Ultima V - Lazarus

[oldmanpaco]

What do people think of Lazarus? Is it worth the time it will take to play it?

 

[Jaime Lannister]

More importantly, is it worth getting Dungeon Siege to play?

 

[oldmanpaco]

More importantly, is it worth getting Dungeon Siege to play?

I bought it when it first came out. Played about half of it and got bored with the game running itself.

 

[Sputnik]

I was initially impressed by Dungeon Siege, until I realized I was just trying to play a screensaver.

But it is definitely worth buying (the re-release version is about 6-7 euros at least around here) just to play Lazarus.

 

[Hazelnut]

Yep Lazarus is well worth it, although I did stall before the end. (more getting distracted from it for long enough that I can't remember what I was supposed to be doing)

 

[made]

Torrent DS, then donate some money to charity since the Lazarus devs don't accept any.

 

[Silellak]

Yes, definitely worth playing and getting Dungeon Siege for. I don't think I ever played more than a couple hours of DS, but Lazarus was one of the best RPGs I've played in the last 10 years. All the more remarkable considering the dev team never made a dime for it. Currently, Ultima 7 (1 and 2) is tied with X-Com as my personal "best game ever", but Lazarus is arguably better than Ultima 7 in a lot of ways. Ultima 7 still gets the nod just for just being the "first", but the Lazarus team really refined the Ultima 7 formula with Lazarus. It feels like a 3D Ultima 7 with Ultima 5's story.

It was a bit buggy on first release, but patches have dealt with that.

I wrote a review of it about 2 and a half years ago, right after I finished it, so it's embarassingly gushy, but I'll repost it here just to save myself some typing:

http://www.u5lazarus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5012&highlight=&sid=23d5fad341c61b06426557d06b9f038f

 

[rpgcodexusername]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/ ... 434&sr=8-3

Dungeon siege is only 1 dollar here!!

It runs on number one and not the sequel right???

 

[Worm King]

Torrent DS, then donate some money to charity since the Lazarus devs don't accept any.

Do these devs have another project?

 

[Jaesun]

Torrent DS, then donate some money to charity since the Lazarus devs don't accept any.

Do these devs have another project?

The Lazarus team has disbanded, but some of them moved onto the Ultima VIproject.

Ultima V Lazarus is a blast to play, and well worth the price of buying DS (for cheep). And the music for it is outstanding!

Also after d/l Lazarus, check out the Mod Section on the official Lazarus forums, as there's a few mods that fix some thing as well as enhance the game better.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

When Lazarus was in production, I got an email from the head of the mod group about covering their mod. I said that RPG Codex doesn't really cover mods for CRPGs(We didn't at the time). So he mailed me back about how it was going to be a lot more than a mod. It was a fairly funny exchange which got quite heated considering he would never really admit it was still just a mod.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

that is the right dungeon siege that I mentioned earlier right?

 

[Kz3r0]

Torrent DS, then donate some money to charity since the Lazarus devs don't accept any.

:idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :idea: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!:

 

[Silellak]

Torrent DS, then donate some money to charity since the Lazarus devs don't accept any.

Do these devs have another project?

The Lazarus team has disbanded, but some of them moved onto the Ultima VIproject.

Ultima V Lazarus is a blast to play, and well worth the price of buying DS (for cheep). And the music for it is outstanding!

Also after d/l Lazarus, check out the Mod Section on the official Lazarus forums, as there's a few mods that fix some thing as well as enhance the game better.

I forgot to mention the music, which as you said, is fucking great.

It was a fairly funny exchange which got quite heated considering he would never really admit it was still just a mod.

IS it really just a mod, though? Being a Lazarus fanboy I am obviously bias, but if you've played it, you'd know just how extensive the changes to the Dungeon Siege engine were. I don't think it can be classified as a mod any more than, say, Mass Effect is a mod of UT 3 just because they use the same underlying engine.

