Colored Ore

[noxmonk]

Since the locations of colored ore never changed until significantly after UO:R, I was wondering why they were changed here as it is one of the largest NEA changes made.

[Kaivan]

Ore spawns were allocated using a default algorithm in RunUO that makes any given location yield the same type of ore as the same location on any other RunUO server. With the re-design of our spawning system to properly allocate resources using 8x8 chunks, we re-allocated the locations of colored ore spawns a single time in order to fall in-line with the era mechanic whereby every server had unique locations for spawning colored ore from every other server.

[noxmonk]

Ore spawns were allocated using a default algorithm in RunUO that makes any given location yield the same type of ore as the same location on any other RunUO server. With the re-design of our spawning system to properly allocate resources using 8x8 chunks, we re-allocated the locations of colored ore spawns a single time in order to fall in-line with the era mechanic whereby every server had unique locations for spawning colored ore from every other server.

I understand the design change, however the colored ore relocation is quite wrong and would be curious in how you determined that the spawns were randomized across servers. There are several locations along the brit mines that were commonly farmed for specific colors of ore during T2A and on at least 2 different shards (chesapeake, napa valley) were the same. I also logged onto T2A originally and went to 8 separate spots for a specific color of ore were I remembered them being located and successfully mined that specific color. Braden said you had some sort of irrefutable proof code or otherwise. Where is it located?

[e1] additionally, due to LOS changes, there are several places you could mine in era that you can no longer mine. Was this intended?

[e2] Looking at the patch notes, I notice on Feb 2, 1999 is when colored ore was introduced.

Code: Select all

Colored ore, granting karma, and combat changes Feb 2 1999 10:57AM
Colored ore, ingots and armor go in
Mining
Eight new varieties of minerals can now be found.
Each variety offers a unique color.
The different colors can only be found by miners of specific skill levels--only Grandmasters or near Grandmasters can find the rarest mineral, valorite.
Once a vein is located, it will always be at that location from then on. (It behooves miners to conceal this location!) We have seen the feedback from those concerned that these locations will become ambush points. If this develops into a problem, we will make the veins move. For now, however, they will remain where they are found.)
Even a known vein will not always yield the rare mineral.
You cannot combine ore of different colors.
You can only smelt the colored minerals if you meet the Mining skill requirement to do so.
Smelting more difficult minerals will result in a greater skill gain than smelting easy minerals.

No changes made to the ore/mining system after this one, which seemed very close to the one we had previously, minus the mini-nodes giving 15.

[Kaivan]

Ore spawns were allocated using a default algorithm in RunUO that makes any given location yield the same type of ore as the same location on any other RunUO server. With the re-design of our spawning system to properly allocate resources using 8x8 chunks, we re-allocated the locations of colored ore spawns a single time in order to fall in-line with the era mechanic whereby every server had unique locations for spawning colored ore from every other server.

I understand the design change, however the colored ore relocation is quite wrong and would be curious in how you determined that the spawns were randomized across servers. There are several locations along the brit mines that were commonly farmed for specific colors of ore during T2A and on at least 2 different shards (chesapeake, napa valley) were the same. I also logged onto T2A originally and went to 8 separate spots for a specific color of ore were I remembered them being located and successfully mined that specific color. Braden said you had some sort of irrefutable proof code or otherwise. Where is it located?

As far as all information that I have been able to find on the matter has suggested, all ore spots were entirely randomized on all servers, even between facets. These two threads from the newsgroups discuss the algorithm that was used in determining where a specific type of ore would spawn once the new system went into place, and also include a partial quote from Runesabre that states that not only were the ore locations randomized, but were randomized enough to be different on the new facet that was about to be opened. Additionally, stratics also has the percentages which are discussed in the two threads talking about the algorithm used to determine what type of ore spawns in a given area (the percentages are located here). Now, while we haven't achieved our ore spawns in the same manner as OSI, we do have our own ore spawns which are entirely unique from all other servers.

[e1] additionally, due to LOS changes, there are several places you could mine in era that you can no longer mine. Was this intended?

