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I used to develop games for PC in the 90s (Ultima 7 and Netstorm). The combination of complex products and hard holiday deadlines was just a bitch. Console dev
by jim-greer 11y ago
I used to develop games for PC in the 90s (Ultima 7 and Netstorm). The combination of complex products and hard holiday deadlines was just a bitch.
Console development still sucks. Mobile and PC with online distribution are much less stressful.
If you develop tools ship dates don't matter too much as long as you're consistently improving in ways that your customers care about.
- yolesaber 11y agoThis is off-topic but I would just like to thank you for your contributions to Ultima 7. It is by far my favorite game.
- jim-greer 11y agoThanks! Amusing trivia - everyone on the development team got to be an NPC in the game, meaning the character looked like them. I joined late, so every character was taken except for a cyclops named Iskander. So the cyclops looks like me, but with one big eye. http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander
- miketuritzin 11y agoUltima 7 (parts 1 and 2) are also my favorite games ever! I almost have "real" memories from the worlds and plotlines in those games, they were so vivid. Out of curiosity, what was your role on Ultima 7? Do you know of any good articles or resources on the development of that game?
- jim-greer 11y agoI was the lead scripting developer and general content fixer... I helped the world builders and hacked on their tools etc. I was 20 at the time so my title in the credits was "Wonderboy" I haven't seen a lot of writing about that time but man it deserves it.
- whatusername 11y agoNetstorm was an underrated Gem. Have you seen much like it since?
- jim-greer 11y agoThanks! No, it seems to have been its own odd thing with no followers. There's some fans trying to remake it in Unity though. They've got quite a lot of it done: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=294002132 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=29400...
- danschuller 11y agoI loved Ultima 7. An amazing feat for the time! The world simulation aspect of it was really cool (and something even now you don't see that often. Like a baker going to through process of baking bread everyday)
- greggman 11y agoInteresting. I found PC 100x more frustrating than console. With console there's 1 target. With PC there's infinite targets. No matter what you ship it won't work on someone's GPU, OS version, with XYZ installed. A company I worked at shipped one PC game and swore never again. Their support costs went through the roof relative to console.
- jim-greer 11y agoYes, I think that was actually easier in the 90s (and I only did 2d games, which were simpler).
- mentos 11y agoWow you know I always knew that Ultima Online had its predecessors in the Ultima series but never really researched them until now. Its blowing my mind right now to see the evolution of the games leading up to UO! Currently been working on my own FPS for 1.5 years in UE4 (hoping to release a trailer soon) and I owe a lot to Ultima for inspiring me to learn game dev at a young age. I know Richard Garriot has been working on what is effectively UO2 with Shroud of the Avatar but sadly have not had the time to check it out.
- poelzi 11y agoI loved netstorm. One of the best games ever, thank you :)