Lord-Xanthor - Good evening everyone, thank you for coming to tonight's Ultima Online open house. This Stratics House of Commons chat is a direct connection between you the players and the designers and programmers of Ultima Online.
Lord-Xanthor - This chat will be in a moderated format. To ask a question of the developers, please /msg or /query the question takers that will be listed in the topic of the channel and have [QT] in front of their names. These question takers will then present the questions to the Ultima Online development team here with us this evening.
Lord-Xanthor - I will be our moderator tonight...I will post your question into the House of Commons chat channel and the Developers will answer those that they can. Please /msg or /query different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed the process up.
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Lord-Xanthor - Please remember that your question may have been asked previously or may not be able to be answered in a public forum. Please do not message or query myself or anyone from OSI, these questions will be ignored. We encourage you to read the logs of the previous Open Houses, which are available at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Lord-Xanthor - Enjoy tonight's chat...the topic is Housing
MrTact - Before we get started tonight, I would just like to take a moment and thank everyone for your patience in light of our recent issues.
MrTact - Rest assured, many MANY people at OSI and EA have been working very hard to get our networking issues resolved and get the shards back into a working state.

Lord-Xanthor - *Barrackas* In the screenshot of the custom house released, there were things like dead trees etc. What sort of limitations are there going to be on which artwork we can use to build our houses, and would it be possible to e.g. build one completely out of wheels of cheese?
Vex - There will be a limited subset of available artwork for use. We've picked out particular wall sets, floors, stairs, doors, etc. to use. Anything else, like a wheel of cheese, won't be available for use. You can, of course, continue to build things out of cheese using lockdowns...

Lord-Xanthor - *Kog* with this upcomming expansion will it be possible to make houses look orcish in sense and will this up comming expansion allow more diversity in house looks and is there any possiblity there will be more classes with the new uo expansion since it comes with the housign stuff jus a necro and paladin class kind of let me down hoping for more than 2
Vex - Some of the wall sets available for use do have a particularly primitive style, and with misc. other decorations I'm sure a creative person could build something looking positively orcish.
Vex - I can say without a doubt that there will be huge diversity in house appearances after the release of Age of Shadows.
Vex - Regarding the classes question...well, you sneaked that in despite the topic. :) Right now there are no plans for more classes other than the announced Necromancer and Paladin.

Lord-Xanthor - *Sonol* i just want to know if there will be a way to check the decay status of a house that you don't own
MrTact - There are no plans at the moment to allow people who are not owners, coowners or friends see the decay status of a house.

Lord-Xanthor - *Azrile* any estimates on how many houses will be falling in a few days? about 10%?
MrTact - Between a couple hundred and a thousand or so per shard. Naturally, not all of those are properly placed.

Lord-Xanthor - *Pali-Not_HERE* Will housing be included in the New land expansion that Age of Shadows is promising us
Vex - Age of Shadows includes a new landmass. The new lands, called Malas, are specifically designed with space to place new houses. We estimate there will be enough space for around 1000 to 1500 new houses per shard.

Lord-Xanthor - *Falx|THC* with the new housing system will we be able to claim houses ever again like when an account goes deactived for more than 90 days or will there never be house claiming again?
MrTact - House claiming was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I don't foresee us ever doing it again.
MrTact - In the future, when accounts go inactive, their houses will simply fall.
Sannio - House claiming, although currently still acive, will be off as of shard-up on Saturday.
Sannio - So the last day for house claiming will be tomorrow.

Lord-Xanthor - *eve* I have a sandstone, will I be able to enclose the roof and patio areas to make additional indoor areas?
Vex - This item needs clarification. Unfortunately, it won't be possible to start with an existing house and change its design. For custom houses, you'll start with a rectangular foundation covered in dirt, and you'll build the house on top of that.
Vex - You'll be able to exchange your sandstone for a customzable foundation, and build something that looks like the old house used to, and maybe add another story or change walls or make a fenced-in yard.
Vex - Note that exchanging a standard house for a customizable one will be done securely, meaning there won't be any chance of losing your house because you have to collapse one and put up another. The house will transform into a custom one in place.

