Introduction

For those of you who know me, you will know I have a passion for building and deco, so I have decided to put up a few things I have done, or made, or found in my travels through Sosaria that I like.  Not all are my creation, and where I know the ‘originator’ I shall give credit. Some things I have seen have inspired me to amend them to ‘my way’ of doing a similar thing or tried to work a ‘better’ way of doing it to use less lockdowns, which all decorators know is the bane of life in UO!

I tend to do my stuff in a ‘whole of building’ approach from start to finish, to form some type of ‘theme’ for the whole house.  In a custom design this starts from before the first tile is placed.  In any design the first question is ‘what is this going to be used for?’.  You must always have that first and foremost in your mind before starting a build.  Is it just a house for your characters to live in? Is it going to be a public or private house? If public, what kind of access will you require to keep the crowds of visitors under control? If the building will function as both private space for you and public space for others, how will you control movement? Do you want anything in there of a particular nature, ie a rune library, a guild hall, a tavern or something else? Are you the type who wants rooms designated for a particular use such as a tailor or smith shop? Or do you prefer to have everything at your fingertips for ‘real’ use, however still have ‘rooms’ as display, so keep all your crafting stuff together, but create pure deco rooms for those activities.

I tend to focus most of my ‘deco’ on UO Classic houses, such as Castles and Keeps.  These prove to be more of a ‘challenge’ in that you do not have the ability to knock out a wall or make a space bigger, or add things such as water tiles, stairways or teleporters, so to create useful spaces in these areas that go with my ‘themed’ approach tend to require a lot more thought in the purely deco side of things.  Castles are a special challenge as a lot of the space in a castle is very narrow so to effectively make items visible without appearing cluttered is a huge challenge. I dislike clutter, so want to be able to run around my whole castle fast without banging into tables or items that impede movement but still want useful decorated spaces!

My other focus has been for player run events, which I have operated on my shard for a few years, first under the banner of ‘Fox-Emporium Events [F-em] and currently under the banner of Emporium Vendors & Events [EVE].  Creating venues for player run events is a challenge in itself as the focus shifts to ‘crowd control’ and ‘use’ and the relationship between space and deco becomes more critical. Also ‘acoustics’ play a much greater role when doing the deco for events as you need to ‘test’ positioning of seating so that the ‘pubic’ can actually hear what they are there for and ‘see’ what they are meant to see, so design and deco for auction halls and arenas and event houses needs to be considered before any build or deco is done to cater for the ‘use’.

As with anything designed or decoration there is a lot of personal taste involved, some things I may like, you may hate and vice versa.  So browse these pages as you wish and use whatever  you fancy in your designs or deco and modify as you see fit! The beauty of Ultima is that there is scope for everyone’s taste and the ability to change things as and when you like, so for those ‘closet’ architects or interior decorators this is the place for you!

Regards

MissEcho [2008]

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