Greetings,

A while ago, I have discovered Elemental, absorbing every other piece of information I could get my dirty hands on. It got me pretty darn excited. At the same time, nostalgic memories of Ultima (Ultima Online, specifically) from a time long ago emerged in my brain. These two forces of insane magnitude in terms of awesomeness met in my brain, combined and re-emerged as an idea. (Granted, hearing the Stones track from Ultima Online at that point didn't help much to prevent it.)

»  Hey, « I thought to myself, » wouldn't it be awesome to use Elemental's modding capabilities to create a singleplayer campaign loosely based on the Ultima series? «

Indeed, it would -- well, unless Origin sues me. Then again, they have allowed the existence of privately maintained and free to play Ultima Online servers for many years. Plus, if kept loosely enough, the grounds for lawsuits may dwindle.

» Ah, screw it and give it a shot. Wish I have had access to the map editor to get started on the map though, « one of my neurons underneath my cortex moaned. Then again, 0-day is only a painfully long six days away, give or take. I'll just try to hang on to my sanity and see what can be done about that when time comes. Right? RIGHT? *the author of this post gnaws on this thumbs while drooling all over the desk*

(minutes later...)

Anyhow. I will probably try to work a little bit on a singleplayer campaign for Elemental loosely based on Ultima. It's probably going to be less of an 4X campaign and more like a narrative story where the player will start out as a pawn (figuratively speaking) amidst the politics of Britannia, questing the day away while slowly becoming entangled in a greater adventure. As for the storytelling part, I was thinking something among the lines of Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Say what you want about the game, but I, for one, absolutely loved the narrative part.

As far as naming goes, I'll probably go with Elemental: Stories of Britannia until I find a less dumb title for the project if/when I start implementing it -- shouldn't be too hard to come up with a better name. So far, the only work done are a few scraps and notes in OneNote to summarize and detail the plot. I might as well use an episodic approach where (concluded) parts of the storyline are released as, well, sequential episodes.

That aside, I'd be happy to receive feedback on a number of things, such as the issue of legality, theme, mood, criticism, suggestion and ideas. If forums aren't good enough, I happen to lurk on Stardock's IRC every now and then, mostly in #elemental and #stardock.