The goal of our LoS changes was to attempt to reflect the LoS algorithm and results of the demo. If you feel that a location that is no longer reachable should be point it out in a bug post and we can cross-reference the location with live OSI servers, which is largely unchanged from the demo, and confirm the recollection.

[e2] Looking at the patch notes, I notice on Feb 2, 1999 is when colored ore was introduced.

Code: Select all

Colored ore, granting karma, and combat changes Feb 2 1999 10:57AM
Colored ore, ingots and armor go in
Mining
Eight new varieties of minerals can now be found.
Each variety offers a unique color.
The different colors can only be found by miners of specific skill levels--only Grandmasters or near Grandmasters can find the rarest mineral, valorite.
Once a vein is located, it will always be at that location from then on. (It behooves miners to conceal this location!) We have seen the feedback from those concerned that these locations will become ambush points. If this develops into a problem, we will make the veins move. For now, however, they will remain where they are found.)
Even a known vein will not always yield the rare mineral.
You cannot combine ore of different colors.
You can only smelt the colored minerals if you meet the Mining skill requirement to do so.
Smelting more difficult minerals will result in a greater skill gain than smelting easy minerals.

No changes made to the ore/mining system after this one, which seemed very close to the one we had previously, minus the mini-nodes giving 15.

When we re-designed our spawning system it was not a change away from an accurate system, it was a change that brought our current system in-line with the system as it stood on OSI servers.

[noxmonk]

As far as all information that I have been able to find on the matter has suggested, all ore spots were entirely randomized on all servers, even between facets. These two threads from the newsgroups discuss the algorithm that was used in determining where a specific type of ore would spawn once the new system went into place, and also include a partial quote from Runesabre that states that not only were the ore locations randomized, but were randomized enough to be different on the new facet that was about to be opened. Additionally, stratics also has the percentages which are discussed in the two threads talking about the algorithm used to determine what type of ore spawns in a given area (the percentages are located here). Now, while we haven't achieved our ore spawns in the same manner as OSI, we do have our own ore spawns which are entirely unique from all other servers.

Those posts are about as conclusive as a Chinese website saying double hits existed with no further proof other than that and speculation. No one outright answers but players provide a few theories. The partial quote by RS isn't even something you could get a whole lot of information out of. It's a partial quote of a message he was replying to say that trammel and felucca facets should have different ore maps.

The goal of our LoS changes was to attempt to reflect the LoS algorithm and results of the demo. If you feel that a location that is no longer reachable should be point it out in a bug post and we can cross-reference the location with live OSI servers, which is largely unchanged from the demo, and confirm the recollection.

I'll take a picture and circle the spot.

When we re-designed our spawning system it was not a change away from an accurate system, it was a change that brought our current system in-line with the system as it stood on OSI servers.

Your change as far as the amounts and 8x8 calculation for ore per node may not have been away from an OSI based system. However, relocating where colored ore is located is a change away from OSI. Ore spawns were never randomly moved unless it was after UO:R. Unless there's some other documentation supporting this, and I don't really see any public or semi-public discussion of this at all.

[BlackFoot]

Ore spawns were never randomly moved unless it was after UO:R.

It sounds like you are a bit confused about what has actually happened here.

[BobDobbs]

I don't think the ore spawns "move," colored ore is just not in the same places on UOSA as it was on whatever OSI shard you played on. I'm not even sure every OSI shard had the same colored ore spawns in the same locations.

Either way, it isn't big deal and it makes ingots worth more. This is a good thing.

[MatronDeWinter]

Perhaps uo ore spawn was random, but certain colors had different properties which determined where they are likely to spawn, making it a little different for each shard, but still making <some color ore> common in similar areas. For instance, maybe verite likes to grow near the tip of a mountain, when it intersects with a grassland. Or Shadow likes to grow in caves when the tile around it it snow.

[Mikel123]

Bottom line:

1) it was a one-time change, to make the shard more accurate, that caused the veins to move
2) they will not move again, and will thus be stable (accurate)
3) not all shards had ore veins in the same spots, so it is impossible for us to even attempt to match where they were on a production server

I think Kaivan did more than enough research to back up these three points, and my hunch is that the basis of this thread is sour grapes.

