That's right.
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?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:
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...
- 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
Oh, it comes with an editor, but fuck if I can figure it out.
I hope they fix it. I just remembered one instance of the bartering thing: You have to barter with Zak to get the Taper of Sacrifice. If you can't barter, your only hope is to kill Zak.
Choose a class with high strength, since this determines carrying capacity and can't be changed. You can make good use of both swordcraft and spellcasting with the same character (find something with fairly high scores in both strength and intelligence), and this is certainly the most effective way to play the game. Also take note that some skills have little to no utility:
Terrible idea. If you're getting a CM-32L ROM (get that one, not the MT-32 one) then you should use that for both music and sound. UW1 uses some of the CM-32L-specific tones (such as when swimming) and you won't hear them with either the MT-32 ROM or with the GM patch. Munt is at a point where it emulates the MT-32 line pretty well and there are versions of DOSBox that have it built-in (and they're the DOSBox versions you should be using, really). You could get away with the GM patch for UW2 since it uses digitized sound effects but you might as well just keep using the CM-32L ROM and emulation.
I just finished reading it. As usual he seems to have messed up something but blames it on the game. He's complaining about sound effects being poor, and since this game's sound effects are better than anything that came out before I'm pretty sure he's playing in MT-32 mode through the Windows GM emulator or something equally bad.
