5 ms·

Reminded me about another bit of info on Ultima 6 / Warren Spector: Spector cites an amusing anecdote from Ultima 6’s in-house testing: "…on Ultima VI, which i

Reminded me about another bit of info on Ultima 6 / Warren Spector: Spector cites an amusing anecdote from Ultima 6’s in-house testing: "…on Ultima VI, which is kind of where I realized that all this improvisational stuff could really be magical. It was unplanned, kind of a bug. There was one puzzle where the Avatar and his party came up on one side of a portcullis and there was a lever on the other side of the portcullis that you had to flip to raise the portcullis and keep on making progress. I watched one of our testers, a guy named Mark Schaefgen, playing in that area. And he didn’t have the telekinesis spell, which was the way to get past that portcullis. I was sitting there rubbing my hands together going ‘oh ho ho, he’s screwed, he can’t do it.’ He had a character in his party named Sherry the Mouse. You can probably see where this is going. The portcullis was ‘simulated,’ and here the air quotes are around simulated, simulated enough that there was a gap at the bottom that was too small for a human to get through, but not too small for Sherry. He sent Sherry the Mouse under the portcullis, over to the lever, she flipped the lever, and then the rest of the party went through. And I fell on the floor. At that moment I just said to myself, ‘this is what games should do. We should start planning this, not having it happen as a bug.’ That was where I realized this was really powerful." It was things like this that make the Ultima series stick in my head to this day. :)

pchristensen 10y ago
I have my own Sherry the Mouse story. I realized that having a character that could skip portcullises would be useful, so I kept her. I had to make her tougher and I found a way to grind to raise her stats. I gave her a lightning wand (one of the few weapons she could carry), went to a village and found a dog walking around, and had her kill it. In order to get it to re spawn, I had to remove the dead dog body, but it was faster to just put it in my backpack. So I would have Sherry kill dogs until I ran out of room for the bodies in my inventory and then go far away to unload them, then go back and grind some more, shooting dogs with lightning. Once she was strong enough to hold a real weapon, I went to the cave of the giant ants and had her kill ants with a halberd until she was strong enough to wear plate mail armor. A mouse. With a halberd and plate mail armor. Probably my favorite gaming experience ever.
- gavanwoolery 10y ago
  Many people have made fun of this, a quick google search and I found: http://img06.deviantart.net/9d4d/i/2014/014/6/b/sherry_the_mouse_and_lord_british__by_gijohn20-d727jjb.jpg http://img06.deviantart.net/9d4d/i/2014/014/6/b/sherry_the_m...
shanusmagnus 10y ago
My own version: remember how the inventory system would allow you to drag damn near any item to any of the open "slots" on a character -- hands, feet, torso, etc? One day I noticed that someone in my party was super ineffectual in combat, which took a while to notice because combat was pretty chaotic when a party was involved. Eventually I investigated a bit and found that, for reasons that had probably made sense at some point, I had equipped one of that character's hands with a turkey leg, the other with a ham. So he was flailing around using meat as weapons. I don't know why that was so enchanting, but I never forgot it.
stupidcar 10y ago
In Ultima 6, there's a gypsy that the Avatar can pay to sleep with. There's also a sleeping potion that will put the Avatar to sleep and pass the player's control to another member of the party - such as Sherry the Mouse. Well, Doug The Eagle discovered you can combine these two facts in the exact manner you're now imagining: http://www.it-he.org/u6_main.php#13 http://www.it-he.org/u6_main.php#13 He also discovered a great amount of weird, interesting, and downright perverse stuff you can do in the Ultima series, and a lot of other RPGs. I highly recommend checking out his whole site: http://www.it-he.org/front.php http://www.it-he.org/front.php
- Arizhel 10y ago
  That second link looks like it hasn't changed since 1996. I love it.
pmh 10y ago
The source of said anecdote: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-dishonored-bioshock-2-and-deus-ex-swap-stories-about-making-pcs-most-complex-games/ http://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-dishonored-bioshock-... I'd say it's worth a listen/read if you're into the genre
Razengan 10y ago
I'm still waiting for a -proper- 3D RPG, with realistic physics and terrain deformation, that you can use to solve quests and achieve goals your way, in non-scripted ways. • Enemy boss in a building guarded by henchmen twice your character's level? Feel free to spend a day or two digging beneath the structure to make it collapse on itself. • "Indestructible" doors and walls blocking the way? Gather the strongest weapons and just keep shelling the same spot; realistic physics should dictate that nothing is indestructible and something should give way even if it hadn't been scripted in. Of course, it could also cause a cave-in on the other side, making you lose your objective anyway. :)

