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Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

What is your favorite Ultima game?

  • Total voters
    348
Grauken

Grauken

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Bumvelcrow said:
taxalot said:
I do not think so.
Click to expand...

It was the Underworld Ascendant of it's time. A rush job thrown together because they ran out of time, money and ideas. It was fucking dreadful as a stand alone game, let alone as a conclusion to a story begun with U7.
Click to expand...

While Ultima 9 was terrible, it still was a fully functional game. The Underworld Ascendant of it's time was more Descent to Undermountain or other barely functional "games"
 
Max Heap

Max Heap

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Jul 21, 2011
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Grauken said:
Bumvelcrow said:
taxalot said:
I do not think so.
Click to expand...

It was the Underworld Ascendant of it's time. A rush job thrown together because they ran out of time, money and ideas. It was fucking dreadful as a stand alone game, let alone as a conclusion to a story begun with U7.
Click to expand...

While Ultima 9 was terrible, it still was a fully functional game. The Underworld Ascendant of it's time was more Descent to Undermountain or other barely functional "games"
Click to expand...

I'd agree that U9 was nowhere near as bad or broken as UA, but I don't think functional is really the right word to describe it. U9 had some horrendous bugs - some of which actually broke the game. I remember that, when I was playing it at release, a teleporter in a dungeon near Minoc basically just crashed the game and broke my save file. So that is as far as I ever got in that game.
However, the big difference between UA and U9 was, that Origin knew how to pull off an asset-based exit strategy - that means, you take everything you made (scripts, 3D objects, sounds, textures, etc) and you somehow punch it together into a game that works just well enough so it can be sold. That's also why the dungeon of Hythloth is based on assets of the (originally planned) Britain sewer system.

UA, while also trying to pull off the same trick, couldn't even get that right. I can't really tell what on earth they were thinking and my memory of the release version is slowly fading away like a bad dream.
Maybe it was this: U9 had competent programmers, with too little time (to finish the last version of the game) and bad direction, while UA had incompetent programmers, with too much time and bad direction.

I do have to say though: Today I like U9 just for the fact of how much of a mess that project was. It's outright interesting to dig through it and come up with reasons why they did things in a certain way.
Also, quickly putting together a game brought about some hilarious results like the pirate of Austin, Texas. You can somehow reason over it (like the pirate somehow fell out of the moongate like the gazer) but it's just so silly.
 
Grauken

Grauken

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You're right, I remember the original release version was horribly bugged, but with all the patches over time it became playable
 
Nifft Batuff

Nifft Batuff

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Max Heap said:
I remember that, when I was playing it at release, a teleporter in a dungeon near Minoc basically just crashed the game and broke my save file. So that is as far as I ever got in that game.
Click to expand...
At least u9 had a save game feature.
 
Infinitron

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Ultima in ScummVM: https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/pull/2025

I'm at a stage where I'm happy enough with the Ultima engine that I've been working on to open it for review for inclusion into master. This engine currently consists of work for three games in the Ultima series.
  1. Ultima VIII - Pagan.
    This is based on the Pentagram project. I've finally got music playback working, and am about to start a full playthrough test of the game to may sure everything in the engine still works, and the game is completeable.

  2. Ultima VI - The False Prophet
    This is based on the Nuvie project. I added two game detection entries, one for Nuvie's "classic" mode, and another that turns on the Nuvie enhancements like Ultima 7 style gumps and a full-screen map. I haven't really tested it much beyond the game starting up, the initial fight, and moving around the castle a bit. But everything seems to work. One downside is that I had to include the entirety of the Lua interpreter that Nuvie used in order for the cutscenes and various in-game monster AI and combat calculations to work. So testing it further, and seeing whether I can get it to use the common Lua code is going on a back burner until I've finished testing Pagan.

  3. Ultima 1
    This is an in progress work based on my decompilation of the first Ultima game (not counting Akalabeth). Most of the in-game towns/castles, overworld, and dungeons are supported. It's just missing the outer space sim section, and the endgame bossfight. Further work on this will wait until the other two Ultima games are done.
Click to expand...
 
TwoEdge

TwoEdge

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Grauken said:
Is there any reason to play those games in ScummVM over Dosbox?
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Scumm implements each game or game engine individually, whereas DOSBox emulates the system itself. The end result is that the former tends to be easier to use and more feature rich (e.g. it interprets Amiga versions, has intuitive graphic mode and/or sound switching, better saving etc.) and the latter more versatile, compatible and fiddly. I usually go to ScummVM first and DOSBox otherwise, but you can't really go wrong with either.
 
Last edited:
Sherry

Sherry

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taxalot said:
It's out.

https://www.dosgameclub.com/ultima-vii/

I'm the guy with the horrible accent. I refuse to listen to it.
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Hi!

Gosh who does not likkszx the Ultima games grewing up together and adverntugin we let our children grow up to ghem we have the books and even boxes still!!! They loveed looking at them and reading the mnauls an d history like in uLtima 5 and right into Ultima 6. taxalot very good work during the stream and jkust hearing the music again is fantastic takes me back for su

Thanks,
Sherry
 
Gangrelrumbler

Gangrelrumbler

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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
The ending of the Alone in the Dark episode was probably some of the best on Youtube. I sure hope that low views won't encourage him to transition into making retrospectives on shitty tv shows LIKE SOME OTHER RETRO YOUTUBER I USED TO WATCH.
 

Comte

Guest
Sherry said:
taxalot said:
It's out.

https://www.dosgameclub.com/ultima-vii/

I'm the guy with the horrible accent. I refuse to listen to it.
Click to expand...

Hi!

Gosh who does not likkszx the Ultima games grewing up together and adverntugin we let our children grow up to ghem we have the books and even boxes still!!! They loveed looking at them and reading the mnauls an d history like in uLtima 5 and right into Ultima 6. taxalot very good work during the stream and jkust hearing the music again is fantastic takes me back for su

Thanks,
Sherry
Click to expand...

Sherry your still alive!
 
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