Comment by careersuicide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by careersuicide | Hacker News Reader

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This is really awesome! I had always just assumed the servers ran on Windows NT or similar. I'm not really sure why I thought that. Maybe because SphereServer and RunUO are/were for Windows so the association stuck in my head? But I never would have guessed Solaris.

It's really hard to have a discussion about UO without the urge to talk about how important it was to me (I've noticed I'm not the only one).

So rather than resist that urge... Ultima Online is directly responsible for me being a programmer. I was 13 when I got a copy of the game and an account thanks to my parents. It wasn't the first game I'd played where I'd wondered how it had been made but it was the first game I'd played where I couldn't even conceive of how it could possibly work. It was so different from anything else that I'd played before, including the first 8 Ultima games. Trying to figure that out led me towards programming in general and to SphereServer, the UO server emulator. The scripting system for SphereServer allowed me to change the game (for me and my friends only, but still) and really explore what's possible. By the time I was 16 I knew what I was doing for the rest of my life, even if it wasn't necessarily anything related to games.

No gaming experience has ever been as involving as the good old UO. And I also started my programming by coding automation scripts for one of at that time popular and mostly prohibited playing assist programs called "UO Inject". No other motivation keeps you as engaged in programming as writing scripts that automatically cut the trees for you while you sleep!

One of the very first actually useful programs I wrote was a simple macro program for UO. It would read a text file, parse the very basic commands in the file and then send them to the UO client by finding its HWND via FindWindow and calling SendMessage to send the key presses. I used this to macro easy skills like hiding with scripts like (I don't remember the exact command names now):

STARTLOOP

KEYPRESS F1 // client macro key for hiding skill

WAIT 1000

MOVERANDOM 4 // move 4 times in a random direction to get around server checks for using a skill in the same spot

WAIT 8000

ENDLOOP

You wanted to move 8, not 4. Skill gains were made through an 8x8 grid. All the latter skill macros through RunUO were set up for being done on a boat sailing up and down to the east of Moonglow (where you could wrap around the map). They spammed the skill until you got a skill gain, then halted the boat, stepped it forward 8, and tried agian. Rinse and repeat until the 'run' stopped, then resume just moving forward trying until you hit the next run.

This gives a good summary: http://www.uoguide.com/8x8

Before the graphics, there were thousands of MUDs. In fact, UO took PvP inspiration from a (still active) MUD called MUME [0], which I have played for over twenty years, and met my wife through. Not many people know about that, but you can find quotes out there by the creators of UO about it. Anyways, MUME doesn't allow scripting, but for me, it was MajorMUD back in the early 90s that started me on the scripting path. Good stuff!

[0] http://www.mume.org

I used to write scripts to chop down trees, practice healing, mine and smelt ore, cast "fireball" on myself so I could level up my magic skills...lol

I remember a specific time when I was setting up my mining operation. I took the time to figure out how long it took for ore to re-spawn, and had my character mine in an elaborate circuit several times before starting the smelting process. I was super proud of myself, haha. I think I was about 12 or 13 at the time.

I started scripting when I was 14 to increase the number of scraps and testimonials in my Orkut scrapbook.

Creating phishing pages so that I can brag about hacking my friend's account was the other motive.

I think that MIT's scratch is a very good platform for children to learn about programming.

I had a similar experience. Between the ages of 14-16 I tinkered on my own sphere shard with a friend of mine. I didn't realise what I was doing was programming until I took courses 16-17 and realised what I had been doing the whole time :)

There was one website, Taran's Scripting For Dummies, that was pretty much my bible.

Nice. Ultima 'offline' is directly responsible for me being a programmer. Inspired to build ultima-like games in high school (w00 turbo pascal!), I eventually ended up as a professional software thingamajiggy.

...I'm still sad about how awful the ultima (offline) series ended, though

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