Does anyone want some custom zones?
 

For those who don't know the Scorpious2k server, we have over 20 custom (not in EQLive) zones. I'm not talking about the way they are populated, I mean the ZONES are different - created with OpenZone and a lot of imagination.

For some time, I have wanted to find a way to release these to the community. I have decided to either:

1) make it a sub-project of the EQEmu project, and put it on sourceforge. The only problems with this is that we seem to have stopped using sourceforge (makes no sense to me) and that the devs with control of our sourceforge site seem to be in perpetual AFK.

2) Start my own sourceforge project, which has the advantage of not having to count on people who are not around, and gives some independence to it. I'm not sure how independant it should be.

NOTE: these also become available for the SimpleClient project.

I guess my question is, is there any interest? Would anyone want to work on new zones? Contribute zones they have created? Would anyone want to use these? Or am would I be wasting my time?

I would be interested, Id love to see how others have set up their custom zones ect and varity is always nice :D

Agree, Scorp. I think you should open your own SVN if nothing else, and maybe keep a couple of admins assigned in case you fall off the planet. :)

Do these zones require "ZoneProxy"? I remember reading about that lonnnng ago, and it scared me away from ever making my own content with OpenZone. I tried once and made an OZ custom zone named "Nexus" and it worked pretty good... then, ADHD took over and next thing you know I am doing DB work elsewhere.

I like the work Sak was doing, and so far not convinced about SimpleClient (no offense - just never gave it a good whirl). If nothing, I'd love to learn how to "properly" create custom zones like this. In short, yes. Please. :)

Indeed I am interested Scorpious. I feel our community of world builders should share the work we do to a greater extent. At the moment there is not much custom content available "to pick and start from", there is pretty much only PEQ and Angelox DB.

Custom zone geometry is one thing we all could use. We could also start sharing some of our zone contents (not talking specifically about your zones here, we all have written some stuff on our own), custom quests etc. It is normal that server maintainers do not publish their whole world, and this is not what I am asking for. But when portions of a world contents became fairly well-known it may be time to share it, selectively.

One major problem for content sharing is the medium. Zone geometry files are whole, so that part is quite easy, it takes making the files available for download somewhere, with minimal instructions on how to put that to work. Content (DB, quest) is something else entirely.

My latest work on EQEmu was to write a wiki-based tool as a way of configuring (writing) content. The tool take scontent description from a wiki and generates the DB entries out of that. It would be a way to share, as the wiki part is very readable, and the generation works. But at the moment I have little time to devote to EQEmu so I have put it on hold.

People may want to ask what I have to share. I would like to get stuff, but what can I offer in return ? Well I do not have much, but I have written a few quests and tweaked some NPC drops for low-level adventuring. As I do not plan to run a public server for the moment I would have no problem sharing that with other content builders.

To sum up Scopious, new zones are very interesting and if you can make some of them available to us be sure you can count me among the grateful people who will look at them. I hope we can go further as time progresses, and that your initiative encourages our community to open some of our private gardens :)

definatly interested. just got into the whole OZ thing myself and this would help me figure some stuff out im sure.

Seriously, I really don't know why you need to ask :-D . Post up the zones and just watch the download counter roll up the numbers.

I was thinking the same thing. Well, not the planet/fall thing. Only thing that would take me away is my current computer (lack of) crisis, but that's another thread.

No, the way we use them is simply to replace existing zones. I selected the mmc*, ruj*, mir*, and guk* zones as a large block of them. We also used Nektropos and tutoriala. Basically, any zone you never plan on using "as-is" can be a custom zone.

Sak and I actually worked together to create a zone. He is very talented. I would hope we can drag him into this little project.

The zone we did is a city, called Copper City. It lies on the northern tip of our starting zones, the homeland islands... Basically, Copper City relaces both PoK and bazaar.

This is the only zone I will hold on to (until I have his permission to release it since he is co-designer)

I'm not sure about "properly design", but we have learned a lot with each zone we created.

deffinatly interested.

As a side note just so everyone knows you can rename zones using s3d spy to rename all the wld files within a zone file you can also change textures, graphics and so forth, making it entirely possible to customize your server almost anyway you see fit!

Sure Scorp, You can give it out. I have no problems with letting others have zones. The only problem I have is that I start getting requests from people to let them have the scene files also and then that means they need all the textures and models also which you know can be rather time consuming and I also have to be careful because I am making what I hope to one day be a commercial MMO and some of my models are for that alone so I dont want to be giving my whole library away ( I make zones in 3dmax for my game but test them in EQ too!) lol. Anyway yes by all means release Copper City. I am also very sorry to hear about your bad luck and feel bad I cant do anything to help you out but I am starting a new life in a new country and its taking all I have to survive at the moment, I hope things look up for you soon.


