Game News Lord British Kickstarter coming up - "Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues"

[taxalot]

Someone should remake Ultima IX with the original plot fuck that shit

 

[Infinitron]

More images:

 

[ghostdog]

I'm starting to feel like Nostradamus, or something :

 

[taxalot]

The worse thing is that I definitely remember seeing live footage of that, on a TV show about computer games I don't remember the name of. It also showcased the world editor. It was only a minute long, but it was awesome to see.

I just wish someone finds this build from an old CD buried somewhere and releases it.

 

[felipepepe]

Ok, back to the topic, I don't think anybody will share my weird devotion for Ultima IX.

I'm not devoted to it, but I can certanly see why a game developer would admire it. It's definetly one, if not THE most ambicious RPG titles, and while playing it you can clearly see all the effort that was put into it, even if failing to properly deliver...

My name is Lord British, creator of worlds.

And I bid you farewell.

I cried.

 

[ghostdog]

 

[evdk]

"EA is not willing to sign up to fund a 30 million dollar movie even with the game..."
DOHOHOHO

 

[Saxon1974]

More images:

I think I remember seeing these screens in a magazine maybe computer gaming world. I wonder how much of the game was done in this engine. There were also many additional design concepts and story elements that didnt get included in the game that was released, I wonder if that stuff was planned when this engine was being developed. I think it was called the White plot or something? I think there is a mod being done by someone to add the changes back in.

This stuff has my panties wet, but I know I am just gonna end up a woman scored. I can't help it though I am a whore for anything Ultima, even know knowing whatever he introduces is going to piss me off.

 

[Infinitron]

Saxon1974 My first post on the Codex: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/ultima-9s-bob-white-plot-full-docs.60870/

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I love how all these cash whores who utterly abandoned PC gaming are now hoping back to the trough since it's profitable again. Molyneaux, Schafer, Gilbert, and now Garriot. Who wants to bet we see a Warren Spector KS project within a year?

People like money, news at 11. As long as it's not a shitty cashbrag riding on old glories alone, it's business as usual.

This stuff has my panties wet, but I know I am just gonna end up a woman scored.

As in, fucked?

 

[Saxon1974]

Saxon1974 My first post on the Codex: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/ultima-9s-bob-white-plot-full-docs.60870/

Yes thanks for posting this, man too bad the original design didnt get built, sounds like the majority of it was done.

Here is Bob White's post from yours for anyone else that wants to read it.

1. We were almost at the alpha stage in 96 when we all got rerouted over to the UO team to pull their tails out of the fire. The original UIX team was pretty amazing, even to all others in the game industry. We tried to tackle some of the hardest ideas and on the bleeding edge of the hardware and we were doing very well at it and we kept pretty close to our milestones. That was one of the main reasons we got thrown at UO. When we started returning to UIX, things changed and drastically. I won’t go into the politics but it was kind of bad and almost all of it came from the dolts they put in charge of Origin at the time. A lot of people ended up leaving or changing around and the game suffered as a result.
At the time we moved over to UO all conversations were at full alpha state, many game systems including inventory, combat, plot event tracking, manipulation of objects, set scripting and the like were either in place or being integrated at the time. Nearly all the flicks, and cut scenes had been written, rendered, and were just being polished there were a lot of them, something around 13 or so. The world map was close to 80% complete, but still needed mucho polish. The towns were in place, but still needed polish. The dungeons were mostly in place, but there was a rush to complete thre of them. Some of the things we were still focusing hard on was magical special effects (the spells were already written), people schedules, adding npcs, fleshing out side quests (non-plot specific) and a few other things. In fact we joked that we might release before UO…well that is history now.

2. Most of the stuff I see people calling impossible or we couldn’t do it…we were doing it. We had techniques and ways we were going to handle the wars and the armies, etc.

3. The first main engine that Gary Scott Smith constructed for us to work with was a 3D engine. As reported before the UVIII engine just would not do what we needed. However even though the world was to be 3D we were going to have the camera locked at the “high” angle and just have a camera you could rotate around (like many games do now). The technology was new and we were coming up with new quaternion algorithms to handle displaying and manipulating 3D objects, stuff that is pretty normal now. Then Tomb Raider came out…
Well that did it and the technical guys went bonkers. As you can imagine displaying meshes top down limited the number that would be visible giving a good frame rate, moving the camera down changed everything. Several of us fought to keep the cameras up since waiting for Moore’s law to help wasn’t viable. However Herman Miller kept coding on the engine while the rest of us went to UO and he was able to increase it’s frame rate significantly, but still I think it was way to slow even when the released the game.
So what this boils down to is the 3D aspect of the game was almost in there from the start, at least it was ever since 94 when Richard took the helm again.

