The Savage Empire Remake Needs People; Let's Go!
Scythifuge posted a short “help wanted” notice in the Exult forums over the weekend:
In order to ensure the completion of The Savage Empire Remake, I need people to draw frames for creatures & NPC’s, and any other assets that may possibly be included. Coders are needed to created scripts for animations and interactions. If I had people that could test stuff out for me, I could keep focusing on drawing new assets.
This is a clarion call for aid.
…
We all need to help each other out. The forums have been… sleepy as of late. EA is remaking Ultima in its own image. Richard Garriott is creating New Britannia. It is up to the classic community to make sure that the classics remain playable and that new classic-inspired content keeps happening.
We can do it, people!
So, to re-cap, he is looking for two categories of assistance: coders (especially those who are familiar with and have worked with Ultima 7’s</em usecode before), and pixel artists who can draw animation frames for all the various fine-looking creatures and objects that Scythifuge has come up with thus far.
If any of you Dragons and Dragonettes have messed around with such things in the past, make yourselves known either in the comments form here, or in this thread at the Exult forums!
Well, I really don’t want to see this project die. If you want me to do some testing, I can do that. I have no interest in coding, and I’m not so hot at drawing. But if you need a tester to… test stuff… let me know.
So goeth the call for help; it falls upon deaf ears. Either people are too busy or outright don’t give a shit. Guess it’s easier to feign excitement about the release of a project than to do something to help it along the way. What a strong community here!
My problem with helping is that your project uses a slightly different perspective than the graphics in my game. I think they may both be oblique perspective, but Ultima VI, Ultima VII, and The Savage Empire have it tilted at this weird 45 degree angle which defies the implied geometry and enters the realm of the surreal.
Is it possible to use sprites/bitmaps of a different perspective mixed in with wall tiles using the traditional one? Here’s one of my bitmaps at a straight oblique perspective:
http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/misc/se/SE%20Remake%20-%20Tree%201.png
It’s using the SE 256-color palette and I made sure it was 256×256 pixels and anchored at the bottom. It has an alpha channel of course. I don’t know if this perspective for vegetation, particularly tall vegetation, would illicit a negative reaction when mixed with SE’s traditional perspective images, but maybe it would work. If so we could share resources.
I tried using the “shear” function in GIMP to put it in the proper perspective (which worked), but it looked like shit. This leads me to believe that the images for Ultima VI, VII, and SE were hand-tweaked to further defy their unnatural perspective just so they wouldn’t look completely insane.
Input on this phenomena appreciated, as I find it interesting.
Props to http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/profile.php?f=1&id=687 for responding. Other than for offering graphical help to Scythifuge, I like him because he did some space ship graphics, and I have this obscene fetish for space shooters. There’s just something about a solar prominence that makes my ship move.
Heh…yeah: “move or we’ll all die when that prominence of super-hot solar plasma touches this flimsy little excuse for a tin can we call a spaceship!”
I do agree, though: props to that fella.
http://www.tigmo55.com/lforce2.png
Ouch. When I finally get done with my game, the next one will either be the ultimate space shooter or something more along the lines of ?????II ????? mixed with ????????X ??????.
Hopefully Scythifuge will like my image, though the perspective may be an issue.
Funny that your host’s software package can’t handle Kanji, Katakana, or Hiragana. Guess you’ll never know what I was saying. The things I take for granted these days…
I probably don’t have the necessary language packs for WordPress installed.
Not that it’s ever been an issue before now…
I notice it because I have a lot of Japanese discographies and soundtracks in my computer music collection, and that they’re displayed using the appropriate character sets lets me know something’s working.
Anyway, the games I was mentioning in gaijin terms were Castlevania II and Symphony of the Night. An online RPG with similar combat and exploration mechanics would be awesome.