Sorry, but I haven’t had the time to create a homepage so far, so I want to provide some quick info on the actual project state here:

Currently (after being offline for about 6 months) I continue working on basic tasks, like categorizing items and upgrading the creation tools. When this is done, the next step will be adding bigger objects (mainly rocks and trees) onto the Britannia overworld (which invovles pure hexcoding) Both of these tasks will take until approximately Summer 2011.

After that I will have something new to show (which is not really the case ATM), so this will be a good time for providing a homepage. Also, a new demo is planned for late 2011 (I hope that I get the .NET Launcher done before then).

Furthermore, I’m sorry to say that there will be no way to remove the fogging on overworld maps in Windows 7, but it doesn’t make much sense to do so anyway, simply because a MiddleClip value higher than 6000 makes the game unstable.

Long-term goals for Beautiful Britannia:

• Providing many more details for the Britannia overworld
• Making several unsued maps (overworlds and dungeons) playable
• Shortening the linear parts of the game and adding nonlinear elements instead

So there you have it, folks.

I have to confess a certain particular affinity for this project, in no small part due to the fact that it makes use of the original Ultima 9 game engine. Even in this day and age, that engine stacks up not badly against more modern systems, at least to my thinking.

Yes, the engine doesn’t do as well with DirectX (it was built in the era of Glide), and yes, the polygon counts are lower and the textures are low-resolution. But equally, the world of Ascension was far more interactive than most 3D RPG game worlds are these days (at least if one does an “out of the box” comparison), and few games these days do as well making a world feel truly seamless (many don’t even try). Many of the game’s systems (its conversation engine, for example) were quite well-implemented.

And while I’m not exactly the biggest fan of jumping puzzles, I actually rather miss the ability to jump and climb objects in many of the games I enjoy today. In Ascension, it was no big deal to jump across a small chasm or climb up a ledge…and I can think of a good half-dozen situations in Mass Effect 2 where I would have killed to have either ability.

So…check thou it out!

Feel like rescuing a princess again? Or maybe taking a space shuttle mission to a distant world? Has it been too long since you journeyed into the Abyss?

Ultimoid appears to be a browser-based parody of the Ultima games, constructed with the GameBuilder service. As such, it’s not a particularly lengthy adventure, and its control set is pretty simple.

Its appearance draws heavily on the tiled graphics of Ultima 1 through Ultima 5. Timeline-wise, it claims to be set in a post-Ultima 9 Britannia.

Apropos of what I said before, I’ve decided to bump up the testing weekend a bit, and have made a couple of changes to the plan since yesterday afternoon.

For starters, the ‘Milano’ theme is out. I’ve gone with the ‘Perogato’ theme (from the same designer) instead, with a few custom modifications (including a sexy new logo, if I do say so myself). I’ve dropped the ‘:’ from the site name as well…it’s a minor thing.

Additionally, since I actually like this theme, there’s a decent chance that it will stay in place. I have to make a few modifications to it still (e.g. adding tag support and forum discussion links), but those are minor cosmetic changes. This theme has most of what else I was hoping to end up with: a more modern feel, a featured content pane so I can highlight stories that I think are important, more and better use of jQuery and inline images, and dropdown menus for quicker access to the things that keep many of you coming back to the site: Ultima remakes, patches, and utilities.

May I draw attention to the double menu bar at the top of the site? The red bar, the good reader will note, lists what are considered, by this site at least, to be the main canonical entries in the Ultima series, from Akalabeth through to Ultima 9, including both Underworld titles. Obviously, not every remake, patch, and utility is listed, and so the complete list of categories still appears on the sidebar, but this way there will at least serve to get a goodly number of site visitors to the content they want a) more quickly, and b) without even the need to scroll down the main page.

The main page of the site will also boast more articles under this template.

Anyhow, please leave feedback in the comments form of this article, or in the related forum thread. I want to hear what everyone thinks about this redesign. And as I mentioned, this design is one I like more, but is not yet at the point where it will be an unchangeable thing; if a goodly number of people who leave comments say “I hate it!”, I’ll put the ‘Aspire’ theme back first thing on Tuesday morning, without the slightest hesitation.

Quoth Sergorn:

I will be following a similar pattern for each game: a first post presenting the game, my relationship with it, and when it applies the version chosen for this playthrough. Afterward I’ll post blog posts and possibly some screenshots of my adventuring for how long it will take (which could take a while, or not so much considering I can end up devoting a crazy amount of time to such things when I put myself to it) with some final impressions once the game is finished.

He might even delve into some of the various ported versions of the Ultima titles, though at this time he has no fixed plans in that regard.

So…do be sure to check back with him from time to time!

I admit I’ve been tempted to move this one into the Cemetery…but for this somewhat cryptic announcement that Thepal made in the forum earlier this month. For the moment at least, this one will remain on the books as a remake.

And yes, we could probably debate the merits and problems of Ultima 9 until Ultima 10 gets released (see what I did there?)…but that’s not really what I’m posting this article for. I just want to let you all know that Grandor and Novum’s patches are once again available for download.

Anyhow, I’ve restored the 1.18 and 1.19 patches for Ultima 9. These two patches are basically required to make Ascension run well on any system, and the 1.19 patch in particular seems to be necessary to get Ascension running on modern graphics hardware. At least, that was my experience when I tried to re-install the game earlier this year.