Forgotten World: The Britannian Highway Administration
The Forgotten World team have been announcing new developments in their project with startling frequency of late, and today’s (well, actually, Saturday’s) news is another fine example of the trend. They have completed their editor for Ultima 9’s “highway database”; being able to edit this file is a major milestone along the road to implementing editable NPC schedules and scripting in the game.
It contains an ID/coordinate database of the waypoint objects used in the game for engine to know where to teleport the Avatar, NPCs, objects, etc. and for NPCs to know where their “marks” are for movement during events or schedules. So in a sense, any waypoint or target location we add to the map has to be “registered” in this file to be used by the engine. I observed this issue back when I fixed Mariah and Jaana’s post shrine cleansing scripts. Until I added their teleport targets to the highway file (by hex editing), they wouldn’t teleport to their places.
In addition, this file contains highway segments with each segment being a route of waypoints with seemingly no restriction on the number of waypoints in a path. A waypoint can be repeated multiple times within a route, so an NPC could be made to pace back and forth between two waypoints or to play fetch.
Anyway, for those curious, I’ve posted a screenshot. Obviously, the tool usefulness is limited by the functionality of other tools, but my rapid progress so far probably means a complete scheduling editor will be ready in a week or so.
Here’s a lower-resolution version of said screenshot (see the Forgotten World website for the full-size version):
Edit all the highways!
An Ultima 9 with NPC schedules? This is an exciting thing to contemplate.
That is so cool!
This is nothing, wait until you see the activity editor. Currently coding it up now.
Thou art *still* a tease, Iceblade.
NPC schedules? It’s actually becoming a REAL Ultima title!
Now, now…it never wasn’t.
And to be fair, the game was meant to have schedules originally; they were removed due to issues with collision detection and performance.
Still, it would be nice to see them put back in.
I don’t think I’m going to shatter too many cherished memories by saying that 9 failed to impress the way previous titles did. It was as you pointed out however, most likely due to a rushed completion and a lack of finish. I may have completed the game, but I can’t even recall anymore. All I really remember of it was a flooded Paws, horse genocide, and the bag of rib cages I ended up with in order to stop the skeletons from rebuilding themselves.
These projects do often make me want to locate my copy of it though, just to see what was done with it. It was gorgeous and down right ambitious for it’s time. I WANTED to like 9, it had a lot of interesting features, but ultimately when I look back and think of Ultima, I think of 4 – 7.
Point granted.
U9’s biggest offense, I think, was that we all knew — as in: had evidence — that it could have been more than it was. It was moderately groundbreaking anyway (and some of its features have yet to re-emerge in another 3D RPG), but it could have been even more.
A year or so back, I would have considered the idea of expanding towns and developing schedules to be ambitious at the least; now it is seems within grasp of being possible or even being easily doable right now. We have the means and understanding of the data structure to completely develop many of the required tools.
No doubt, when it comes time for WorldBuilding at least a dozen or so will be jumping at the chance to finish or rebuild parts of Ultima IX’s maps.
Unfortunately, it is going to take some real effort to change NPC conversations or even add new NPCs altogether. Even if we never manage that (though I’d be surprised if we weren’t able to make changes in that area to some degree), the world would still become much larger. Towns more complete and significantly more vast given a small increase in generic NPCs and the addition of bunch of homes and places to live, work, and eat.
Heh, this is starting to turn into a campaign speech:
“When I become your World Builder, I promise to give every family a home, every person young or old a bed to sleep in and tasks to do during the day. No man, woman, or child shall go hungry again. No town will be unguarded, no Keep ill-remembered, and no Dungeon will be out of place. I’m looking at you Hythloth. You’re going back under Britain and like it. And take off that silly nametag, everyone knows your an imposter.”
“Unfortunately, it is going to take some real effort to change NPC conversations or even add new NPCs altogether”
I’m speaking for myself now, but you know if you guys somehow managed to implement NPC scheduling to the existing game as it is, I’m sure this would already made many people happy.
As far as expanding the world goes, I certainly wish you luck in finding worldbuilders, they can alas be hard to come by 🙁
Well, anybody doing world building for us would have direct access to the tool programmers, and be able to provide input to us to refine the tools so that they are even easier to use.
We want the WB task to be as easy and intuitive as possible.