Ultima VI Tile Graphics Identification Part 1

"K is part of mill-work mechanism. You can find in various towns, the sawmill, or maybe that crazy mage's island - Sutek."

For V (the forge) I think those are red hot stones. I can't find a great reference photo. But this is kinda close. Just picture looking down at it with the top removed. And somehow it got hot enough to make the stones glow.

"N-P look like the different sun icons."

"Black Pearl I think has fewer pixels. Looks more like cannonball. I don't think the same graphic was used."

"Is 'L' maybe for any mass party buffs/effects - like mass invis too? 'M' I've seen before but can't place. Maybe for any mass damage/debuff effect spells?"

I think I remember seeing Q as the volcanic craters in the overland map.

"G is part of a rotisserie over a forge...See the second level of the Cyclops Cave for an example:"

"V is a forge made of refractory brick. In this design, the pieces have to fit together very well because they don't have refractory mortar technology. The top surface of each brick slopes a bit. Air is routed from the bellows to the center, underneath."

"Here's another circular refractory brick forge. The one in Ultima is also based on a cooking pit: It has a low level edge on the NE and SW sides, and higher edges on NW and SE. So, if you placed a spit with a pig on it, SW-to-NE, it would stay put. Now that I've pointed that out, you can probably make visual sense of it."

"Okay, this is a weird rabbit hole. 🙂 The material is called “pipestone”. It’s a kind of compressed talc rock. It insulates and doesn’t explode under extreme heat.
It’s very soft; you can etch it with a butter knife. Also, this kind of stone is often laced with asbestos. The Viking culture people of Hurstvik used it to “smelt” bog iron.

Bog iron wasn’t normally melted. It’s part pure iron and part silica. It was heated to red hot, and the consistency of used bubblegum in the cold.

This is why it’s referred to as “cold iron”. The glowing lump is called “a bloom”.

Bog iron is found as pea-sized nodules in peat. Formed by microbes, it appears after about 30 years. Hence its other name, of “living iron”.

If actually melted, it was ruined, turning into mere pure iron. It does not rust— many ship’s fixtures are made of it, even today.

Bog iron was used to make razors. Once melted, the silica went away, and the leftover pure iron no longer holds an edge.

It was only good for cast iron skillets and pots after that.

Bog iron was powdered and then immediately ‘roasted’ to drive off water. That shape, of the brazier, like a cone with the top cut off, then a bowl-shaped depression, is “a roaster”.

http://www.hurstwic.org/.../manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm"

People went to extreme efforts to acquire it. There’s only a few spots in the world to find it, notably India. It was made into a kind of cauldron. It’s called gala red soapstone.

Here’s an item made out of it. The luster is waxy; the color may be slightly mottled. If there’s a fire, the subsurface scattering has a slight yellowish hue.

"W is an aluminum milk can. Aluminum is an anachronism, but it's such an iconic material for this item."

"Y is wheat in a sheaf. Modern wheat is only hip-height, to work well with the mowing and threshing devices. This is a "heritage" cultivar. The stalks are as long as a person is tall. The "ears" of grain at the top flop over and outwards. It would have been tied with a braid made of straw." (when multiple sheaves are stood up with 3 legs like tripods seen here to dry) "...that’s a stook."

"It’s this."

"Incidentally— if you see this carved on a gravestone, it means the person lived to a 'ripe old age'."

"The straw itself is also much tougher than modern wheat straw. It was highly prized as a material for thatching roofs because it insulated the whole house. We had a set of thatched roofs, made using Arthur Claude Strachan's paintings for reference. They were a nice relief from all the sharp edges; they had rounded corners. Unfortunately, roofs were cut out to fit RAM. Variant Elizabethan walls sections with quaint diagonal wood beams, also didn't make it in. The wattle-and-daub walls just had repetitive vertical dark beams."

Denis Loubet: "I did many of these tiles. But I did them so long ago that I can’t help much with identification.""

ME: I see. I'm wondering about your thoughts then. Scale is really weird, and many large objects are often fitted into single tiles, like the water wheel, which presumably would be waaaay bigger than a cat in real life. As an artists designing concept art, was it frustrating to be limited by the tech? Like, you'd draw a big sweeping village with multiple stories, etc., then it'd have to be crafted with like 3 tiles. So the question I want to ask everyone involved with U6 is, what was particularly frustrating about the limitations of the development, and if you could remake Ultima VI in 3D with modern tech, what would be the biggest changes you'd make to make the product more in line with the original vision? For example, multi story houses? hills? bigger towns? what would players notice as being VERY different if you could do it now? Obviously there are some fans who would scoff at ANY change, but I'm not worried about the fans here so much as the vision.

Denis Loubet: "I knew it all had to be done with icons, there was simply no other way. The part I found rewarding was treating the icons like paintings, with lighting and shadows. I was especially proud of the shiny black floor tiles, they were definitely a little victory."

ME: ah yes, they are pretty nice. Since I'm am modeling all the U6 tiles in 3D, would it makes sense to use your paintings and other fantasy art as references for what they should look like? for example, I used the avatar's sword from your awesome Black Gate painting to model the sword. Most of what you do feels like it would fit perfectly in Ultima. Were you chosen because Garriott was like "that's what I want Britannia to look like!"? or did he describe what he wanted and you said "ah I can do that."?

Denis Loubet: "Richard was showing off Ultima 1 to his friend Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games and I was there doing art for SJG. For whatever reason, Richard liked my work and commissioned covers and manual art from then on until he could hire me full time."