Ultima The Ultima Underworld I & II Thread

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Spoiler

Hi guys

I found a nice UW walkthrough, step-by-step. I only copied level 1 & the map into MS Word. Now I can't seem to find it on google anymore. I searched and searched and can't find it.

Here is the part I have. If anyone knows about this walkthrough, please share!

FIRST FLOOR

(I will basically follow the player's guide's starting walkthrough for convenience.)
1. Entrance. Grab the bag for your map and some starting equipment.
2. Make sure to grab the bowl and the torch. The axe is optional, depends on your weapon preferences.
3. Grab ORT and JUX. You can't do anything with them yet, but that's ok.
4. Grab the backpack. Put all the runestones into the rune bag and put it somewhere convenient to access. Read the note and then drop it.
Here you get the RED KEY, which opens doors marked with A on my map.
You now have runes BIJLOS.
5. Pull the chain to get in. Grab the bag and unlock both doors.
6. Do the thing with the silver seed. Go to the east end of the room and search for secret doors. Head on through.
7. Easiest way to make these jumps is to get to the edge and use Shift-J, which is a standing forward jump, a fact the player card neglects to mention when it describes jumping.
Hit the button, go through the door. Read the walls to learn your first three mantras. Then I recommend saving and using SUMM RA until it gives you useful stuff.
Then jump to the remaining platform. Grab the GREY KEY and unlock the door- now you can use this path to get back up if you fall into the water. (If you fall in the water first, you can break the lock with a single weapon blow.)
8. Look at the Orb. Remember what it shows you: the green path. Also, there is a rotworm to kill on the way in- grab its corpse and hold onto it for the rotworm stew later.
9. Bedroll. You'll want this.
Just outside this room is Bragit, an Outcast. He'll tell you some about this floor of the Abyss, and also offhandedly mention something that comes in useful in general- you can use a pole to push buttons beyond your reach. Note that you cannot do this with a fishing pole!
10. Switch that opens the door at the north end of the room.
11. Two poles and a box. You can grab the box for inventory space but ditch the sling and stones. One of the poles you'll turn into a fishing pole and solve all your food problems forever, the other you can keep to actually use as a pole.
12. Two Outcasts. They teach you some about the Abyss.
13. Gulik and Hagbard. Both are Outcasts; Hagbard is their leader.
14. Box with two runestones (M and Y). There's a Lurker in the water here, and they're pretty tough at low level, so you might want to grab the box and run.
You now have runes BIJLMOSY.
15. In here is another copy of key , and some stairs down.
16. A spellcasting monster lives in here but he isn't too tough. In here is a scroll that tells you how to cast a Jump spell (Uus Por).
17. In here is Drog, a green goblin guard. He's not very nice but he'll open the portcullis if you ask.
18. Talk to Lanugo, the guard first. You can bribe him with a single gold piece. He'll tell you to be very flattering to the king. Be polite and he will give you the recipe for Rotworm stew, which you will want later on. Keep the paper the recipe is on- unless most things in this game where the paper just teaches you how to do it, here you actually need to Use the recipe to make the stew.
19. These four dials control the heights of the four platforms in the room to the west. To get to the small chamber above the room, you want to make a zig-zag staircase of sorts. To do this you want to basically reverse the heights of the 4 moveable platforms. (The solution by dial is, from left to right and with 0 as straight up: 0 1 3 4.) The room's contents- a gravestone and a box with most of a suit of leather (which you should have by now), a worn axe (no better than what you probably have by now unless it's magic and I didn't realize), a "resilient sphere" which I don't yet know what they do, and a scepter of mana boost. (NOTE: Having finished the game, I found two resilient spheres and no sign that they have any use whatsoever.)
20. Eb the grey goblin guard.
21. Retichal. You need her permission to talk to the king. Then go through the door to the south and speak with Ketchaval, King of the Gray Goblins. He'll tell you about Navrey Night-Eyes. Probably best if you don't mention having spoken with the Green Goblins.
22. Navrey. It's a good idea to grab the leeches from the cave before the bridge, as Navrel poisons. Grab all three things of thread, and drag one onto one of the two poles to turn it into a fishing pole. Thus are your food problems solved. The other two will be valuable later.
23. Through a secret door is this fountain, which heals you.

Maybe put spoilers in spoiler tags. Why would you want a walkthrough anyways? Discovery and exploration are the joy.

 

[andwan0]

Sorry, I didn't know about the spoiler option. Good idea.

