Game News Ultima 6 Project: v1.0 Now Released!

[Jaesun]

Not removing DS from inventory as we speak. Any calls on which game is better - Lazarus or the U6 remake?

If you have not played Lazarus, you really should do so now.

 

[Heresiarch]

After a bit of trying out, comparing Lazarus to U6P. And I must say...heh, despite using the same DS engine, it feels very, very different.

If you're like me, who have played Lazarus many times before (regardless if you've ever finished it or not), then there are truly a lot of WOW in U6P. Call me crazy, but I think U6P is pretty next-gen. Compared to U5L, U6P is much more polished on many aspects - it has an excellent journal, compendium etc, its automap doesn't come with a massive BAM when you close it, and it has fuckin CUTSCENES. With awesome GFX to boot. The UI is completely revamped as well, unlike U5L which pretty much just used the vanilla DS UI.

One thing I noticed is how closely U6P is trying to make some area designs like the original's. For example LB's castle layout is almost exactly the same as the original, down right to how the chests are placed.

Unfortunately, while U6P's sound and artwork designers are talented, the quality of portraits and music (especially the latter) are downright inferior compared to U5L's. I don't think you can find hotties like Julia or the twins in New Magincia of U5L in U6P. In fact, most of the portraits are just indie-crude and ugly.

And the music...it just feel too boring and simple compared to U5L's wonderful stuff like Lycaeum's, Serpent's Hold's, Empath Abbey's and Blackthorn's Castle's themes. Maybe there are better music to be heard later on? The Rule, Britannia in U6P is probably the worst I've heard ever (even worse than the original's)

One thing which seems the design lacks is the area scaling. LB's castle just feel too big and empty, for example. Maybe there are people out there who thinks that U5L's areas are too crowded though.

I can't say much about the actual quest design and conversations, because those really need more gameplay time to prove. So far from what I've seen, the conversation is a bit simpler compared to U5L, with less (useless) branches to explore.

I definetly don't think U6P is bad, but it's definetly not THAT good compared to U5L. People who played U5L would probably miss many fine touches and definetly miss the music in U5L, but the journal system and revamped UI would give a very streamlined gaming experience.

Now I hope they will combine both their best things and remake U7...that'll be HEAVAN.

 

[Silellak]

After a bit of trying out, comparing Lazarus to U6P. And I must say...heh, despite using the same DS engine, it feels very, very different.

If you're like me, who have played Lazarus many times before (regardless if you've ever finished it or not), then there are truly a lot of WOW in U6P. Call me crazy, but I think U6P is pretty next-gen. Compared to U5L, U6P is much more polished on many aspects - it has an excellent journal, compendium etc, its automap doesn't come with a massive BAM when you close it, and it has fuckin CUTSCENES. With awesome GFX to boot. The UI is completely revamped as well, unlike U5L which pretty much just used the vanilla DS UI.

One thing I noticed is how closely U6P is trying to make some area designs like the original's. For example LB's castle layout is almost exactly the same as the original, down right to how the chests are placed.

Unfortunately, while U6P's sound and artwork designers are talented, the quality of portraits and music (especially the latter) are downright inferior compared to U5L's. I don't think you can find hotties like Julia or the twins in New Magincia of U5L in U6P. In fact, most of the portraits are just indie-crude and ugly.

And the music...it just feel too boring and simple compared to U5L's wonderful stuff like Lycaeum's, Serpent's Hold's, Empath Abbey's and Blackthorn's Castle's themes. Maybe there are better music to be heard later on?

One thing which seems the design lacks is the area scaling. LB's castle just feel too big and empty, for example. Maybe there are people out there who thinks that U5L's areas are too crowded though.

I can't say much about the actual quest design and conversations, because those really need more gameplay time to prove. So far from what I've seen, the conversation is a bit simpler compared to U5L, with less (useless) branches to explore.

I definetly don't think U6P is bad, but it's definetly not THAT good compared to U5L. People who played U5L would probably miss many fine touches and definetly miss the music in U5L, but the journal system and revamped UI would give a very streamlined gaming experience.

Now I hope they will combine both their best things and remake U7...that'll be HEAVAN.

