Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

[SausageInYourFace]

What would you take from U5 to improve U7 with?

• Combat. I'm not saying U5 combat was brilliant, because it wasn't, but it was a hell of a lot better than U7 combat. So at least taking the U5 combat and improving it instead of throwing it out would be preferable. Of course, by U7 the Ultima series wasn't about combat any more - it was essentially an adventure with RPG elements.

Fair enough, I guess thats what most people would say, most Codexians, anyway. I will still probably disagree but I'm gonna expand on why in another post.

About the map, I think it would be a too radical change from the way U7 is designed. The seamless world is integral to its design, that the world feels a bit smaller (and the adventure perhaps a bit less 'epic') as a result is something one just has to live with, I suppose.

If they'd been fully fleshed out blobbers then that would be something, but it was like playing a different game, and not a particularly good one.

Yes, particularly odd that it changed from blobber perspective to tactical top down in combat. They did a few interesting things with that (secret doors, levers and so on) but a fast paced M&M style blobber combat might have been a better choice, it certainly would've made exploration faster.

 

[Iznaliu]

Ultima VI was a revelation when I first played it in the spring of 1990.

Before Ultima VI, I loved playing games like The Bard's Tale, Wizardry, the Gold Box AD&D games, etc.

After Ultima VI, those games just felt so limited and pedestrian. PC RPGs could now produce a world simulation like this... How could those other combat-focused titles not feel simplistic in comparison? Obviously many don't see it my way.

I was never able to enjoy those other games the same way again. I kept waiting for other CRPGs to catch up, but Ultima VII was the only one that took the foundation of VI and built on it.

I had the opposite experience with Wiz8

 

[Gentle Player]

What would you take from U5 to improve U7 with?

• The multi-scale map. Although how that could easily be integrated with U7 I don't know. U7 would have to be completely redesigned from the ground up, with all the possibilities for ruining the game that this entails. I did have a lot of fun exploring Serpent Isle, far more than the new single-scale Britannia, which I think comes from being unable to suspend my disbelief at the suddenly changed gameworld, whereas SI didn't have that baggage (unless you consider go back to U1).
• Combat. I'm not saying U5 combat was brilliant, because it wasn't, but it was a hell of a lot better than U7 combat. So at least taking the U5 combat and improving it instead of throwing it out would be preferable. Of course, by U7 the Ultima series wasn't about combat any more - it was essentially an adventure with RPG elements.

I thought I'd have more, but those are the two ones that immediately spring to mind when I think about U7. Most of the other potential changes, like world design, would stem from the multi-scale map. I'm not saying that you could make U7 a better game by pulling bits out of U5 - I'm sure that would just create a mess - I'm saying that you could potentially make a better game than either by using the best bits of both as a starting point. Rather than what we ended up getting.

There was also a bit more minor "dumbing down" with regards to some of the simulationist aspects. I can't remember if it was VI or VII which removed them, however. I'm thinking of things like setting up a guard whilst the whole party slept in the wilderness, in order to look out for ambushes. In VII, only the Avatar needed to have a bed roll to sleep in; it didn't matter for other party members; there were also no ambushes and no need to set up a watch.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Would you really like to put up a bedroll for every companion everytime you wanted to rest? People would've played with the avatar alone instead of taking companions with them because it would've been incredibly tedious.

 

[Infinitron]

Would you really like to put up a bedroll for every companion everytime you wanted to rest? People would've played with the avatar alone instead of taking companions with them because it would've been incredibly tedious.

It's not like the game wasn't already made tedious by having to feed them yourself though (ffs)

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I can't imagine what that must've been like. Even in Exult, where its made much easier, it gets old pretty quickly.

 

[Infinitron]

I can't imagine what that must've been like. Even in Exult, where its made much easier, it gets old pretty quickly.

I think Origin never really had a solid grasp of RPG gameplay design, and to some degree they simply got lucky making games that were built on a simple enough formula that it took a while to go off the rails.

In the case of Ultima VII, though, I've always wondered if the game wasn't also simply rushed. For how much of a breakthrough it was, they developed it incredibly quickly. Maybe it would have had more playable combat and a saner food system if they'd had more time.

 

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

How I hated Ultima VI.

I had first played Ultima III when I was 9 years old. I eventually won the game. My father had already won it, so that helped. Also, my father would cheat for us by figuring out ways to increase powerful items in the inventory. In III he figured out that if you handed items around between characters it often had a multiplying effect. I believe in III the key item was that time stopping powder, but I would also have 99 map-seeing gems, etc.

