KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[newtmonkey]

I have this and Arcania permanently installed for lolz, when I want to play something horrible in between more substantial games. Having said that, at least Arcania is stable (if you use the legacy version and hack it with a hex editor to run on modern OS). Ascendant is just ridiculous, it's like a the most buggiest bullshit game you'd play from some fucking kid releasing an asset swap on steam, combined with modern design sensibilities (insanely long tutorial section to explain the most basic of fundamentals, checkpoint saves only, etc. etc.).

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Like Ascension, and to a lesser scale, Pagan(because it's not as bad) weren't mainly their fault for heavily rushing the games, not letting the staff do their job, or wanting to focus way too much on Ultima Online, who knows, maybe if they had let Richard Garriott and his staff do their job and take as long as they wanted, we could have had Ultima ending on a high note.

Garriott and Origin fucked up Ascension all on their own.

 

[Bad Sector]

So i was watching at the level design videos from this guy (The Playing Field) and in the Prey one shows (not released at the time) Underworld Ascendant as a game from the company he worked on (he uses it as an example of something going wrong). He has a few other videos where he clearly shows he understands these types of games and level design in general, which while watching the videos makes me wonder how with someone like him on board they made UA to have so many issues.

Then i watched the Thief 2 video where at the end he mentions that he was hired for QA instead of level design.

 

[Ivan]

The Thief 2 vid predates the Prey vid. He must have moved up the ladder

 

[Bad Sector]

The Thief 2 vid predates the Prey vid. He must have moved up the ladder

Perhaps, but unless i missed it (it is a 71 minute video after all), he doesn't mention that he was the one worked on the level (he actually mentions "the designers" - which can be interpreted as both him being part of the team and not) so it isn't clear if he did move up the ladder.

Of course it is possible he was promoted (and might be mentioned in an in-between video, i haven't watched the Alien Isolation one since i haven't played the game yet) but i have my doubts considering that the Thief 2 video was uploaded a year ago whereas the Prey one was 9 months ago and i do not think they'd promote him to a totally different position in just a few months *and* to he to have any significant impact on the game.

So actually i went looking around a bit and found his site where he says that he's still on QA, although they did let him do a bit of "additional design" a couple of months ago (Feb 19):

Otherside Entertainment (Additional Design, Feb ‘19; Senior QA, Nov ’18 - Present; QA Consultant, Nov ‘17 - Oct ‘18): Position working on Underworld Ascendant and Underworld Overlord as a bug tester. Involves running smoketests, logging bugs in Hansoft and Jira, formulating and executing test plans, and writing C# scripts in Unity to automate tasks. Was given responsibility for technical and level design tasks under guidance of senior design, resulting in an Additional Design credit on Underworld Ascendant.

 

[coldcrow]

Like Ascension, and to a lesser scale, Pagan(because it's not as bad) weren't mainly their fault for heavily rushing the games, not letting the staff do their job, or wanting to focus way too much on Ultima Online, who knows, maybe if they had let Richard Garriott and his staff do their job and take as long as they wanted, we could have had Ultima ending on a high note.

That's only a part of the issue. The original prototype for U9 was isometric, probably sprite based. Yet the managment got enamored by the emerging 3D tech and, yea let's just throw our codebase out. In the meantime they got aquired by EA, which focused on U:O, so U9 was left with little time and few resources. What came of it we all know. It's the usual story of Peter's Principle, people just work/rise until they reach a position of incompetence.

 

[Silentstorm]

Ahh, forgot about that, man, i am still sad whenever i read about this and part of me wishes EA would just give the rights to anyone or make remakes themselves...granted, they would likely suck or have some annoying amount of DLC, but they would at least be doing something with Ultima.

 

[Jenkem]

In ten years this will be in the codex Top 75

 

[Invictus]

Fucking EA, they have all these good IPs like Ultima Underworld... in these post Skyrim days imagine them developing a true open world game based on the Ultima world to compete with Witcher 3 and TES, but NOOO they rather just milk their sports games, rape Bioware’s carcass some more and look for the next promising lootbox scam

 

[Nano]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSeuXYwI-KY

Q: Please create an honest deep-dive into Underworld Ascendant's development history and gameplay failings. It's shocking poor.

The Playing Field 5 months ago
I'm not sure this is the place to do that. I'll post a postmortem if we get one written up at some point- I really want one to be shared.

