Forgotten World: Add New Books to Ultima 9!
I actually meant to report on this yesterday, but forgot to push it through the queue. The Forgotten World team have done a wonderful thing, in that they have figured out how to add text for new books and scrolls to Ultima 9*, and are on the cusp of implementing a utility which can do just that.
As such, they are looking for content submissions:
The Librarians of the Britannia seek new additions for their shelves. Over the next several months, we will be taking submissions for novels, songs, tales, self-help, and daily living texts to add to the available list of books for various locations around Britannia. Already, work is starting to fill out the list with books from Ultima 6 and 7, but more tomes are needed.
It is up to you how far you wish to develop the book. It can be a lengthy short story (though we would prefer if you kept it below 10 double-space pages), plot summary, excerpt from a daily living, occupational or self-help text, or a full guide of recipes. If your recipes or crafting ideas are worth-while they made be added as a scriptable event in-game similar to the bread-making feature. If you want to write a fictional tale (either full length or a plot summary), we do ask that you write something original rather than summarize the plot of a real novel.
…if you submit something, then as long as it fits and doesn’t contradict Ultima lore, it will be added to the book list. And when you make a submission, please include the name you want displayed for the book’s author, the kind of book it is, and approximately when it was written in relation to the games (pre-U5, post-SI, etc.).
A full list of their requirements, as these things go, can be found at the Forgotten World website.
Get your submissions in!
* Actually implementing the new book and scroll objects in-game is still being worked on.
My dad wrote a book and several unpublished short stories, though they are all in modern times. I could ask him if he would allow parts of them to be published here. I know it would be weird in an Ultima game to hear of modern things in a book, but considering the Avatar and Lord British came from modern Earth it wouldn’t be that weird. They probably brought a shitload of books with them to go into the Lycaeum or their private collections.
We know LB did. Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, surely Lord British didn’t write these from memory.
Just a clarification regarding implementing books/scrolls/signs, we can add new entries to existing instances of books in the world, easily. We could can even add books to the world, but it is just really messy to do so.
I’m confused. Are we talking about adding brand new books, or are we talking about editing existing books within the game? Because adding brand new books would be cool.
Also, the music contributions, are we talking about brand new music, or are we taking about editing existing music. Just curious.
Also, WTF, how come UltimaAiera is always incorrectly displaying the number of responses to an article. It always seems to report 2 or 3 more responses than actually exist in the last few articles you’ve posted.
Well, I remember that it used to count directly related articles as comments/responses, though I don’t see anything of the kind here or anywhere on this site anymore.
As for clarification, yes all new books and scrolls (and signs) can be added to the game with almost no limit, which altering the old books. So not only will new book entries be possible, but also new instances of book/scroll objects can be created on a map (currently only using a very inefficient method) and edited to display text to the new book entry.
Same thing for music. New and old songs will be heard throughout Britannia (well a rebuilt Britannia, but you get the idea).
Really, the main thing slowing us down is completion on our World Building editor capable of placing and editing objects and terrain on the various maps.
It is actually part of the reason for the slow progress on Beautiful Britannia. We are adding new objects to the world from in-game, extracting the altered Nonfixed Object Map File for the main map from the savegame, editing it via hex editor or our own incomplete nonfixed editor, and then replacing the starting version of the nonfixed file.