From UO Stratics:

Player: what will you do to fix stupid tokuno dies -, elven hues - hair dies, reward cloth and how will you prevent your nice friend to add more stupid colours?

CatHat: Easy - I speak to them about it and work with them to see what we can do about it. Actually, yesterday I went to them and spoke to them about Hues on some new things they've in progress - and spoke exactly on the topic of a few of the poorer choices of some Existing reward colors - and they spoke to me about -"oh what can we do about improving Elven Hair". So a lot of what you guys see - we see too.

I've said it before - but 8 years makes a lot of stuff to go through.

The difficult thing about an MMOG is -that once stuff is released to the public its very hard to go back and fix. Sometimes changes means taking things away from people basically and that irritates folk who like what they have ya know.

The whole HUE coloring thing sorta balances on the 3 main disciplines here - Firstly, When the artists make things, they need to be done so if/when a HUE does happen to it - it works very very well - preferrably a partial hue to make it look spiffy and so details aren't lost. Secondly - Engineering needs to iron out any bugs in the backside of the hue system - so design has no invisible pitfalls. Thirdly, designers need to implement it with real care and caution - probably refering back to the artists if they're in doubt about if they've nerfed the art too much, and if another approach might be possible.

In other words - real teamwork fostered by new leaders enabing us to do things right.

A lot of what we're doing right now is just working on backside / internal stuff - making sure we have more understanding in the team - more internal checks and balances, and tool improvments so there are far fewer 'mistakes' that perpetuates that drift. Makes no sense to go and fix things up if you're just going to break em again as quickly - lol.

Player: Perhaps we will see the hued colored plants look more natural to where the peddles and bulbs on the plants are the only things colored rather then the whole thing.

CatHat: Darn right - again - its about the wrong way of hueing things in the past. They just have to be aware of how this stuff is used when they make things. Leveraging a Partial Hue in a manner that doesn't suck is important - its the right way to do things.

2 sayings come to mind - one of my favorites, "Work Smarter, not just Harder"

And, as our producer Darkscribe.is fond of saying, "its all on the table"

Player: their should be a special dev contest and the winner gets to go and work 1 full day (maybe week) on inside news with the devs too see how things really go. this stuff looks interesting

CatHat: Haha - that would be too cruel of a joke on the winner - we're about as exciting as watching research scientist at work.

For those of you who missed the thread about what an average day in the life of a dev is - here's a copy\paste of a previous thread reguarding that - - forgive me my temporary hijack oh mighty stratics admin


------What is a day in the life of a UO dev?
-----------------------------------------------

Lets see i roll outta bed at 6 - commute get my butt into the office by 7:30 - turn on the lights, expresso machine and coffee machine. Yeah i'm an early kinda guy - get a triple mocha going - and while i work on my caffine buzz i flip through emails, bug reports and any late PMs and or stickynotes and smokesignals from the night before.

Its about this time Grimm cranks some UO radio when they play a few requested songs for us - we trade war stories or sorts while we kick out the illogic of one problem or two we're currently facing. Usually cresting in some rant about something exceptionally cool or nasty. Work on our late bugs or new things that are primo projects we dont' wanna put down.

Since we're as about as exciting as research scientists to watch in action - we work on art stuff - test hideous things soon to be super good looking things - arts always ugly right up until its gone - thus that whole 'artist don't wanna show his work till its done syndrome' everyone steroptyes

Then there's some kinda meeting of one sort or another where we pile of to some clasutrophobic meeting room and systematically wear the chairs down as we lean back, get all worked up about what we've gotta do and try not to OD on the white board fumes.

Then back for more 3d/2d applicatison and Game editors, managment software and the like. This is usually followed by lunch, though some kinda sports activity usually rages during lunch - a few of the real gluttons for pain will go for some evil dodgeball - well until someone bans it for the contusions and broken bones it delivers onto the populus here.

Then its back to hitting things hard and doing drive by questions and random 'how the hell is this supposed to work?" drop in on folks. Some flipping through random weird emails sent by other team members.. More 'oh crappp! this broke fix it now' and "dude look at how cool this is" moments.

Usually at this time in the afternoon people I meet are trying to tell if thats a Guiness or a coke in my glass and if its real black velvet i'm wearing. I've usually got the headphones on with an audiobook on - gotta keep up my intake of good books while i work at my tasks.

Bounce around occasionally for a 5 minute break to see what everyone else is up to - strech the legs, crack the back - scowl at the afternoon sun - and then get back to work.. The air is filled with shouts of glee - whining and phrases starting usually with 'dude can you belive this'. Nothing too atypical of a dev environment.

On a rare day a nerf missle will sail over head - though that technology has been suprassed by the invisible 'shockwave' air cannons readily avialible. Things get tacked to walls and off color bits of humor spead throughout the office sometimes. Posters with fake game titles and things appear bout this time occasionally.

I switch to tea for the late afternoon as the acid of stress and coke go together like fire and gasoline - whee - but use the time to talk shop at the kitchen - find out how someones code is progressing or something. Circle glass office meeting rooms to find so and so. Eye the candy machine with interest - check pockets for stray quarters.

Back to building and testing things in game on my desktop - adding notes that little my desk with their haphazzard apprearance. Concept art gets tacked up on the wall or goes onto a dictionary thick stack or previous drawings.

last minute flurry as the evening moves on - getting input and feedback for my final stuff if i can. Pushing things up to servers or whatever with all the approproate notes and history attached.

then its off to the commute again thinking about the job mostly as i drive - get home spend a few hours with the Mrs, the new baby - my cat and dog - cook dinner - spend some more family time -no time for tv during the week, yay tivo - then some online game time for me, a necessity - peer around in my online disguise to see if i spot any of the other DEV folk about - kill me some monsters - explore new places in the world - then hit the Stratics message boards answer emails and PMs - and about mindnight hit the hay - getting ready to start it all over again.

Sorry there's no Military Helicopters landing in the middle of the quad or Cheerleaders, or Sumo-Bodysuit matches, just went mostly with the USUAL day stuff there. We try to have a decent set of hours and a life - well for a Dev person it is. Have to keep the social and club stuff - tv or whatever confined to the weekends personally. But anywho thats about it in a nut shell. Well, for one artist on our team anyway.

Gotta wonder how you ever manage to find anything on that infamous table full of stuff. Maybe consider a neatly organized cupboard or even a file cabinet? :grin:

Just popped to mind about hueing: what would really rock would be if the players could choose which portion of an item to hue if the item is sort of split into parts (partial hueing). So for instance with an armor piece there could be two choices, the metal parts or the straps and other details on it - when dyeing you choose which portion to apply the dye to. Now that's giving us tons of customization ability for guild uniforms etc!

One can always dream...

I am so happy to hear they are working on the hueing thing....I always thought hueing a whole plant was a bit odd... but what do I know... I am just the player....and I understand some people like the whole neon color hueing everything in his little world... which is fine.... but have some consideration for those of us... that aren't so hot with the flame color.. or that green for that matter... and yes i have a few pieces dyed those colors... but certainly not a whole 18*18 plot dedicated to the color...lol

im also glad they are working on the hue thing ive hated looking at artifats that look like a normal item with some stupid color on them... i remember when doom first came out and all the doom junkies would stand at the bank with all their arties on and they would look like rainbow people.

yeah ya sometimes feel like its a rainbow bright convention....HEHEHE

Cathat is awesome.
I think Cathat will follow well in Leurocian's footsteps.