Ultima The Ultima Underworld I & II Thread

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

reading advice on how to play a game before playing it is gimping yourself

Reading advice on character customization / party composition in RPGs is a sensible idea, particularly for skill-based games such as The Stygian Abyss where several skills might be more or less completely useless (or simply not functioning properly) and others might be invaluable, but without any means for the player to determine this at character creation without consulting external information.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

reading advice on how to play a game before playing it is gimping yourself

Reading advice on character customization / party composition in RPGs is a sensible idea, particularly for skill-based games such as The Stygian Abyss where several skills might be more or less completely useless (or simply not functioning properly) and others might be invaluable, but without any means for the player to determine this at character creation without consulting external information.

Eh. Yes and no. Again, UU is a pretty easy game; even if you over-invest in one or two useless skills as long as you’re not really stupid and trying to make a completely pacifist build with no combat or magic ability, you’re probably going to be fine. Also the standard

Spoiler

just keep rerolling stats until you have 30 strength

advice you find on the internet kind of completely trivializes what difficulty there is.

UU1 is much more forgiving in this regard than, say, Realms of Arkania.

 

[Mortmal]

reading advice on how to play a game before playing it is gimping yourself

He's right as it may considerably hinder your enjoyment of the game . Back then there was absolutely no info and you had to discover everything by yourself . Trust the experts there, try it, and only come back after to disccuss it , that make the experience greater. It was an era full of creativty, profit was clearly not in everyone's mind, absolutely not designing for mainstream , most often really weird games to discover all by yourself with no handholding at all.

 

[Sinatar]

The only reason people recommend rolling 30 strength is for the carrying capacity, you have to lug a ton of shit around in the game, so the more carrying capacity you have, the less time you have to spend running back and forth to your junk pile.

 

[Inconceivable]

UU1 is much more forgiving in this regard than, say, Realms of Arkania.

Realms of Arkania... I forgot these games existed, even though I finished 1, 2 and 3 way back. I will have to replay them one of these days. They nail the feeling of being a fairly insignificant band of adventurers in a large, mysterious and perilous world. Not many RPG's manage to pull that off as effectively. Such epic adventures. The games were easy for me to get into, since I played the pen and paper version with my friends. It was the D&D of Germany.
I wonder if the newer games are any good.

Also love the Underworlds. Finished UU1, never finished UU2, despite enjoying it more. I'll have to get back to that too, one of these days.

 

[Cael]

UU1 is much more forgiving in this regard than, say, Realms of Arkania.

Realms of Arkania... I forgot these games existed, even though I finished 1, 2 and 3 way back. I will have to replay them one of these days. They nail the feeling of being a fairly insignificant band of adventurers in a large, mysterious and perilous world. Not many RPG's manage to pull that off as effectively. Such epic adventures. The games were easy for me to get into, since I played the pen and paper version with my friends. It was the D&D of Germany.
I wonder if the newer games are any good.

Also love the Underworlds. Finished UU1, never finished UU2, despite enjoying it more. I'll have to get back to that too, one of these days.

Shadows Over Riva's last 10% or so was rage inducing.

 

[Inconceivable]

UU1 is much more forgiving in this regard than, say, Realms of Arkania.

Realms of Arkania... I forgot these games existed, even though I finished 1, 2 and 3 way back. I will have to replay them one of these days. They nail the feeling of being a fairly insignificant band of adventurers in a large, mysterious and perilous world. Not many RPG's manage to pull that off as effectively. Such epic adventures. The games were easy for me to get into, since I played the pen and paper version with my friends. It was the D&D of Germany.
I wonder if the newer games are any good.

Also love the Underworlds. Finished UU1, never finished UU2, despite enjoying it more. I'll have to get back to that too, one of these days.

Shadows Over Riva's last 10% or so was rage inducing.

I hardly remember anything, except the quest when you are in some kind of manor, and the place is completely overrun by orks. It's just one battle after the other, and I just managed to complete the quest and get out, by the skin of my teeth. Maybe that was the ending?
And I remember spending a disproportionate amount of time in certain establishments...

 

[Cael]

UU1 is much more forgiving in this regard than, say, Realms of Arkania.