[Kaivan]

As far as all information that I have been able to find on the matter has suggested, all ore spots were entirely randomized on all servers, even between facets. These two threads from the newsgroups discuss the algorithm that was used in determining where a specific type of ore would spawn once the new system went into place, and also include a partial quote from Runesabre that states that not only were the ore locations randomized, but were randomized enough to be different on the new facet that was about to be opened. Additionally, stratics also has the percentages which are discussed in the two threads talking about the algorithm used to determine what type of ore spawns in a given area (the percentages are located here). Now, while we haven't achieved our ore spawns in the same manner as OSI, we do have our own ore spawns which are entirely unique from all other servers.

Those posts are about as conclusive as a Chinese website saying double hits existed with no further proof other than that and speculation. No one outright answers but players provide a few theories. The partial quote by RS isn't even something you could get a whole lot of information out of. It's a partial quote of a message he was replying to say that trammel and felucca facets should have different ore maps.

I would hardly place stratics and clearly thought out posts that describe an algorithm used to determine the locations of ore spawns on par with an oriental website where the text is fed through a translator and spits out nearly incoherent text in English.

Beyond that, here are two relevant posts from the separate threads:

According to OSI, when the mining patch was put in, the standard percentage
chance for each type of ore was given to miners. When a miner used a
previously untouched (since the patch) spot, it would figure if he was
successful at getting a type of colored ore. If he WAS, that mining spot
became a source for that ore permanently.

So yes, after the mining patch, the far off spots that only experienced
miners used were more likely to become sources of higher end colored ore.

Ingot Head
Atlantic

This post clearly outlines an algorithm for how colored ore came into existence.

• First, when each server came up after receiving the February 2 patch, each chunk was marked as unused.
• Second, when a miner mined a spot for ore, the server would randomly choose one of the different types of ore based on the percentages in the Stratics article.
• Third, if the miner had the skill to mine the randomly selected color ore for that spot, then that location became a permanent source of that type of ore, because a miner had found that ore. If the miner was not capable of mining the randomly chosen ore, then the server would leave the chunk untouched and run the algorithm the next time that the chunk was mined.
• Fourth, depending on whether a type of ore had been found, the server would mark that chunk as spawning that type of ore, and thus permanently mark the spot.

The second quote of relevance is this one from Runesabre:

From: Runesabre
Date: April 21, 2000 at 6:43 pm
In Reply to: Rune/Cal: Re Ore locations per chat last night
Subject: Since colored ore locations are randomly set...

... they should differ between Felucca and Trammel.

While this is an incomplete quote, the relevant information is still there. Specifically, that ore locations are randomly set. This not only corroborates the idea that spawns were not identical on all servers, but corroborates the first quote that states that the chance for ore to appear in a location was randomly selected unless it had already been confirmed.

Finally, to offer some more information that shows that spawns were randomized, we can look at this FYI update that states the following:

In addressing the issues connected to resource spawning and shard crashes we were required to clear the information that tracked the location of colored ore veins. This fix is currently active on Lake Superior, Great Lakes, Yamato, and Izumo. In order to ensure the resource issue does not crash other shards, we will be implementing this fix on all other shards following their next scheduled maintenance. Colored ore will still spawn on the shards, however, the locations for the colors will no longer be the same.

The above quote specifically states that the information connected with the location of each ore vein was wiped, but there is no mention of any change to the algorithm that determined the location of ore spawns. Operating under the only reasonable assumption that just the information itself was wiped, the quote specifically states that the location for the colors will no longer be the same. This further corroborates the notion that OSI randomly placed ore spawns, because a wipe on ore spawn locations would naturally bring about a new random distribution of node locations.

Your change as far as the amounts and 8x8 calculation for ore per node may not have been away from an OSI based system. However, relocating where colored ore is located is a change away from OSI. Ore spawns were never randomly moved unless it was after UO:R. Unless there's some other documentation supporting this, and I don't really see any public or semi-public discussion of this at all.

I think that the above information clearly shows that ore spawns on all servers were thoroughly different from other servers, and while we didn't approach the process of randomization in the same manner as OSI, we did randomize our spawns in order to differentiate ourselves from every other RunUO server out there and provide mechanical accuracy of randomized ore spawns.