Time Immortal

You totally didn’t read it here first, but there it is: Ultima series creator Richard Garriott has parted ways with Tabula Rasa (also his creation) publisher NCSoft in order to pursue new interests.

Apparently, his recent trip into space (a “lifelong dream” of his) has prompted him to look for a change:

“Well, that unforgettable experience has sparked some new interests that I would like to devote my time and resources to. As such, I am leaving NCsoft to pursue those interests.”

Well, here at Time Immortal, we wish Lord — now General — British all the best in whatever new venture he strikes out toward, whether those interests exist within, or outside of, the gaming industry.

Interesting factoid I did not know previously: Lord British is apparently the son of an astronaut.

(thanks to Aiera Reader mageguru for the link to this article)

Star Wars: The Old Republic — the new massively multiplayer online game from BioWare and LucasArts. As the good Reader can hopefully see, it looks amazing…and if it’s BioWare developing the storylines for it, I’ve no doubt that its gameplay and plot will, likewise, be nothing short of incredible.

The Realms of Ultima project — the Neverwinter Nights 2-based version of Project Britannia, a project which aims to create a pre-fabricated Ultima world for others to use as a basis for their own projects — has been updated twice since last I checked in with it.

For starters, project lead MokahTGS has posted an article in which he discusses a few of his inspirations, as well as some of the new features of an upcoming NWN2 expansion pack that he is looking forward to making use of.

But additionally, he and fellow developer Jaesun have been working on a contribution to Bouncy Rock Entertainment’s “Community Halloween Project.” Their contribution will evidently be the Grumpy Strumpet tavern, which will in due time become the tavern in .

Full and fair disclosure: I’m still angry at Harper and the Conservatives for cutting the Telefilm new media fund. As a part-time gamer, part-time game historian, part-time game-maker, and technical officer for the Edmonton Game Convention, the loss of the Telefilm fund is, for me, something that stings…especially since we had hoped to draw funding for the Convention, in part, from Telefilm (who were really enthusiastic at the idea of a gamer-centric gaming convention).

Be that as it may, however, I do agree with Stephen Harper when he notes that much of the whining and pleas for money from the arts community in Canada simply do not resonate with Canadians. Much of the content that the arts community in Canada produces is, simply put, not worth the money spent on it. It’s just not that good.

That’s not to say it’s all crap, of course…but one notes that the best things coming out of e.g. Vancouver these days are not wholly Canadian shows. Things like Battlestar Galactica — an excellent series — make heavy use of Canadian talent and Canadian locations, because it’s the only way that a show with such consistently high-quality visual effects can possibly stay within its overall budget. And that Canadian talent is put to good use; many of the actors on that show are excellent or better. Likewise, the Canadian landscape has proven itself versatile and adaptable to the needs of a show that has involved a few instances of planet-hopping.

But in the end, BSG is still essentially an American show. Most of its funding flows from the Sci-Fi Channel, and its principal audience is State-side. The same can be said of shows like Stargate Atlantis — produced here, but mostly funded from abroad. Few wholly Canadian shows rise to match the quality of e.g. BSG, and fewer still enjoy any kind of comparable audience and popularity.

And in many cases, there’s a good reason for that. Even a cursory glance at the slate of programs that the CBC is running this season makes one scratch one’s head — the shows just aren’t that good. Hockey Night in Canada is still about the best thing the CBC has going for it, because it’s about the only show in Mothercorp’s lineup that doesn’t betray a leftward political slant (although, to his credit, Rick Mercer has come down on the right side of the freedom of speech/HRC debate).

And of course, this is just television we’re talking about. The arts community in Canada produces quite a lot of other stuff besides niche television shows…much of it of even lower quality, and lesser appeal, than Canadian television. There’s not a stage play that has been produced in Canada in…a long time…that I’d care to go and see, and even most Canadian “artists” (by which I mean painters, sculptors, and the like) produce material that simply does not resonate with me (and, I suspect, with many other Canadians as well). Some of it is disgusting, some of it is mediocre, and some of it is just damned odd…and the amount of crap sadly outweighs, and overshadows, what genuinely good stuff exists.

And we, the Canadian taxpayers, shouldn’t have to fork over dollars in support of things which we’ll never go and see, nor ever acknowledge as being something of substance and quality. Yeah, I’ll gladly pay to support Hockey Night, even if I don’t watch much hockey…but I’m not particularly inclined to support Little Mosque On The Prairie. I’d be okay with sending a few of my tax dollars to the producers of Corner Gas, but I’d rather not line the pockets of the people who work on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Canadian artists rallied to denounce the Harper government for its stance. Gordon Pinsent even stood up and said that Canadian artists “should be the landlords of [their] own industry, not the tenants.”

