Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but rest assured, we’re still alive and kicking. First of all, we’d like to welcome 2 new people to the team, Archangel and Natsu. Archangel has come on board to tackle the music, using his musical talents to update and remaster all of the tracks in U6. Currently, Archangel has finished the U6 Forest Theme and the gargoyle intro theme and they sound fantastic. The gargoyle intro theme sounds mysterious and adds the sense of danger in an unknown land which fits the situation perfectly. The U6 Forest theme (My favorite track in the game, by the way) adds to the mystique of exploring the dense forests and no longer sounds repetitive. I am looking forward to Archangel working his magic on the other tracks as well. Additionally, he has offered several in-game book submissions that are well written that will be found upon the various bookshelves of Britannia. Below the update you will find the updated U6 Forest Theme and the Gargoyle theme for your listening pleasure. Also, be sure to check out his other work on the links to his other sites below.
Natsu has offered his programming skills to provide some additional help with the coding, and possibly on trying to finish the portraits. He is also in the planning stages of something that would greatly enhance the U6 mod. I can’t give out any details as of right now because he is trying to get accustomed to the ins and outs of the Exult engine and what it is capable of, but the idea itself is exciting and something that hasn’t been done with the Exult engine before.
Crowley has been working on new sprites for the mod, such as a blonde Shamino which suits his U6 portrait better. Also, he provided us with magic locked chests. In the works are several other visual upgrades for npcs such as Blaine, Seggallion, and the gypsies such as Taynith. Sythifuge has been putting the finishing touches on the grave sprite for us, and from what I’ve seen of it so far it looks pretty well done. This grave shape will function like his – when you use a shovel to dig up the graves, the ‘lid’ (the grave mound) will be removed, revealing the corpse/empty grave below, and leaving a pile of dirt next to it. I can’t wait to put it in game and try it out.
Map work progress on the mod has been steady even though there have been no site updates lately. Mostly I have been putting the finishing touches on the mainland. All cities, towns, shrines, are complete. Only Paws remains needing npc conversations, and some of the wanderers such as the gypsies and so on.
I have also been experimenting with a few new interaction features that are currently working on a test mod and will be inserted into the U6 mod soon. One new feature is that you can now create campfires! It works similar to how campfires worked in UO; first you double click a dagger then target a tree, which creates “kindling” (currently, using the ‘branch’ imported from SI). Double clicking the branch on the ground will start a fire which starts small and grows. After about 2 hours or so in-game, the fire starts to dwindle down, until it goes to hot coals (frame 0 of campfire). Eventually, it turns into a scorchmark then disappears once you’re off-screen.
Another new feature I have been experimenting with is being able to cook raw meat on frying pans after getting the meat from deer, cows, etc. On my test mod, I imported the ‘raw wolf meat’ shape from SI (temporary for now) and made 4 or 5 separate shapes for each type of meat. For example, one shape is “raw beef” which takes the place of the cooked beef that is normally found on the corpses of cows, and one shape for ‘raw venison’ which takes the place of the meat on the deer, and so on. Double clicking the meat will bring up a target, which you target on a frying pan. It checks to see if that frying pan is on a campfire, if not, you’ll be prompted to move it closer to the fire. Once you are cooking the meat, it plays the sizzling sound effect, then you have a 1/5 chance of failing to cook it. If the cooking fails, it is deleted and your companions might nag you that you left it on too long or something. If success, it changes the raw meat to the corresponding cooked meat. Eventually, I would like to implement the U6 style camping where the party would sleep themselves and one would stand watch to wake the party in the event of a random monster ambush.
In our next update, there WILL be a demo! We’ve received well above the amount I asked for in book submissions and still welcome more. Most are put in the game but I’m still working on inserting the others. The demo will be of the Trinsic area, as it received the most votes on our website poll. Within this area will be the city of Trinsic, some shipwrecks, the gypsies (with scripted Wanda interactions…) and the Shrine of Honor which can be freed from the gargoyles. All other buildings and places won’t be available, as to concentrate everyone’s attention to the Trinsic area alone. In addition to the Trinsic area NPC’s, I will probably throw in a few NPCs that will be available to talk to such as Gwenno, and Sinjen from Yew to show off some new sprites from Crowley.
Hopefully we’ll have the next update sooner than later! –agentorangeguy
