2014-10-19 Fixed and Fixes
It has been almost a month and I have some important news to relate. First up, our editor can now alter and add fixed objects. For some clarification, Ultima IX’s maps are split into three files: terrain, fixed objects, and nonfixed objects. Terrain obviously deals with height maps, liquids (water and lava mainly), and ground textures. The fixed object file largely contains scenery and buildings; essentially anything that shouldn’t be moved (ie fixed) and that doesn’t need a property. In fact, nothing in the game can change fixed objects since fixed files aren’t included in the savegame. Everything else goes into the nonfixed object file from scripting objects and npcs to items and effects to scenery and other fixed-like objects that must be moved, altered, or deleted. For some time now, we have had the ability to alter nonfixed files using several tools of varying capability, but with the addition of fixed file editing, we can now engage in more significant worldbuilding activities. While adding new objects is still very very rudimentary and the editor lacks terrain functionality, this does open up the possibility of expanding existing dungeons and building brand new underground areas.
As for Beautiful Britannia, I have made significant headway with incorporating much of my earlier patching work. At present, there are 23 fixes and polishes incorporated into the latest internal build of BB. Luckily, most of my fixes didn’t require any work on the map files themselves. So I’ll be preparing at least one more patch for the vanilla game, it will also give me the ability to properly test the fixes without running into any issues from the major town reconstruction going on in Cove, Minoc, and Moonglow for BB. By the way, if anybody would like to do a little testing with the vanilla version of the patch, just send us an email (see Contacts under Information).
– Iceblade
