Ultima The Ultima Underworld I & II Thread

[dacencora]

I’ll never stop shilling eXoDOS! That guy has actually put in all the work that GOG doesn’t. Pretty much every title I’ve launched had multiple sound emulator options, and most have MT-32 as well, IIRC. It’s an impressive collection.

EDIT:

Ultima Underworld has MT32 emulation in eXoDOS:

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor? I was playing a floppy version because I couldn't find a CD at first and the GOG version didn't have any sound for me. Its one hell of a ride to be in some normal combat, using a sling against some goblins, only for your map to get used like a sling bullet.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor? I was playing a floppy version because I couldn't find a CD at first and the GOG version didn't have any sound for me. Its one hell of a ride to be in some normal combat, using a sling against some goblins, only for your map to get used like a sling bullet.

I've never encountered that, but it's been literally 30 years since I played the floppy version.

 

[Maggot]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor? I was playing a floppy version because I couldn't find a CD at first and the GOG version didn't have any sound for me. Its one hell of a ride to be in some normal combat, using a sling against some goblins, only for your map to get used like a sling bullet.

I've read other people having the same problem of reaching the 255 item limit on the first floor before. There's nothing keeping it from happening on any floor as far as I know.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I've read other people having the same problem of reaching the 255 item limit on the first floor before. There's nothing keeping it from happening on any floor as far as I know.

So...at no point during testing did anyone think, gee, maybe we shouldn't include enemies that throw pebbles as each individually appear as items in the game world? Wait, what am I saying, this is Origin, of course they didn't test it enough. Is there even a way to destroy items in this game without using them?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I've read other people having the same problem of reaching the 255 item limit on the first floor before. There's nothing keeping it from happening on any floor as far as I know.

So...at no point during testing did anyone think, gee, maybe we shouldn't include enemies that throw pebbles as each individually appear as items in the game world? Wait, what am I saying, this is Origin, of course they didn't test it enough. Is there even a way to destroy items in this game without using them?

iirc dropping them in water or lava works.

 

[octavius]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

In all seriousness I wish GOG's version of Underworld had a preset for MT-32 emulation

GOG hasn't put effort into the games they sell for years now. They just package it with dosbox and that's it, very lame.

Yup. I've just decided to pirate GOG games from now on (too bad I already bought all the Ultima games and gave EA my money.) Except in some hyopthetical scenario where I wanted to support the developers which has not happened yet.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Mind you, I did go with DOSbox-X, but I don't really have the same performance issues.

Well, I was running DBX on a first-time, incredibly borked Arch Linux install, so that probably didn't help.

Later I discovered that my base DOSBox conf was full of all sorts of bullshit fucking up the sound in my games. I had been reusing that conf since I was 13 years old, on Windows 7, to play Daggerfall, so maybe I shouldn't have expected perfect compatibility in the first place.

 

[Fowyr]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor?

Yep, absolutely "normal".
You can check page 30 of the thread, I got this bug myself last time.
Throw bones and useless things into the water. I used Fireball spell to destroy moss and blood as well.
Bug really strikes around level six, then you need to literally scorch everything on the upper floors.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor?

Yep, absolutely "normal".
You can check page 30 of the thread, I got this bug myself last time.
Throw bones and useless things into the water. I used Fireball spell to destroy moss and blood as well.
Bug really strikes around level six, then you need to literally scorch everything on the upper floors.

Well, now I'm on the CD version, so things are going smoothly...I hope. But if the game is counting everything towards a 255 item limit, does that mean that's total or there's one big limit that's 7 or so floors times 255? I was planning on playing the PSX version one day, since I'm learning Japanese, and unfortunately that version also has the item limit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

everything counts towards the object limit, including things like bloodstains from combat.
UU2 fixes this by deleting those things first before deleting your inventory items

CD version should be fine though, it was released post-patch which upped the limit. PSX version has the bug.

 

[Fowyr]

Is it normal for the object changing/deleting glitch to happen on the first floor?

Yep, absolutely "normal".
You can check page 30 of the thread, I got this bug myself last time.
Throw bones and useless things into the water. I used Fireball spell to destroy moss and blood as well.
Bug really strikes around level six, then you need to literally scorch everything on the upper floors.

Well, now I'm on the CD version, so things are going smoothly...I hope. But if the game is counting everything towards a 255 item limit, does that mean that's total or there's one big limit that's 7 or so floors times 255? I was planning on playing the PSX version one day, since I'm learning Japanese, and unfortunately that version also has the item limit.

https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_Underworld_internal_formats
Should be 1024-256 items, i.e. 768 static objects.
Such a fine and useful page, last time when I played UUW, I spent half an hour to hack myself a fireball wand with 255 charges to burn debris.
When I played UUW2 year ago, got a bug too. Mors Gotha is not spawned. Probably, got a bug with the misplaced djinn bottle.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I love directions in this game.
"[Rodrick, the Chaos Knight] He lives by the old banquet hall to the north."
Northwest, and unless he's levitating or invisibility, he's not living there. Directly north is the stairs down. But I guess there is the implication that he's not telling you to go straight north.
"If thou wishest to become a knight, thou shouldst go south of our domain and talk to Dorna, our leader."
We're in the southernmost part of the map. South of here is out of the dungeon. If I could go there, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but I'm really starting to think poorly of the NPCs in this game.