Realms of Arkania... I forgot these games existed, even though I finished 1, 2 and 3 way back. I will have to replay them one of these days. They nail the feeling of being a fairly insignificant band of adventurers in a large, mysterious and perilous world. Not many RPG's manage to pull that off as effectively. Such epic adventures. The games were easy for me to get into, since I played the pen and paper version with my friends. It was the D&D of Germany.
I wonder if the newer games are any good.

Also love the Underworlds. Finished UU1, never finished UU2, despite enjoying it more. I'll have to get back to that too, one of these days.

Shadows Over Riva's last 10% or so was rage inducing.

I hardly remember anything, except the quest when you are in some kind of manor, and the place is completely overrun by orks. It's just one battle after the other, and I just managed to complete the quest and get out, by the skin of my teeth. Maybe that was the ending?
And I remember spending a disproportionate amount of time in certain establishments...

No. That was the dwarven mines overrunned by orcs. You can do that right from the beginning.

The last one was...

Spoiler

...where you are shrunk to go into the insect nest, but your equipment was not shrunk with you. That's right, all your loot you have gathered over the entire game GONE! Just like that.

 

[Junmarko]

you mean the Unity remake?

2:34 / 24:25 / 52:18

Enemy/NPC A.I seems bugged, pathfinding & aggro specifically.

Last release was 2018.

 

[Inconceivable]

The last one was...

Spoiler

...where you are shrunk to go into the insect nest, but your equipment was not shrunk with you. That's right, all your loot you have gathered over the entire game GONE! Just like that.

Yeah, I can hazily remember. I guess that was the beast from the box art. Fortunately the mages can't lose their spells.
So much nostalgia... even though the game worlds were practically "empty" in the sense that you never encounter NPC's, and everything is conveyed via text, it worked surprisingly well. I can remember the eerie feeling of walking around Riva at night. I think at some point there's a vampire on the loose.
But overall, I think I enjoyed the second game "Star Trail" the most. It allowed you to explore a large area, without confining you to a single city, but with the improved graphics and mechanics than the first game.
But maybe I should stop fawning all over the Arkania games now and stop derailing this thread. =)

 

[vota DC]

I noticed that you get only 1 skill point for level up in uw2 while in uw1 level up seems slower. When you train you get something like 1-2 points while in uw1 you get more points from shrine and you can choose more training.

Also Is unarmed skill formula (for chance to hit and damage) different from other melee weapon skill formula?

 

[Cael]

I noticed that you get only 1 skill point for level up in uw2 while in uw1 level up seems slower. When you train you get something like 1-2 points while in uw1 you get more points from shrine and you can choose more training.

Also Is unarmed skill formula (for chance to hit and damage) different from other melee weapon skill formula?

UW2 has unlimited skill points. The XP counter keeps going up after you hit max level, and skill points gained are based off that. Technically, you can grind to max out all skills if you go crazy in the arena.

UW1 has limits. Once you hit max level, you stop gaining skill points.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

I have been playing through Underworld 1 and ran into the object limit error. Turns out the area with the goblins in level 2 had around 80 sling bullets laying around as a result of my earlier encounter with them.

 

[unseeingeye]

The last one was...

Spoiler

...where you are shrunk to go into the insect nest, but your equipment was not shrunk with you. That's right, all your loot you have gathered over the entire game GONE! Just like that.

Yeah, I can hazily remember. I guess that was the beast from the box art. Fortunately the mages can't lose their spells.
So much nostalgia... even though the game worlds were practically "empty" in the sense that you never encounter NPC's, and everything is conveyed via text, it worked surprisingly well. I can remember the eerie feeling of walking around Riva at night. I think at some point there's a vampire on the loose.
But overall, I think I enjoyed the second game "Star Trail" the most. It allowed you to explore a large area, without confining you to a single city, but with the improved graphics and mechanics than the first game.
But maybe I should stop fawning all over the Arkania games now and stop derailing this thread. =)

I just started playing the Realms of Arkania games, and regret very much that I did not know about them earlier. They are remarkable and absolutely gorgeous. I've also been replaying the Underworld games; I recently decided to try the mouselook patch and am going through from the beginning again. This is my first post, I'm so glad to see the enthusiasm for games like this and Wizardry &c is still going strong.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Underworld definitely has my favorite version of the Avatar because of the great writing and PC dialogue options. Even though you're the morally pure paragon of all virtue, you have so many asshole things to say. I like to imagine that the Avatar is so irritated by his situation that the rude dialogue options are what's popping into his head, and he has to restrain himself to pick the polite option.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

There was another reimagination of UW I saw the other day. It could be old so I'll tryto refind it.

