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Malena

My new project: "Ultima Nostalgia" server based on UO map

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Hey guys, 

 

Up till now, the only thing I've been using Unlimited for is to play around with the god tools so I can test out house and environment designs for WO. Playing around with the magic god wand has become so enjoyable that I decided I'd like to recreate the Ultima Online map. As mentioned in my previous thread, this is going to be a "look but don't touch" server and the whole server will be one gigantic deed. So I will not be opening it up for other people to live on as I just don't have time or energy to get into community management at this point. I just want to relax and enjoy building. For now, the server will be offline. Once it's ready though, I will make it public so all you old Ultima fans out there can come and visit as a tourist if you like. 

 

In this thread, I'll be documenting the whole process as I go along. 

 

I know there have been some previous Ultima related projects out there, and as far as I can tell, they have died off and are offline. But I just want to reassure those people that my project is not in competition even if y'all decided to restart up your servers. Again, the reason being because my server will not be a community, just a tourist attraction. 

 

The most nostalgic MMO players I know (myself included) are old Ultima Online players. So I've named the server accordingly and will do my very best to set it up, build and decorate just like good old UO. When the day comes that it's ready to be made public, I hope you'll share a little moistness in your eye, remembering back to the good old days in the lands of Sosaria!

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Stage 1 - Setting up the UO Map

 

So how is one to make a UO server without a UO map! Thus, yesterday I researched the process of making a custom map. Thanks to Digging ForWater's YouTube videos, I was able to figure it out eventually!

 

Once I'd gotten the hang of generating random maps, it was time to create a UO map. First I was testing out a heightmap shared from the Ultima IX: Redemption project and it actually worked pretty nicely! But when I compared it to the UO map, it had quite a lot of differences. I wanted the map to be laid out exactly like UO! 

 

So where to get the UO map sprites? Well I tried the programs used to extract files from the UO directories, but they weren't working so well in regards to the map. Then I found this great map someone had probably screencaptured from good old UO Cartographer. Not sure if the software itself still works, but this online map was enough for my purposes. 

 

The map helped me mask out the water areas, but the mountains were something I'd have to hand paint to get the shapes feeling like real mountains.

 

A very happy coincidence was the map size. For touristy purposes, the small 1024x1024 map size would be ideal so people could more easily get around. But would the dimensions match the world of UO?

 

I made a grid in Photoshop containing 1024x1024 squares which each represented Wurm tiles, and arranged the UO map so that it would roughly fit inside of it.

 

grid.jpg

 

Next was to install 1) the 2D UO client and 2) an UO emulator (first time I've ever tried the emulator btw!). Then, I ran around UO in god mode checking the buildings and how many tiles would be needed in Wurm to accommodate them. What I discovered, is that to my amazement and utter pleasure, the UO map almost identically matched the wurm tiles if I were to make a 1024x1024 sized map. :-o I would however have to squeeze some of the islands inwards just a bit, but not too much! Heightwise, the mainland fit just perfectly!

 

After about (what seems) 30 experiments involving a lot of photoshopping, a lot of map building and a lot of server starting, today I've finally settled on a version of the map that I'm happy enough with. At least nothing that ye olde Ebony wand can't fix!

 

So here they are, the two maps side by side. Here you can see how islands had to be squished in a bit. But it's fine! My MAIN concern is that I want it so that when I build a city, the buildings and spacing between the building will be as close to UO as possible. That walking distances will feel authentic etc.

 

MapRender.jpg

 

And below, the first screenshots of all the main places before they've touched at all. Not much to see yet, but it will sure be fun to compare once they're all dolled up!

 

Britain

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Britain.jpg

 

Buccaneer's Den

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_BuccaneersDen.jpg

 

Desert of Compassion

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Compassion.jpg

 

Dagger Isle

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_DaggerIsle.jpg

 

Fire Isle

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_FireIsle.jpg

 

Hedge Maze

Spoiler

I foresee some serious surface mining action coming up :-D!