pchristensen 10y ago

I have my own Sherry the Mouse story. I realized that having a character that could skip portcullises would be useful, so I kept her. I had to make her tougher and I found a way to grind to raise her stats. I gave her a lightning wand (one of the few weapons she could carry), went to a village and found a dog walking around, and had her kill it. In order to get it to re spawn, I had to remove the dead dog body, but it was faster to just put it in my backpack. So I would have Sherry kill dogs until I ran out of room for the bodies in my inventory and then go far away to unload them, then go back and grind some more, shooting dogs with lightning. Once she was strong enough to hold a real weapon, I went to the cave of the giant ants and had her kill ants with a halberd until she was strong enough to wear plate mail armor. A mouse. With a halberd and plate mail armor. Probably my favorite gaming experience ever.

gavanwoolery 10y ago
Many people have made fun of this, a quick google search and I found: http://img06.deviantart.net/9d4d/i/2014/014/6/b/sherry_the_mouse_and_lord_british__by_gijohn20-d727jjb.jpg http://img06.deviantart.net/9d4d/i/2014/014/6/b/sherry_the_m...

shanusmagnus 10y ago

My own version: remember how the inventory system would allow you to drag damn near any item to any of the open "slots" on a character -- hands, feet, torso, etc? One day I noticed that someone in my party was super ineffectual in combat, which took a while to notice because combat was pretty chaotic when a party was involved. Eventually I investigated a bit and found that, for reasons that had probably made sense at some point, I had equipped one of that character's hands with a turkey leg, the other with a ham. So he was flailing around using meat as weapons. I don't know why that was so enchanting, but I never forgot it.

stupidcar 10y ago

In Ultima 6, there's a gypsy that the Avatar can pay to sleep with. There's also a sleeping potion that will put the Avatar to sleep and pass the player's control to another member of the party - such as Sherry the Mouse. Well, Doug The Eagle discovered you can combine these two facts in the exact manner you're now imagining: http://www.it-he.org/u6_main.php#13 http://www.it-he.org/u6_main.php#13 He also discovered a great amount of weird, interesting, and downright perverse stuff you can do in the Ultima series, and a lot of other RPGs. I highly recommend checking out his whole site: http://www.it-he.org/front.php http://www.it-he.org/front.php

Arizhel 10y ago
That second link looks like it hasn't changed since 1996. I love it.

pmh 10y ago

The source of said anecdote: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-dishonored-bioshock-2-and-deus-ex-swap-stories-about-making-pcs-most-complex-games/ http://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-dishonored-bioshock-... I'd say it's worth a listen/read if you're into the genre

Razengan 10y ago

I'm still waiting for a -proper- 3D RPG, with realistic physics and terrain deformation, that you can use to solve quests and achieve goals your way, in non-scripted ways. • Enemy boss in a building guarded by henchmen twice your character's level? Feel free to spend a day or two digging beneath the structure to make it collapse on itself. • "Indestructible" doors and walls blocking the way? Gather the strongest weapons and just keep shelling the same spot; realistic physics should dictate that nothing is indestructible and something should give way even if it hadn't been scripted in. Of course, it could also cause a cave-in on the other side, making you lose your objective anyway. :)