UO Second Age

How possible would it be to incorporate monsters from other eras on just special occasions?

Not as a mainstay just on visitation.

My guess is, if the body type is present in the T2A client, it's possible. So like... ancient liches, shadow iron elementals, etc. Things like beetles probably aren't possible. Just my hunch.

All that stuff is more than likely still in the files, just not used.

However I don't like the idea one bit. The era accuracy in this shard from an artistic perspective is great... I'd prefer not to look at the retarded artwork that made its way into the game around the Lord Blackthorn's Revenge/UO3D era.

Juka? Meer? You used to be cool Richard Garriot but then you read Discworld and got all Steampunk on our asses...

I think he was long gone from UO by then.

we have seen a bunch of later creatures in events and monster invasions etc

Any models and/or animations that are not included in our version of the client would have to be patched-in, to be available at all; I have no idea what's all there (hidden in the graphics files) that is normally NEA (and therefore "gathering dust", unused), but there has to be some of this material in existence if any of it has appeared in any event without a client patch.

Another thing I'm not sure of regards manipulating texture and/or hue on our existing graphical objects: if an event needed pink ogres, would this require a client patch, or could the server simply impose the variant texture/hue "by remote", when the instructions are sent to render the object; the answer to this question may indeed be "yes" for certain orders of objects, and "no" for others.

To be clear, I'm not recommending patching new models/animations into the client: I feel that it shouldn't be necessary; staff can follow whatever paths they wish, however, particularly when it involves a special event.

SS