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Ultima VII Revisited
- khedoros1 11mo agoMy first thought was "How is this different from Exult?" (which is a relatively vanilla reimplementation of the game). Some of the video segments here make differences clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJcOEwKJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJcOEwKJ4 While Exult basically matches the graphics of the original game, this is closer to "3D Ultima VII", with rotatable views and more interactivity in the game. It gives it what looks like a kind of voxel-ish look, mixing in original sprites with newly-modeled 3D objects.
- VariousPrograms 11mo agoThat's a lovely art style, kind of Runescape Classic vibes.
- anthk 11mo agoOr some Ultima Online clients (Iris3D?).
- isolli 11mo agoWhiplash warning: seeing the portal in the video just threw me back 30 years!
- araes 11mo agoThe 0.1.0 release video also has addition segments about feature improvements [1] with some examples of the 2D to 3D conversion process that are quite impressive. [1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=25 https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=25 0:25 to 0:40 has a bunch of the small scale objects being replaceable, rotatable, and animatable in 3D. [1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=48 https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=48 0:48 to 1:06 has bulk replacement of scene objects with personally chosen substitutes. (3D rotatable) [1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=67 https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=67 1:07 to 1:25 has fixing broken geometry and creating fully textured 3D replacements. With the current state of the engine, and the extensive personal editing features, much like the comment from VariousPrograms, it could be used as a platform for doing other games, modified quests, and multi-player MMO style games.
- pixelpoet 11mo agoVery excited about this project, U7 was my favourite game for a long, long time. These days we have BG3, and I'm dying for more of that.
- cubefox 11mo agoI never played an Ultima game, but I remember that many years ago, there was a period where Ultima VII was commonly mentioned as "the best RPG of all time" by PC players. Nowadays it seems Ultima is rarely talked about anymore compared to classic SNES RPGs like Final Fantasy VI, which came out two years later.
- anthk 11mo agoThe best RPG of all time should be either Ultima IV, Chrono Trigger+, that's it, with the Plus patch or Pokémon Crystal (a hacked ROM) with improving patches, such as: - all mons ingame - level cap - no trading - improved Battle Tower Ultima VII shines with the in-game simulation, but today Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights curb-stomps U VII in that area. Pokémon, well, it's about battling with your favourite mons, the game story it's just a placeholder with nice Japanese pixelated vistas. Also, I'd put Slashem on par, too. Because it's damn silly and fun to raise a Samurai with Yakuza weapons, an anachronistic madness like the Discworld series (and OFC you have the Tourist role from the books too). More than strategy, Slashem/Nethack it's about lateral thinking and doing crazy stuff to advance into your goal. Throwing potions as weapons? Done. A Doppleganger Kung Fu monk doing DBZ-like attacks while using your Wand of Digging against rock based foes? OFC, done.
- cubefox 11mo agoAnother RPG that is praised a lot is Disco Elysium (2019). Though I guess this one is quite different from the ones you mentioned. "RPG" is a wide term.
- aidenn0 11mo agoJRPG games like FF VI are far more accessible than the Ultima games. The Avatar trilogy (Ultimas IV, V, and VI) are essentially unplayable without having all the manuals and taking detailed notes[1]. Even doing that, they are quite hard. Nearly every single Final Fantasy game is easy to beat just by taking a bit of time to grind levels whenever you get stuck. There is a blogger who teaches a class on old games (I can't remember who) and Ultima IV was one that his students bounced off of immediately because they didn't read the manual cover-to-cover, which is a prerequisite for not being totally lost. 1: Or using a walkthrough, I guess, but IMO the main point of the Ultima games of this era was the sense of discovery.
- easwee 11mo agoThis brings back so much memories!
- jbm 11mo agoVaguely related but there is this whole set of videos on the production of the Ultima series on Youtube by Majuular that I've been playing while working out. Just such a different time, I almost regret missing it. His video on 7 and serpent's isle brought back a lot of memories (although my preferred origin game was Wing Commander) https://youtu.be/0NyaGRNH2zE https://youtu.be/0NyaGRNH2zE
- andrepd 11mo agoThe one on Ultima Underworld is my favourite. What an incredible game, so ahead of its time.