The only difference is that Lazarus requires Dungeon Siege to run, but I imagine that's because they can't legally distribute the required files on their own. I mean, it also requires the original Ultima 5 files to run - for legal reasons - but it's obviously not an Ultima 5 mod. Where exactly do you draw the line between "mod" and "unique product that uses the same engine"? Personally, I think the question to ask is:

If this were released as a stand-alone product that did not require any outside programs to run, would it still be considered just a "mod" of the original game, or something wholly different that happened to use the same engine? I think Lazarus would be considered, by most people, to be the second.

So, I can see why the head of the Lazarus team would not consider it a mod, and would thus passionately defend his team's creation. And honestly, I think it's a bit sad the Codex didn't cover Lazarus, when they were perfectly willing to cover shitty mainstream RPGs that were "original" but ignored Lazarus because it was "just a mod".

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

IS it really just a mod, though?

Yup.

 

[Silellak]

IS it really just a mod, though?

Yup.

I...don't suppose you'd actually care to justify that position?

Nah, I didn't think so. This is the Codex, after all. Opinion = fact, no debate needed.

If Lazarus is a mod, why isn't Mass Effect? Or Bioshock? They all just use the Unreal 3 engine, right?

 

[Worm King]

Silellak, leave it. You lost, okay? Take it as a man.

 

[TheWesDude]

its not a mod, its a total conversion.

mod: something that changes or adds some feature to the original game.

total conversion: something that replaces the original mechanics/story to tell a different story with different mechanics.

from what i remember, they used the ultima 5 xp/level system and u5 mechanics, not the DS mechanics.

 

[Jaesun]

its not a mod, its a total conversion.

mod: something that changes or adds some feature to the original game.

total conversion: something that replaces the original mechanics/story to tell a different story with different mechanics.

from what i remember, they used the ultima 5 xp/level system and u5 mechanics, not the DS mechanics.

Correct. Both Lazarus and the Ultima VI Project are Total Conversions of the DS engine.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

An excellent conversion. Pity the combat is still a touch boring, but there wasn't much in the way of a moddable engine with TBC at the time.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I...don't suppose you'd actually care to justify that position?

Well, it's such a stupid question, I didn't think I had to justify the answer.

If Lazarus is a mod, why isn't Mass Effect? Or Bioshock? They all just use the Unreal 3 engine, right?

The big BLATANTLY OBVIOUS difference would be how BioWare modified the source codes to produce their game. They added things to it, they took things out of it and replaced it, and so on. There's a huge difference between using a render engine like the UT engine or Torque and taking a game and writing a mod for it. You can't just take UT3's data, plop it in your Mass Effect directory and expect to play UT3. This should be abundantly apparent by the fact you need Dungeon Siege to play Lazarus.

Oh yeah, a total conversion is still just a mod just like a MacLaren F1 and a Nano are both just cars. Sure, they replaced most of the graphics, but they're still using the scripting engine of Dungeon Siege, the sound code, the graphics, and most everything else on the software side of the game. Replacing the scripts, sound files, and models doesn't make it a stand alone game. A mod is still a mod regardless of how much data they change.

 

[Silellak]

I...don't suppose you'd actually care to justify that position?

Well, it's such a stupid question, I didn't think I had to justify the answer.

If Lazarus is a mod, why isn't Mass Effect? Or Bioshock? They all just use the Unreal 3 engine, right?

The big BLATANTLY OBVIOUS difference would be how BioWare modified the source codes to produce their game. They added things to it, they took things out of it and replaced it, and so on. There's a huge difference between using a render engine like the UT engine or Torque and taking a game and writing a mod for it. You can't just take UT3's data, plop it in your Mass Effect directory and expect to play UT3. This should be abundantly apparent by the fact you need Dungeon Siege to play Lazarus.

Oh yeah, a total conversion is still just a mod just like a MacLaren F1 and a Nano are both just cars. Sure, they replaced most of the graphics, but they're still using the scripting engine of Dungeon Siege, the sound code, the graphics, and most everything else on the software side of the game. Replacing the scripts, sound files, and models doesn't make it a stand alone game. A mod is still a mod regardless of how much data they change.

I'm not sure what changes were made to the Dungeon Siege engine for Lazarus. Are you?

