Hail, well met, and Happy Thanksgiving,

I would like to welcome to the team Chris Hopkins who created the parody Ultima IV Pt. 2.  He will be our Pascal Coder for our secondary tools, and from what I've seen of the parody, I feel confident that we will see some great new features to our toolkit.

Now onto this week's Awesome Screen.  Firstknight's Beautiful Britannia work has yielded some interesting additions in more than just the flora.  Take a look at the screenshot for Britain and let me know (via the comments at Aiera) what you think is different.

Work on the Patches project has been a little slow of late due to real life.  Fortunately, the semester ends on December 3, so expect a lot of awesome during the weeks before Christmas.

- Iceblade

Hail and well met,

Unfortunately, this past week has been fairly busy and next week will be worse, but I've got something pretty awesome to show you guys.  First, I'll refer back to the first Awesome screen I released.  You will notice that Jaana is actually standing in the court of Yew as a result of a proximity trigger going off.  This serves more as a proof of concept that we can make these kinds of changes rather then a solution to the Jaana problem.  Actually, I must admit, it was fairly easy to do.  Jaana had an empty teleport "activity sequence" (a series of activity commands that do different things like teleport, patrol, loiter) labeled "To Yew," which I filled with a teleport target ID.  Next I had to have it activated, so I used Vasagralem's trigger sequence and changed the activity sequence reference in the trigger to point toward Jaana's "To Yew" sequence.  

Now I'll point you to Awesome screen #3, where Jaana is now standing in Moonglow.  What is significant about this is that I actually placed new objects into the game world, gave them the correct properties and flags to function, and created a completely new trigger sequence to call Jaana's activity sequence.  So now whenever I approach Mariah's house, a trigger gets called to activate Jaana's "To Yew" teleport activity sequence, which takes her to the teleport target I placed at Mariah's house.  Another aspect in this image that you should note is that Jaana is sitting.  She actually did this automatically, and in fact, we found that at times she would go inside the house and sit on a bench there.  We know that this occurred because this activity sequence we used also included an "activate activity sequence" command that pointed back to Jaana's "Loiter" activity sequence (a simple, one command sequence).  So apparently, loitering is a very comprehensive activity, which is great as this just makes our job easier.

I suppose you might be wondering why I was working on getting Jaana to Moonglow.  Well unlike Jaana, Mariah doesn't have any empty activity sequences I could use, and we currently don't have the tools to add new activity sequences or commands.  Also, the court at Yew is very packed in and the high concentration of additional triggers makes testing rather difficult - and there was a lot of testing needed to get this working properly.   Luckily, it shouldn't take me long to take what I did at Mariah's and repeat it for the Court of Yew.  I will admit here that Jaana will be reincorporated and ready to go within a few weeks (depending on how busy I'll be).  Mariah, however, will slow down a new patch drastically unless of course a Delphi/Pascal coder joins the team.

That is all for this week.  Be sure to return in a week to see more Awesome.

- Iceblade

Hello again ye ole friends and yonder new followers,

As you may have noticed, the site has received some more updates.  I've switched our image viewer to Admiror Gallery 2.0 for its additional functionality and customizable appearance settings.

Speaking of improved graphics, I would like to present this week's Awesome Screen "Trees of Yew", which can be seen on the Releases and Media page.  If you'll compare that screenshot with those in the screenshot archive you will notice a rather marked improvement in the graphical quality.  I would like you to take special note of the amazing improvement in the leaves of the trees.  I have to admit that I was totally astounded by the look of Yew in this screenshot.  And we aren't even using custom made resources; if we were to recruit a dedicated texture artist, the improvement to the overall visuals would no doubt blow you away.

Oh, if you haven't yet, check out Awesome Screen #1, I think you will notice something rather interesting in the court of Yew.

In addition to screenshots, I would like to announce the official return of Project Beautiful Britannia under the Forgotten World roof.  I will let FirstKnight comment further:

A warm welcome to everyone, who is interested in our projects. I am very happy to say that I found a new way back to my old home here on this site.   My humble self and Iceblade have joined forces again to explore the possibilities of enhancing Ultima IX, while keeping our own projects in mind.

 

Within the next year we both will focus on common things (decoding stuff, game fixes) to provide a solid base for our greater enhancements.  So, even if there will not be so much "visible" progress within a certain amount of time, please be patient, the speed will increase drastically, when we will have both the knowledge and the tools available.

 

I further recommend, that you check out the project sections for the BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA series and FORGOTTEN WORLD regularly, simply because new developments can easily influence the overall project goals.  For now, the first major goal for me is not only to help both projects to improve, but also to finish the first release of BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA within the next 5 years.

 

Not to forget, I cannot thank WTFDragon enough for supporting our projects for all those years.  For his Aiera site, I will leave the project sections separated (because they have quite different goals), but I will provide any common content under the FORGOTTEN WORLD section (texture packages for example), only full demos and releases of BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA and its sequels will be provided under their own section then.  I hope, that this solution is not too confusing, but regarding to the replies on Aiera there is a different fanbase for both projects, and this choice will provide simply the right downloads for the right people then.

 

Finally, I will promise to everyone reading this, that I will FINISH the whole BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA series (consisting of 3 Parts) as well as supporting Iceblade as much as possible to reach his goals with FORGOTTEN WORLD.  All I want to request from the readers here is to be VERY, VERY PATIENT, the results will be worth the wait. 

A new set of screenshots for Beautiful Britannia is also available on its own screenshot page.  In those screenshots, you can view more of the wonderful retextured scenery.

In addition, I found some screenshots from our old website, which I've posted for your perusal.  Most of these were placed into our Archived Screenshots page, but there were a few interesting editor screenshots that I posted on the Releases and Media page.  I also posted in the Editor Gallery a screenshot view of the nonfixed objects on the lowest level of Hythloth.

Just to add, in addition to a C++ programmer, we also have a need for a Delphi/FreePascal coder.  Well that is all for now.  Be sure to return in one week for more Awesome.

- Iceblade and FirstKnight

Hello friends,

If you are having difficulty getting the Deathly Hallows map to load or you are can't your Ultima IX CD, fear not.  Thanks to Dagur Dragon, you can view a near complete run through of the map.  Enjoy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxjK0ReryyE

On another note, please vote in our poll for our next Ultima IX bug fix.  I will be keeping the poll open until the end of November.

Oh and one last thing, I am starting a new feature at the site where I post an interesting screenshot every Friday for at least the next few months.  I made a quick one today. It's nothing special. ;)  The screenshot is the first one on the Releases and Media page.

- Iceblade