 

UltimaNostalgia_HedgeMaze.jpg

 

Jhelom

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Jhelom.jpg

 

Magincia

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Magincia.jpg

 

Minoc

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Minoc.jpg

 

Moonglow

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Moonglow.jpg

 

Nujel'm

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Nujelm.jpg

 

Occlo

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Occlo.jpg

 

Serpent's Hold

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_SerpentsHold.jpg

 

Skara Brae

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_SkaraBrae.jpg

 

Trinsic

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Trinsic.jpg

 

Vesper

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Vesper.jpg

 

Yew

Spoiler

UltimaNostalgia_Yew.jpg

 

Edited by Malena
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Applause to the map you did! I am waiting with excitement to see it with buildings. And when it opens up to public we should as a bunch stand on the Brit bank before we spread all over the map... and playing yoyo or doing other silly stuff to draw attention... or selling black horses ;). Btw you can always go for free to Ulima Online forever server which allows free playing on the original maps. I have a soft spot for Moonglow and Fire Island... Moonglow was the Island I spend the most time as a newbie mage grabbing regs which did spawn on the earth back then. On Fire I had my first log cabin and tamed Dragons from the balcony running inside when they did firespit to hard on me.

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Thank you Sirene :). Yeah my sons have been playing on the free shards for probably over a decade, but like wurm unlimited servers, I never was too keen on playing on a server run by someone else. I just never felt secure enough, that the work I put into it will stay. But my sons have had tons of fun in those :). 

 

Oh those two were among my favorites as well! I had a greek restaurant and resort on the southern shores of Fire Island. I loved living there. It was so far away from the hustle and bustle, and it was exciting to know the dragons were so close by. 

 

greek_village.jpg

 

And Moonglow! My absolute FAVORITE place to play my little thief (back before it was split into Felucca and Trammel and stealing was still fun)

 

mm_kill_later.jpg   mm_bum.jpg

 

 

mm_attacking.jpg  mm_help.jpg

 

mm_feelings.jpgmm_fight.jpg mm_backpains.jpg

 

mm_into_hiding.jpgmm_boo.jpg

 

I laughed TEARS playing that thief. I was so evil playing cat and mouse with my victims, but in the end I'd usually give them their stuff back :).

 

 

 

 

 

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Okay wow, this is amazing.

 

Back when WU first launched, someone by the name of lichbane began a project for a UO map called Britannia reborn. It was an insanely large server (4x xan!)  and didnt come with the cities, so I'm super keen to see this come to life, you better make some videos about it too!

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5 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

Okay wow, this is amazing.

 

Back when WU first launched, someone by the name of lichbane began a project for a UO map called Britannia reborn. It was an insanely large server (4x xan!)  and didnt come with the cities, so I'm super keen to see this come to life, you better make some videos about it too!

 

Yeah I saw the thread and watched some players test it out on YouTube. It looked like an absolutely fantastic and amazing project. This was the guy running the server on his computer in Australia right? Anyhow, you could really see all the love and dedication that had gone into it. Absolutely heartbreaking that it never worked out, apparently because of lag issues. A lot of these cool projects start up, but then die off eventually. That's the challenge when community is involved, to keep the spirits up, it sorta requires everyone to stay motivated and active. But you know how humans and life are. Life happens and things wane. With my project, there is only one person who needs to stay motivated, and that's me. My only problem is that I tend to start things but get bored before I finish them. However I love using the god tool SOOOOO much (I just wish we could assign keybinds to the commands!!!) that I can't see myself getting bored too fast with this one. And the added value and excitement of seeing Ultima come to life will keep me going, I'm sure!

 

Thanks for the words of encouragement!

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Best of luck Malena,

 

   We both adored and still do adore Ultima Online :)

 

   We created and run Mystic Highlands server, if you ever need any help or anything, please do not hesitate to ask. 

 

   We look forward to see how this goes !

 

    Valiance and Kaylie.

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The server has some laggy periods, I believe a mixture of being a 16k server along with the early lag issues faced by WU servers (fog spiders and such)

 

I know lichbane was originally recreating britannia in UE, but upon hearing about WU started looking at that.

 

Some commands can be keybound, a mod you absolutely NEED to use is the keybind any action mod, it makes things much easier, and can really streamline the boring processes.

