Beautiful Britannia 2011 R3 Released!
Firstknight has just today uploaded the third Beautiful Britannia release this year, 2011 R3!
Here’s how the man himself describes what’s in this latest package:
Beautiful Britannia 2011 R3 – Release!
Features:
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* More than 150 new designed Textures (Terrain, Foliage, LB Castle, Walls), most of them in higher resolutions than the original ones.
* More than 15.000 objects added (Flowers, Grass and other plants, Butterflies, most of them around yew) to the original release from 1999.
* Contains the latest version of U9BB.EXE (supports more than one fogless overworlds, those overworlds will be implemented in future releases)NOTES:
From now on U9BB.exe can be created by using U9PatcherEXE.exe (separate installer), please look into U9BB-readme.txt for details.
Terrain textures are not completely finished yet, please excuse the disburbing effects because of missing transistions.Quick Install instructions:
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* Unzip the Release into your Ultima IX install directory (where u9.exe is located, otherwise the Installer will not work)
* Now you have a new directory within your Ultima IX install directory, named BB, with a Subdir named BB2011R3, further the Installer called BB2011R3.cmd
* To the next please run BB2011R3.cmd
* At the first start the Installer creates a Backup of the original files in the BACKUP Subdir of the BB2011R3 directory.
* Enter 1 for installing the BB2011R3 (Enter 2 for restoring the previous installation)
* Now please start a new the game using U9BB.EXE (fogless overworld) or standard U9.EXE (overworld with distance fogging).
* BB2011R3 will further work every early savegames from the earth map or stonegate.If you want to send comments, I recommend posting a reply to the entry on Ultima Aiera, I will stop by there frequently and will also answer questions there.
So, be sure to head on over to the project entry and grab yourself a copy! Firstknight recently released some screenshots from this release of his project, and he promises that he will have formal comparison screenshots for us soon which better illustrate all the changes that have been made.
Going to have to dig up and dust off the old U9 CDs.
Well done. Over fifteen thousand objects is absolutely insane. It would be interesting to know how many objects Skyrim has for comparison. Just wow. 🙂
Yeah, and even better, the final release will have more than 50000 objects added then…
What techniques are you using to place objects? I’m guessing with a number that high that most of the objects are natural (vegetation, etc.) and that you’re doing it at least partially procedurally? I’m doing the same for my project, which is why I’m so interested (other than it just being cool, of course).
I use a manually-created grayscale bitmap for each object type that overlays the overworld and controls the percent chance of occurrence of that object (black = 0% chance, white = 100% chance). The generator uses collision detection so that all objects stay a proper distance from each other. It’s more complex than that, but that’s the gist.
I haven’t made the time to explore your project yet, but I remember that some pretty nice external tools are being developed to take advantage of the engine.
Well, everything added is pure handplaced stuff, sorry.
To be more detailed:
I use a combination of in-game-placement and savegame alteration for adding objects.
That’s cool if altering the save game file lets you load more objects and control their positions. All hand placed is pretty artistic, more like crafting than generating. I do partially generated landscapes.
I will try this tonight!
Gave it a try! Looks great. LB’s looks amazing. The terrain looks nifty too. Very few terrain tiles are missing now. Keep up the good work!