I loved Ultima IV and played the hell out of it but could never win it. I couldn't become the Avatar. I guess I was too young to understand the virtue system well enough. I would never let monsters flee, I would never give beggars more than 2-3 gold, etc. I didn't like the Avatar thing so much . Otherwise I loved the game.

Ultima V was my favorite by far, and I completed that one too. The cheating in that one involved using Norton Utilities to give yourself 99 of the important items. The summon daemon scrolls made the combat trivial I guess. Hey, I was a kid. I would probably do it again though in order to roll through all the trash combat.

I was so excited to get Ultima VI. I loved the Ultimas. I had been waiting for this game to come out. I installed it and the fucking thing barely worked on my computer (a 386 IBM I believe). I don't think my computer had enough memory or something. I tried so hard to get it to work, but the UI and screen view was just so completely awful as well. I was enraged. Why the hell didn't the idiots just use the same graphics as Ultima V? Who the hell cares about 3-D graphics?

In short order I rage quit and never played another Ultima again until Ultima Online many years later. I was also busy playing other stuff like the Gold Box games. From what I read here, Ultima VII is a great game so maybe I will give that a try soon.

 

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

I see I got the old icon.

I'm definitely still old, but I think I screwed up the ages slightly. When I was playing Ultima III, I was probably a little younger than I had mentioned because I was definitely only 10 or 11 when I was finishing Ultima V.

I very distinctly remember where I was the day after the space shuttle Challenger blew up. That day I had faked being sick in order skip school and play Ultima V all day. I remember being in the Underworld, in the final stages of the game, and my mother had the TV on in the background. Every single channel was just non-stop coverage of the disaster. As a kid, I could not understand what the big deal was and was getting so pissed off that they wouldn't shut up about it.

 

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

Wow I just looked it up and that cannot be right. The dates are off. I must have been playing Ultima IV.

My long term memory is so bad. I would have though for sure that it was Ultima V. I clearly remember being home from school, sitting at the computer and playing an Ultima while there was non-stop coverage of the shuttle disaster. Which to me, was infuriating. Had to be Ultima IV, not V.

I used to often fake sick to play RPGs. I am pretty sure I conflated this memory with a memory where I was home "sick" and I was super excited because I was finding things in the Underworld in the end stages of Ultima V. I "remember" that but thought I remembered the shuttle disaster thing being the same day.

 

[Keldryn]

Had you played Ultima 5 first?

Admittedly, not much.

I tried playing a copy of IV on my C-64, but without the map, manual, command reference, etc it was not the easiest game to get into. Around the end of 1989, my dad built a PC clone through an NRI course he was taking. My mom let me order a few games for it from Chips N Bits; the thing was that this XT only had a Hercules monochrome (green) adapter, so I had to pick games that worked with it. I picked Hero's Quest, Times of Lore, and Ultima V.

I did try playing Ultima V, but two shades of green really sucks when you have a C-64 and an NES as well. My dad got tired of me laughing at his computet, so in the spring (1990) he bought a VGA card and monitor.

By this time I saw magazine ads for Ultima VI and I really wanted to play it. We ordered the game and when it arrived, my dad was in the process of upgrading the XT to a 286-12 with a 40MB hard drive. Once I played Ultima VI on that, I was hooked (especially after we got a Sound Blaster a few weeks later). Never looked back at the C-64 aftet that. And Ultima V, unfortunately just felt rather archaic after I was playing Ultima VI, Hero's Quest, Loom, etc.

I did go back and play a bit of V much later, when I was building regions for the Lazarus remake. I was surprised by how much of what I had thought was introduced in VI was actually present.

Still, the consistent perspective, continuous map, and modeling the world down to individual objects like forks and plates were a big part of what really impressed me about VI.

And of course, VI was the first Ultima that I really got into, so I'm sure that's a big part of it.

Take the best (or at least my favourite) bits from U5 and U7, and you'd get the dream game that was never made. I originally thought U9 was shaping up to be that game, before it was all tossed out in favour of an action-adventure.

Yeah, U9 was and remains the single greatest disappointment in my decades of gaming.

It could have been great even as an action/adventure... But the story, writing, acting, and lack of attention to the world sim really killed it for me. It sounds minor, but it really bugged me that Britain is the only town that has beds in all the houses. Yew has none, Moonglow has none...

 

[SausageInYourFace]

The richness of 6 was what I meant in terms of the detail that was added to the new engine.

