Shard.Patch: A simple connection and patcher utility for free shards.

[dmurphy]

Hey guys,

I was hoping to release the first version of this tonight but it is not quite there yet. It will likely be another day or two before it will be available for shards to use.

I am posting right now because I told some people it would be out tonight and felt bad I could not complete it in time. So in the meantime I will post the following feature list and allow you all to give suggestions before the release of R1

Features:

• A patch utility that will check your local files against a list of files on a remote server and patch as necessary.
• Launch either client.exe directly or razor (UO steam will come in a later release due to limitations on UO steams end)
• Show news and shard status to users before they connect to their shard.
• Completely open source. Change the layout and add your own features easily. Coded in c#
• More coming.

It is a simple utility and will do pretty much what it was designed for and not much more. Though if you can think up a really good feature that would be good in this app let me know and I will give it some thought

Here is a sneak peak of the app.

 

[Sirenix]

So are you hoping to help Shard admins and players download files for custom artwork/tiledata/hues etc, for that particular shard, and revert it back to default Stock UO upon removal of said shard? Something like what ConnectUO, and UOgateway where to do (with out the shard list of course). Or am I understanding this wrong? In either case, its always great to have new programs for a something thats coming increasingly hard to get good programs for. Thanks for the effort!

 

[dmurphy]

So are you hoping to help Shard admins and players download files for custom artwork/tiledata/hues etc, for that particular shard, and revert it back to default Stock UO upon removal of said shard? Something like what ConnectUO, and UOgateway where to do (with out the shard list of course). Or am I understanding this wrong? In either case, its always great to have new programs for a something thats coming increasingly hard to get good programs for. Thanks for the effort!

This app will be shard specific where it will keep just one shards patches up to date. That is why it is open source so each admin will be able to set it up for their own shard.

The way it works is when you first launch the patcher you are asked for a target directory. If that directory is empty it will download every file in the patch list. I.e the whole client. If it is pointed at an already existing UO install then it will check each file against a remote list of files and download only the files that are different. After that every time the launcher is ran it will check the local patch version against the remote patch version and if != will run a check on the local files again and once again download the files that differ.

What you suggest where it will keep patches for each shard and a single UO install is in the works for a bigger project in the future (Think UOG and CUO replacement) though that is some time off.