Beautiful Britannia: Final World Map (Rough)
Firstknight sent me the following by email, announcing a major milestone in the development of Beautiful Britannia:
…after more than 6 months of being unable to continue on BB, I finally managed to finish the major changes to the Britannia terrain file.
This means that the map I’ve sent you here shows the final look for the overworld of BB. The first playable release using this map is planned for the end of 2013, and will be called “Beautiful Britannia 0.5”.
This is because it will have about 50% of the content planned for BB included.
Here, by the way, is the new map, with the original map of Britannia for comparison:
-
- Beautiful Britannia
-
- Original
Firstknight continues:
As one can see, there are 3 major expansions:
- Cove East (already known)
- Yew West
Old Moonglow Each of these areas will have to be visited to finish the main plot. For example: in Cove the shrine is now located in the very east of the new area. Also, Morganna is to be found somewhere on the way to the shrine.
Similar things are planned for Yew West (Empath Abbey) and Old Moonglow (at least also the shrine).
Screens of the new areas and of new created textures will be shown once every month from now on, beginning November 2012.
So feast your eyes, Dragons and Dragonettes, on what is to come for Beautiful Britannia. The new terrain still needs some polish and smoothing, but it’s clear just how much Firstknight has been able to add to the world of Ultima 9. I for one look forward to exploring all the new areas he has crafted!
Oh wow! That is some AMAZING work! I can’;t believe how different Brittania looks!
Looking at this, I’m pretty excited too. Can’t want to check these areas out. The ‘new’ Verity island has me really excited. That area was news to me as well.
It does look nothing short of awesome. The terrain needs a bit of spit and polish, but man, this expanded Britannia will be fun as heck to explore.
Wow!
Thanks to you and your crew for using your own time to make something cool… 😉
Looking pretty good, FK. Btw, what are you using to take the screens? The game engine or our editor?
@Dungy – And that is using the original map files rather than creating a new ones. One large seamless world.
@Iceblade
Have used the game engine, was quite some task!
Want to use the FW editor next time, of course.
Some additional words related to this map:
The next massive step is to include thousands of objects to create lively surroundings. And this WILL take some time. On the other hand, some new textures are already nearly finished, so check out some fresh screens here and on the FW site at the beginning of november.
One thing Id question is, what is the point in expanding the map?
Unless you give the player an incentive to explore the new areas I can’t really see much point to it. You’d need to add extra quests, NPC’s or at least new items
This is of course a good question.
Well, in my opinion there is a need for exploreable areas in UIX. Certain islands, cove for example, feel way too small for me. All things in and around cove can be found too easily. This will not the case with future builds of BB. It will become quite some task to get some of the more important items (Gringolet for example). Of course you will get some additional hints, so that you will not get completely lost when searching for it.
The plan is to move existing items or even NPCs, so that the new areas make sense.
This is maybe more understandable in detail, when those new areas are developed a bit more, and i can show some screens, whichs includes some of this moved content.
Also, Nick…not really. Take a look at a game like Ultima 6. The map has huge areas of land that are essentially empty of anything but the occasional encounter. But that’s okay, because they’re there just to explore.
That’s one aspect of Ultima’s design that has tended to differentiate it from other RPGs; Origin were more than willing to waste a bit of memory and a bit of disk space to just create a world you could wander around in, take a stroll in the woods, and just…do nothing at all, really. That was, in some respects, their genius, because the real world is full of many such places where one can do the same thing. And the fact that Britannia had such spaces too…that made it feel a bit more like home.
I’m impressed as always. It clearly looks like there’s more land mass, and from an over head perspective, towns like Cove and Moonglow look more Ultimaish to me.
But I have a QQ, is it the perspective that makes the streams and unchanged areas look smaller, or is it that the streams are a little smaller?
I think the most likely explanation is that the camera is zoomed out a bit farther.
Looking at the pictures, I think there is no difference other than perspective. There is quite a size difference between those two photos.
There is no change to the size of the other areas, but there are three gigantic chunks that have been added to the world. The biggest probably be the ‘New’ Moonglow island.
Fully correct, no changes have been made the other existing areas.
And, expect to get more from BB, not less.
Means, with this build you can see the 3 bigger expansions planned. There could be further some additional smaller ones added, when there is need for them in later builds.
And, thanks for assistence, WtF Dragon!
You bring to the point, what is the idea behind these expansions.
In UIX I always felt taken by the hand, with no freedom of decision, and no room for exploration. I want to change this (as good as possible) with BB. The upcoming screens (from the November build) will show you, how this looks like.