Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Kammie's Custom House Designs: January 2010

This house design is very heavily influenced by a design I'd found on a website at the time. I believe it was from Markee Dragon's website back when they actually had screenshots from UO. I remember perusing those images all the time, looking for some sort of decorating/building inspiration.
Here you can see the eating table I had set up. I really just wanted to fill that empty space and had decided to reuse my previous "Thanksgiving Table" concept here.
Here you can see the entrance way I had set up. This really had no 'me' touch besides the carpet; I took it directly from the screenshots I was using to build this house. The only other changes were the addition of a couple of plants, then-new Christmas and 12th Anniversary decorations, and that candelabra that was from Stygian Abyss.
This was my usual waterfall and sitting area combination that I'd taken a liking to around that time. Here you can also see my addition of the runebook library of sorts to the right.
Here's where I had my rares and collectibles. I probably should have added a completed library in the upper left area, but this was before I'd taken to adding libraries wherever I needed to fill space. My tailor BOD cloth and sandals were on display as this was Test Center and at the time it still had a separate economy from production shards, leaving menial things such as these as high-end trading items.
The third floor had my typical crafting and storage section. I'd later add in another stone table to add some baking goods on (such as the gingerbread men that my friends and I found quite amusing when trying to eat) but the layout remained much the same.
For completion's sake I've included the screenshots that I took to show the roofing. If you look closely you can see that this roofing doesn't create a perfect 'fit' with the level above it, and on the 3rd floor you can sort of see into the house in lines of about 2 pixels wide. In later iterations of these roofs I began taking to placing like-colored tiling on the 4th floor to prevent that inconsistency.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Kammie's Memories: 2007 - Garret

Now this is a trip to the past. I only remember that this was taken in very early 2007, back when I still had a thing with symmetry in my house designs and when I liked having a color scheme to each individual room. Looking back, I feel I made the rooms to this house too big... but that's besides the point of this particular tidbit from my past.
The character in blaze riding the green hiryu is Garret. He was a pretty close friend at that time. As I recall he was many years older than me, but we weren't ones to complain about ages. We enjoyed taming colored hiryus and collecting as many colored ones as we could. I remember that this was before the introduction of greater dragons, and that I couldn't tame the hiryus on my own unless I was completely devoting my attention to healing my white wyrm. I miss him, even though my memories fail to tell me why. I'm pretty sure it's just because he was a great friend and we did so much together, back in the days of "TLAC" and "TGIF" (Tastes Like a Chicken, and Thank God It's Friday), the predecessors to AXIS.
Anyways... this is a short entry, but I've decided to try to post whatever I can about my earlier days of Ultima Online.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Kammie's Custom House Design Builds: October 2010 (Round Two)

This is actually older than the previous post's build, but when initially looking at them I'd thought this was the younger one. Oops, my bad. This was the last build I did on this particular Test Center before it wiped and we got the one in the previous post. Then that one got taken down for Shard of the Dead 2010. Fun times, right? As I never got a chance to decorate this build, there are no accompanying screenshots. That seems to've happened with a lot of the builds I recorded.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Kammie's Custom House Design Builds: October 2010


I found this video while going through the remains of my previous hard drive and decided I would post it. This is another design for Test Center, and as I recall this design wasn't decorated at all. Before I got a chance to, I decided to go for a more "Halloweeny" look. Then, before I could decorate my finished product, the shard was taken down for the 2010 Shard of the Dead.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Kammie's Custom House Designs: December 2010


 This is another Test Center design, but it's while trying to better incorporate my runebooks into the house design without having to create a complete separate structure for the runebooks. It's also where I work with some Winter themed decor. This is also where I began adding more porches to my designs in an attempt to prevent the houses from looking too large and blocky.
By this point I had incorporated a soulforge into my design, and the bottom floor had become my crafting floor. Here you can see that I was still fond of the 'little stable' outside the house.
I'd also taken to adding a spare bedroom or two around this time, as well as an "arty" area where I just threw all of the rares I had collected. If you look closely at the stairs leading up to the third floor, you can see two wooden boxes hidden in the stairs. What better way to kick back and read than by your secret stash of goods?
On the top floor we have my bedroom, as well as my storage room, complete with skeletons and whatnot from trick-or-treating a few months prior. At this point I loved using reading nooks to fill in spaces I otherwise couldn't find a purpose for.
In this design you can also see the result of the new Treasure Map system - mainly the new vines hanging on either side of the door on the 2nd story porch.

At this point I'm very angry with myself. There were at least 6 house designs between February and December that I can clearly see in old screenshots, but I failed to go through and take screenshots like this. Previous ones are incomplete screenshots of the house, or while the house was in progress, or including some old friends and some text that would take away from the design. I thought I was more thorough at documenting my house designs.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Kammie's Custom House Designs: February 2010


This is the first house design I made where I really experimented with juxtaposing different wall types together for an all new feel. This is also during my stage of oriental-style housing, which lasted for well over a year.

Here is another view of the exterior, as well as the Northwest roof garden I used. This is unusual in that my gardens aren't typically in that corner of the house. I don't do this often because the walls to the South and East of the garden tend to obscure any decorations I might put. In this case, I used it to break up an otherwise bulky building.
Here you can see the small runebook library I made public for those who needed it. I say small, but it in fact took up about a third of the house. I've always tried to make public services when creating a house, and as this house was on Test Center, the small runebook library proved to be a valuable addition to the community we had there. The rest of the floor was dedicated to an indoor eating area/garden of sorts, with  a small stable outside.
Here you can see the second story of the rune library, as well as my bedroom and miscellaneous items. The biggest area of note I want to point out is the hidden library on top of the stables. I've always loved adding in little easter eggs to my designs. They add character and reason for others to explore every nook and cranny of the house, something I've always loved.
Here we have the crafting room and outdoor garden. In the little 2by4 room is the teleporter that would lead to the library, accessible only to those who knew the nifty little click-and-drag to walk through solid objects trick. They've 'fixed' that trick by now, though I must say I miss what it added to the creativity it added to house designs. Before I knew of that trick's existence, there had been a puzzle house on Lake Austin that I could never finish. It had fallen by the time I thought to try out the trick on that area I got stuck in, but it obviously was used in more than just decorating.
Finally, here is a 'closer' look at the library room, complete with writing table and bookshelves. I wish I had taken another screenshot using the circle of transparency, so I could show the room in better detail, but this design was well over 3 years ago. It's long gone.