- vancroft 11mo agoSo funny to see this here, I was just looking into Ultima remakes last night, and saw this one among others. Looks really awesome. I never played any of the Ultima games back in the day, and have bounced off them when trying in later years. This should make Ultima VII a lot more accessible and playable. There's also a remake of Ultima Underworld being made in Godot: https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldGodot https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldGodot Hoping for these projects to succeed, both U7 and UU sound like incredible games that deserve to be accessible to modern gamers.
- esafak 11mo agoUU was teh shizz. I wonder what it would look like with photorealistic renders.
- anthk 11mo agoYou can play Arx Libertatis today with the assets bought from GOG (Arx Fatalis). The game is really close to UU.
- cholantesh 11mo agoNot good, I imagine; IMO part of the magic of a game from the era is that blocky aesthetic. I'm reminded of how Dracula X Chronicles completely sucks all the joy out of Rondo of Blood with ugly 3D models and weird arrangements of the compositions with 'real' instruments (or just a different synth).
- mtillman 11mo agoThe only reason to play that version is the SotN unlock for the PSP and even then, easier to just download the PSX iso.
- Cpoll 11mo agoThe PSP SotN was different enough than the NA PSX release, including a new Maria mode (different than the Saturn one), and a new translation (technically better, but retranslates some iconic lines).
- gradstudent 11mo agoLooks cool! I wonder if they reworked/fixed the terrible font. I find it borderline illegible in the original! (example https://cdn.neowin.com/news/images/uploaded/31070-ultima-vii-the-black-gate-dos-screenshot-batlin-states-his.gif https://cdn.neowin.com/news/images/uploaded/31070-ultima-vii...)
- deafpolygon 11mo agoI also bounced off the original due to the weird camera angle
- tosapple 11mo agoThat qualifies as illegible? Maybe at the Tt mark but otherwise very clear. tL maybe?
- layer8 11mo agoIt was a little more readable on CRT. But yes, not really great.
- dark-star 11mo agoThis is pretty neat. There have been multiple attempts at something like that in the past, and of them, this is by far the best-looking one. However, I think some artefacts can never be properly resolved (see for example the marble statue to the left at 1:53 in the video), which makes it look veird and break immersion (also the flat roofs that are supposed to be slanted/angled roofs) Also, the U7 engine is a very complex beast so to properly implement it will take a lot of work and fine-tuning (although I guess they can use Exult as a start, which is by now pretty feature-complete)
- eek2121 11mo agoThe one that comes to mind for me is Exult: https://exult.sourceforge.io/ https://exult.sourceforge.io/. It is still being actively developed to this day: https://github.com/exult https://github.com/exult
- anthk 11mo agoExult did this decades ago :). On Ultima VII, can you play the 7th series without playing the previous ones? I mean, are these games standalone? Because Ultima IV it's always praised to be an incredible RPG to play. BTW, Scummvm will happily play Ultima 4, 6 and 8 games too, with better controls and support.
- lerno 11mo agoUltima 4 was good story wise, but the combat was extremely tedious with each in your party only being able to take a single step per turn. This was particularly annoying when facing easy to beat foes. The SSI AD&D games which only came out a little after U4 had a superior system, where each character in the party could move multiple steps (depending on stats) and so could the mosters. That system, while also repetitive, was much faster for combat, not to mention much more strategic and fun. Later Ultimas, like U7 instead went for a streamlined realtime battle which was much better. That went overboard with the at the time infamous U8
- tmtvl 11mo agoThere are a couple of references to earlier games, but if you read the manual then you know enough to just get started with QotA (Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar). QotA, WoD (Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny), and TFP (Ultima 6: The False Prophet) kind of make a trilogy (the so-called 'Age of Enlightenment' trilogy) and you can port your character over between one game and the next, but they're perfectly playable by themselves. While TFP has the best story of the 3, I consider QotA my favourite because I love the concept of an RPG without a big evil villain. It's a story of a normal person cleaning up their act and becoming an exemplar of virtue and I love it. Ultima VII is again perfectly playable by itself, but, yet again, it's best if you thoroughly read the manual for all the background information you need. There's an old joke of Bethesda introducing a new feature for one of the Elder Scrolls games (NPCs have schedules and go about their daily life! You can bake bread!) and the response being that Ultima VII already did that back in 1992.