Sherry, why do you never talk about Ultima 7? Did you like Ultima 6 so much better?

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I see I got the old icon.

You're about as old as me. I also remember playing U4 at about that time. I somehow acquired flu and spent the entire week off school playing U4 non-stop. Never been so addicted to a game before or since. I only played U3 after U4 and it was an odd experience to have such a combat focussed game after the virtue-led U4 experience.

 

[Sherry]

The richness of 6 was what I meant in terms of the detail that was added to the new engine.

Sherry, why do you never talk about Ultima 7? Did you like Ultima 6 so much better?

Hi.

k. u7 right? Yes I played and beat it too but a lot older compared to my youth watching my brother play older ultimas and not understanding it but loving it at the same time. We kind of finished u4 together with me watching and making pages upon pages of rewritten notes all organized and that is how I learned about the world and the quest while my brother played but when it wasn't until I got older and could understand playing games better that I was able to play them on my own. Maybe it is because u6 was my very first play with myself after watching and learning about the world my brother was playing in with me sitting next to him unfold the world to me.

So TBG right? okay I did not play that until two or three years after it came out and I got the game from a friend who had bought it and never asked for it back. My love for ultima as a child and into my early adulthood simply made me never mention I finished it just so I could keep it. I know, it is rotten to say but I truly do not think they missed it at all as they focused on becoming a police officer. TBG I really enjoyed too but it wasn't the 1st ultima game I sat down and solved for myself, it was the forth after doing the u6, u4, u5 run into u7.

I know it is on top of a lot of Ultima fans lists okay along with u5 and u6 is not the popular choice but memories and good memories with u6 trumps it for me. From a design aspect, u7 by far was superior to u6 but the whole running after E&A from town to town without the possibility of even running into them halfway to create that loathing hate we feel towards an antagonist kind of missed out opportunity. The world was fantastic though and I felt that same sense of excitement while exploring as I did with u6.

It was the last ultima I played but did see u8 via a friend and just made a face. The enjoyment of the ultima games was returning to the world to experience the changes from one game to another and running into old friends and names of characters you recognize from previous games and just entering a game where you feel it is a true home away from home place. u8 destroyed it for me. oh well. ultima online was fun for the 6 months I played it too when it came out but I gave up too when my beauty shop idea never came to be because the whole free land in the world was full of stupid houses and repeat vendors selling the same junk when my beauty shop would have transformed Vesper into a major clothing and beauty hub but all the best spots were already taken by junk players selling more junk so I gave up and cancelled.

Well thanks for the ultima chat and see you around okay?

Thanks,
Sherry

 

[Keldryn]

In the case of Ultima VII, though, I've always wondered if the game wasn't also simply rushed. For how much of a breakthrough it was, they developed it incredibly quickly. Maybe it would have had more playable combat and a saner food system if they'd had more time.

Well Ultima VII did ship about 4 months late ("The quest begins Christmas 1991"). From what I understand, Origin was known for being a real sweatshop BEFORE the EA buyout (working conditions improved after). They were likely working 12-16 hour days for most of those two years. I'm not sure if I'd call that rushing it.

The initial release was buggy as hell (though not as bad as VI in my experience -- at least Shamino didn't turn into a bed when I played VII). With more time in the oven it would have been less buggy, but I don't know that combat would have received an overhaul.

Of course, given how combat turned out in U8 and U9, you could very well be right about them not really understanding RPG design very well...

 

[Junmarko]

I think Origin never really had a solid grasp of RPG gameplay design, and to some degree they simply got lucky making games that were built on a simple enough formula that it took a while to go off the rails.

Richard was fucking razor-sharp for a long stretch though. He was either hand-picking systems from lesser games & reworking them, or just trying things no one had done at the time. Until U8, pretty much everything he put out was in a league of it's own.

They never had any real competition either - Wizardry/M&M, maybe?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

In the case of Ultima VII, though, I've always wondered if the game wasn't also simply rushed. For how much of a breakthrough it was, they developed it incredibly quickly. Maybe it would have had more playable combat and a saner food system if they'd had more time.

Well Ultima VII did ship about 4 months late ("The quest begins Christmas 1991"). From what I understand, Origin was known for being a real sweatshop BEFORE the EA buyout (working conditions improved after). They were likely working 12-16 hour days for most of those two years. I'm not sure if I'd call that rushing it.

Speaking of "4 months late" - today is the 25th anniversary of Ultima VII's release.