The fact you need Dungeon Siege to play Lazarus is not proof that the game is "just a mod". They were releasing the game for free, so they couldn't afford to just license the Dungeon Siege engine and release it as a stand-alone product. The game also requires the original Ultima 5 files to run, but it clearly doesn't need them in any programmatic way.

The impression I got is that, obviously, they could not change the DS engine since they lack the source code, but they also added some things beyond graphics, sound files, and scripts. I can't tell you what exactly those are, but that was the impression I got when playing the game and from what I remember the dev team saying.

Here's what I was able to gather from their webpage:

Lazarus will be available for users who own a copy of Gas-Powered Games' Dungeon Siege**, the engine we're modding. Dungeon Siege will be required because Lazarus is a Siegelet for it and we do not own the rights to the Dungeon Siege engine.

Now, the word "Siegelet" does seem to imply it's "just a mod", but on the other hand, they say they're modding the engine, not the game. I do get the impression from that statement that if they bought the rights to the DS engine, Lazarus could be released without needing DS installed, but there's no "proof" of that one way or the other.

We could argue the semantics back and forth for a month, but there's really no point because I doubt either of us will change our minds. I still think you made a mistake by not covering a project like Lazarus, given that far, far more work and love went into it than most modern, mainstream games receive.

 

[Antagonist]

What do people think of Lazarus? Is it worth the time it will take to play it?

I enjoyed the game very much but it very much depends if you like games akin to Ultima 7 which pronounce the exploration and dialogue aspects more than character building and choices and consequences. For what it's worth: I needed around 70 hours to finish the game according to the ingame clock and I enjoyed most of it immensely. I can't remember having been that that well entertained in years. To a non-native english speaker the dialogues were superb and the world was well designed and offered a lot of opportunity for exploration. The combat was actually acceptable (it didn't get too much in the way and some spells were so broken that it became trivial).

So yes, it's worth buying Dungeon Siege for Lazarus alone, especially considering that you can get it for peanuts these days.

If you happen to play this game don't miss some of the mods which were released after the final patch (check the fora). Most of these were written by the Lazarus team themselves and change/improve various gameplay aspects.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Thanks for everyone’s opinion. I downloaded it the other night and I'm going to give it a try after work today.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm not sure what changes were made to the Dungeon Siege engine for Lazarus. Are you?

Followed by:

so they couldn't afford to just license the Dungeon Siege engine

they could not change the DS engine since they lack the source code

Be less stupid, please. If they don't have the source, they're not modifying the engine's code. Period.

This is 2008. 35 years since computers became consumer level items. Computers aren't magic. Things like "NO SOURCE, NO CHANGE TO EXECUTABLE CODE" should be something that isn't questioned at all.

Here's what I was able to gather from their webpage:

Lazarus will be available for users who own a copy of Gas-Powered Games' Dungeon Siege**, the engine we're modding. Dungeon Siege will be required because Lazarus is a Siegelet for it and we do not own the rights to the Dungeon Siege engine.

...

"the engine we're modding" as in "The engine we're using for our mod". It's not semantics here, that's just absurd trying to twist extra meaning in to a statement that's only ambiguous if you don't understand the difference between executable code and the data.

We could argue the semantics back and forth for a month, but there's really no point because I doubt either of us will change our minds.

Okay, you don't have to change your mind. You can stay wrong.

I still think you made a mistake by not covering a project like Lazarus, given that far, far more work and love went into it than most modern, mainstream games receive.

No matter how much work goes in to a mod, it's still a mod. You cover one, you get bombed by emails from other people who make mods who think their mod is just as cool as the one you cover. That's even assuming the mod is ever released.

But hey, if you're going to spend that much time(or love, whatever) in a project, you're foolish to do so just so someone else can make more money off something mediocre like Dungeon Siege. There's plenty of 3D engines out there which are open source, or cheap like Torque. Sure, you have to get someone to write a scripting engine or linking up something like python, but if you're going to "love" something that much, finding one more person to do that shouldn't be an issue.