Lord-Xanthor - *CompanionBlack-Ram_Ches* approx how many months after the world release of Uo:Aos will houses be allowed to be placed in Malas?
MrTact - Hopefully, zero.
MrTact - However, we won't have a solid date for that until we get closer to the release date for AoS.

Lord-Xanthor - *Cyberdud* Will there be a limit on the amounts of floors we can put in these houses? will we be able to put an underground level? or stack 10 stories high?
Vex - You'll only be able to build up, not down. Smaller-size customizable "dirt lots" will have the capacity for three levels, and larger ones can go up to 4 levels like the existing large tower.

Lord-Xanthor - *Method-CoS* if house creation is one of the options for dealing with the lag issue in uo, will it be a skill or something everyone can do? if so what skills would be needed?
Vex - I'm not sure what you mean by the lag thing. But, everyone will be able to customize houses. It won't require skills or resources (other than gold). While it certainly would be cool if carpenters would actually build wooden walls to place in a house, doing something like that would easily require an extra 6 months of development time and have a lot of additional problems to boot.

Lord-Xanthor - *Thez* Any*Thez* Any plans on limiting the size of new houses placed - for exsample by introducing new and maybe smaller house templates? plans on limiting the size of new houses placed - for exsample by introducing new and maybe smaller house templates?
Vex - There is an upper limit on the size of custom house foundations. Mainly, the limit has to do with sheer bandwidth. Transmitting the complete customized definition of something the size of a castle and three or four stories high would cause "black hole" lag like never before.
Vex - The footprint of the largest customizable foundation is slightly larger than the base of a large tower (i.e. not including the wings).

Lord-Xanthor - *Valeria|work* If you trade in your existing house for a customizable one, will it condemn all of the other houses on that account?
Vex - The precise details of how that will work have not yet been decided on. Sorry I can't give a better answer right now.

Lord-Xanthor - *Palinor* Will we be able to modify existing housing that is already placed in Trammel and Felucca after Age of Shadows is released
Vex - Just to clarify, you won't be able to modify an existing house, but you'll be able to securely replace it with a "dirt lot" of the same footprint size and customize the walls, floors, etc. on that footprint.

Lord-Xanthor - *Barrackas* How do you intend to get around the issue of the lag that custom houses will create? Currently lockdowns etc don't load until you stand on the steps, but how would such a system work when the actual house itself is dynamic?
MrTact - Lag is a major concern for us as we create this system.
MrTact - We are researching a number of ways to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. The principal way we are probably going to deal with it will be to compress the housing data we send over the wire.

Lord-Xanthor - *Red_Magic* Will any new "houses" be able soon? Can you give me an Example of What kind?
MrTact - If you mean, will we be doing any new static house designs, I don't think so.
MrTact - As far as housing is concerned, customization is pretty much our exclusive focus at the moment

Lord-Xanthor - *Bad_Magic* When you say "the only thing it will cost is gold" do you mean gold for the initial dirt patch (and aprox how much)? or do you mean "Gold per item customized" and how much? =)
Vex - You'll have to pay both to place down the original "dirt lot", and pay when you edit your house. In general, the costs are going to be scaled so that a customized house would cost about 2-3x what a similar-sized static house would cost.

Lord-Xanthor - *Nieves* Any plans to avoid the housing nightmare that occurred during UO:R"s housing placement days?
MrTact - Well, we think that the "one house per shard" rule will help address the land rush issue.
MrTact - So if you are asking, are we planning to do a lottery or any other distribution mechanism, the answer is no.
MrTact - There are plenty of issues inherent in any of those types of strategies, and we don't really have the time to do a good job developing them anyway, so we aren't going to go there.