The Playing Field 5 months ago
Nah you're fine. I've been feeling all kinds of ways about it too. It's difficult to summarize as well because it's four years of decisions towards making the game (and I was only there for the past twelve months), and depending on who you ask, different decisions or points of friction are what they're going to pin the state of the project on. Trimming that into something comprehensible is difficult.

Interesting.

 

[vota DC]

Fucking EA, they have all these good IPs like Ultima Underworld... in these post Skyrim days imagine them developing a true open world game based on the Ultima world to compete with Witcher 3 and TES, but NOOO they rather just milk their sports games, rape Bioware’s carcass some more and look for the next promising lootbox scam

No idea why they made some decent c&c games but they snubbed ultima games but also dungeon keeper and populous like game.
I guess they didn't want to explore those kind of games. Maybe they had an rts team since they made battle for middle earth too but they couldn't do rpg or god games.

 

[JarlFrank]

Fucking EA, they have all these good IPs like Ultima Underworld... in these post Skyrim days imagine them developing a true open world game based on the Ultima world to compete with Witcher 3 and TES, but NOOO they rather just milk their sports games, rape Bioware’s carcass some more and look for the next promising lootbox scam

What they've turned Bioware into with Ass Effect Assdromeda and Assthem is the best argument against them reviving Ultima.

Imagine the kind of rape they'd perform on it if they made one of their slave studios create a new Ultima. The horror. Bioware used to make decent RPGs before, but EA turned them into a shit factory. I'm quite happy EA isn't trying to do more with the genre.

 

[Gord]

He has a few other videos where he clearly shows he understands these types of games and level design in general, which while watching the videos makes me wonder how with someone like him on board they made UA to have so many issues.

IMHO level design is the smallest of the issues UA has. The levels themselves are not that bad in many places - but they are lacking the necessary content and gameplay to go along with it.

 

[Bad Sector]

IMHO level design is the smallest of the issues UA has. The levels themselves are not that bad in many places - but they are lacking the necessary content and gameplay to go along with it.

He also mentions systems design, especially in the Prey and Thief 2 videos. But it seems he was only allowed to work on actual design months *after* the game was released. Also just in case since you mention lack of gameplay, with "level design" i mean the gameplay side of things, not visuals (i mention it because some people confuse it with environment art - which is understandable since at the past, especially in the 90s, the level designers also were largely environment artists, but in this case after trying the map he made for the System Shock 2 video i can easily say that he is *not* an environment artist :-P).

 

[Tacgnol]

Fucking EA, they have all these good IPs like Ultima Underworld... in these post Skyrim days imagine them developing a true open world game based on the Ultima world to compete with Witcher 3 and TES, but NOOO they rather just milk their sports games, rape Bioware’s carcass some more and look for the next promising lootbox scam

What they've turned Bioware into with Ass Effect Assdromeda and Assthem is the best argument against them reviving Ultima.

Imagine the kind of rape they'd perform on it if they made one of their slave studios create a new Ultima. The horror. Bioware used to make decent RPGs before, but EA turned them into a shit factory. I'm quite happy EA isn't trying to do more with the genre.

Yeah, better Ultima stay dead than EA reanimating the corpse.

Same with many "revived" franchises.

 

[Gord]

Also just in case since you mention lack of gameplay, with "level design" i mean the gameplay side of things, not visuals...

Level design for me is more about the layout and how they deliver the fundament for the gameplay to emerge/play out and also the visuals. The gameplay itself is in a way emerging form the interaction between the underlying systems and the level design. So maybe I should say the systems are lacking and as a result the gameplay is, too. But the levels themself might work well enough in another game.

 

[Silentstorm]

Fucking EA, they have all these good IPs like Ultima Underworld... in these post Skyrim days imagine them developing a true open world game based on the Ultima world to compete with Witcher 3 and TES, but NOOO they rather just milk their sports games, rape Bioware’s carcass some more and look for the next promising lootbox scam

What they've turned Bioware into with Ass Effect Assdromeda and Assthem is the best argument against them reviving Ultima.

Imagine the kind of rape they'd perform on it if they made one of their slave studios create a new Ultima. The horror. Bioware used to make decent RPGs before, but EA turned them into a shit factory. I'm quite happy EA isn't trying to do more with the genre.

Yeah, better Ultima stay dead than EA reanimating the corpse.

Same with many "revived" franchises.

Plus, the last Ultima games were made when EA were the owners of the IP, and let's just say those last games aren't exactly considered classics, i would very much like to see Ultima come back, but honestly, only if EA sold the IP.