 

[Junmarko]

Does anyone have a hi-res scan of the UU1 box-art? Wouldn't mind getting a poster printed. Can't seem to find one with ideal dimensions like this: http://www.romanladder.com/u5/Box Art.jpg

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Does anyone have a hi-res scan of the UU1 box-art? Wouldn't mind getting a poster printed. Can't seem to find one with ideal dimensions like this: http://www.romanladder.com/u5/Box Art.jpg

Paging mindx2

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, turns 25 years old today.

It's at this point that I realize that the best "celebratory" smilies the Codex has on offer are these two:

 

[yellowcake]

Hi guys
I am trying to find a lost walkthrough Ultima Underworld. It was a nice UW walkthrough, very detailed, step-by-step. I only copied level 1 & the map into MS Word a long time ago. Now I can't find it on google anymore. I searched and searched and can't find it.
Here is the part I have. If anyone knows about this walkthrough, please share!

Spoiler

FIRST FLOOR
(I will basically follow the player's guide's starting walkthrough for convenience.)
1. Entrance. Grab the bag for your map and some starting equipment.
2. Make sure to grab the bowl and the torch. The axe is optional, depends on your weapon preferences.
3. Grab ORT and JUX. You can't do anything with them yet, but that's ok.
4. Grab the backpack. Put all the runestones into the rune bag and put it somewhere convenient to access. Read the note and then drop it.
Here you get the RED KEY, which opens doors marked with A on my map.
You now have runes BIJLOS.
5. Pull the chain to get in. Grab the bag and unlock both doors.
6. Do the thing with the silver seed. Go to the east end of the room and search for secret doors. Head on through.
7. Easiest way to make these jumps is to get to the edge and use Shift-J, which is a standing forward jump, a fact the player card neglects to mention when it describes jumping.
Hit the button, go through the door. Read the walls to learn your first three mantras. Then I recommend saving and using SUMM RA until it gives you useful stuff.
Then jump to the remaining platform. Grab the GREY KEY and unlock the door- now you can use this path to get back up if you fall into the water. (If you fall in the water first, you can break the lock with a single weapon blow.)
8. Look at the Orb. Remember what it shows you: the green path. Also, there is a rotworm to kill on the way in- grab its corpse and hold onto it for the rotworm stew later.
9. Bedroll. You'll want this.
Just outside this room is Bragit, an Outcast. He'll tell you some about this floor of the Abyss, and also offhandedly mention something that comes in useful in general- you can use a pole to push buttons beyond your reach. Note that you cannot do this with a fishing pole!
10. Switch that opens the door at the north end of the room.
11. Two poles and a box. You can grab the box for inventory space but ditch the sling and stones. One of the poles you'll turn into a fishing pole and solve all your food problems forever, the other you can keep to actually use as a pole.
12. Two Outcasts. They teach you some about the Abyss.
13. Gulik and Hagbard. Both are Outcasts; Hagbard is their leader.
14. Box with two runestones (M and Y). There's a Lurker in the water here, and they're pretty tough at low level, so you might want to grab the box and run.
You now have runes BIJLMOSY.
15. In here is another copy of key , and some stairs down.
16. A spellcasting monster lives in here but he isn't too tough. In here is a scroll that tells you how to cast a Jump spell (Uus Por).
17. In here is Drog, a green goblin guard. He's not very nice but he'll open the portcullis if you ask.
18. Talk to Lanugo, the guard first. You can bribe him with a single gold piece. He'll tell you to be very flattering to the king. Be polite and he will give you the recipe for Rotworm stew, which you will want later on. Keep the paper the recipe is on- unless most things in this game where the paper just teaches you how to do it, here you actually need to Use the recipe to make the stew.
19. These four dials control the heights of the four platforms in the room to the west. To get to the small chamber above the room, you want to make a zig-zag staircase of sorts. To do this you want to basically reverse the heights of the 4 moveable platforms. (The solution by dial is, from left to right and with 0 as straight up: 0 1 3 4.) The room's contents- a gravestone and a box with most of a suit of leather (which you should have by now), a worn axe (no better than what you probably have by now unless it's magic and I didn't realize), a "resilient sphere" which I don't yet know what they do, and a scepter of mana boost. (NOTE: Having finished the game, I found two resilient spheres and no sign that they have any use whatsoever.)
20. Eb the grey goblin guard.
21. Retichal. You need her permission to talk to the king. Then go through the door to the south and speak with Ketchaval, King of the Gray Goblins. He'll tell you about Navrey Night-Eyes. Probably best if you don't mention having spoken with the Green Goblins.
22. Navrey. It's a good idea to grab the leeches from the cave before the bridge, as Navrel poisons. Grab all three things of thread, and drag one onto one of the two poles to turn it into a fishing pole. Thus are your food problems solved. The other two will be valuable later.
23. Through a secret door is this fountain, which heals you.

