Firstknight, as Iceblade mentioned in his Forgotten World update, has been busily working on expanding the map of Britannia in Ultima 9. Cove, and the area east of it, has occupied much of his attention, and the results have been impressive:

Commenting on his work, Firstknight had this to say:

In the last 3 months I’ve developed a new method, which allows me to insert groups of objects from other maps. In fact, it’s a bit tricky, but works in the end. One of the screens shows a new weapon store in cove, which was reused from an old map. Now that Valclav has a nice store in Cove, the plan is to implement a schedule for him, so that he can walk home to Minoc in the evening and come back the next morning. Other screens show off a pair of caves, which were also reused from another old map.

So, with the added buildings (there is even a working windmill!), combined with some terrain motifications, the city of Cove…well, it looks like a little city now, don’t you think?

After that, I reworked the terrain of the Cove expansion, and created a more interesting landscape. One of the screens shows a river with a mountain in the background. Another screen shows the shrine (from some distance); it’s now located at the eastern edge of the island.

As always, the screenshots from Beautiful Britannia look nothing short of amazing. I can’t wait to actually play through this expanded part of the world when the next release from the project is…er…released. Yes.