The Digital Lycaeum: The "Ultima Game Developer" Series (Updated!)

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Over at The Digital Lycaeum, Browncoat Jayson has published a series of articles — which I am assuming are part of an ongoing series that he hasn’t yet finished — which explore the various details and considerations that would-be developers of Ultima games and fan projects should be aware of. Some of his articles also explore extant resources which may be useful in creating such projects.

Here’s the list of articles he has published thus far, in chronological order (you can also see his explanatory article for a list):

Additionally — because I don’t know if I’ve yet made mention of this — he has contributed the first two assets to the Lycaeum: 2D art assets for the Britannian moons of Trammel and Felucca.

So…a big “thank you” to Jayson for grokking the idea of The Digital Lycaeum and really getting it off to a good start! Here is hoping that the site can continue to develop and grow along the excellent path that he has started it on!

Also: Be sure to check out his short review of Ultima V: Lazarus!

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20 Responses

  1. Sanctimonia says:
    August 24, 2011 at 5:53 am

    Pretty cool articles. I gave a couple a read (will read the rest tomorrow) and am impressed. Hopefully I’ll have something useful to contribute in the comments. Good work Jayson. 🙂

  2. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 24, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Thanks guys. I’m working on a few more articles on NPC schedules, crafting systems, and conversations. If you have any ideas about new articles, please let me know.

  3. Sslaxx says:
    August 24, 2011 at 3:36 pm

    Please do. How about the skillset a would-be developer would need, or about teamwork? Revision control systems? Dealing with assets you may have developed yourself but could never release freely? Legal risk?

  4. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 24, 2011 at 6:16 pm

    Good ideas, Sslaxx. I’ll add them to the list of potential topics.

    There is a new post up:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/2011/crafting-system/

  5. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 24, 2011 at 8:34 pm

    Another post in the series:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/2011/morality/

  6. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 24, 2011 at 8:38 pm

    Since the posts are really the focus of the Lycaeum, do you think we should remove the year from the short URL and just have “posts”? So it would be http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/posts/felucca/ instead of http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/2011/felucca/

    That would make them easier to find, once there starts getting to be a lot, and after the year ticks over. It seems possible, since Review posts go to their own group (i.e., http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/reviews/lazarus/).

  7. Iceblade says:
    August 25, 2011 at 1:06 am

    Good articles. Really enjoyable reading actually.

  8. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 25, 2011 at 4:18 am

    Thanks WTF, that should help keep things from rolling off. What would you think about adding another link to the top for quickly getting to posts in the “Tutorials” category? I’ve been thinking about putting together some tutorials about how to do certain things in UDK, for example, that are fairly Ultima specific (moongates, spellbooks, potions, Karma tracker, etc). Once I get far enough into my game, that is.

    And thank you for the compliments, Iceblade.

    I’m working on the third version of my skydome, which is coming along much better than the prior two. A few things I’m still not happy with… Also, Epic released a new UDK version, so I need to copy and test my projects again, to make sure nothing changed compatibility-wise. I’ve been lucky so far that the only thing I needed to replace was the clunky canvas objects with pretty new Scaleform ones. Crossing my fingers for another good version!

    I put together a “home page” for this series on the Lycaeum:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/posts/the-ultima-game-developer-series/

    • WtF Dragon says:
      August 25, 2011 at 4:47 am

      Menu entries are easily added; if you look now, you’ll see the ‘Tutorials’ link in place. And for the record, I’d love to see some tutorials about how to put together systems in UDK, because I really want to start learning that development framework.

      Other than that, I’ve linked to your “home page” article, and I’ve added the series as a menu link as well. You’re doing phenomenal work on that site; keep it up!

  9. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 25, 2011 at 7:40 pm

    Another one up:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/posts/npc-schedules/

    Thanks! I’m getting a lot of positive feedback for the series; its great that you guys are enjoying it.

  10. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 26, 2011 at 4:16 am

    One more for the week:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/posts/milestones/

  11. Browncoat Jayson says:
    August 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    It looks like the change to the “posts” permalinks also did something to the reviews permalinks. The link on the pages to the Lazarus review goes to http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/posts/reviews/lazarus/, but should go to http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/reviews/lazarus/. With the “posts” line in there, it just shows the image file, with its own comments…

  12. Browncoat Jayson says:
    November 30, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    I’ve added a couple more:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/conversations/
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/requirements/

    as well as a short review of U6P:
    http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/reviews/ultima-6-project/

    I’m not sure if its possible, but is there a way to pin the base post for the series (http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/ultima-game-developer/) to the top of the category (http://lycaeum.ultimaaiera.com/category/ultima-game-developer-series/)? I think it would make navigation a little easier.

    I’ll add another by the end of the week. What do you all want to see next?

    • WtF Dragon says:
      December 1, 2011 at 12:26 am

      Hey Jayson,

      I saw all those; I was actually going to post about them tonight. Good work, in all cases!

      I’m…not sure about the game developer article; categories archives are usually just dumb lists. But there might be a clever bit of PHP or a plugin that will allow what you’re asking for. I will investigate.

  13. Browncoat Jayson says:
    December 1, 2011 at 5:28 pm

    I can’t seem to find something that would affect just the category page, without also sticking it to the main page…

    But I did find a way to organize the category pages by title instead of date. It would work for this instance (That topic is the only one that didn’t start with U), and may help organize other categories as well.

    http://jehiah.cz/a/wordpress-category-page-hacks

    Just a short bit of PHP in the wp-blog-header file.