History of Sphere

1998 - 1999

Menace creates Grayworld early in 1998. The Ultima Online Second Age demo was used to base much of the emulator off of, the demo was a self contained server that illuminated many of the methods in which OSI built their servers. It eventually evolves into TUS (The Ultimate Server), which again evolves into Sphere (aka SphereServer) around April 2000. Versions 51 through 54 were released in this period.

2001

On March 15th 2001 55c was released followed by 55d on an unknown date. 55e was released on March 21st 2001 followed by 55f on another unknown date. 55g was released on March 29th 2001, 55h was released on April 4th 2001. One of the most popular versions from this era was 55i released on unknown date shortly after its predecessor. The 55 series brought on many changes and was a leap forward for support on the scripter's side with many beneficial changes to how the sphere script pack was fundamentally scripted.

2002

Shadowlord starts working on SteamEngine, an open-source UO emu mimicing Sphereserver's functionality, on Sept. 29th, 2002.

2003

55j was one of the last releases before the revisions began. Kell and Zorm worked tirelessly on these revisions and there was a schism in the community about their legitimacy. 55R1 released on November 14th 2003, and 55R2 on November 27th 2003. During which time Darkstorm began contributing to the source. 55R2A released on November 30th 2003. These were the final contributions for the R2 versions, the next year brought a new revision.

2004 - 2016

2004 saw significant Improvements to the core, starting with 55 R3 rc1 through R3 Final. These were labeled unofficial releases and "un-allowed". During the R3 final period Radiant began contributing to the source as well as Balkon. On June 7th 2004 Furio ajoined the team and 55 R4.0.1 through 55 R4.0.3 were released. Vjaka joins the the development team as well during this period, but the date is unknown. This brought the revisions to a close and the version was renamed to 56a. 56a had a brief lifetime before it was replaced with 56b on December 9th 2004. 56b was an extremely popular version and lived through till May 4th 2013. Ben, Shaklaban, Terrikate, Coruja, ShiryuX, MrSugarCube, RanXerox, Khaos, Nazghul, Shadow Dragon, Dwayne, Jeem, Beyonder, Mordaunt, Furio, Radiant, Ellessar, Camelloten, Vjaka, Epila, and many others contributed to the 56b version during this period. Today 56b still sees use on some servers, despite being an older emulator. On July 12th 2013 the 56c version of sphere was released, RanXerox and XuN began making contributions and 56c continued on through till April 9th 20016.

2016 - Present Day

The 56d branch was released around the 10th of April with contributions almost exclusively by Coruja, seeing updates as late as March 10th, 2021. 56d is considered the main branch. On the 11th of July in 2016 The X branch (formerly known as eXperimental) was forked from 56d and received a great deal bug fixes, heavy alteration of internal behaviors for better performance and stability. Support for 64 bit architecture and new standards were adopted. Additional comments to the code were added for better visibility and understanding, as well as re-organization of thousands of lines of code and files/directories. Refactoring of the code began, considering updates for the most recent programming standards. This branch is maintained still to this date by Nolok, XuN, Ben, Drk, Jhobean, Soulless and many others who continue to support the project.

Notable Shards (circa 2001)

This information was pulled from internet archives, sorted by the highest player count :

SHARD NAME	UPTIME	CLIENTS	REGISTRATION	VERSION	LANGUAGE	DESCRIPTION
Noah Mainland	107 days	514	WebApp	0.48e	CHINESE	enwelt.de
Novus Opiate	178 days	458	WebAuto	0.48e	English	Gryphon's Lair is currently in the testing phases
New World	171 days	432	EmailApp	0.51a	CHS	Many new feature such as new food potion and professions Visit us in http:
Jarry's World	146 days	419	Unspecified	0.48e
Enchanted Lands	106 days	372	WebAuto	0.51a	Italiano-English	The First Server in Italy
Cyber Kingdom	33 days	365	Unspecified	0.51a	English
Asiauo.com	20 days	318	Unspecified	0.51a	English	The best free Uo sphere.
Third Dawn	3 days	316	Unspecified	0.48e
NeoLand Server	148 days	310	Unspecified	0.54t	korean	Neoland server
PJUO	75 days	307	EmailApp	0.51a	English
Phoebus's World(uo.iszero.com)	60 days	253	Unspecified	0.51a	English
New NGI _UO	111 days	201	WebApp	0.51a	English	NGI - www.ngi.it - A Place to Play!
CSD UO	106 days	192	Unspecified	0.52
Alter Realm	13 days	191	WebAuto	0.54x	English	247 US Shard Located in Boston MA Area - Over 2 Years Old! Running the latest Sphere latest scripts and many new options. Large Player Base T1 Connection.
Koretanica	149 days	185	WebApp	0.51a	Korean
Schattenwelt	146 days	182	WebApp	0.51a	German	Schattenwelt - Good and large RP Server with lots of Races and Classes balanced Spellsystem and quite a lot of fun.
SER	50 days	178	Unspecified	0.48e
Legend of Hero	145 days	173	EmailApp	0.51a	English
Mystara	152 days	160	Unspecified	0.52	Portuguese	"Selected project made in Brazil by Parkus" Menasoft
Flying Snow	33 days	131	Free	0.51a	English
Darkness Dynasty	29 days	121	WebApp	0.51a	Chinese
Land of Dreams	144 days	121	Unspecified	0.5	German	RPG Shard
Universo v 1.01	3 days	119	Unspecified	0.51a	Italiano	Universo nato per il vostro divertimento un mondo in continua crescita e che sapr coinvolgervi e farvi appassionare pi che mai
Novus II	15 days	113	Unspecified	0.48e
Cimmeria	107 days	110	WebApp	0.51a	german
Elven's heaven	69 days	109	EmailApp	0.51a	English
Angeltear Land	90 days	104	Closed	0.51a	China