- nonamesleft 11mo agoI also remember churning enough butter to fill backpacks in Ultima VI. (don't recall offhand whether bread was doable)
- tclancy 11mo agoThis is nice and all, but I want to revisit I, II and III! Edit: Ask, and ye shall receive https://archive.org/details/ultima-1-gfx https://archive.org/details/ultima-1-gfx
- gokaygurcan 11mo agoGreat initiative.
- choeger 11mo agoIf only someone would properly finish U8 ...
- austin-cheney 11mo agoAnd if there were less jumping in U8. Visiting the air elemental was cause to rage against a village.
- chuckadams 11mo agoLater releases of U8 fixed jumping so it was less pixel-precise. It was still a clumsy mechanic, and the game still felt unfinished. But TBH I had a much worse reaction to Ultima IX, which capped off the series with a giant steaming turd. When I managed to get U9 to run at all after several years, I bounced out after a couple hours of playing. Still the only Ultima game I never finished.
- NDizzle 11mo agoIt was also kind of creepy that a very good way to level up was to kill that pack of aggro children north of town.
- block_dagger 11mo agoNeat, let me just find those old DOS U7 files…
- flohofwoe 11mo agoGoG got you covered, and it's even on sale currently (I wonder if they scan HN heh) https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_7_complete https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_7_complete
- mrinterweb 11mo agoLet me go find my collection of floppy disks, then I'll need a 32 pin connection adapter for the drive. I remember U7 was my favorite game for a long time. I received U7 Serpent Isle as a gift, but at least one of 15 of the 3.5" disks was corrupted, ordering a replacement disks cost $14 dollars per disk, and I wasn't sure how many disks might be corrupted. I gave up on the game. I should just buy it on GoG.
- aksss 11mo agoSerpent Isle was fantastic.
- ta12653421 11mo agoRise your hand if you remember how long you had to tinker around to get enough EMS to load the game plus sound card drivers loaded into memory when being in DOS! :-D
- sumtechguy 11mo agoWait play the game? I am fiddling my config.sys and autoexec.bat just right and making sure I could get to 610k. Using 4DOS to have a pick a path adventure of which configuration to load as it was starting up to run each game. Then I might play a game here and there.
- dark-star 11mo agothe game didn't run with EMS. You needed XMS
- TheAmazingRace 11mo agoFun fact. Ultima 7 was one of the few commercial titles ever made that used "Unreal" mode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode It wasn't particularly popular as it couldn't play nice with protected mode environments.
- dark-star 10mo agoOther than Ultima 7 I only know of Zone66 as another game that used Unreal mode. Early versions also didn't like v86 mode but later versions added support for DPMI or in some other way started to play nicely with EMM386
- boredhedgehog 11mo agoOh yeah, I had to unload the CD driver and move the mouse driver to himem just for this...
- glonq 11mo agoI recall that it was possible to squeeze a disk cache in too, which made a nice difference for performance.
- jakebasile 11mo agoThere's a YouTuber that's been going through and making in-depth retrospectives of each Ultima game that some here may find interesting. I've found them a pleasant watch and I don't usually go for this type of content. I never played the Ultima series until Ultima Online so I don't have the nostalgia goggles that I'd need to go back and play games this old (sorry, it's the truth) so these videos are as close as I'll probably get. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yfJJxAM6g-4YxKGI-17q-K3nrXuVSd https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yfJJxAM6g-4YxKGI-1...
- glonq 11mo agoA YT'er named 'Spoony' also made a thorough, entertaining retrospective of the Ultimas, and even caps it off with an interview with Lord British!