 

[EruDaan]

Too bad that no multi-billion company / publisher / indie developer has the balls (or skillz) to do an first person RPG adventure like the both Underworlds.

 

[Butter]

Too bad that no multi-billion company / publisher / indie developer has the balls (or skillz) to do an first person RPG adventure like the both Underworlds.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/monomyth-a-first-person-action-rpg-dungeon-crawler.115034/

 

[Maggot]

So far I have been enjoying UUW2 even more than 1, probably due to how different each world you visit is as well as more interesting quests and dialogue.

 

[EruDaan]

Too bad that no multi-billion company / publisher / indie developer has the balls (or skillz) to do an first person RPG adventure like the both Underworlds.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/monomyth-a-first-person-action-rpg-dungeon-crawler.115034/

Yeah, will check it out, brah.
Also, also... yes, UWII did feel almost completley different. Almost as if the developer gathered more experience with this kind of games - more hidden niches and caches of treasure. Also, yes, the worlds felt more different to each other and opened a lot more approached how and when to solve every world. It wasn't THAT railroaded.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So still looking for those older abandoned projects. I did find a few things:
Underworld Editor

Underworld Exporter

Pix Posts an Ultima Underworld 3 Design Document

Hardcore Gaming Ultima Underworld

IBM

Playstation




Ah! Slashie again on Britannia Underworld.

Yea, I vaguely recall this one. [Slashie's Journal]

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I had no idea this was ever released for PSX! What is the platform from the animated GIF posted above? It looks like there is no way they could have duplicated the PC version maps. Was it practically a different game?

 

[Owl]

So still looking for those older abandoned projects.

Underworld Adventures looked really promising with 3d accelerated Opengl graphics, etc. Sadly it has been discontinued a long time ago.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ah, lessee:


Stygian Abyss, 2015 7DRL Challenge, Victory!

Stygian Abyss, 2015 7DRL Challenge, Victory!
Posted on March 16, 2015 by slash

Stygian Abyss is a procedurally generated first person action dungeon crawler; survive the legendary Stygian Abyss to find the Codex of Ultimate wisdom, a new adventure awaits you every time!

Features

• 
  
  
  • A level generator inspired in Ultima Underworld
  • Explore the environment in a first person view.
  • 8 classes with different starting equipment and skills
  • 11 spells
  • 28 different monsters
  • Melee and ranged weapons

Play online now!

—-

I managed to survive for another year!

Many thanks to jucarave, a.k.a Exodus Destiny Dragon; we teamed up for this year and it was great working with him.

This 7DRL is made up of two different open source projects; the Stygian Generator and the Stygian Abyss 7DRL game.

The level generator can be used independently (you are welcome to use it in your project!), it’s very customizable and comes bundled with parameters to recreate the Abyss based mainly on Ultima IV. This one was started from scratch for the challenge. I will talk a bit more about it on a future post.





The 7DRL game module was developed using as a base the existing work that Jucarave had made for Britannian Underworld; from there we developed all the game related stuff like spells, combat, etc. A whole lot of work went there!





The cover art was created by Talzhemir “Manda” Penumbra; drawn and painted specially for this game. She was part of the Ultima VI dev team. Thank you!

The music is Ultima IV “Dungeon“, from Ken Arnold. C64 version from the Videogame Music Preservation Foundation

The sound effects were made by Bart, from OpenGameArt.

Graphics come directly from the Ultima IV and Ultima V tilesets, with some tweaks and original tiles being made.

This project is non-commercial, made just for fun from fans to fans.

I was hoping for an offline version but github doesn't seem to have it.

Play online?