Nicodemus' Worldbuilding Dev Diary

[Nicodemus]

Dev Diary       March 9, 2008


I’ve decided to just come clean…I had been wondering how to begin this Dev Diary and it occurred to me that it would probably be easiest if I just threw caution to the wind, rolled the dice and let the chips fall where they may (I just  love cliches, don't you?  That was the most I could fit in one sentence on my first try.) 


I am an Ultima Addict.


I've been suffering from Ultimaholism for a few years now and it feels good to just type those words out....it really is refreshing and I must say I feel better already.  I'm more relaxed, like a great lumbering beast with huge dripping venomous fangs has been physically lifted from my shoulders and all the cares and concerns of this earth have just floated away on the backs of tiny angels.  Smiling cheribically as they wave fondly at me and head ever onward to the blissful transulent safety of their majestic havens.  Far away and out of view.


Well maybe not quite like that, but perhaps close…perhaps very close.

Anyhow, I’m glad we’ve gotten that out of the way.  Introductions are probably in order so let me begin with this...My handle is Nicodemus and I am a Worldbuilder for the U6P Archon team.  My UDIC name is Randy Dragon I’ve been with the team a good while now.  I began my modding career by doing some Quality Assurance for the team…I believe the team was releasing their second Milestone at the time and I had written Zephyr(the then and now Co-Producer of the team) an email offering my services as a play-tester…he may have mentioned in a post that they were interested in a few people doing that for them.   I had just completed Ultima 5 Remake Lazarus and I wanted to see more…so when he replied back that he would offer me a spot as a play-tester, I quickly fell right into it.

I QA’d for a while and slowly began to take on other projects…a little at a time…most of them in the Worldbuilding function, but I dabbled in Content as well.  AS WyrdWeb says in her u6project.com profile...I was donning different "hats".  My first big worldbuilding assignment was Paws…Frilly Wumpus gave me a worldbuilding tutorial off of the old Siege Network.  After I read that I checked out some concept art that Zephyr had and I also looked into some resources on the internet for the original Ultima 6 game.  I also went bumping around in Lazarus a bit as well just to see how they had pieced things together.  After I did this research I then got a scratch sheet of paper and drew an outline of the region I was working in and then placed the buildings as best I could taking into consideration the original game and our new concept of the town. 

Now I’m sure most of you know that Lazarus and the U6P project work off of the same map…. utilizing the Project Britannia map.  Most cases, we are working off of just an empty landscaped area with only trees, hills, rivers and the like to start off with…in order to fit all of our buildings and whatnot in, typically quite a bit of terraforming is in order.  Some examples of this is if you look closely and compare Project Britannia, or even Lazarus’ version of Paws area you will see in our game the Sea is pushed back a little bit and some hills had to be what I have just taken to calling “Terra-formed”.   I’ve had to use this process quite a bit….Buc’s Den had to be slightly terraformed, the Skara Brae islands actually had to be merged together in one case…Project Britannia’s Skara Brae has 3 islands…I condensed it down to 2 and removed the river that ran through the bigger island…(this made our version more in line with how the original game layout looked.)  Whenever feasible I like to keep with the original game layout as much as possible…this also comes into play with some of the décor which I am sure I will cover with my subsequent Dev Diaries….

My intention with these posts are to keep you all in the community up to speed with what’s going on in the mod-making process with our little game…my hope is that I can give you all a pretty good idea of where we have been and where we are aiming to go with our version of Ultima 6 The False Prophet.  That’s all for now folks…I’ll continue at a later time when I can come up for air…


Here are some pics of the topics I discussed in this Diary...



Overhead view of Paws



Overhead view of Skara Brae



A town shot of Skara Brae



A ferry landing from Skara Brae main island to Iver's Round--home of that crazy, whacky wizard Horance



The Skara Brae Winery

[Spyder]

Looks great, Nicodemus! Beautiful screenshots of a beautiful landscape
Keep up the good work!

[Petrell]

Heh, Paws was rather bloated in U6. It was third largest settlement in entire Britannia!  Not that Britannia has stayed consistent between games  with entire islands rising and sinking between them  (if someone want's to compare, The Hawk has good size maps of first seven Ultimas at The Lands of Ultima).

Does U6P pay homage to sunken islands from U5 (Bordermarch, Windmere & Farthing) so player can see their ruins at bottom of the sea? Also is the weird swapping of Codex and Shrine of Humility fixed or did you decide to keep it as it was in original U6.

Anyway, great work!

[WyrdWeb]

Rest assured, we have some things up our sleeves.    Also, one of the things that is our goal is to  fix intra-series inconsistencies.

[U6P Zephyr]

Does U6P pay homage to sunken islands from U5 (Bordermarch, Windmere & Farthing) so player can see their ruins at bottom of the sea?

*cough* Not saying. *cough cough*

[Petrell]

Rest assured, we have some things up our sleeves.    Also, one of the things that is our goal is to  fix intra-series inconsistencies.

That's good to hear.

Zephyr seems to have something stuck in his throat. WyrdWeb, do you mind going there and slapping him (hard) in the back for me? 

[WyrdWeb]

Zephyr seems to have something stuck in his throat. WyrdWeb, do you mind going there and slapping him (hard) in the back for me? 

No problem, Petrell! 

[Corwin]

I've posted this with a link on our news page. Please let me know when any future DD's are posted in case I miss them, so I can keep our readers informed and this project fresh in their minds!!

