Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

[Darth Slaughter]

Last time I played in DOSBox, I just followed the roads, or the shore and water with the carpet, and you will be fine, but do not ever under any circumstance fly over the Isle of the Avatar, or say by bye to the game (you will never ever be able to finish the game, even if you reload).

The bug is that there's a door in the cave that you walk past it and it locks behind you forever, and that's intentional. But the game triggers this lock down if you fly over it, and since you';re outside, you can't actually see it happening.

It actually happened with me in my first playthrough ever and I got stuck for months, and only later, when I had my first contact with the internet, I learned that there was a debug mode that i could use to remove that door (no way I'd replay the whole game at that point). I did that after looking for some key in walkthroughs, only there was never anything mentioning it, only that there was a door that would close behind you once you entered. Anyway, I removed the door, entered, saved the game. Managed to finish it. Actually, i remeber reading something about not flying with the magic carpet over avatar island, and I couldn't load an earlier save because I flew over it very early in the game.

 

[Jaesun]

Oh yeah, the debug mode would allow you to move the door, and actually get past it. Good point.

 

[Comte]

Jaesun do the NPC routines work in Exult now?

 

[Jaesun]

Jaesun do the NPC routines work in Exult now?

Yes they did a bunch of fixes to that about last year or so. They all work fine now, but there may be a few here and there that might not work (I didn't notice any in my last playthrough a few months ago).

 

[Comte]

Yes they did a bunch of fixes to that about last year or so. They all work fine now, but there may be a few here and there that might not work (I didn't notice any in my last playthrough a few months ago).

It's been a couple of years since I last tried Exult. I prefer Exult to running it on DosBox.

 

[Jaesun]

It's been a couple of years since I last tried Exult. I prefer Exult to running it on DosBox.

Yeah me too, if you are in the mood again, definitely download the latest 1.5X snapshot, you can play and completely finish the game just fine (Black Gate and Serpent Isle).

 

[Malignant Manor]

Ultima 6 has indeed the best soundtrack. The more annoying it is that it just stops everytime I start a conversation..

Too bad I missed this thread and you didn't play through U6 with Nuvie. It has the option to not stop the music during conversations and many other improvements. Nuvie can load the original save game file if you didn't finish playing. You can even use the much superior FM-Towns sfx and/or terrible voice acting in Nuvie.

 

[epeli]

Where's the UUW option?

If the poll is tweaked, also include the Worlds of Ultima games for shits and giggles. I bet Savage Empire would get some votes from modern day Bioware fans, seeing how it pioneered this whole romance thing in arrpeegees.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Too bad I missed this thread and you didn't play through U6 with Nuvie. It has the option to not stop the music during conversations and many other improvements. Nuvie can load the original save game file if you didn't finish playing. You can even use the much superior FM-Towns sfx and/or terrible voice acting in Nuvie.

I actually even tried my luck with Nuvie before I went with the original, for some reason I didn't get it to work though, but I don't remember the specifics. My playthrough is on hold for a bit at the moment but I guess I will finish it in the original engine, now that I started that way. Might try Nuvie again at some point in the future, if I attempt a second playthrough.

 

[Outlander]

I bet Savage Empire would get some votes from modern day Bioware fans, seeing how it pioneered this whole romance thing in arrpeegees.

Implying modern day Bioware fans know what Ultima is

 

[Daemongar]

Interesting, I never once encountered that bug in Minoc when I played U7 on my 386 or 486. But in later years (Pentium II and up), it hit me every time I played it. Maybe it's a bug that was unlikely to show up with the clock speeds of 1992?

I played Ultima VII originally on a 486, and had this bug every time. Tried quite a few ways to avoid this, and I think that Jaeson may be on to it as far as eggs being set. For some reason, I would see the bodies in the Minoc sawmill for about 3/4ths of a second once I walked in the door, but then they would disappear. I was just so relieved they didn't put DeSnel's Dagger on one of the bodies or anything.