- cyrialize 11mo agoI'm a huge fan of Majuular, these videos are amazing. I like that he dives deeply into the history behind each game as well - like the company, Richard Garriott (Lord British), etc. His other videos on other games are great as well!
- jerf 11mo agoAs someone who played these back in the day and enjoyed them, I don't think I could even recommend them to myself today. Ultima VII is everything the other comments say it is... but it's also one staggeringly large nested fetch quest, with nothing much breaking it up. I'd recommend some combination of the Bethesda open world games and the JRPG genre today. They're not the same, nothing really quite fills the Ultima gap that I know of, but between those two I'd call it close enough.
- skipkey 11mo agoFor years, Ultima VII was the buggiest RPG I ever finished the main quest on. Then I played Daggerfall.
- jakebasile 11mo agoI keep meaning to go and play the Underworld games, since I love the subgenre they pioneered (Immersive Sim). I'll get around to it... one day. It's like you say, not exactly the same, but for CRPGs it's hard to go wrong with Baldur's Gate 3. It's similar enough to later Ultima in some ways that it might scratch the itch.
- Projectiboga 11mo agoI forget whether it was Ultima III or IV but that turned me off of adventure games. The busy work being asked of me was offputting. May have just been a shift of interest once reaching maturity and turning interests to Women and Music. I still liked some other games but more for study breaks and occasional arcade sessions than constant activities. Gen X here checking in.
- WhyOhWhyQ 11mo agoWhat's the busy work like in Ultima? I've never played it.
- Joshua-Peter 11mo ago[flagged]
- alexwebb2 11mo agoLLM spam
- M0T0K0 11mo agoQueuing up Spoony's retrospective while checking this out :3
- M0T0K0 11mo agoarchive breadcrumb: https://archive.org/details/spoony-ultima-retrospective-original https://archive.org/details/spoony-ultima-retrospective-orig...
- glonq 11mo agoI loved U7 and 7.5, but those were the last ones I played because the series somewhat went off the rails after that. Pity.
- kbutler 11mo agoThe recent Wizardry remaster encouraged me to go back and play other nostalgic games - finished Ultima I and II, but the nostalgia wasn't strong enough to keep going through the busywork and UI impedance of others. I'll keep this one on my list for when nostalgia strikes again...
- jghn 11mo agoI'm holding out for Wiz 2 & 3 being remade. Wiz 4 would be fun for 30 minutes or so before I give up in frustration
- uzidil 11mo agoThis is really nice work. It compels me to plug my attempt at an ultima vii -inspired project: https://uzudil.itch.io/enalim https://uzudil.itch.io/enalim
- ryandrake 11mo agoAny thread about Ultima remakes is incomplete without mention of the highly ambitious Ultima V - Lazarus project[1], which re-made (and significantly expanded) the game onto the Dungeon Siege engine. A true labor of love! 1: https://www.u5lazarus.com https://www.u5lazarus.com
- ajxs 11mo agoReally impressive work! I'm not sure I like the perspective any better than the original game, but the lighting makes for a nice aesthetic! I'll take this opportunity to mention another engine-upgrade to a classic Origin game that got me excited: https://github.com/Howard-Day/WCUnity https://github.com/Howard-Day/WCUnity
- john-carter 11mo ago[flagged]
- john-carter 11mo ago[flagged]
- npsomaratna 11mo agoI remember playing Ultima VII back in '94 (or was it '95?). When the game started up, I could only feel wonder. It was so far ahead of the competition at the time. The only other instance where I got the same "this game is way ahead of everyone else" feel was when I first played Morrowind.
- anon1993 11mo agoIf you want to scratch that nostalgia itch, I recommend https://lparchive.org/Ultima-VII-The-Black-Gate/ https://lparchive.org/Ultima-VII-The-Black-Gate/
- jim-greer 11mo agoMy first job ever was as a scripter on U7. Great times, and wonderful to see that there's still such an enthusiastic community