Archive for April, 2008
I like the guys at Cracked.com. While I’m not a fan of some of the gross-out, overtly sexual humour, I do generally appreciate the insight they often display in their articles. Yes, they’re intended to be funny…but often, the underlying truth is quite compelling.
The Seven Commandments All Video Games Should Obey- #1 – Better graphics do not equal innovation and/or creativity.
…guys like Epic games president Mike Capps are out there making stupid-ass statements about how they would never lower themselves to develop for the [Nintendo Wii] because that would be “going backward.”
This is epidemic in an industry that defines “innovation” purely by graphical horsepower and nothing else. Guys like him are utterly baffled that anyone could ever want a Wii, just because it, you know, offers a completely new playing experience.
Somehow these guys have gotten it in their heads that nothing counts for innovation except bump mapping and pixel shaders. “However can any human enjoy these outdated graphics without literally vomiting with disgust?”
Well, if these people would bother having a conversation with someone outside their own offices, they’d realize that the entire concept of “outdated” graphics is meaningless to 80 percent of gamers.
Want proof? Nintendo DS games look like this:
(blocky screenshot from Mario Kart)
They’ve sold more than 60 million of them. Tell you what, Mike. The next time you see some casual gamer tapping away at their Nintendo DS, show them a screenshot of Gears of War…Don’t be shocked if they point out your game seems made up of three colors (brown, gray, and muzzle flash). Sure, hard-core gamers know the difference, they know the game is a marvel of technology. The rest of us just want to have fun, or be told a good story.
It gets hard, some days, not to punch people right in the mind who complain that the Ultima games are “outdated” and that they have “terrible graphics.”
Tags: bump map, Cracked.com, Gears of War, Mike Capps, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, pixel shader, Ultima
Well, it’s been a little while since I posted an update pertaining to Ultima projects, and I see that Petrell and Dino over at Dino’s Ultima Page have uncovered several juicy morsels of news. To wit:
EUO
This Ultima-like project reached its fifth year just recently, and to celebrate the occasion they threw a number of bonuses and extra stuff into the game — experience bonuses, prizes & giveaways, DM-hosted events, special in-game drinks (eggnog, for example), and even a few new bosses.
Also, a “Newbie Island” tutorial map has been added to the game to help new players ease in.
Ultima 6 Project
A new press release from this promising-looking remake of Ultima 6 has been released at RPGWatch. It has some details about new cities and places in the pending fifth milestone release (Nicodemus’ keep, for example), and also informs us that the team is always in need of world builders, 3D modelers, artists, and musicians.
So, O Reader, if you fall into any of those categories, you might want to swing by the Ultima 6 Project website and drop someone a line.
Additionally, project developer Nicodemus has posted another update to his worldbuilding Dev Diary with some cool new screenshots of his work (Jhelom and Skara Brae).
Ultima: Iris
A new build — build 2010 — of this 3D client for Ultima Online has been released. It can be downloaded from the project’s homepage, or via the project entry here at Aiera.
xu4
A new snapshot of the Mac version of this Ultima 4 remake is available for download either through the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera. A new Windows snapshot is also available.
Ultima V for TI Calculators
Ranman has posted additional news about his project that has ported Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. He lets us know, firstly, about some special item capabilities that he as implemented. Secondly, he talks about killing NPCs, lock picking, and guard behaviour — rather a “law and order” sort of post.
The project is still in beta testing.
I also took a bit of a wander around the Ultima community myself, and noticed a few other odds and ends that the Reader might be interested in.
Savage Empire for Exult
Scythifuge is always looking for people to help out with his ambitious goal of porting the Savage Empire storyline into Exult.
Exult
Speaking of Exult, I notice that the Windows snapshot of Exult 1.4 has been updated recently (April 14th), as have the snapshots for Exult Tools and Exult Studio. These can be downloaded from the project website, and I have added them to the project entry here at Aiera.
Project Britannia
I noticed that the britannia_art.dsres and britannia_logic.dsres resource files for this Ultima world framework were updated at the beginning of April. Changes since the previous revision include the addition of a new lockpick texture, a ferry, and two new light textures, as well as changes to melee attack logic, the lockpick’s shape, and a bunch of other things.
The updated files can be downloaded from the Project Britannia site, or via the project entry here at Aiera.
Also, I’ve made a few minor changes to the site here. For starters, I have added a module to the site sidebar to track the ten most downloaded files in the last 30 days. Initially, I wasn’t going to clear the statistics for the download manager with any sort of frequency, but after a bunch of Ultima 9-related downloads surged ahead (in some cases, to over 3,000 downloads!), it seemed reasonable to give some of the other files a chance to make the top spot.
So it’s there, and I won’t be putting a “top five” list onto news posts anymore.