 

[mindx2]

One only has to remember "Lady British" a.k.a Shroud of the Avatar to see what EA would do with Ultima......better off dead.

 

[Bad Sector]

Level design for me is more about the layout and how they deliver the fundament for the gameplay to emerge/play out and also the visuals. The gameplay itself is in a way emerging form the interaction between the underlying systems and the level design. So maybe I should say the systems are lacking and as a result the gameplay is, too. But the levels themself might work well enough in another game.

Yeah, that sounds pretty much what i have in mind too. I'm not really a level designer, just have interest on it (partly out of curiosity as its mechanical side is close to programming, but also partly out of necessity for my own personal -eventual, hopefully- projects), but i'd expect that level designers shape the systems too (even if in part), so unless two games share a similar way of playing them (TPF calls this the level design philosophy of a game) it might not be easy to "transplant" a level from one game to another (e.g. a Doom map might work in Blood and/or Duke 3D, but it'll be harder for it to work in Strife or Thief - outside of remaking the spaces without any regard for the gameplay of course), especially as more systems enter into the picture (e.g. Thief and Dishonored may play in a similar way from a high vantage point, but i do not think it would be as easy to take a level from Thief and place it in Dishonored as it would be in taking a level from Doom and placing it in Duke 3D).

 

[JarlFrank]

Level design for me is more about the layout and how they deliver the fundament for the gameplay to emerge/play out and also the visuals. The gameplay itself is in a way emerging form the interaction between the underlying systems and the level design. So maybe I should say the systems are lacking and as a result the gameplay is, too. But the levels themself might work well enough in another game.

Yeah, that sounds pretty much what i have in mind too. I'm not really a level designer, just have interest on it (partly out of curiosity as its mechanical side is close to programming, but also partly out of necessity for my own personal -eventual, hopefully- projects), but i'd expect that level designers shape the systems too (even if in part), so unless two games share a similar way of playing them (TPF calls this the level design philosophy of a game) it might not be easy to "transplant" a level from one game to another (e.g. a Doom map might work in Blood and/or Duke 3D, but it'll be harder for it to work in Strife or Thief - outside of remaking the spaces without any regard for the gameplay of course), especially as more systems enter into the picture (e.g. Thief and Dishonored may play in a similar way from a high vantage point, but i do not think it would be as easy to take a level from Thief and place it in Dishonored as it would be in taking a level from Doom and placing it in Duke 3D).

Yeah, levels are usually designed with a purpose and mechanics in mind. There are some Thief fan missions that could easily be transported to Dishonored, yet the details are different enough that you can't just copypaste them but would have to make adjustments. Dishonored relies on blink for vertical movement, Thief relies on rope arrows, which means in Thief you have to keep the length of the ropes in mind when you place wooden textures intended for players to rope up on, in Dishonored you have to keep the reach of blink in mind when placing locations that are supposed to be reachable. If you want to design a map to be ghostable (as in, go through without ever being detected and without knocking out any guards), you need to place the AIs and patrol routes differently since both games handle detection in different ways: Thief operates with light and shadow and footstep sounds are very important; Dishonored operates mostly with verticality and line of sight and footstep sounds are less important since sneaking is silent on any surface. It's the subtleties of the mechanics that really determine how a level should be designed.

Similarly I don't think you could just import a Doom level to a Duke3D level without losing something. Of course on the one hand we have the different weapon and enemy types that can't just be copied. On the other we have the different capabilities of the engines. Doom's engine is more primitive than Duke3D's, since Duke has the ability to put spaces above or below other spaces with some trickery, while it's not possible to do so in Doom. Duke levels will generally feel more lifelike and realistic (cityscapes, alien bases, etc) while Doom's will feel more abstract. Porting maps between the two games wouldn't work that well just because of the different theme and atmosphere they go for. Theme influences level design just as much as systems do.

 

[Bad Sector]

Similarly I don't think you could just import a Doom level to a Duke3D level without losing something. Of course on the one hand we have the different weapon and enemy types that can't just be copied. On the other we have the different capabilities of the engines. Doom's engine is more primitive than Duke3D's, since Duke has the ability to put spaces above or below other spaces with some trickery, while it's not possible to do so in Doom. Duke levels will generally feel more lifelike and realistic (cityscapes, alien bases, etc) while Doom's will feel more abstract. Porting maps between the two games wouldn't work that well just because of the different theme and atmosphere they go for. Theme influences level design just as much as systems do.