4. The mismatch between the dungeons and the plot you read is because versions have been lost over time. All of the dungeons in the plot doc of dungeons you have were still going to be included. It wasn’t until much later that changed.

 

[Saxon1974]

This stuff has my panties wet, but I know I am just gonna end up a woman scored.

As in, fucked? [/quote]

No that would be a good result, scorned meaning "shamed or mistreated" ha.

 

[evdk]

People like money, news at 11. As long as it's not a shitty cashbrag riding on old glories alone, it's business as usual.

Since we have entered Grammar Nazi territory, it's cashgrab.

 

[Infinitron]

Saxon1974
Yep, like I said, ultimately it's the graphics whore tech geeks of Origin who are directly responsible for fucking up Ultima IX. Sad but true.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

People like money, news at 11. As long as it's not a shitty cashbrag riding on old glories alone, it's business as usual.

Since we have entered Grammar Nazi territory, it's cashgrab.

No, it's cashbrag because Garriot brags about being a 2nd generation spa- ah, it wasn't that funny anyway.

 

[Stabwound]

God damn. Now that looks like a real Ultima 9.

Although I doubt it will ever happen, I'd love something like that from LB again.

Ah, who am I kidding. At the very best it would end up being some kind of unintentional self-mockery like Metallica's "comeback" album.

 

[Saxon1974]

Saxon1974
Yep, like I said, ultimately it's the graphics whore tech geeks of Origin who are directly responsible for fucking up Ultima IX. Sad but true.

Makes me wonder if they had not gone that route if it would have made a difference in the dismantling of Origin but I think by this time they were already in trouble and part of EA? I could be wrong on the timing.

 

[Saxon1974]

God damn. Now that looks like a real Ultima 9.

Although I doubt it will ever happen, I'd love something like that from LB again.

Ah, who am I kidding. At the very best it would end up being some kind of unintentional self-mockery like Metallica's "comeback" album.

Agree me too. In the video talking about these shots garriot said the pixelated areas (tree specifically) would look better and less pixelated in the released game so I think it looks pretty decent, honestly better than ULTIMA 9 as released.

 

[Mortmal]

It looks more like an ultima 8 part 2 , i remember seeing those screenshots too, so long ago. Ah what a disapointment the 9 was i think its one of the reason lot of us are so bitter about the video game industry . He will need to put LOT of work into his kickstarter and bring many old names like denis loubet for example before i send even a small amount of money . After shit like ultimate garage collector and poker stuff, that better be a very impressive video pitch.

 

[JarlFrank]

Those screenshots really look beautiful to me.

For some reason I really love the looks of early 3D.

 

[Studio Fawn]

Saxon1974
Yep, like I said, ultimately it's the graphics whore tech geeks of Origin who are directly responsible for fucking up Ultima IX. Sad but true.

Nah, it was whoever was in charge of the project. If your managing a project and your artists / programmers throw out some crazy direction for the project, you might give them a little freedom to try some stuff out...but if it isn't panning out, you move on instead of letting it sink the project. The person at the head of the project is the filter and guide to make sure the project happens and moves forward ~_~

And still, it wasn't just a technical issue... the story itself and writing was just completely bonkers. Over 3 and half years into the project and you decide to completely rewrite everything? A year before it needs to be released? Wait...what?

 

[taxalot]

Saxon1974
Yep, like I said, ultimately it's the graphics whore tech geeks of Origin who are directly responsible for fucking up Ultima IX. Sad but true.

Nah, it was whoever was in charge of the project. If your managing a project and your artists / programmers throw out some crazy direction for the project, you might give them a little freedom to try some stuff out...but if it isn't panning out, you move on instead of letting it sink the project. The person at the head of the project is the filter and guide to make sure the project happens and moves forward ~_~

And still, it wasn't just a technical issue... the story itself and writing was just completely bonkers. Over 3 and half years into the project and you decide to completely rewrite everything? A year before it needs to be released? Wait...what?

They rewrote everything because the engine they ended up having couldn't handle the story they have written, also, EA wanted a plot that could be understood by everyone.

 

[Jaesun]

If you take the time and actually read the Bob White plot, it doesn't feel very "Ultima" and that's probably why they re-wrote it. I thought it was still pretty cool though (for the most part).

 

[taxalot]

Those screenshots really look beautiful to me.

For some reason I really love the looks of early 3D.

I do too : it looks decent and still looks like a video game. There's such a thing as too good graphics as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Studio Fawn]

They rewrote everything because the engine they ended up having couldn't handle the story they have written, also, EA wanted a plot that could be understood by everyone.

o_O since when does the engine limit the story telling? To tell a great story, you don't need super amazing cinematics ~_~

Also, ANY plot should be able to be understood by anyone... that is part of the job with telling a story ~_~ Always having the character ask "what is ____?" and then having an npc give them a wall of text to "catch them up" is just lazy "story telling".