Ultima 7 (MCraft)

The Ultima 7 project for minecraft

• A remake of the entire Ultima 7 world in MineCraft.
• An adventure map

The plan was to remake the U7 world, buildings, AI and villagers using a few tools as quick as possible, although i feel this should be a community project, something everybody gets together to build rather than something i build alone for display purposes.

For now i will overview the project and see if anyone randomly finds this page and is interested. Once i have some of the smaller islands complete i will decide whether i should complete the build or release it for another server to allow people complete.

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The Ultima 7 World (In World Painter)

 

• U7 4096 x 4096 world image
• It turned out great and i have begun building tree schematics and buildings.
• The edges of the islands are steep and flat. Approx 10 Cubes high and completely flat.
• Items are placed in chests
• AI/ Wildlife are spawned/ placed manually, by use of “Egg spawners”
• Caves do not have roofs, these are built using MCedit and MCraft

Ultima 7 is played with a top down/ isometric view, thus the water is actually the same level as the ground. Sadly this feature is not possible with minecraft as the entire world would flood upon generating. It may have looked better with a slight gradient, declining by 1 cube on the z-axis for every cube on the x or y, however, when the player reaches the edge of the island it acts as a deterrent and clear indication you are walking off the map/ islands. MCEdit will make it relatively simple to add to the beaches and island perimeters if needed.

– It was possible to build this using a grid system, however, as we all know, minecraft environments are built with one default scale in mind. The same size cube everywhere for everything. This meant that i could not keep a strict Grid pattern throughout the development stages.

Click the image to make it bigger, have a look at Scara Brae (Red island on the west), the grey squares represent where the buildings will be built.

The buildings will be built with a variety of blocks; these blocks will be replaced with custom textures in the style of Ultima. I think this would be easier than me learning how to mod MCraft and add new blocks, especially when they may interfere with other mods.

I experienced issues with Auto-populating minecraft. The benefits are you get some buildings, features, creatures and mobs. Unfortunately this also caused lava pools and water pools and destruction of the world in general. Even with tweaks in Worldpainter prior to exporting could not get it right..

– For those reasons the world is being manually populated.

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Whats next:

• Finish as many islands as i can, maybe leave Brittania to the community
• learn about – or get a volunteer to make – mods, for the Headless Enemies
• learn about – or get a volunteer to make – mods, for the Music
• Finish the custom Ultima texture pack

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Resources & Software Used:

• MCEdit
• WorldPainter
• Photoshop
• Ultima 7 (Complete Edition)
• Exult
• Minecraft

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Links:

• http://inspired.ultimacodex.com/tag/minecraft/
• http://ian-albert.com/games/ultima_6_minecraft/

 

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