 

[Max Stats]

I was so excited to get Ultima VI. I loved the Ultimas. I had been waiting for this game to come out. I installed it and the fucking thing barely worked on my computer (a 386 IBM I believe). I don't think my computer had enough memory or something. I tried so hard to get it to work, but the UI and screen view was just so completely awful as well.

Weird, it ran fine on my 386, as did the spinoffs on the same engine, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. U7 didn't run great but with a lot of work on config.sys/autoexec.bat, it could be coaxed into enough free memory to get it running. You sure it wasn't a 286? I had a friend with one of those and he had problems with the games on the VI engine.

 

[Keldryn]

Yeah, Ultima VI should have had no problems running on a 386. I originally played it on a 12 MHz 286 and it ran reasonably well; it took a long time to save a game, and the intro sequence was extremely choppy when the screen scrolled. We later upgraded to a 20 MHz 386SX and it ran extremely well. That 386SX had 1MB of RAM, so with EMM386 or QEMM 386, I was able to get music in Savage Empire and Martian Dreams.

Ultima VII was a bit slugglish on a 33 MHz 386 -- especially if you weren't running a disk cache.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

Ultimas V and VI were my favorites. The open ended worlds, the scavenger hunt gameplay, the great characters and dialogues (more in VI than V). VII was good too but I just felt that V and VI were much more charming.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Ultima VII was a bit slugglish on a 33 MHz 386 -- especially if you weren't running a disk cache.

Tell me about it, I ran it on a 40 Mhz 386, but at least it had 8 Mb of RAM.

I also ran Ultima VIII on that same machine. It's surprisingly playable as long as no monsters are on-screen.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Tell me about it, I ran it on a 40 Mhz 386, but at least it had 8 Mb of RAM.

I think I ran it on a 486 (I had an Amiga through the 386 era) and still have painful memories of movement stuttering and skipping. Ultima 8 was worse because of all the precision leaping that had to be done. The patch that made it easier was the only thing that allowed it to be somewhat playable.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2017/04/new-gallery-makeface-instructions/

New Gallery: MAKEFACE Instructions
BY WTF DRAGON · APRIL 18, 2017

As part of the Ultima Codex’s slightly belated celebration of Ultima 7’s 25th anniversary, we have uploaded and published a new gallery item: instructions on how to build and use MAKEFACE, Origin Systems’ utility for building NPC portrait data files for Ultima 7.

Mike McShaffry, at some unknown date, created this utility for what was referred to internally at Origin as System 7 — the Ultima 7 game engine. Improvements to the program were later made, in April of 1992, by Phil Sulak, and it was around that time that the instructions available for download were created…or, at least, updated.

MAKEFACE was the “automatic portrait extractor for System 7”. As the instructions explain, “all of the portraits in Ultima 7 (and, eventually, Serpent Isle and Arthurian Legends) [were] stored in .LBM files. These files [had to] be organized together, and eventually used to create FACES.VGA, the file that holds all the portraits for the game.” Faces were stored in these .LBM files using a coordinate system, as the instructions again explain: “Since the portraits in any given LBM file are usually the same size, we can determine each coordinate by knowing only two figures: the default x offset and the default y offset.”

As always, download and enjoy these documents; pore over them and look for all the interesting little details that are contained therein. The Ultima Codex is grateful to Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum for unearthing these files, and to Sheri Graner Ray for handing over the diskettes on which they were found.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Doesn't this mean that Ultima VII: The Codex Edition (starring Codex forum regulars) is a possibility now?

 

[PunchBarkeepInFace]

I was so excited to get Ultima VI. I loved the Ultimas. I had been waiting for this game to come out. I installed it and the fucking thing barely worked on my computer (a 386 IBM I believe). I don't think my computer had enough memory or something. I tried so hard to get it to work, but the UI and screen view was just so completely awful as well.

Weird, it ran fine on my 386, as did the spinoffs on the same engine, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. U7 didn't run great but with a lot of work on config.sys/autoexec.bat, it could be coaxed into enough free memory to get it running. You sure it wasn't a 286? I had a friend with one of those and he had problems with the games on the VI engine.

I think you're right and it was a 286. I played Ultimas III and IV on the Commodore 64. I remember we also had a green-screened 8086. So the computer I tried Ultima VI on would be the computer we got after the 8086. It was almost 30 years ago but 286 sounds right now that you mention it. Pretty sure that's what we had. Also pretty sure I had played Ultima V on the same comp.