 

If you have any questions or need any assistance feel free to poke me, I'd love to help in any way I can.

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Wulfrock: Thank ye kindly for the well wishes and kind offer of help! Always warms the heart to bump into other Ultima fans. 

 

Retro: Ooohh! Thank you for the tip on the mods. I've never installed mods in Wurm before, so I tried it out and installed a few. They work like a charm! Boy that keybind mod is going to save a lot of hairs from going grey! Thanks again!

 

Norlys: *curtseys*

 

Alrighty. First thing to do was to set up the server wide deed. A tiny little bump of stone just happened to be protruding in the middle of the map, so it was the perfect place to plonk it down. Ultima Nostalgia is now safe and sound! 

 

DeedToken.jpg

 

 

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Now that the deed token is good to go, time to start building the first thing on the map. Castle Britannia, of course!

 

Process_CastleBritannia_00.jpg

 

 

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So problem: The dirt in UO is dark brown and we don't really have any tile type that could be used to represent it. So what I'll do is replace the packed dirt with a new graphic, using the normal dirt as a base. I've already adjusted the color to be a nice rich brown, just have to finish off making some of the stones grey like in UO. 

 

Upon opening graphics.jar, I was surprised to see that the graphics files were now DDS files. This guy's tutorial helped me out in understanding how to open those in Photoshop. Learning something new every day!

 

ModifyingDirt.jpg

 

So have I understood correctly, that every time there is a graphics.jar update, it will overwrite the one I modify? Or is there a way around that? Also, here's a super dumb question but any textures I can see on my computer, I am assuming that if others visit my server, they will not see them, they'll only see the textures their own local graphics.jar has, right? So modded textures only ever show for the person who has installed them?

 

 

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Ok now I'm in trouble. Tried to save the file and all these options pop up. When I try to save with whatever it offers by default, I get a graphic that isn't even in the correct dimensions. Tried to do a search for DDS here on the forums but couldn't find anything. Heeeelp!

 

dds.jpg

 

 

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I don't know about DDS, sorry, but I can answer your other questions.  Textures are client side, not on the server, so yes only you will be able to see the modifications you make to them.  And yes, you will have to re-apply your changes every time the graphics.jar is updated.

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Thanks Ricowan, good to know! Annnnnnd I got it to work, fiddled around with the settings and apparently whatever I did worked haha! 

 

The tiles for the castle are all planned out now. Ready to start building! (and yes, the Castle of Brtiannia is not symmetrical. The entrance is not exactly in the middle, which was a strange discovery. But I'm building it to be identical, "flaws" and all. 

 

dirtworking.jpg

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Ok, faced with my next problem. Even at 100.0 carpentry, I still run into my upper limit (outlined in red below) to create a big enough floor plan. So first question: Does anyone know of some way to override the plan size restriction in god mode? Or is there possibly a mod for that?

 

If no such thing exists, I guess I will be forced to chop the castle up into bits and use tall fences and bridges to "fuse the bits together". 

 

carpentry.jpg

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Found this conversation with the mod mentioned, trying it out now!

 

Edit: Ok that didn't work at all. It completely stopped the Wurm launcher from starting up. And I had the correct mod launcher as well. Ah well...

Edited by Malena

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Awesome to see another go at this idea :)

 

Too tired at the moment but I'll look into the carp limit thing tommorow if no one else does it by then.

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That is awesome!  Love and miss UO.  Would be nice to see a lot of ideas from UO brought to Wurm.

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biggerhouses mod  is what I use, it's like an extension of my persons because I can go as big as I want to.

 

 

Edited by ozmods

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2 minutes ago, ozmods said:

biggerhouses mod  is what I use, it's like an extension of my persons because I can go as big as I want to.

 

 

 

Hey Ozmods, Thank you - but that's the exact one I tried (based on that thread I linked). As I mentioned above, my launcher refused to even start when I had it there, even though I had the mod launcher he mentioned. As soon as I removed bigger houses, the wurm launcher started to work again. 

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You could create a focus zone and make it use the massive house option in there. Then shape it to your needs. that would work.

 

Have fun !

 

Valiance and Kaylie.

 

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