Development

I’d just like to get an idea of who the favorites are. I reserve the right to pick whichever NPCs best serve the story. All of the companions from U4 will be included. Suggestions can include NPCs who are only referred to in in-game materials, for example Philpop the Weary. The only requirement is that they should be alive at the time during which the game is set.

The votes were as follows:

• Iolo: 12
• Dupre: 7
• Shamino: 5
• Jaana: 4
• Time Lord: 4
• Geoffrey: 3
• Hawkwind: 2
• Gwenno: 2
• Erstam: 2
• Vasel: 2
• Julia: 1
• Wanda: 1
• Seggallian: 1
• Mandrake: 1
• Katrina: 1
• Mariah: 1

These are the 16 “towns” featured in the game:

• Britain
• Cove
• Buccaneer’s Den
• Fawn
• Jhelom
• Castle Britannia
• Magincia
• Minoc
• Montor
• Moon
• Paws
• Skara Brae
• Trinsic
• Vesper
• Yew

The maps were created using this cross-platform tool: http://www.mapeditor.org/

Here’s the U3.5 beta tileset. Quite similar to the EGA U4 set, but with some U3 (thief and cleric) and U5 (walls, floors, and doors) influences. One thing to remember is that the tiles have 8×1 attributes (only two colors per 8×1 pixel block). The target machine can’t do per-pixel color anyway, but on the plus side this format means the tiles only take up 16K of RAM.

I only have room in the engine for 16 ‘towns’ and Lord British’s Castle uses two of them, so merging the Montors was necessary. My supposition is that the two got smooshed together before being abandoned entirely by the time of U4. Scaling from 64×64 towns to 32×32 towns was bad enough. 128×64 was worse, but I’ve managed to keep the main shops.

Fawn

Magincia

Montor

With this question, posed to the UDIC Facebook group, U3.5: Pax Britannia was born. Initially nameless, briefly known as Ultima 3.5 before the registered trademark of Electronic Arts was dropped from the title, and subsequently sub-titled Pax Britannia, this is where it all started:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/UltimaDragons/permalink/10150508826738797/

Well, except for that earlier incarnation as ZXU4 for the Chloe 280SE, but that’s a story for another day.

I thought it was about time U3.5:PB had its own website, and WTF Dragon has kindly agreed to host it on the Ultima Codex Network. This also means I can stop spamming the UDIC group on Facebook with U3.5:PB development news. And yes, I did have to jump through a moon gate to post this.