Short news about Britannian Underworld

The project development has slowed down quite a bit since we still don’t have a pixel artist, however there are things of relevance to note.

Art

We are still looking for an artist for the project, if you’d like to contribute and gain great fame and virtue, here’s a list of stuff 🙂

Engine

Exodus Destiny has completely remade the engine using WebGL instead of the hand made raycasting software rendering he was using on the first version of the engine (which was pretty impressive from the technical POV), in his mind he’s achieved what he wanted to do with it in, learning a lot in the process of making it and pushing it to its limits; however the game still ran a bit slow on low-end machines, and that was his main motivation to do the new one.

Along with improved performance, this will allow several new things like:

• Easily support different height terrain, as can be seen in the current demo
• We could eventually incorporate some 3D models (UW did it with the rocks :P)
• Rendering stuff is simplified, leveraging ED’s development power to work on more things directly related to the game

Of course, we are keeping with the initial idea of following the original Ultima Underworld style, so we won’t be using all the power put at our disposal with WebGL. The only drawback is that now you’ll need a browser that supports WebGL.

You can find the current version here, it’s Open Source so if you want to take a look and collaborate, it’s here

The former, simpler version of the engine is probably going to be used in the future for a simpler 3D dungeon hack’n slash game.

Music and Sound

This version also includes the first track sent to us by Cantarelli Cantarelli, it’s a melancholic track that we are going to be using probably in the menu screen. We were also contacted by Stephen Johnson, a sound design / voice-over specialist, whose skills may come in handy for the weapon and environmental SFXs, as well as a possible Intro ala UW.

Level Design

We have been chatting along with Orlando, defining the posibilites given by the engine for puzzle design.