Thanks for the summary. It really is a shame about the music - Lazarus easily has the best soundtrack in any Ultima game, so I guess that's a bit hard to live up to. Part of me almost wishes they'd just reuse the Lazarus score with whatever additions they need to make for Ultima 6, but I imagine professional pride - if nothing else - would prevent that.

You mention "fine touches" of Lazarus, and I think that's where all the best Ultima games shine. The small things. A character here, a hidden location there. The main storylines, while in no way bad, are not what you play an Ultima game for - and it's not what I think about when I remember my various playthroughs. If Ultima 6 Project is lacking in that area, then I don't think it will ever truly live up to Lazarus or the other great Ultimas - but I don't want to make that sweeping statement without at least trying it, at some point.

I'm curious what fellow Lazarus-fanboy Jaesun has to say as well.

Also, I'm not sure I want anyone to remake Ultima 7. While the combat system is fucking horrendous, everything else about it is almost perfect. I don't really see what exactly it would gain with a remake that Exult hasn't already done.

A re-imagined Ultima 8 or 9 would be fantastic, though. Titans of Ether seems interesting, but has been in development for-fucking-ever, and I'm not sure what I think of them using the Morrowind engine. Using the Dungeon Siege engine would allow for a proper isometric conclusion to the "Guardian Trilogy".

 

[made]

Well, I started downloading it, but then I realized I don't have DS installed anymore.

Anyone know if it requires a full DS installation or just some of the files in order to work?

 

[Ruprekt]

Full installation with cd check.

 

[Elwro]

OK, so is there a possibility of buying a cheap downloadable version of DS 1? Frankly, I can't find one...

 

[commie]

OK, so is there a possibility of buying a cheap downloadable version of DS 1? Frankly, I can't find one...

Well you can find it anywhere I guess....just saying....there are ways....

 

[Elwro]

I know, but I wanted to buy it.

 

[Ruprekt]

I owned it once so I didn't feel obligated to buy it again.

It's old enough that just mounting the ISO in daemon tools works fine.

 

[zephyrjs]

Hey guys - Zephyr from U6 here. Just wanted to address a few comments.

One thing I noticed is how closely U6P is trying to make some area designs like the original's. For example LB's castle layout is almost exactly the same as the original, down right to how the chests are placed.

Some areas are like that; others are completely reworked from the ground up. Still others are going to be very familiar and resemble U5. I wouldn't judge the entire game from LB's castle.

Unfortunately, while U6P's sound and artwork designers are talented, the quality of portraits ... are downright inferior compared to U5L's. I don't think you can find hotties like Julia or the twins in New Magincia of U5L in U6P. In fact, most of the portraits are just indie-crude and ugly.

Truth be told - we had a really hard time getting anyone to commit to working on the portraits for more than a few months at a time. Thus, we have a lot of really great work, some that is not quite as good, and quite frankly a whole lot of meh or missing portraits. We simply couldn't get anyone who was good enough to stay on. It's a lot of work, doing 300 portrait-quality paintings. Again, if you want to insert your own portraits, easy enough to do - just open up the tank, insert your own psd files, and retank. Voila.

And the music...it just feel too boring and simple compared to U5L's wonderful stuff like Lycaeum's, Serpent's Hold's, Empath Abbey's and Blackthorn's Castle's themes. Maybe there are better music to be heard later on? The Rule, Britannia in U6P is probably the worst I've heard ever (even worse than the original's)

We've gotten a lot of praise for the music; some people like it, others don't. It's very easy to change it out for your own if you prefer. Just crack open the tank file, insert your own MP3s in place of our own, and retank. Feel free to issue your own mod if you want.

I did witness one guy who didn't like the music at first, but after a while he decided that he liked it better than U5. It's definitely more "atmosphere" than "drama."

One thing which seems the design lacks is the area scaling. LB's castle just feel too big and empty, for example. Maybe there are people out there who thinks that U5L's areas are too crowded though.

