The shard host already has the UO client — ServUO cannot boot without one, and
Config/DataPath.cfg resolves into Server.Core.DataDirectories at runtime. So the
cliloc table, the creature and item art, and the spawn atlas's own source files
can all reach the website over the bridge that already exists, and UOFiddler,
the desktop conversion step and the website's shared-filesystem view of the
ServUO tree all go away.
Design of record for the work: the shard extracts, the sidecar forwards, the
website decides — which is the only arrangement that keeps the sidecar a dumb
forwarder while still resolving creature slug -> body id, something only code
running inside ServUO can do.
Measured against this machine's ServUO 57.4 tree and client rather than assumed:
Art.GetStatic and GetLand decode ~66,000 ids with no faults, 1,144 bodies have a
decodable first frame, and body 400 alone is 1,050 frames across its actions and
directions — which is what makes the bulk set one thumbnail per body and
everything deeper on demand.
Two findings shape the build. Gumps.GetGump(2) does not fail, it corrupts the
process (AccessViolationException, 0xC0000005) — uncatchable on .NET Framework
4.8 and a shard crash in-process — so §4 recommends owning bounds-checked
decoders rather than calling ServUO's vendored Ultima, which also removes the
System.Drawing/libgdiplus dependency and the UOP gap that leaves gargoyle bodies
666/667 empty. And the shard -> sidecar direction has no line cap today, which
Protocol 8 must close before it starts sending large lines deliberately.
UOFiddler is Beerware, so its Mythic cliloc decompressor can be ported into this
GPL-3.0-or-later tree and the conversion step retired entirely.
Nine phases, four decisions still open in §17.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016wDDVXWMDz82WqE1i969r4
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