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We loved ultima 3 growing up. A bunch of us were playing it in middle school and we'd occasionally swap hints about how to advance. Before the internet thats

We loved ultima 3 growing up. A bunch of us were playing it in middle school and we'd occasionally swap hints about how to advance. Before the internet thats all we had. Out of our group, at least one of us had a real copy of each game, making the spell books and instructions available... The cloth maps were fun, but I don't think we used them during game play. The games were a bit of grind, but we didn't care. I do like the Ars Video on how they spent all this time on the "ultima online ecosystem" only to have it not work out.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE

TacticalCoder 3y ago
Ultima III had this weird quirk where you could draw a "path" across the map by killing monsters and not opening the chest they'd drop. We'd do that between towns / important locations: we'd surround our desired line with unopened chess all around or path, leaving only one "square" line (a line with a width of one square). That way it'd be very rare that monsters would spawn in our path and we could travel across the map really quick. That trick wasn't working in Ultima IV anymore. As a sidenote, I find this one mindboggling: an Apple ][e with a MIDI interface which Ultima V supported back in... 1988. The Apple ][e is hooked to old Roland gear. It looks and sounds georgous, amazing stuff (skip to 12m to hear a demo): https://youtu.be/aJMwspc-5wk https://youtu.be/aJMwspc-5wk
- cpeterso 3y ago
  How did the unopened chests affect monster spawning? Did new monsters not spawn near unopened chests? Or did the chests form a protective wall?
  - chuckadams 3y ago
    They were a wall: monsters couldn't occupy the same tile as a chest. Of course there was no such thing as pathfinding, monsters just made a beeline for you and got hung up on the first obstacle.
  - TacticalCoder 3y ago
    > Or did the chests form a protective wall? Yup: they'd form a protective wall that monsters couldn't cross!
- technothrasher 3y ago
  We used the same trick to build a huge monster 'zoo', by trapping monsters into cages of chests. Good times.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

Ultima III had this weird quirk where you could draw a "path" across the map by killing monsters and not opening the chest they'd drop. We'd do that between towns / important locations: we'd surround our desired line with unopened chess all around or path, leaving only one "square" line (a line with a width of one square). That way it'd be very rare that monsters would spawn in our path and we could travel across the map really quick. That trick wasn't working in Ultima IV anymore. As a sidenote, I find this one mindboggling: an Apple ][e with a MIDI interface which Ultima V supported back in... 1988. The Apple ][e is hooked to old Roland gear. It looks and sounds georgous, amazing stuff (skip to 12m to hear a demo): https://youtu.be/aJMwspc-5wk https://youtu.be/aJMwspc-5wk

cpeterso 3y ago
How did the unopened chests affect monster spawning? Did new monsters not spawn near unopened chests? Or did the chests form a protective wall?
- chuckadams 3y ago
  They were a wall: monsters couldn't occupy the same tile as a chest. Of course there was no such thing as pathfinding, monsters just made a beeline for you and got hung up on the first obstacle.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > Or did the chests form a protective wall? Yup: they'd form a protective wall that monsters couldn't cross!
technothrasher 3y ago
We used the same trick to build a huge monster 'zoo', by trapping monsters into cages of chests. Good times.