Lord Phoenix
Neophyte
I'm relatively new to the server, and I've been paying attention to miners while out mining. Watching how they move around and such. After doing this a while, I realized something. So, I started asking miners I came across if they knew about the 8x8. A few knew about it, some knew about it from back in the day but didn't realize it still applied, and most had no clue what the hell I was talking about. So, I decided to post something here about it.
First, some history.
The 8x8. The Resource Grid. Back in old original UO it was a fundamental and mostly hidden mechanic that governed ore and lumber to fish and even spawn and skill gain chances (which, incidentally, meant most macroing was done on boats, at least in the era of the power hour). The 4096x4096 tile world was divvied up into 8x8 tile chunks, 512 chunks across and 512 chunks high, for a total of 262,144 chunks. What resources were available to be gathered was determined by what tiles and objects were within each 8x8 chunk. Mountain and cave tiles added ore to the chunk's resource pool, tree trunks added lumber, water added fish. If you mined a tile or chopped a tree within a chunk, you weren't mining the tile, you were mining from the combined resource pool, and could deplete the entire chunk's supply from one spot. From a programming logic and data storage perspective, this allowed them to track and store the available resources across the world on a chunk basis rather than a tile by tile basis, reducing the amount they had to keep track of from 16,777,216 tiles down to 262,144 chunks, with each chunk only needing to know a tally of specific types of tiles within it in order to generate its own resource pool.
Now, Outlands.
I've done enough lumberjacking to know that, for whatever reason, trees are tracked on a tree by tree basis here. Haven't done enough fishing to know if it still follows the 8x8. But I know mining still does, and there's even a built in option to see the 8x8. If you open the World Map from the Maps button in the upper left menu, and zoom in on it a bit, you get this:
The 8x8 in all its glory. The option to turn it off/on is under Grid and Zone Options if you right click on the map, but it's on by default.
As you can see, I'm standing at the intersection of 4 chunks. If I stand here and mine repeatedly, I will mine each chunk in succession, automatically switching to a new chunk when one chunk is depleted, until all 4 chunks are out of ore. I should get full ore from the chunks to the northwest, sw, and ne, and slightly less from the chunk to the southeast, because it's not entirely mountain/cave but instead has a bit of greenery in it. Once depleted, I can move north 16 tiles, jumping one intersection to the next one, and have 4 more chunks to mine, like so (with depleted chunks shown in purple, hand drawn in, it's not gonna do that for you, you'll have to keep mental track of that yourself):
And I can continue moving around along the grid lines, depleting chunks efficiently, knowing exactly how far I need to move once they run out before I can mine again, and knowing where there's weird corners and bits to grab that might be easily missed otherwise and spot full chunks that are only really accessible from one awkward spot. I believe you still need to be within 2 tiles of a spot to mine it (so at most one empty tile between you and the mining location), but if you can hit one tile in the chunk you hit the entire chunk.
That's why sometimes when you're mining you seem to be able to stand in one spot for a long time, and sometimes it runs out really quick. Sometimes you're standing near an intersection, and sometimes you're hitting a chunk with only a couple of valid tiles in it.
Now, as for colored ore, in old UO the colors were set in stone (pun intended) per chunk, so once you found Valorite it would always be Valorite, but Outlands seems to randomly generate a single colored ore type, or none at all, into a chunk's resource pool.
And that's the 8x8 Resource Grid.
First, some history.
The 8x8. The Resource Grid. Back in old original UO it was a fundamental and mostly hidden mechanic that governed ore and lumber to fish and even spawn and skill gain chances (which, incidentally, meant most macroing was done on boats, at least in the era of the power hour). The 4096x4096 tile world was divvied up into 8x8 tile chunks, 512 chunks across and 512 chunks high, for a total of 262,144 chunks. What resources were available to be gathered was determined by what tiles and objects were within each 8x8 chunk. Mountain and cave tiles added ore to the chunk's resource pool, tree trunks added lumber, water added fish. If you mined a tile or chopped a tree within a chunk, you weren't mining the tile, you were mining from the combined resource pool, and could deplete the entire chunk's supply from one spot. From a programming logic and data storage perspective, this allowed them to track and store the available resources across the world on a chunk basis rather than a tile by tile basis, reducing the amount they had to keep track of from 16,777,216 tiles down to 262,144 chunks, with each chunk only needing to know a tally of specific types of tiles within it in order to generate its own resource pool.
Now, Outlands.
I've done enough lumberjacking to know that, for whatever reason, trees are tracked on a tree by tree basis here. Haven't done enough fishing to know if it still follows the 8x8. But I know mining still does, and there's even a built in option to see the 8x8. If you open the World Map from the Maps button in the upper left menu, and zoom in on it a bit, you get this:
The 8x8 in all its glory. The option to turn it off/on is under Grid and Zone Options if you right click on the map, but it's on by default.
As you can see, I'm standing at the intersection of 4 chunks. If I stand here and mine repeatedly, I will mine each chunk in succession, automatically switching to a new chunk when one chunk is depleted, until all 4 chunks are out of ore. I should get full ore from the chunks to the northwest, sw, and ne, and slightly less from the chunk to the southeast, because it's not entirely mountain/cave but instead has a bit of greenery in it. Once depleted, I can move north 16 tiles, jumping one intersection to the next one, and have 4 more chunks to mine, like so (with depleted chunks shown in purple, hand drawn in, it's not gonna do that for you, you'll have to keep mental track of that yourself):
And I can continue moving around along the grid lines, depleting chunks efficiently, knowing exactly how far I need to move once they run out before I can mine again, and knowing where there's weird corners and bits to grab that might be easily missed otherwise and spot full chunks that are only really accessible from one awkward spot. I believe you still need to be within 2 tiles of a spot to mine it (so at most one empty tile between you and the mining location), but if you can hit one tile in the chunk you hit the entire chunk.
That's why sometimes when you're mining you seem to be able to stand in one spot for a long time, and sometimes it runs out really quick. Sometimes you're standing near an intersection, and sometimes you're hitting a chunk with only a couple of valid tiles in it.
Now, as for colored ore, in old UO the colors were set in stone (pun intended) per chunk, so once you found Valorite it would always be Valorite, but Outlands seems to randomly generate a single colored ore type, or none at all, into a chunk's resource pool.
And that's the 8x8 Resource Grid.