I actually agree. I think Canadian artists shouldn’t be government tenants, dependent on federal handouts. I think the art that Canadians produce should be able to stand up on its own merits, and generate revenue that doesn’t emerge primarily from federal coffers. I have no problem with the idea that the government might lend assistance to commercially viable artistic ventures…but in the end, I don’t think the government’s contribution should be the majority share of any particular art project’s funding.

Let’s come back to the Telefilm fund and computer games for a minute. If there is one thing that Canadian artists — new media artists, mind — do very well, it is computer games. Canadians make excellent games. And I’m not just talking about EA Sports out in Vancouver, which was for years the only decent EA studio. I’m talking about the various smaller developers who have produced a consistent string of excellent titles over the last few years. Relic (Vancouver) gave us Homeworld and its sequel. Ironclad Games (Burnaby) gave us Sins Of A Solar Empire, which I am told is just an astounding title. Edmonton’s own BioWare has produced a steady stream of hits, including Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights Of The Old Republic, and Mass Effect. And Ubisoft Canada (Montreal) gave us Assassin’s Creed, another critically acclaimed game.

Government funding went into some of these titles, but the government didn’t provide the lion’s share of the development money in any particular case. And it isn’t government money that let the games themselves turn a profit; all of these titles have been commercially successful, because they’re damn good. Because they were developed with the end user in mind, and offered something that gamers the world over were willing to actually pay money for.

It’s that last point that’s important: people wanted to support these games financially, by buying them. As Kateland at TLA notes:

In any given time, in any given culture, if patrons cannot be found who are freely willing to pay for the fare which is offered by the artistic community, is says something substantial about the fare which is offered, but apparently, not in Canada.

The government purse is not a finite resource. The purse is only filled by sweat of the brow of the taxpayers via the coercive arm of Revenue Canada. Life is about choices and so is government. The government cannot go on funding indefinitely and without concern to the cost of each program which it currently funds.

And so I find I’m torn. I agree, overall, with the decision of the Canadian government to restrict arts funding. I just wish they hadn’t killed the Telefilm fund in the process. In the end, though, that’s not a total loss either. Certainly, none of the above-listed game companies is going to be hurt all that much by it, and even the Convention will be able to find alternative sources of funding. That’s because they, and we, keep in mind the most important thing: the people. These companies, and our Convention team, intend to produce something that others will see as worthwhile, and not just something which will earn appreciative nods from a select handful of artistés and intelligensia.

EUO — the free, online multiplayer RPG that draws heavy inspiration from earlier Ultima games — has seen a large update just recently:

Some big changes: Added a huge mapset expansion based around a new mini-continent called Maeondir, mostly aimed at the lvl 40+ set. Also converted the client to 800×600 and added custom skins support.

Screenshots of the new continent can be viewed here.

Since the update in part pertains to a modification to the game client, I have uploaded the latest version of the game’s installer to Aiera, and it can be downloaded at the project entry there. Note that this updated seems only to pertain to the game’s 2D client, and not its 3D client.

Pentagram, the remake that does for Ultima 8 what Exult did for Ultima 7, has posted news of their development progress for the first time since last December. The team, it seems, has been busy indeed!

In the last few months, interest in Pentagram seems to have picked up again. A number of bugs were fixed since the last update, including camera fixes, key handling, containers (backpack, barrels, etc.), and a fix for a problem in the German versions of the U8. The default key binding for stasis moved from ‘S’ to ‘F10′. The build should now properly support versions of autoconf greater than 2.60.

Mac OS X builds also received a lot of attention. They build system switched from XCode to a makefile-based system that builds Pentagram and dependencies using their traditional configure script and make methods. This allows us a greater amount of control over the builds and should help prevent changes to Pentagram for unix systems that break OS X builds and vice versa.

Just prior to this news update, I noticed that the Pentagram team had released updated snapshots of both their Windows and Mac builds of the game, and both of these updates have been added to the project entry at Aiera. I’ve also updated Aiera’s copy of the Pentagram source code.

I’ve switched the focus of my development efforts a little bit, and am (for the time being) working on implementing interior areas and furniture in Black Dragon City, the capital city of Sosaria in Lost Sosaria. And there’s 8 new screenshots over on the project website demonstrating the fruits of those efforts.