Also I offered before to make any zones to replace EQ zones for people or even for SimpleClient and that offer still stands as long as no one wants my scene files too :O

Okay, two things.

FIRST: I want to give out the SCN file along with the *required* textures and meshes for that zone (or put together a package of textures, meshes and models for this project as an add-on for openzone). I would like people to be able to play around with what we have done, change it , and learn. I feel this will lead to more people doing zones, and then everyone benfits.

SECOND: I registered a project on sourceforge today. It will take a while to get approved, but when it does I can't imagine anyone else I would like to ask to be an admin on it first. Interested?

Thanks, and best wishes to you on your move. You didn't move to some strange country and have to learn a new language... like Canada did you?

With the new sourceforge project, there will be a central place for new zones, textures, meshes, etc to be shared.

Truly a frightening thought indeed. Godspeed, Sakrateri.

Hey Scorp. You can give away the zone I gave you too by the way. :)

Thanks, but I don't have the scn file or textures/meshes for it.

I am trying to keep it open source (as much as OZ has "source" for a zone)

I found this, it will give a little preview of what I am talking about: http://scorpious2k.cafe150.com/ click the picture of the zones you want to see more about. I didn't have Homeland Islands in when i did this, so for those zones you will have to wait to see (or download the files and get on my server and collect your own screen shots :D

Looks like we need a plan "B". I got this back from sourceforge:

Ideas anyone?

google has free sbvn projects that are instantly created http://code.google.com/

http://www.mmoforge.org/gf/

Another projects site that Ascent folks seem to use a lot. There's always emupedia... ~gufaws~

you said that you replaced the bazaar and pok with copper city? Might I ask how you got the /bazaar and /barter commands to work in the new zone? i tried replacing the Baz and the commands didnt work outside of the actual bazaar zone

Does it work before?

I don't have any traders in the zone so all I get is the window opening.

yeah if i replace the bazaar itself they work but if i try to use the zone i made for pok in place of the bazaar they dont work

Sooooooo....

I've gone through what I have and have zipped up over 600 textures and over 350 meshes not distributed with OpenZone. These are needed for the zones I have, but will also give you budding world creators something more to work with.

If I had a computer I could set up SVN here, but the sites sent to me look like we can get around that little problem of mine. I think for finished zones, textures, etc., we should use simple zip files and downloads. Not everyone knows SVN and there really isn't a need to use it to distribute something that isn't changing.

I am working on a website when I am able to get on my daughter's computer. I plan on using it as the means to distribute the finished files, news about what is going on, and possibly a place to put forums for discussions.

I think thats a pretty good idea just distributing them as zip files you could always put them on sourceforge as a release within the OZ files where the other stuff is for it. Of course you could throw them on mediafire or rapidshare or something too since both are free and what not

Im not sure if there are any solutions to run svn on a iis box but I have about 5 servers just sitting here waiting for use if that would help?

According to the server code, you should get the "bazaar welcome" message as long as the zone short name is bazaar.

oh so you made coppercity bazaar that explains it lol

I did try changing that bit of the code to use load (its the zone I am using for testing) but it didnt work I think its something clientside that makes it only work in the bazzar

Yes, I made it bazaar because I was aware of the server code and suspected (it seems correctly) that the client also had some restrictions along the same line.

cant wait to see how you made buildings mine never turn out very well its one of the parts of making zones that I havetn quite gotten down yet,that and trees lol

I have the website started and the textures/meshes ready for download:

http://webpages.charter.net/s2k

nice, going to take a look at these tonight :)

i have some webspace you can use too, if you need scorp.
let me know, and thanks :)

Do you use 3ds to make your zones and meshes?

The reason i ask is i downloaded the meshes and textures put them in the appropriate oz lib folders and some of the meshes have no texture Im just wondering if Im doing something wrong or if some just got missed

Do you have all the OpenZone textures downloaded?

yeah as far as i am aware ill double check an example is copwal1 and 2 have no texture

yeah i have all 5 texture packs

and all 6 of your texture packs forgot to mention that sorry lol

I just checked those, and I don't have the textures for them either. They may have been sent by Sakrateri when he was working on Copper City... maybe something he planned to use but didn't

being that i downloaded the actual zone files cause i was going to try out yourserver, couldnt i just extract the textures from the s3d files with s3d spy?

If I don't have them, they aren't there. And those meshes weren't used.

I wouldn't mind helping with this either...

Jump in, join in, and have fun!

I now have screen shots in for the Homeland Islands on the website.