I never did use the Flying Carpet, and still don't. I just always liked roaming around on the map. It was pretty fun and in the first couple of playthroughs, you always saw something new. Lost a bit when i started messing around with Exult Studio and started taking everything apart.

To this day, I still can't find the fish on Locke Lake that has the key to the Hoe of Destruction, even after countless play-throughs...

 

[Trojan_generic]

Ultima VII. Those were the days. First impression: how can this shit get so wonderful reviews? Screen was scrolling/jerking slowly and everybody had words appearing and disappearing on top of their heads. Graphics were state-of-the art VGA, the character portraits were something not seen before. Hard disk light was blinking constantly. And I had like the fastest 386/33 dream machine at the time. Eventually the eyes adjusted, like they often do. Still never got really used to the angle of viewing. Combat: companions run off-screen screaming and either you follow and die or then you try to find out what it was that Iolo has killed. Lovely.

 

[Daemongar]

Ultima VII. Those were the days. First impression: how can this shit get so wonderful reviews? Screen was scrolling/jerking slowly and everybody had words appearing and disappearing on top of their heads. Graphics were state-of-the art VGA, the character portraits were something not seen before. Hard disk light was blinking constantly. And I had like the fastest 386/33 dream machine at the time. Eventually the eyes adjusted, like they often do. Still never got really used to the angle of viewing. Combat: companions run off-screen screaming and either you follow and die or then you try to find out what it was that Iolo has killed. Lovely.

I played on a 486/50 (not a clock doubled 25, as if anyone cares anymore) and I actually thought the enemies running away was pretty cool. They drop their weapons and run off. Think Shamino was the worst so I rarely added him. The game performance wasn't bad for me, but it may have been pretty dependent on amount of system memory to load chunks when walking in any direction. You may have had 1, 2, or 4Mb - which may have drastically affected performance, and that Voodoo memory probably didn't help. Did you have an actual SB card, or some generic sound card?

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

The 486/50 was better than the 486/66 for I/O or graphics if your card could handle the 50Mhz bus speed. The connaisseurs' 486.

 

[Malignant Manor]

I remember our old Pentium played U7 super fast when the memory got increased.

 

[Trojan_generic]

I played on a 486/50 (not a clock doubled 25, as if anyone cares anymore) and I actually thought the enemies running away was pretty cool. They drop their weapons and run off. Think Shamino was the worst so I rarely added him. The game performance wasn't bad for me, but it may have been pretty dependent on amount of system memory to load chunks when walking in any direction. You may have had 1, 2, or 4Mb - which may have drastically affected performance, and that Voodoo memory probably didn't help. Did you have an actual SB card, or some generic sound card?

4 MB memory, SB 2.0. It had all the game asked for, and it was probably mostly smooth, but in particular I remember the horse carriage drives.

 

[Daemongar]

The 486/50 was better than the 486/66 for I/O or graphics if your card could handle the 50Mhz bus speed. The connaisseurs' 486.

Yeah, that was probably the only time in my life I came into some money, and I spent most of it on the best computer I could find. It was different because that computer lasted me at least 5 years or more. The only thing I didn't think of was a SB card. I remember playing a 5 1/4" floppy demo of UW (just one level - don't know how they fit it on one disk.) Then my girlfriend bought me UW1 for Christmas. How could something that started that good get so horrible (my relationship, not the game. That game was awesome from start to finish.) Just don't know.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Yeah, that was probably the only time in my life I came into some money, and I spent most of it on the best computer I could find. It was different because that computer lasted me at least 5 years or more. The only thing I didn't think of was a SB card. I remember playing a 5 1/4" floppy demo of UW (just one level - don't know how they fit it on one disk.) Then my girlfriend bought me UW1 for Christmas. How could something that started that good get so horrible (my relationship, not the game. That game was awesome from start to finish.) Just don't know.

I had the same setup but with the SbPro. UW and Falcon 3.0 saw a lot of play time.

