Forgotten World: Good News, Bad News
In a short update to the Forgotten World website, Iceblade explains some recent developments made by the team, and also forecasts a shift in the type of development that will be done over the next few months:
I have some good news. Hawkwind is now back and work is starting again on our World Builder tool, which is very significant news since the last version of the Editor was back in 2009.
Unfortunately, there is some bad news too. I am entering the busiest semester of my academic career in a week or so, which means my time for U9 research and tool development will become negligible until December. Even so, I will still be posting some tidbits of news and overall managing the website during that time.
He also offers this report of his most recent discovery regarding triggers within the Ultima 9 engine:
A lot of progress has been made to identify what each type does as well as what its parameters mean. In addition, much of this information has been carefully organized into our internal wiki for easy reference and expansion, which makes tool development and later world building that much easier. This is significant as the game world is as much defined by object properties and triggers as it is an object’s associated usecode.
Don’t be surprised if in an upcoming update, some months down the road, Iceblade announces an object properties editor for Ultima 9 that allows for modification of in-game event and object triggers. This team has proven to be full of surprises, after all.
Surprisingly, I have a few extra days of low work load, so I did some more tool work. See forgottenworld.de
Oh, Ice.
Have you ever heard the song “The Cat Came Back”?
Hmmm…Having some trouble getting the picture to upload, recently had a server change, which has us a little thrown off. I’ll email to you to post with an article.
Huh, that was simple…. okay the Moonglow Underground Shop Lift is fixed.
You keep making these updates, Iceblade; how am I ever supposed to draft an article about them?
I kid, I kid…phenomenal work, as always. Yours is the spirit that I so desperately love about the development side of the community, that persistent drive to improve things.
Ah, the power of my trigger editor. What would have taken me a hour using an flx extractor or days by hand, was done a minute. Of course I had to research the event to know what to do ahead of time, but still very simple clicks.
Oh and Dermot is fixed as well. Though the pathfinding system shows its simplicity (ie bugginess). I think he will eventually return without assistance, but a little coaxing by opening the door for him certainly doesn’t hurt.
Heh…it’s not what actually happens; it’s what seems to be happening!
I became convinced some years ago, messing about with NWN scripting, that event scripting in games and the art of performing “magic” on stage are not so different. In either case, as long as the audience thinks they’re seeing something, the illusion works, and much enjoyment is had by all.
Yeah, if I saw a guy IRL doing what Dermot was doing, I would just think he was insanely drunk and after spending 12 hours drinking…no wonder he can’t find the door knob. The cemetery sure sobers him up quick, though.