LB's castle is just... big. If you look at the map, it takes up a giant chunk of it. We have a lot of really big rooms with a lot of floorspace. We could have filled it with columns and floor decorations, but when we tried that, it just looked cluttered. Castles have big, wide open rooms. So, it came down to - do we shrink the castle, or add more "stuff?" We decided that we wanted to keep the size in order to respect the scale of the original game. So, there you go. The rest of the world isn't like that though. Definitely a lot more clutter. Well, aside from a couple of roads in Britain.

You mention "fine touches" of Lazarus, and I think that's where all the best Ultima games shine. The small things. A character here, a hidden location there.

We've done a huge amount of fan service on this. I think you'll find a lot of what you're looking for. Hopefully.

DS sucks, why didn't you use NWN, Morrowind, this engine, that engine, etc....

Agreed - DS is problematic at best. However, it allows full access to the GUI, full access to modifying stats, and an 8-character party system, something that no other game engine could provide. (Well, NWN has a party system, but NWN is extremely limited in stats because of the ties to D&D. When we checked it out, the dialog system was limited at best and definitely did not have the robust customizable branching that we wanted.) We did the math - DS came out on top. There still isn't a better system out there that has all of the requirements; even DS2 won't work, because it only allows 6 party members. Frustrating for us too, I assure you, but there you go.

A re-imagined Ultima 8 or 9 would be fantastic, though.

Dungeon Siege is the wrong engine for it. I'd check out Pentagram, if it's still in progress, for U8, and Titans of Ether for U9. I hope we'll see those some day. I doubt you would see either of those done with Project Britannia. I would not be surprised if a new team popped up to do U4, but I doubt U7 would be done with Project Britannia, as Exult is as good as it gets.

So, yeah. Thanks for the feedback. We worked really hard on it; some of you guys are gonna love it, others not so much. Just the nature of the beast. I think we did a pretty awesome job personally, but I might be a bit biased. I do recommend that you give it a chance - get out and talk to some people, wander around a dungeon or two, and then tell us what you think.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

If you could answer a question I have had since Lazarus first started to solidify; As the creator of one of these two projects, do you yourself and others from your team have no problems playing the original? Or is it too oldschool for you now? Or was it frustrating for you watching younger gamers take a dump on the graphics, etc, without trying out the game itself?

Genuinely curious as to the motivation behind these two remakes.

 

[zephyrjs]

If you could answer a question I have had since Lazarus first started to solidify; As the creator of one of these two projects, do you yourself and others from your team have no problems playing the original? Or is it too oldschool for you now? Or was it frustrating for you watching younger gamers take a dump on the graphics, etc, without trying out the game itself?

Genuinely curious as to the motivation behind these two remakes.

Well first, I have to clarify - I'm not actually the creator; the creator was Matt Hutaff, a.k.a. Sliding Dragon, so you can blame him for that. I'm merely one of three co-producers, and part of a rather awesome collaborative team.

As for why - well, first of all, we all love the original game, and as far as I know, everyone on the team would play it now. It definitely has nothing to do with any dissatisfaction with the original, or anything like that.

I think the primary motivation was that U6 doesn't run very well under plain Windows; you have to run it under Dosbox or something similar, and most ordinary mortals don't have the interest or knowledge about how to get something like that to run. Not that installing the U6 Project is THAT much easier, but it's at least closer to what people are used to today. So, there's that.

Also, the original U6 had a lot of little issues and plot dead-ends that we wanted to address. A lot of things that were hinted at in the original are now fully fleshed-out side quests.

Then, when you took the original game and stuck it in a new game engine, a lot of those towns just seemed awfully anemic. If we stuck to the original game's design, we'd have, what, 3 people in the town of Cove? Heck, why even build the town at that point. So, we felt the need to expand that quite a bit.

Also, we felt that there was never really a sense that the world of Britannia was under attack. It was rather calm going from town to town (other than the occasional attack from a pack of nasties), and we wanted to really present the world at war. I think we did reasonably well with that; I'm not sure we really took it as far as we wanted to in terms of the original vision; there's only so much you can really do, given the limitations of the game engine, but we did all right.

Finally, the gargoyle lands were never really fleshed out in the original. Their world was really small; there weren't many NPCs there when compared with Britannia, so it just seemed somewhat inequitable. If we want to show these races as equal powers, we figured we should at least give some semblance of equality in terms of the space they inhabit.