 

[Cael]

I love directions in this game.
"[Rodrick, the Chaos Knight] He lives by the old banquet hall to the north."
Northwest, and unless he's levitating or invisibility, he's not living there. Directly north is the stairs down. But I guess there is the implication that he's not telling you to go straight north.
"If thou wishest to become a knight, thou shouldst go south of our domain and talk to Dorna, our leader."
We're in the southernmost part of the map. South of here is out of the dungeon. If I could go there, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but I'm really starting to think poorly of the NPCs in this game.

There are good reasons why Caibirus died of stress dealing with the numbnuts.

 

[BruceVC]

I love directions in this game.
"[Rodrick, the Chaos Knight] He lives by the old banquet hall to the north."
Northwest, and unless he's levitating or invisibility, he's not living there. Directly north is the stairs down. But I guess there is the implication that he's not telling you to go straight north.
"If thou wishest to become a knight, thou shouldst go south of our domain and talk to Dorna, our leader."
We're in the southernmost part of the map. South of here is out of the dungeon. If I could go there, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but I'm really starting to think poorly of the NPCs in this game.

I thinks its intentionally designed to make things not so obvious so you have to explore, personally I prefer exploring and not some blinking icon on the mini-map telling you exactly where you need to go
But I do like auto-maps...Im not that hardcore

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

UU has the best auto-map ever designed, especially for a dungeon-crawler. Sort of mind-boggling it’s rarely used in other games.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

 

[octavius]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

Hmm...now that you mention it, maybe I misremember and it was a NPC falling in the lava that was butthurt inducing.

 

[Cael]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

Hmm...now that you mention it, maybe I misremember and it was a NPC falling in the lava that was butthurt inducing.

That NPC will drop her quest item on the lava and it will stay there unaffected.

 

[Fowyr]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

I had in this thread somewhere list of things that are unaffected by water and lava.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-ultima-underworld-i-ii-thread.72708/page-31#post-4549748

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

Hmm...now that you mention it, maybe I misremember and it was a NPC falling in the lava that was butthurt inducing.

That NPC will drop her quest item on the lava and it will stay there unaffected.

Nice! I think it was added in some patch, because remember that a lot of people had a problem with that old lady.

 

[Cael]

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

I had in this thread somewhere list of things that are unaffected by water and lava.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-ultima-underworld-i-ii-thread.72708/page-31#post-4549748

Dropping quest items in lava is a classic recipe for butthurt.

Which is why some (most?) of them in UU1 aren't affected by it.

Hmm...now that you mention it, maybe I misremember and it was a NPC falling in the lava that was butthurt inducing.

That NPC will drop her quest item on the lava and it will stay there unaffected.

Nice! I think it was added in some patch, because remember that a lot of people had a problem with that old lady.

It was like that even 20 years ago when I played it.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

There are good reasons why Caibirus died of stress dealing with the numbnuts.

Its really telling that the least nuts people so far don't speak English/common/whatever its called.

I thinks its intentionally designed to make things not so obvious so you have to explore, personally I prefer exploring and not some blinking icon on the mini-map telling you exactly where you need to go
But I do like auto-maps...Im not that hardcore

Its not like I'm not going to go exploring, but if you have a NPC who tells me "Go in this direction, its important", I do sort of expect that there's something in that direction, even if its a trap.

 

[Cael]

There are good reasons why Caibirus died of stress dealing with the numbnuts.

Its really telling that the least nuts people so far don't speak English/common/whatever its called.

Who knew speech impediment is a sign of high IQ? :D

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Would it have been so hard to say the head knight is in the main office?
One of the funny things about coming into this game after a lot of games that were influenced by it in some way is you don't notice some obvious lore going on. I see the headless, I think, oh, just like the weakest enemies in Pathways into Darkness. Guess they were inspired to have that kind of undead in their game after playing this. (despite not being released on Mac) Later, I go north of the troll camp. Aha, some headless stuck in a room, they're trolls who have had their heads cut off! You just don't notice it when you're remembering what some game took from this one.
Now I'm doing quests for ghouls, corpses who consume flesh from the living. As in the hordes of zombies one might find in Dawn of the Dead. I know I'm supposed to be the paragon of virtue here, but damn! What's next, I help out a wizard who previously killed a 3rd of the population of the world? There's gotta be a point where I can say enough is enough and stab some obviously evil dude, and I'm not just talking about those formerly talkative bandits on the 3rd floor.