 

[octavius]

Then my girlfriend bought me UW1 for Christmas. How could something that started that good get so horrible (my relationship, not the game.

Ultima Underworld made me drop my amiga.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I would fist that but it's kind of sad.

 

[octavius]

I dropped her with a heavy heart, saying "it's not me me, it's you. I can't see a future for us if you can't run Ultima Underworld".

 

[Keldryn]

Ultima VII. Those were the days. First impression: how can this shit get so wonderful reviews? Screen was scrolling/jerking slowly and everybody had words appearing and disappearing on top of their heads. Graphics were state-of-the art VGA, the character portraits were something not seen before. Hard disk light was blinking constantly. And I had like the fastest 386/33 dream machine at the time. Eventually the eyes adjusted, like they often do. Still never got really used to the angle of viewing. Combat: companions run off-screen screaming and either you follow and die or then you try to find out what it was that Iolo has killed. Lovely.

I remember that it really chugged on my 386/33 -- which was pretty much the minimum requirement for it anyway. When I upgraded to a 486/33 (4MB RAM) and got a disk cache loaded into high memory, it ran pretty well. Had a Diamond Speedstar SVGA card, which was one of the fastest at the time, and that probably helped too.

But that disk access was the real killer, as I remember it. A disk cache made a world of difference.

Ultima VIII ran like shit in that PC though.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I used Novell Dos at the time for the better memory management and runtime configurable ramdisks etc. Helped a lot with the finicky HIMEM EMS, XMS environments Origin games needed to run.

Soon after switched to OS/2. Those were the days.

 

[Jaesun]

Combat: companions run off-screen screaming and either you follow and die or then you try to find out what it was that Iolo has killed. Lovely.

The Ultima VII Clusterfuck Combat System™ at it's finest.

 

[the_shadow]

I'll always have a soft spot for the Ultima series, ever since Ultima III was one of the first RPGs I played on the Mac in the early 90's, along with Exile 1 and Realmz. I must have been 6 years old and had absolutely no idea how to progress in the game, and couldn't do much about it because we didn't have the internet. Still, the game intrigued me. A few years later I was lucky enough to stumble across the Ultima Collection (Ultimas 1-8), and had to have it. Ultima 7 + Serpent Isle were easily my favorites, despite the automated combat. The worlds were so rich, vibrant and colorful, and there was so much loot that it was a pack rats dream. A while back I wrote a rant on the 'Dex about Ultima 8 and how it was such a bitter disappointment, but I've eased up on the game since then. It's a step down from Ultima 7, but still a decent game in its own right.

A few years afterwards I found out that Ultima IX had been released. Now, this is no doubt where everyone would expect me to say that the game ruined my childhood, but I actually enjoyed the game, in spite of the shitty AI and game-breaking bugs. It was the first 3D RPG I had ever played, especially with complete voice acting. Yeahhh, I know the voice acting is cheesy, but for me it's so bad it's good. And the storyline had a number of plot holes, but I hadn't finished most of the earlier Ultimas, so I didn't know any better. The music was pretty damn good too, and included one of the best renditions of 'Stones' I have heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KabFlHF1YoU

Then there are memorable WTF moments such as when you meet your in-game gay fanboy (complete with a stereotypical gay voice!), a child who throws fireballs at you after you refuse to give him money (despite magic not working), or when you shag a hooker in Buccaneer's Den (complete with a Swedish? accent) and lose karma.

But man, the bugs almost broke me. At one point I saved the game underwater, and every time I tried to resurface the game would crash. It took me weeks to figure out a work-around. Another time a lever for an elevator didn't work in Hyloth, so I had to resort to the noclip cheat. And I broke the game by jumping over the mountains between Britain and Yew, resulting in me triggering the trial for killing the gargoyles before I had even been to Ambrosia. If there were a patch which actually fixed the game-breaking bugs and tweaked the AI, I'd say that Ultima IX would be a decent game in isolation, or 'so bad it's good' at the very least. It's got way more personality than Oblivion.