It's been just over a week since my last post, and there's been major changes since then. I've added information regarding login encryption, enabling god client worldbuilding features, and a vast amount of new information to the packet guide. The guide currently documents the general information for every packet, from 0x00 to 0xDB, and work on documenting packet specifics is done daily. Added recently are the specifications for nearly all AOS packets and almost all non-obsolete packets from 0x00 to 0x3C (I assure you that the remaining two will be added shortly ). Currently I'm going through and adding all of the known packets so that I can continue my work with the unknown ones. The protocol, compression, and encryption guides are meant for emulator-related development; I'd rather not see it misused for the sake of hack programs. My goal is to finish the work of documenting Ultima Online that was started by others before me. Many emulators these days do not disclose their protocol, and as an fan of Ultima Online and emulators in general I hope to provide a resource for current and future developers.

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It's been a while since my last post, but I hope to make them more frequently now that summer is here. Work on Athena is increasing now that I have more free time and it's coming along nicely. The goal right now is to finalize the networking protocol and optimize various data handling procedures. Of course, introducing new systems and content is still high on the list of things to do. The latest feature is NPC Speech; remember the days when you could actually interact with them? Now if you talk to an NPC in Ultima, they just sit there. So, I added a scripted speech system for NPCs using old speech templates from Ultima Online. Also, I added a link to the Packet Guide I was working on on the old site and a few other links in the Athena section to your left.

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This post is to announce the development of a new Ultima Online emulator!

Why make a new emulator when I already have Epsilon? Epsilon was more of a learning experience for me, and the code isn't exactly optimized. The Epsilon you know today came from a primitive Visual Basic 6.0 version that was upgraded and tweaked to death. About 95% of the +Epsilon (Visual Basic .NET version) contains new code, but many pieces are...I guess you might call it untidy. Anyways, a complete rewrite would be required to "fix" Epsilon and so I just decided to create an entirely new project.

So, the new project is written in C-Sharp and is named Athena. The code is much more optimized than +Epsilon and contains a plethora of new features including this fancy-pants GUI:

All of the basic server stuff has been written, and what I'm working on now is the actual handling of data. When I say server stuff, I mean networking, scripting, accounts, mobiles, items, etc. The actual game content is yet to be added.

So, there you have it. New emulator. Athena. The End.

Just a quick update: the packet guide now documents all (minus 2) non-obsolete packets up to 0x91. I also removed the client encryption guide.

The packet guide is now up to 0xA7. In between packets I've been working on Athena, the latest changes have been mostly optimizations of existing functions. Of course, since my last update on Athena, god client compatibility has also been added . Allowing god clients to edit the world is as easy as changing two lines in the configuration. Lastly, the encryption guide has been re-uploaded

First of all, the packet guide is up to 0xB1 and climbing.

Now, to the point of this post: I've begun a new project! What Ultima Online guide would be complete without the mul formats? Not mine, I can tell you that. My new project, Ouren, is a mul editing bundle I made to help refresh my memory on the mul formats while in the process of posting the new guides. Specifically, Ouren is a program written in C-Sharp that allows easy editing of Ultima Online data files.

The first portion of this program that I have started is the Multi Editor. The Multi Editor is a neat little tool that allows for the easy creation and modification of Multi objects in an environment that behaves similarly to the Ultima Online client and its interface. A picture of the first version of this editor can be seen here. What you see in the image, by the way, is a house with the 'Ghost Selected Items' toggle turned on after selecting the roof.

I plan to extend the same functionality and ease found in the Multi Editor to a combination Map and Statics editor in the future. If you want to know where you can download Ouren, you'll just have to wait for now. I started the project only a short while ago, and a downloadable version won't be available for quite some time. In the mean time, be sure to check back here for more updates on Ouren as well as the upcoming mul format guides.