed that there existed a bug commonly called, "hide repair". By taking advantage of this bug, one could hide and repair any piece of armor with 100% success rate, regardless of blacksmithy skill. [26]
- House Placement Terrain - House placement rules with regard to the evenness of the terrain should be less restrictive [27]
- Guarded T2A Entrances - Certain Lost Lands entrances may have been guarded in era. [28]
- Ore Deletion - Mined ore should be deleted if the character's backpack is overweight. [29]
- Holiday Item Decay - Holiday decorations such as Christmas Trees may have been seasonal. [30]
Implemented Changes
This sections includes changes that were originally included in the above sections, but have since been implemented or are undergoing implementation.
- Line of Sight - It should be possible to teleport to any tile directly in front of you, regardless of Z axis or line of sight. Some people recall being able to teleport to any tile directly above their character using last target. The line of sight for teleport also had several other quirks, for example, the ability to teleport through certain walls. These vague, inconsistent mechanics might be hard to replicate. [31] [32]
- Buc's Den Banker - Should be named "Splint Crackknee". [33] [34]
- Party and Guild Chat - Party chat has been removed. Guild chat will remain implemented. Derrick explained that it is essentially an interface feature and somewhat compensates for the lack of an in-game messenger system. It has also been modified so that it no longer produces a SysMsg, and as such it can no longer be abused for the sake of archer bots. [35] [36]
- Wedding Rings - Newbied wedding rings should be craftable with 41.8 Tinkering skill. [37]
- Horse Stamina - Horse stamina should run out faster than it currently does. [38]
- Mounting Horses in Combat - Players shouldn't be able to mount a horse that's in combat. [39] [40]
- Action Delay - The action delay should be 1 second as opposed to its current 0.75 seconds. [41]
- Logging Out on Items - Logging out and back in on top of a mobile or (impassable) item should push you up or down to the next surface. [42]
- Guarded Items - Items guarded by pets are reported to need fixing with regards to criminal flags. [43]
- Spells in Town - EQ/Fire Field/Wall of Stone/etc should be castable in town. [44] [45] [46]
- NPC Backpacks - (DEMO) NPCs, such as vendors, should have random items in their backpacks along with gold: i.e. loaf of bread, torch, bottle of ale
- Trade Windows - Trade windows should allow the trading of trapped containers, items that are too heavy, etc. [47] [48]
Demo-verifiable Changes
This includes changes that are not necessarily accurate, but verifiable with the demo.
- All mushrooms should raise your Z-axis value by 1 when walked over. It is uncertain whether this mechanic still applies when the mushroom is movable and not locked down.
- When blue NPCs are killed, their corpses are simply named, "a corpse of a human."
- Cutting up a corpse should create a blood puddle near the corpse.
- The distance from which you are able to successfully "vendor buy" from a vendor varies on the demo.
- Vendors seem to have a bad habit of wandering off and when you try to buy from them, they'll respond with something along the lines of, "I do not have my wares with me!" After they wander off on their own they usually end up getting teleported back to the tile they spawned on originally.
- You shouldn't be able to drop items at your feet. Fun fact: You can bypass this by draining a water barrel and taking the now empty barrel (which cannot be used as a container) and dropping an item on it. The item will appear at your feet regardless of where it was previously.
- A player with 10000+ fame and 0 karma on the demo has the title of, "The Lord", on the paperdoll instead of simply, "Lord".
Concepts of Era Accuracy
These terms were defined in order to promote discussion and better communication when discussing issues of era accuracy.
- Perfect Era Accuracy - A specific era of T2A perfectly replicated. As it is impossible to make anything perfect, this concept is obviously an ideal and can never actually be achieved, however, UOSA is always striving toward this as a goal regardless.
- Selective/Eclectic Era Accuracy - A different ideal which inherently contradicts Perfect Era Accuracy. Selective era accuracy would be the ideal of including different aspects of all eras of T2A. For example, having stealable house deeds and house lockdowns at the same time. This approach is often criticized because this type of era accuracy would end up creating an era that never actually existed within T2A.
- Social Era Accuracy - This concept concerns the replication of the original population and demographics of the T2A. The original demographics would include the original proportions of PKs, anti-PKs, crafters, PvM'ers, etc. Obviously, this is an ideal and can never be achieved, but may prove to be a useful term.
- Economic Era Accuracy - The goal of this concept would be to replicate the economy during the original T2A. Replication of this would require the ability to control item prices and prevalence. This is most likely impossible to achieve.
- Technical/Interface Accuracy - This concept deals with certain client-side things like era accurate third party utilities. i.e. "Should Razor be allowed?" "Is it similar enough to UOA to be allowed?" "Would OSI have endorsed it like they did UOA?" These issues have been discussed at great lengths on the UOSA Forums.
- Peripheral Accuracy - This concept would include small things, such as the text displayed when an item is single clicked, which font to use, etc.
- Mechanical Accuracy - This includes any T2A mechanic: spell damage, cast time, certain bugs, skill delays, line of sight, server lines, etc. Mechanical Accuracy is the highest priority for UOSA.
- Political Accuracy - This concept would deal with any in-game policy, such the anti-macro policy that was enforced in the original T2A, the question of whether automated events should be allowed, how many accounts a player is allowed to have, and so on.
- Byproduct Accuracy - This includes changes that aren't exactly accurate, but would create an accurate situation through inaccurate means. As an example, byproduct accuracy would encompass changes regarding the addition of server births and black dye tubs. These items existed in T2A, but were originally introduced during pre-T2A. The inaccurate action of adding them in game, creates an accurate situation.