Yes, it's weird. I did google searches on certain sentences from this walkthrough, and I even did an IMAGE SEARCH, and google couldn't find any reference.
I liked this walkthrough because it was the most detailed-step-by-step walkthrough.
I'll try the other walkthroughs - even though they are not as detailed.

I thought I might have it and had dug out some old backup CDs but it turned out to be something different. Anyway, it is an old and very detailed guide\walkthrough that has this advantage that you can only read the "guide" part if you wish. No map pic though.

It is highly recommended to try to complete the game "saute" without any external help however. UW is really well designed and contained in itself that it should be doable if one is attentive. I remember I got stuck only once on my first playthrough and this was with my very rudimentary english command back in the days.

Here's the guide:

http://bootstrike.com/Uw1/Online/walk1.php

 

[Infinitron]

Ultima Underworld engine remake in Unity:



http://ultimacodex.com/2017/03/underworld-exporter-ultima-underworld-in-unity-playthrough/

Hank Morgan has continued working on and improving his Underworld Exporter — a utility that, as the name suggests, exports Ultima Underworld game data from the original files into a Unity project — over the last few months. Recently (well, January), he released a video showing off a near-complete playthrough of Ultima Underworld in Unity, which can be viewed above.

His notes on the playthrough are as follows:

Play-through of Ultima Underworld in Unity.

I attempted to beat the game here but had to abandon it when I destroyed a quest object due to an inventory bug near the end.

Notes:
Infinite magic on. Character stats set to max. No combat tuning done so I use spells to speed things up.
At the moment everything is pre-built via map model export and scripted object importer. It doesn’t use UW game files to run at this time. Therefore no public release. Sorry.

You can, of course, find the latest files for Underworld Exporter — source code, releases, etc. — at the project’s GitHub page. The master repository, as well as the most recent Unity build, can also be found at the project entry here at the Codex.

 

[Excidium II]

congratz I guess

 

[---]

vapourware I guess

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Forget a new engine. Mouselook and new content is all we need for UU.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...nderworld-and-the-freedom-to-make-bad-choices

Ultima Underworld and the freedom to make bad choices
Why I Love: Quantum Soup's Chris Payne gets lost in the many innovations of The Stygian Abyss

Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This installment was contributed by Chris Payne, managing director at Quantum Soup Studios and former senior game mechanics programmer at Traveller's Tales.

I'm writing this largely for the benefit of everyone who wasn't lucky enough to enjoy this classic back in 1992. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was released during my A-levels, and by the time Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds arrived, I had a glorious summer between finishing my exams and leaving for university to escape into Britannia and beyond. I did not see a lot of sunshine that year, and the effect of such ground-breaking games on me at a time when I was just setting out to become a developer was profound.

Ultima Underworld's 3D world was hugely innovative, though not often imitated.

Let's start with the most obvious technical accomplishments. Underworld was the first fully textured true 3D game world. In the days before 3D accelerators, the CPU had to do all the work, and Underworld worked it to the limit. To be fair, it wasn't the best 3D engine ever, but it had ambition. At a time when John Carmack was hard at work making clever compromises to make Doom run at a good lick, Looking Glass just went for it. To keep the frame rate up, they reduced the 3D window to a third of the screen area, and filled the rest with your inventory. Earlier faux-3D RPGs such as Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder had established this as an acceptable compromise. Textures were mapped without perspective correction, making surfaces swim as the camera approached. My lowly 386 PC was well below the recommended spec despite its enormous 4MB of RAM - so I had to drop the quality down to merely dithered floors and ceilings.

Despite this, the game drew me in like nothing before. To navigate this truly 3D space, they created a completely new control method, moving your viewport by clicking on different regions of the 3D viewport, much like some touchscreen apps do nowadays. It was clumsy enough that it was never copied by other games - but it was ambitious and delivered complete freedom to look up and down, rotate, strafe, run and jump...all on mouse only. At the time it was a workable solution, because no-one had invented a better one.