And of course, there’s the gallery and Ultima art repository. I do encourage any interested users to register a user account there and begin uploading any Ultima-related art they can find so that it can be preserved for posterity. This includes scans of art from the manuals, which won’t be around forever.
Oh, and I’ve added another countdown to the sidebar. Only 190 days (roughly — could change in either direction) until Grace and I welcome our little one into the world!
Tags: Aiera, Dino's Ultima Page, Dungeon Siege, EUO, Exult, Exult Studio, Exult Tools, Jhelom, Mac, Project Britannia, Savage Empire, Skara Brae, Texas Instruments, Ultima, Ultima 4, Ultima 5, Ultima 6, Ultima 6 Project, Ultima 7, Ultima 9, Ultima Online, Ultima: Iris, Windows, xu4
Savage Empire for Exult
Produced by: Scythifuge
Website: Exult Form Thread
A project to recreate Savage Empire using Exult. This relatively new project (announced June 16, 2006) seems to be developing at a reasonable pace. Scythifuge has been experimenting with the Gimp and PaintShop Pro, and has begun to add custom graphics to this promising work. He has also begun to experiment with high-resolution tiles, and has posted some sample roof tiles to the forum thread linked above.
As yet, however, no demo or project snapshot has been released.
Tags: Exult, Gimp, PaintShop Pro, Savage Empire
Despite the lack of new news, I’ve been busy.
A discussion unfolded last month about Ultima-related art, with one commentator, Hexxer, noting:
I have had a very hard time trying to find decent resolution Ultima art. It would be nice if someone perhaps made a post requesting this stuff…
Ergonpandilus Dragon dug up a handful of very nice examples thereof, drawing on content from Ultima 9, Ultima V: Lazarus, and other projects as well. One hopes that his findings were but a sampling of content that is available “out there” however. Whether this is the case or not, I cannot say for certain. Regardless, Hexxer had one more observation which is worth repeating here:
I am sure there must be some community members willing to scan some classic stuff at high res, if its not done at some point this stuff is going to fade away!
I think that he’s right. The Ultima games had some great art associated with them — game boxes, manual illustrations, in-game and cut-scene graphics, and promotional material — and have also inspired the creation of a lot of really high-quality art as well in the years since their release. And I think it would be a good idea to have an archive of high-resolution copies of that art, in order to preserve it.
To that end, I’ve made a few changes here at Aiera.
As the Reader should know, images are integrated into many project entries here on the site; these images are stored and called up from a gallery, powered by the Coppermine gallery system, which until now I have kept “out of sight” of the casual visitor. This was due primarily to the fact that I couldn’t find a template for Coppermine which matched the template I am using for the visual layout of Aiera.
That has since changed, in that I have ported Aiera’s template to Coppermine, more or less (a first for me, and quite the learning experience if I do say so myself!). And so the user is now both able and invited to visit the Aiera gallery. What is more, I have opened user registration on the gallery, so that those who wish to submit content for consideration may do so.
Using the gallery is simple, if the Reader but follows the steps below:
- Register as a user in the gallery
- Wait for me to confirm the registration
- Log in to the gallery
- On the sidebar, click on Create/Order my albums
- Create an album — this is necessary in order to save uploaded pictures
- On the sidebar, click on Upload file
- Upload as many as ten files from a hard drive, or five files from online sources
- Save the files to the album previously created
- Wait for me to review and approve the images — those images that meet the criteria outlined below will be ported over to the Ultima Art section of the gallery
- If I don’t approve the images within three days, let me know and I’ll get my act together
- Enjoy!
Guidelines for image submissions are as follows:
- Images must be Ultima-related (obviously)
- Images must be of fairly high resolution. Printable resolutions are preferable.
- Images smaller than 800×600 pixels will be rejected unless it can be demonstrated that they are the only extant representation of that particular piece of artwork
- Images must not already be in the gallery
Due to the fact that most of the images we are talking about here likely fall under a copyright of some kind, their being archived here will be assumed to be covered under fair use provisions in copyright law; they will be stored for posterity only, and not out of any intent to use them for profit generation or money-making ventures.
Update: Registration should work now. There was a problem with the Captcha security image plugin, and this has now been corrected. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Tags: Aiera, Coppermine, copyright, fair use, Ultima, Ultima 9, Ultima art, Ultima V: Lazarus
A little one!
My apologies for the lack of updates this month; in addition to getting away for an Easter vacation, my wife and I just found out that we are now expecting our first child. Very exciting! It does keep one busy, however.
Oh, yeah: far less awesomely, let me just apologize if the site is wonky tomorrow. I’m upgrading Wordpress again, as well as the image-handler.
Tags: Easter