Ultima The Ultima Underworld I & II Thread

[Cael]

Wait... 45 days? The heck???

Also, you're the Avatar. Magical warrior is you.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So, I've finished the Ultima Underworld.

Congratulations. It's obvious by the wall o' text you wrote that you enjoyed it. Welcome to the club.

I didn't manage to solve the black goblins' problem with a spider, I never made the stew, I don't know what some clues meant (Is and Ts, given by Biden), and I never found a certain key (to the Evil Dead at level 7).

There technically is no quest related to the spider, it's more like the goblins telling you of a nearby landmark - one that has eight legs and a voracious appetite. Basically if you killed a wolf spider (red 'un) on the first floor, then you've solved their "problem", but I don't recall them having any reward or even dialogue for it.

The stew is love, the stew is life! Also essential to a quest line that leads to a very useful item. Something to look forward to in a future playthrough.

The "T's and I's"-puzzle is one of the more sneakier ones. It's the game telling you in what order the gold and silver levers are to be pulled at the end of that puzzle section you mentioned in a screenshot or two.

 

[Kweepa]

Anyone interested in playing my WIP? It's mostly feature complete so I'd be interested to hear what you think.
You just need to unip, then copy the crit/cuts/data/sound folders from a gog install into the same folder as the exe. I'm not sure if it works with other versions of the game because I have done some object index specific hacks.
(You also need an xbox controller or equivalent.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zT5oyN8UomdQ6-hCoDjnC8IjGaVUOZpr/view?usp=sharing

 

[behold_a_man]

Wait... 45 days? The heck???

I don't know any better technique for whacking fire elementals than lightning them up. And usually it took most of my mana, so I had to go to sleep afterwards. I expected the last level to contain something interesting, so I searched it carefully, but there were only elementals, armour I couldn't even wear with my limited strength, and some trinkets - so in hindsight, it wasn't worth it.

The "T's and I's"-puzzle is one of the more sneakier ones. It's the game telling you in what order the gold and silver levers are to be pulled at the end of that puzzle section you mentioned in a screenshot or two.

This puzzle is very easy to brute-force, though. Note that

if you push the buttons at random 25 times, you have around 50% chance of opening the doors

#include <stdio.h>
#include <chrono>
#include <random>

const int SOLUTION_LENGTH=5, ATTEMPTS=1000000, ATTEMPT_LENGTH=25;

int counter[1<<SOLUTION_LENGTH];
int main(){
    std::mt19937 rng(std::chrono::steady_clock::now().time_since_epoch().count());
    int res=0;

    for (int i=0; i<ATTEMPTS; i++){
        long unsigned attempt=rng()%(1<<ATTEMPT_LENGTH);

        int current=0;
        for (int j=ATTEMPT_LENGTH-1; j>ATTEMPT_LENGTH-SOLUTION_LENGTH; j--){
            current <<= 1;
            current = current + (((1<<j)&attempt)?1:0);
        }

        for (int j=ATTEMPT_LENGTH-SOLUTION_LENGTH; j>=0; j--){
            current = ((current<<1)&((1<<SOLUTION_LENGTH)-1)) + (((1<<j)&attempt)?1:0);
            counter[current]++;
        }

        for (int j=0; j<(1<<SOLUTION_LENGTH); j++){
            if (counter[j]) res++;
        }

        for (int j=0; j<(1<<SOLUTION_LENGTH); j++) counter[j] = 0;
    }
    printf ("%lf\n", 1.0f*res/ATTEMPTS);

return 0;}

This yields 15.84, so pushing the button randomly 25 times yields ~16 different binary strings of length 5 on average (tested on 10^6 binary strings of length 25), and there are 32 possible binary strings of length 5. Note that there are binary strings of length 36 (minimal possible) that contain all binary strings of length 5 as their substrings - like 000001000110010100111010110111110000 - but it seems more tiresome to generate such than to randomly press them. Besides, I didn't know the length of the sequence until I beat the puzzle.

.

 

[Cael]

Wait... 45 days? The heck???

I don't know any better technique for whacking fire elementals than lightning them up. And usually it took most of my mana, so I had to go to sleep afterwards. I expected the last level to contain something interesting, so I searched it carefully, but there were only elementals, armour I couldn't even wear with my limited strength, and some trinkets - so in hindsight, it wasn't worth it.

I use a technique called "Caliburn to the face". It works admirably.

 

[Kweepa]

I like that you calculated that. The sequence is length 6. How does that affect your math?

 

[Kweepa]

I uploaded a video of the first 10 minutes of gameplay from my WIP Unity port:

 

[behold_a_man]

I like that you calculated that. The sequence is length 6. How does that affect your math?

50 random presses yield ~32.79 distinct binary strings. Still manageable, I guess (it must be manageable since I did pretty much exactly that).

 

[Inec0rn]

I just did a playthrough, I thought I was close to beating this back in the day but alas i needed hints and don't think i ever would have solved 1 or 2 of them. The random secret wall for the blade talisman and cup are ridiculously obtuse. It's a masterpiece game though, if only more developers made games like this. So many innovations and firsts in this game, I can't believe 30 years later developers can't make games as good as these looking glass titles from the early 90's..