Looking Glass made excellent use of their 3D world. Their dungeons were not a linear sequence of mazes to be cleaned out and left behind, but Metroidvania-style labyrinths. There were grates to be opened from the other side, cliffs to leap down that you couldn't climb back up, pits that dropped you into the level below...and it was populated not by a random menagerie of monsters, but small communities with interesting stories to get involved in.

FTL's Dungeon Master had introduced many of these features, but too often it felt like the dungeons were just puzzles to solve - Underworld's innovation was making the Stygian Abyss feel like a real place where lizardmen and goblins lived their lives. This feeling was reinforced by the generous affordances the game provided - doors could be unlocked, picked, bashed in or burned down, enemies could be bargained with, fought or simply pushed into water or lava.

The sequel expanded on this by introducing a multitude of different worlds: a goblin prison tower, a frozen city, a sandstone keep floating above a desert (supported by flying monsters in the basement which you could kill, crashing the keep and killing everyone!), a weird alien dimension... evocative worlds that still linger in my imagination. Details such as books in the prison tower foreshadowing the trap-riddled Tomb of Praecor Loth made the universe feel rich and interconnected. And as with those flying monsters, Looking Glass had the confidence to let the player break the game, and show them they were free to make even bad choices.

Supporting this rich world was a superb map system. Where most RPGs expected players to create their own map, Underworld not only auto-mapped your exploits beautifully on virtual parchment, it allowed you to annotate the map freely and browse the entire game world - the perfect blend of convenience and immersion. Even so...I still have the classic poster map that came in the box!

All this was topped off with Ultima's rune-based magic system. This had been honed in previous top-down Ultima games, but it was my first experience with it. The ability to figure out new spells by combining runes in logical sequences was exhilarating - and of course I could then write the spells I discovered into the corners of the map for future reference. Finding a new runestone would prompt a ten-minute session of hiding in a quiet corner experimenting with new spells, and the satisfaction of "inventing" a fireball by combining the runes for "MOVE" and "FIRE" was great. The existence of a high-level spell that killed every living thing in the game indiscriminately reflected that commitment to honouring player choices, even the bad ones.

Any of these innovations would have made the Underworld series noteworthy. Some of them were logical evolutions of earlier work, and some were bold experiments that were quickly surpassed, but to have so many fresh ideas AND still deliver the sophisticated storylines for which its parent series was legendary makes it a truly landmark accomplishment.

For me, what Ultima Underworld delivered was the idea that sometimes, reaching for the stars can result not in burnt fingers, but in a shining jewel.

 

[Cael]

UU is a classic that, sadly, would never be repeated. Now, what we have are Oblivion clones and Oblivion with guns and its clones.

I weep for the good old days.

*racks shotgun* Now, get off my lawn!

 

[JBro]

What all is still missing from the UU1 Unity port?

 

[calgary.alberta]

I have had troubles finding anything on this release for UU1 in Unity.

The Ultima facebook/scene seems obvious to it.

Even the link is hard to find:

https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter/releases

Release 1.03 - last time I check it was 1.02, so I have no idea.

1.1 Ultima Underworld 1 (UW1).
UW1 is fully supported and can be completed from start to finish. Save games are both forward and backwardly compatable with the original dos version.

1.3 Ultima Underworld 2 (UW2)
UW2 is partially supported with full support to come in time.
-Game saves (loading of vanilla saves is possible)
-Some traps and triggers are not implemented.
-Many new conversation functions are not implemented
-UW2 specific HUD is not implemented.

There is no change log shown, no detail information other then what is listed.

I have tested it, the game works, however does it work and can you beat it as compared to how it was?

Rather surprises me

 

[JBro]

So would that be a good first playthrough of 1? I don't want it to be missing anything major.

 

[calgary.alberta]

I would say no until we have more veterans that have looked into it. It would suck to waste that time only to find something majorly wrong.

That is just my option

 

[McPlusle]

The only issues with the GOG releases involve the dynamic music, right? Are both games still playable from start to finish?

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

The gog music issue is correctable it's just a bad dosbox config. I can check out the unity port and let you know. I won't play the whole thing but can comment on faithfulness for the first level or two.

 

[calgary.alberta]

Thanks.

I'm playing the original games on my old computer, I rather play on OG hardware vs emulation lol

However Unity is tempting

 

[Baron Dupek]

The only issues with the GOG releases involve the dynamic music, right? Are both games still playable from start to finish?

That's right.
I played and finished both in 2011 and got a blast.

