Ikirouta IV - Ultima 5-inspired WIP

[JJ Naas]

This is a mock-up I've been doodling on. 12 years ago or so me and my friends started working on an U4/U5 -like game, I did the graphs, and they had a map editor already coded. Of course nothing came out of it. But I decided to return to the old brief for fun, which was to create tiles for a really dark, low-magic fantasy world. Unfortunately I've lost the original tiles ages ago, it would've been fun to compare. The UI is a complete Ultima 5 rip-off, there just to get myself in the mood. Ikirouta means permafrost.

[Glak]

I love it.  This is really amazing actually.  It has the classic style and has a palette that doesn't look sophisticated but actually is.

[Mr_L]

I've never played this game but are they supposed to be looking directly at us? If they are then that's fine but it looks as if it's a top  down game so I would consider making it more looking like the characters are walking and standing instead of,what looks like,they are laying down.

[JJ Naas]

Glak: Thanks. It was interesting for me to do this because I now understand much better what the constraints for the U5 artists were and how they quite cleverly worked around them. The starting point is that black is the base colour, everything is drawn on top of black. Objects like tables and chairs that will always be found inside can have the floor drawn to the tile same tile, but character graphs that can go inside or walk out in the grass or on whatever surface have only black around them, because (as far as I understand it) they couldn't use transparency on the tiles.

Mr_L: It's not really a top down game. The tiles are more symbolic than anything else, except that for example in U4/U5 there are all kinds of weird perspectives mixed in. It's sometimes a bit confusing. The character tile only has one direction, so if the perspective were more defined as top-down, moving "north" would make the character tile look as if it were walking backwards, in which case I'd need to draw the character from back/side views as well. Laying down looks like it's not facing any particular direction, therefore it can go in any direction, with a single tile's worth of graphs.

[Mr_L]

Mr_L: It's not really a top down game. The tiles are more symbolic than anything else, except that for example in U4/U5 there are all kinds of weird perspectives mixed in. It's sometimes a bit confusing. The character tile only has one direction, so if the perspective were more defined as top-down, moving "north" would make the character tile look as if it were walking backwards, in which case I'd need to draw the character from back/side views as well. Laying down looks like it's not facing any particular direction, therefore it can go in any direction, with a single tile's worth of graphs.

Oh okay then so making it in all an easier game to program since not having to program all 4 or 8 directional sprites.
Pretty good sprites though,I can't seem to critisize them.Looks great.

[Helm]

absolutely spot-on. I've been meaning to do something like this as well.

Personally, I'd go with transparency on the tiles, it's the only 'ugly' thing in U4/U5 graphics and not a necessary limitation to emulate to capture the spirit of the thing, for me.

I love how low-value everything is. Perfect symbolic space, this is how rpgs should be, letting me imagine between the gaps of frames and animations, not throwing faces and lip-synced acting 'it's a movie' on me.

[Ninja Crow]

This is really cool -- I think you have the look 'down pat'.  Ultima 4 was my first PC RPG, and remains a favourite, and number 5 was a very impressive sequel, so I love what you've done so far.

I recently found a site that's dedicated to the crafting of 'vintage' RPGs, like Ultima -- here's a link to it's fourth article.  It's pretty text-heavy, but it has some cool pictures of the Ultima 'line-of-sight-shadows' system in action, near the bottom.  I don't know if you're still planning on making this into a working game, but if you are, I hope you don't mind touching on the programming aspect a bit, as well as the graphics!

I love your palette, too.

[JJ Naas]

absolutely spot-on. I've been meaning to do something like this as well.

I want to see, do it!

Personally, I'd go with transparency on the tiles, it's the only 'ugly' thing in U4/U5 graphics and not a necessary limitation to emulate to capture the spirit of the thing, for me.

If I made this with transparent tiles, then I guess I'd need to work a bit more on the floor tiles to make them less busy.

I love how low-value everything is. Perfect symbolic space, this is how rpgs should be, letting me imagine between the gaps of frames and animations, not throwing faces and lip-synced acting 'it's a movie' on me.

Yeah, that's what's awesome about these games. Another favourite of mine was Nahlakh, which was very hack'n'slash, it had maybe the best fight mechanics I've seen on this genre.

I recently found a site that's dedicated to the crafting of 'vintage' RPGs, like Ultima -- here's a link to it's fourth article.  It's pretty text-heavy, but it has some cool pictures of the Ultima 'line-of-sight-shadows' system in action, near the bottom.  I don't know if you're still planning on making this into a working game, but if you are, I hope you don't mind touching on the programming aspect a bit, as well as the graphics!

Awesome, looks very informative, I've got to take some time to read it. My mock-up doesn't include theline-of-sight, so you can see the inside the house and the forest..

[Helm]

I prefer Natuk by the same author!

[JJ Naas]

I prefer Natuk by the same author!

I have missed that one completely.. dangerous stuff, it might end up stealing a lot of my free time.

Next.. I'll try to do either some desert or cavern tiles for this project.