Back To Roots March Updates
Fearyourself hasn’t updated his project website in about a month, but I missed reporting on his most recent entries, which are in fact worthy of mention.
Most recently, he put up a short post to let us know that he had substantially added to the Ultima 5 internal formats page on the Codex, adding much to the body of knowledge about the inner workings of the game.
Before that, he posted a series of screenshots showing off the newly-supported combat zones that his engine can now display.
He also put up a pair of posts detailing his future plans for the project: the release of a tech demo at some point in the future which presents a sort of “lite” version of Ultima 4/Ultima 5 with a bit more of a hack-and-slash atmosphere…”Diablo-like”, as he puts it.
Here’s hoping the silence on his site is simply a function of his being quite consumed with getting that tech demo built, then!
In a couple of words, Holy Shit. This is awesome. His entries at gamengine.net are definitely worth a read. I also noticed from his YouTube videos that he’s developing in Linux, possibly Ubuntu from the window border.
I got a huge rush of nostalgia from his updates, as I used to use similar techniques to hack the Ultima V data files WAY back in the day. For example there’s a byte you can change in the savegame file that controls which image is used to represent your character. Except it actually emulates all the characteristics of the graphic. So if you change it to the value of a Shadowlord you can move through walls and such…awesome.
Keep up the good work Jc. Total ownage so far.
Ok, I’m a bit late but still, better late than never!
No, I haven’t disappeared but I have been handling a lot of work (two international trips) and a couple of personal issues.
I am working on my little mod for the engine as a technical demo and I’m working on getting up to date. I’ll probably get an update out by the end of the week but it’ll be something small for the moment 🙂
Hopefully, all is well on your side of the world!
Jc