[WyrdWeb]

Corwin, I would be happy to make sure you are contacted as we have news, and for future DDs. Thank you!

[Nicodemus]

Dev Diary       March 29, 2008



All right, I’ve had time to come up for some air…. Actually, I took a little vacation here recently, went out of town and just relaxed.  Galveston Texas was a little cool this time of year, but we had fun anyhow.

After the vacations and lolly gagging around it is time to come home and get some work done.  So here I am with the second installment of my World-Builder’s Diary.  My first thought was to take you all from beginning and up to the most recent in my exploits of Dungeon Siege modding.  I think however, I am going to deviate from that original plan and bring you all up to speed on some of our newer developments.  Why?  Well firstly, because I can…this is my diary and I make the rules.  Secondly, because you all most likely want to see what we have in store for you for M5…rather than just see things you can load up with the last Milestone and just see for yourself.

So let’s talk my big assignment that kicked off the New Year.  After Christmas we all (we all, being the team) decided that we were going to hunker down and build some cities.  The cities we had in mind were Skara Brae, Moonglow, Jhelom, and New Magincia.  Today we are going to talk about Jhelom.  I’ll talk about the others later.

Now when planning for Jhelom commenced I had to take a few things into consideration.  Jhelom, as I am sure most of you Ultima-lovers know, is a city chock full of people who like to FIGHT.  So I had to think in terms of how people who like to fight “think”…that’s kinda difficult for me because I’m a rather peaceful guy and tend to let words win my battles, but nonetheless, I had some ideas anyhow.  We already have the original game as a base…and WyrdWeb is the Ultima Lore expert on the team and pretty much knows everything (Think: Hermione from Harry Potter, but all grow’d up) so we already have the ideas for the armourer, the Sword and Keg Tavern, the Warrior’s Stead Inn…. so on and so forth.  So Wyrd and I get to talking and Wyrd has this idea to have a List Field in Jhelom.  Remember folks, we plan on adding material to the original game where and when appropriate…so we figure a nice List Field where fighters can train to fight the oncoming “Red Horde” of Gargoyle Baddies is in order.

So we start with the kernel of a theme…and all of a sudden we have more epiphanies.  Well if we are going to have a List Field…let’s make it interesting.  So I played with some ideas and finally came up with the idea for a Pit.  Now the Pit would be surrounded by spectator areas, it would have some benches, and maybe some chairs, throw in a tent maybe three…. and voila a Pit any man would be proud to um…die in.

 So, we have a Pit.  How about we to flesh it out a bit. Let’s have sparring partners…friendly npcs who will fight little mock battles but won’t die (Frilly Wumpus came up with that ingenious scripting).  All right, wouldn’t it be neat if we had archers firing at targets?  “BAM!!” (As Emeril would exclaim) Archers…. Kick it up a notch!  Minstrels you say?  Well sure, we’ll add them too.  So as you can see, all of a sudden like the whip crack of lightning, our little infant Pit that started out as a “Hey, let’s have a List Field.”… turned into a big whoopity-do.  Neat huh?  That, my friends, is the joy of modding. 

Which leads me to another point.  We here at TeamArchon.tm are always reaching out to you the fans, for inspiration, support, and feedback.  We appreciate the time you all take to let us know how you feel.  We are also always on the lookout for those of you who may be interested in joining our illustrious team.  The more minds and hearts at work on this project the better I know it will be.  If any of you have enjoyed Ultima for years like I have, and just feel like giving back a little to this awesome franchise, then please consider TeamArchon your avenue for that contribution.  Post on our board if you are interested and one of our friendly representatives will respond in short order.

That’s all I’m going to go over for this entry…perhaps we will pick up with Jhelom again with the next Diary…or maybe we will move on to Skara Brae, Moonglow or New Magincia…you folks can post if you like and let me know what you all would like to see next.

Here are some pics of the Pit and Jhelom taken by our very own Aletys (PR, QA and Apprentice Wber).

[Corwin]

Great Nic, I'll post a link to here on the Watch newspage in the next few minutes. Done!!

[WyrdWeb]

My vote is for Moonglow in the next Dev Diary!

[Aletys]

I second that commotion.

[Nicodemus]

Obviousily I haven't posted in a while (Real-Life does unfortunately sometimes come into play) and regretably this post will be short ....But I thought you folks who so diligently follow our progress on this remake ought to get a little something today. 



WATCH OUT --- SPOILERS AHEAD....




























NO REALLY, THERE ARE SPOILERS RIGHT DOWN HERE.



















LAST CHANCE!  TURN BACK----YOUR EYES MAYETH BURN IN YOUR 'EAD.














OKAY....BUT DON'T SAY YOU WERE NOT WARNED...








Lycaeum gets a new library--


Tholden, Britannia's Chancellor gets a new desk--


A hideout--Alfie built this nice little hole for us---and this is just a taste of the magnificient dungeons that he has managed to magick up for us in no time flat--


Oldtimers will know that you will have to do a little digging on this isle to realize its entire worth--





That's all for now folks---Remember we are always looking for more people to help out with the Project, so if you are interested, feel free to post in this forum.

Take care and until next time!

[Alfie]

More to come soon I suppose 

I have to add that basic Worldbuilding is nearly completed, including all Britannian dungeons...

I take advantage of speaking about dungeons to wish a beautiful journey in the darkness to all the Avatars. And please, when you will be totally lost, let us know.