Beautiful Britannia 2011 vs 2010 Comparison
I posted news about the release of Beautiful Britannia 2011 R1 last week, and was suitably impressed by the list of details that Firstknight sent my way concerning the changes he’d made. But I think I kind of undersold it, if the number of hits on the file is any indication. (I mean…27 downloads? No, no, no.)
I say that because, in all honesty, I had no idea just how profound the change was. I knew that he had enhanced a number of the textures in the game, especially on the foliage. But the actual scale of the change since his penultimate demo release (in late 2010) is…phenomenal. Witness:
Old and busted...2010 demo screenshot.
New hotness...2011 demo screenshot!
Now, I have to apologize slightly, because I probably oversold this on Twitter and the Ultima Facebook page. What can I say: I hadn’t actually cracked into the mod before and seen the difference for myself. But I have to say…it’s incredible.
For full effect: click on over to the Beautiful Britannia screenshots page, and take a look at the last/bottom section of images, entitled “Development History”. Start with the last image (bottom-right) and work your way forward; Firstknight has done an excellent job of capturing images of the same scene through the years as he has made his changes.
And…just…wow.
And really: download the 2011 demo and try it out!
Nice changes! So it is DEMO only…?
Still just the demo, yes, in that Firstknight has only made improvements (read: added additional foliage) to Yew and parts of Britain, two cities within the game.
Note, however, that his texture modifications should affect all 3D assets in the game which use those textures, so you should be able to enjoy many of the improvements as you wander through the rest of Britannia. And the game itself, of course, is still playable from start to finish.
Thanks for promoting Beautiful Britannia 2011 R1, Ken!
Let me add some lines to this:
Yes, Beautiful Britannia 2011 R1 is still very unfinished, i’ve only removed the “demo” from the name, because it’s also fully a playable version of Ultima IX.
Yew is the most finished part of this release (with over 10.000 hand-placed additional objects so far), and because those 20+ highres textures i’ve included in “Beautiful Britannia 2011 R1” affects all those added objects, the effect is quite impressive, as can be seen on the screens.
Please expect 2 or 3 releases per year (for at least the next 5-10 years), the next will be Beautiful Britannia 2011 R2, scheduled for release this summer. Here I will focus on a complete package of highres terrain textures, including all necessary transitions between the different terrain types.
Further releases will include:
o Up to 100.000 additional hand-placed objects (foliage)
on Britannia overworld
o Up to 3000 reworked textures, most of them in higher resolutions
o Integration of completely reworked, playable versions of unused
overworld and dungeon maps, beginning with Old Cove (map.5)
o More places for underwater exploration
(sunken ships within corals for example)
I was extraordinarily impressed with the 2010 release, except for the comments I made about Yew at the time. I’ll try 2011 R1 as soon as I can find the time. Super busy recently.
Firstknight, if you’re reading this…I have just two words to say: skybox textures.
Thanks for the tip, Ken, I’ll check this out immediately!
It’d be a good next thing to look at, I suspect. That’s not to say it will be an easy change; might be hell on wheels. But really, what has always struck me as unfortunate about Ultima 9 is that the skybox is of an absurdly low resolution, even when compared to the low-res plants.
The sky does still look very pretty if you don’t look at it directly, of course…but then when you do, it’s jarringly low-res. If you could improve that texture, man…that would do wonders for the game.
It is awesome beyond awesome to have all this high-res stuff in the foreground, but it seems to be slightly diminished when placed against the pitifully low-res backdrop.
Now, I do not want to disappoint you, but in this case things are more difficult.
Of course I agree with you, the quality of the sky in UIX is nothing but…, well, a “1999 look”. But the sky uses 256×256 textures already (the maximun resolution that the engine supports), if you use “HighresSky=1” in options.ini.
So the only thing possible is to improve the “Sky 3D Model” itself, which is not really possible atm.
It is a task in schedule anyway, I just don’t know when it could be done…
@Dungy
Please take all the time you need. You review will be welcome, whenever it will be.
@Ken
I’ve taken a closer look “behind the scenes” onto the UIX sky and the related textures. I found out the following:
The textures which are directly above “the fog” are not too bad, but the quality of the “central sky” ones are definitly lower, even if those textures have the same 256×256 res than the first i’ve mentioned.
There is room for slightly improvements on these textures, and it should be not too difficult to create them. So i’ve added this for release with “Beautiful Britannia 2011 R2”