I believe increasing the rendering radius would indeed offset game balance. I play a thief sometimes and always wonder if I'm still inside the screens of anyone with a higher resolution than mine before going off stealth.
That's a half truth right there. Orion Assistant is closed source for a good reason. And the reason is: feature control. Basically server dev can use this to generate a packet which will disable EVERYTHING if need be and make OA completely useless or very limited, it's really up to server owners what they allow and what not. The same thing can be done with client options too, just take a look at the launcher.
UOR runs on RunUO 1.0.0 I do not think this older version has the scripts built into the server to disable parts of assistance programs. Otherwise Chris could disable the cheat features in steam and razor. There is a reason both clients have an option to negotiate features with the server.
If it's RunUO 1.0.0 then you don't care about upgrades, so you can mod your core in any way you want and add whatever you want into your scripts. If current server development team needs help in doing it, I can help.
I have tried helping code on the server and Chris does not seem to want the help. I think he has given up on getting help because the people that have helped in the past have caused more issues than they have helped with.
I don't need any access. I can just give him instructions and as a last resort we can always use TeamViewer. I really don't see what's the issue here. Otherwise Chris ( server owner, right? ) has a big problem. Because there's no way to detect when players are using 3rd party software by any means. Anyone can play with Stealh or Orion clients ( or Steam ) atm and automate game process in any way they want to.
After playing on Orion client for just one day (not on UOR), I can tell that this is the best UO client I've ever seen. Everything I could only dream of in terms of client improvements is there. And now I have a really hard time using the original client again... low frame rate makes my eyes bleed.
Orion client is bundled with it's own assistant utility (Orion Assistant) which is waaaaay more powerful than Razor. If I understand correctly, it's power is what concerns administration since it can allow more complex scripts that may break current balance. Plus, it may contain cheating functions. Orion is an open-source project, so the obvious workaround is to fork it and tune it specifically for UOR (possibly blocking some functions and adding security features to block non-forked Orion on UOR). But that would require someone proficient in C++. And a lot of time & effort, most likely...
The Orion dev team has the source code for razor. They have been trying to get the source code for steam because its coded in the same system that there client is coded in. They have had no luck on getting the code. They do not want to develope an assist programs and would rather focus on client side programming. Not sure if they will proceed with releasing razor as part of the client or will keep trying to get steams source code. As for the assistance program, servers can limit what the client can do if the server has the updated files. UOR runs on Runuo 1.0.0 which cannot disable features on assist programs. Orion, uosteam, razor, and sallos all have options to negotiate permissions with the server.
mmm, maybe I misunderstood you. Were you trying to say that you'd prefer to use Razor instead of OrionAssistant?