Lord-Xanthor - *MrTact* My question is, "If I have a house that is placed over a small obstacle, such as a rock, will I be able to place a dirt lot there after AoS?"
MrTact - I was inspired by an earlier question :-)
Vex - If the house has a rectangular (or square) foundation, is Tower sized or smaller, and is properly placed, you will be guaranteed to be able to replace the house with a customizable foundation of the same size and shape.
Vex - For L-shaped houses (not rectangular) and keeps and castles (too big), other options will be available, but I'm unable to discuss the details of those yet.

Lord-Xanthor - *Chron* When customizing a house, does it keep the same number of lockdowns as the original one?
Vex - The final details on lockdowns in customizable houses have not been finalized yet, but it is safe to say that a customizable house will have at least as much secure storage as a static house of the same footprint size.

Lord-Xanthor - *Barrackas* Will it be possible to remove parts of the "base" and create courtyards like in castles?
Vex - No. All building will have to be done on top of the foundation provided. Attempts to erase the floors there will just replace them with the original dirt.

Lord-Xanthor - *Sonol* when you place a AOS house and get the "foundation" and start to add rooms will it be ala carte? such as go buy steps and go buy the walls and windows?
Vex - Yes. You pick from the menu which floors you want to build, and then paint that floor down. Then you can go back and select a wall to draw, and draw the wall. Want a window? Select it and click a wall. You'll also be able to build staircases and teleporters for getting around your new digs.

Lord-Xanthor - *Thez* Will we be able to create extra stories on our house that are a different size than the one below - I.e: Larger or smaller?
Vex - There will be some structural support rules enforced. You will be able to do overhangs on higher stories, but only so far. No floating structures. Full details will be announced later.

Lord-Xanthor - *Lurking_Lyria1* Will custom houses be able to have "wings", like the large towers do? Will we be able to create doors that are locked from both sides?
Vex - You can't add any house parts that fall outside the bounds of the house. If you make a house that is smaller than your foundation, in the center of the foundation, you could do wings or overhangs to the sides so long as the overhang remains within the constraints of the lot's footprint.

Lord-Xanthor - *GreyPawn* One of the screenshots detailed an alchemical symbol on the roof.. when customizing a house, will we have the ability to place teleporter tiles?
Vex - The alchemical symbols are floor tiles that double as teleporters.
Vex - Oh, I forgot part of Lurking_Lyria's question. The exact behavior of doors in custom houses hasn't yet been finalized and I don't have a good answer there.

Lord-Xanthor - *Fenris* will you be letting people create rare items with the new house changes in AoS like blood tiles or water/lava tiles so we can have a pool of blood or a pond?
Vex - There are no plans to have lava, water, or blood tiles available for house customization at initial release. We do have some terrain (dirt, which I've mentioned, plus grass and possibly some others) planned.

Lord-Xanthor - *eve* new question...... will the individual pieces, i.e., walls, etc., be perm once placed, or will we be able to move them as we would a lockdown?
Vex - You will customize the house through a special interface. The walls and other tiles created will act just like pieces of existing houses -- they don't highlight and you can't move them. To change your walls, you'd have to go back into edit mode, delete the wall, and put another one down like it in the new location.

Lord-Xanthor - I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight!
Lord-Xanthor - And thanks to all of the OSI folks for spending their personal time talking to us
Lord-Xanthor - Please join #ultima-online for continued, unmoderated chat
Lord-Xanthor - the log will be posted shortly at http://uohoc.stratics.com
Lord-Xanthor - THANKS
Sannio - Thanks everyone for coming!
Lord-Xanthor - THanks Sannio, and Vex, and MrTact for being our guests tonight =)
* Sannio begins throwing chees wheels to the crowd *
[QT]abombpk - Thanks all for coming and submiting your questions :)
Lord-Xanthor - And Fertbert =)
Sannio - Good night, everyone!
Fertbert - :)
Fertbert - 'night all