 

[JBro]

Some of the more autistic fucks need to dick around with it and let us know if anything major is missing.

I want mouselook.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

OK playing the Unity version now. Some interesting developments I will share.

First, an opinion: If you have not played Ultima Underworld, play the original. While the Unity port is largely functional and I am encouraged by what I see, the original is still the best experience.

Lots of differences for now:

• The controls are obviously not the same. There is an odd (at first) hybrid interaction/mouselook mode that I got used to pretty quickly. Well done IMO but the ever-useful context sensitive cursor mode is not present. You have to switch to look mode, action mode while switching back and forth to mouselook and interactive mode. It is a good compromise as the different interaction modes are selectable via remappable hotkey so thumbs up on controls.
• There is no bartering in the game as of now.
• Nobody owns anything. There is no "Bedroll belonging to an Outcast" for example.
• Because there are no possessions, there is no stealing and no repercussions for being spotted stealing.
• Dialog is in but selection of dialog options by mouse is missing as of now. You must press the number corresponding to the option you want to select.
• Dialog text colours are off.
• Combat needs tweaking. Your characters is too strong at the start. Rats and worms die in one shot and I was able to clobber 3 human outcasts before dying at level 1.
• Movement in general is very fluid but too fast by half. Creature combat was paced for someone who had to use the less nimble control mode and moved much slower in general. I suspect there will need to be some changes made there or it will just be piss easy.
• Adjust the default light level darker in the ini file. It is set at 12 by default which is much brighter than the original. I suggest 4-5.
• Your runebag comes full
• The automap is fully realized but cursor position is offset from the quill
• Some inventory bugs exist. I am carrying 259 lbs of stuff (but I am not really) and I can't pick up anything else.
• Swimming is not there. You can spring-swim the whole level 1 waterway without drowning as level 0. There is no visual bobbing, you swim way too fast and there is zero risk of drowning

This all combines to make the Unity port cool for nostalgics but definitely NOT recommended for first time players. I consider it promising but badly broken compared to the original. But mouselook...

Oh, it comes with an editor, but fuck if I can figure it out.

 

[Cael]

OK playing the Unity version now. Some interesting developments I will share.

First, an opinion: If you have not played Ultima Underworld, play the original. While the Unity port is largely functional and I am encouraged by what I see, the original is still the best experience.

Lots of differences for now:

• The controls are obviously not the same. There is an odd (at first) hybrid interaction/mouselook mode that I got used to pretty quickly. Well done IMO but the ever-useful context sensitive cursor mode is not present. You have to switch to look mode, action mode while switching back and forth to mouselook and interactive mode. It is a good compromise as the different interaction modes are selectable via remappable hotkey so thumbs up on controls.
• There is no bartering in the game as of now.
• Nobody owns anything. There is no "Bedroll belonging to an Outcast" for example.
• Because there are no possessions, there is no stealing and no repercussions for being spotted stealing.
• Dialog is in but selection of dialog options by mouse is missing as of now. You must press the number corresponding to the option you want to select.
• Dialog text colours are off.
• Combat needs tweaking. Your characters is too strong at the start. Rats and worms die in one shot and I was able to clobber 3 human outcasts before dying at level 1.
• Movement in general is very fluid but too fast by half. Creature combat was paced for someone who had to use the less nimble control mode and moved much slower in general. I suspect there will need to be some changes made there or it will just be piss easy.
• Adjust the default light level darker in the ini file. It is set at 12 by default which is much brighter than the original. I suggest 4-5.
• Your runebag comes full
• The automap is fully realized but cursor position is offset from the quill
• Some inventory bugs exist. I am carrying 259 lbs of stuff (but I am not really) and I can't pick up anything else.
• Swimming is not there. You can spring-swim the whole level 1 waterway without drowning as level 0. There is no visual bobbing, you swim way too fast and there is zero risk of drowning

This all combines to make the Unity port cool for nostalgics but definitely NOT recommended for first time players. I consider it promising but badly broken compared to the original. But mouselook...

Oh, it comes with an editor, but fuck if I can figure it out.

Eww! That is definitely work in progress. Some of those are pretty bad bugs, and weren't there several places where you have to barter to get what you needed to complete the game?

 

[JBro]

I wish someone would make an enhanced edition like they did with System Shock.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I suspect you can get what you need and satisfy the main quest by other means but I didn't try quests at all and I listed maybe half the bugs I saw running around the first level.

It does show promise though.