Someone wanted to know more about this Ultima VI fan recreation side project. My end goal is to ensure that my own game #NotSSgame, and #SPgame / #fantasyadventure have all the 'asset capabilities' of Ultima VI (among other games.) What that means currently, is that I'm recreating all the Ultima VI tiles as 3D models using the atlas and real world reference photos as reference. (This is complete in a first form - some models are real blocky still), and today I just got done with making my own texture atlas of all the textures in U6 (or most, still gotta make a few new ones as I see they are needed).
What I mean is, I have painted my own textures in that style. each is 128x128, and it's an almost full 2048x2048 atlas. now I've started uv-mapping those textures onto the 3d models, at which point I will have my own set of textured 3d models that represent all the items found in Ultima VI, and since I created the models, colors, and textures, they'll be my own work I can use in future games.
To ensure I have the full "asset capabilities", the first thing I wanna do with this "asset set" is recreate Britannia in U6 and make it walkable in 1st person in Unity. it may be releasable as a little fan game/demo, as long as all assets involved are created by me, but at the very least after re-creating Britannia and ensuring it all checks out, I can then make my own game world since that would be the only remaining unoriginal aspect - the actual map layout.
As soon as I have a little scene mocked up, I'll take some screenshots of it. It would be fun to post a few locations and see if people can identify them, and give feedback, which would help me know if I'm being faithful to the spirit of U6, which is my favorite game of all time.
Atop this post is one such example.
You can see where there are nice hi-res textures on some items, but also where there are still placeholder original atlas textures. Re-mapping all the models to my custom texture atlas is tedious, but it will look really cool when it's done. I already have all the land tile textures made, too, and the wall tiles, and making the landscape will be pretty fast and easy once the items are done.
But yeah I'm using the original U6 tile atlas as inspiration to help me find real-world reference imagery of the relevant objects (wtf is a wheat sheaf? now I know!) But soon all textures and models will be 100% original work, and I want to eventually pull a Jurassic Park and fill in the missing "Medieval gaps" with Ultima VII items and tiles stuff as well, remaking them in similar fashion.
Here's the original fb UDIC post.