If we consider the aesthetics, yes things become harder (although Blood could be a bit closer) but i was focusing on the mechanical side (since the topic is level design) and especially on the Doom to Duke direction (not the other way around) as i actually remember Ken Silverman had written a tool to do that sort of conversion (the Build engine can represent all of Doom's spaces, again ignoring aesthetics - that is, textures). However even though they do not work the exact same way, Doom has monsters that could be substituted with Duke's monsters (e.g. zombieman -> assault trooper, shotgunner -> pigcop, imp -> octabrain, cacodemon -> assault commander, etc) and similarly with weapons (i think only chainsaw doesn't have an equivalent) and powerups.

Of course adjustments will need to be made, as you mentioned, but i think they'd be much easier compared to a Thief-to-Dishonored, since the Doom and Duke play much closer to each other, to the point where most of the work can be even automated (like the program Ken Silverman wrote, although with the added ability to do entity and art substitution) with only manual fixes applied to the generated Duke map file - mainly for adjusting difficulty and fixing collision issues that might occur from the enemy placement.

 

[JarlFrank]

Similarly I don't think you could just import a Doom level to a Duke3D level without losing something. Of course on the one hand we have the different weapon and enemy types that can't just be copied. On the other we have the different capabilities of the engines. Doom's engine is more primitive than Duke3D's, since Duke has the ability to put spaces above or below other spaces with some trickery, while it's not possible to do so in Doom. Duke levels will generally feel more lifelike and realistic (cityscapes, alien bases, etc) while Doom's will feel more abstract. Porting maps between the two games wouldn't work that well just because of the different theme and atmosphere they go for. Theme influences level design just as much as systems do.

If we consider the aesthetics, yes things become harder (although Blood could be a bit closer) but i was focusing on the mechanical side (since the topic is level design) and especially on the Doom to Duke direction (not the other way around) as i actually remember Ken Silverman had written a tool to do that sort of conversion (the Build engine can represent all of Doom's spaces, again ignoring aesthetics - that is, textures). However even though they do not work the exact same way, Doom has monsters that could be substituted with Duke's monsters (e.g. zombieman -> assault trooper, shotgunner -> pigcop, imp -> octabrain, cacodemon -> assault commander, etc) and similarly with weapons (i think only chainsaw doesn't have an equivalent) and powerups.

Of course adjustments will need to be made, as you mentioned, but i think they'd be much easier compared to a Thief-to-Dishonored, since the Doom and Duke play much closer to each other, to the point where most of the work can be even automated (like the program Ken Silverman wrote, although with the added ability to do entity and art substitution) with only manual fixes applied to the generated Duke map file - mainly for adjusting difficulty and fixing collision issues that might occur from the enemy placement.

Yeah, theroetically it's possible. But there's not that much to gain for it since ideally, a skilled level designer will mold his level to the game it's made for, therefore giving it a strong identity that connects it to that particular game. The more similar the games are, the easier such a direct translation is, but making levels specifically for a certain game from scratch is usually the better idea.

An interesting example is the remake of Doom's iconic E1M1 for Quake, which is included in the Arcane Dimensions modpack. You notice that it feels a bit out of place compared to the other maps of the pack.

 

[Bad Sector]

Yeah, theroetically it's possible. But there's not that much to gain for it since ideally, a skilled level designer will mold his level to the game it's made for, therefore giving it a strong identity that connects it to that particular game. The more similar the games are, the easier such a direct translation is, but making levels specifically for a certain game from scratch is usually the better idea.

I agree, thus why i wrote that it wouldn't be very easy for the Underworld Ascendant levels to work well in another game in my original reply to Gord . At least not unless that other game were made to work in a similar way to Underworld Ascendant. But TBH i haven't played the game, so i cannot really comment on the details and i might be wrong here. I'll buy it at some point to check it out as i have a fascination with broken games, but certainly not at its current price.

 

[Nyast]

Apparently even the ending is bugged...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1649918058734439248/

Q. Is something supposed to happen when you beat the game?
Once you activate the materia modus in the Vault of Nyx, is something supposed to happen before the end credits? I got a black screen with the crosshair dot in the middle, but nothing occurred. I even let it sit there for a while (at least 10 minutes while I read some articles on my phone) but there was no disk activity until I hit escape and the credits rolled.

A. Yes, a cutscene should have rolled with your appropriate ending. We are tracking some reports now, thank you for posting this.

 

[Child of Malkav]

There's no end to it in sight.......this is just sad at this point.