Essentially, what we tried to do was expand upon what we saw as the mission of the original game, address some of the limitations, help improve continuity (as much as you can in a game where the map changes every time and characters age randomly), and just make it better while retaining as much of the original character as possible, given the resources available.

As to whether the end result is a game that you want to play, well, that's up to you to decide. I hope you enjoy it; we put a lot of work into it. I think the end result is more of a complement to the original than a replacement for it. An homage, if you will, and a way to keep the Ultima spirit alive to another generation of gamers. At least, that's what the idealist in me thinks.

 

[Saxon1974]

Im going to definitely be playing this one soon, loved Lazarus! I just need less work, more time and fewer games to play

 

[Atrachasis]

Also, we felt that there was never really a sense that the world of Britannia was under attack. It was rather calm going from town to town (other than the occasional attack from a pack of nasties), and we wanted to really present the world at war.

[...]

Finally, the gargoyle lands were never really fleshed out in the original. Their world was really small; there weren't many NPCs there when compared with Britannia, so it just seemed somewhat inequitable. If we want to show these races as equal powers, we figured we should at least give some semblance of equality in terms of the space they inhabit.

I have always been under the impression that much of the Underworld had collapsed, and that the Gargoyle lands, as well as the Gargoyles themselves, were just a pity remnant of what they had been. Never had the feeling that they were supposed to be an equal power, just desperate for survival (see the Silver Snake venom).

And maybe I instinctively rationalized away some plotholes the first time I played U6, but my guess was that they were in no position to attempt a full conquest, but merely tried to occupy the shrines, perhaps in the hope of luring out the False Prophet.

Anyway, though the original U6 is absolutely current- and every-next-gen-I'll-ever-need-enough for me and U6P is not for me, kudos and congrats for completing this project.

 

[zephyrjs]

I have always been under the impression that much of the Underworld had collapsed, and that the Gargoyle lands, as well as the Gargoyles themselves, were just a pity remnant of what they had been. Never had the feeling that they were supposed to be an equal power, just desperate for survival (see the Silver Snake venom).

And maybe I instinctively rationalized away some plotholes the first time I played U6, but my guess was that they were in no position to attempt a full conquest, but merely tried to occupy the shrines, perhaps in the hope of luring out the False Prophet.

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Highlight text to see.


I actually did a little poking around in the original dialogue just now, and in the original, that is the impression that I get from Captain John:

"The gargoyle world, once as large as Britannia itself, is slowly being destroyed!"

"The forces thou set in motion have caused great sections of their land to fall off into the void!"

"Only a single gargoyle city remains."

Also, looking through the conversations, in the original game, there were actually no instances of the gargoyles actually attacking citizens of Britannia - just the shrines. They did kidnap Mandrake for some reason, which was never explained.

In the original dialog, there are a lot of references to the gargoyles being a threat, and we felt that if they were just hanging out at the shrines, then they wouldn't really be seen so much a threat as a nuisance and an oddity. So, we decided to make them seem like more of a threat. Maybe it's a leap; we felt it told a better story. I think we were able to succeed in making them more of a threat without losing the desperation of the original.

We also definitely wanted to show more of the gargoyle city and culture, so we did expand the lands considerably, but we did also still show that parts were crumbling into the void, along with other cataclysmic changes to the climate.

So, those are the choices we made. I'm not expecting to win anyone over, honestly, as the purists will never accept a remake (any more than a purist would enjoy a "colorized" movie), but I think we did a pretty good job.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

The Gargoyles ate all the horses too, at least in the C64 version. I wear it as a perverse badge of honour that I actually finished that version first, before moving on to the 'standard' version.

 

[mikaelis]

I have a simple question concerning both remakes U5 and U6. How many companions can you take to your party? Is it 8,or limited? And if limited, is it due to some stats, like charisma etc.?

 

[zephyrjs]

FYI - Ultima 6 Project, Project Britannia and U5 Lazarus sites are down - U6P got slashdotted, and it's a shared hosting plan, so the account is temporarily suspended. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[Tolknaz]

Edit: I see

 

[zephyrjs]

I have a simple question concerning both remakes U5 and U6. How many companions can you take to your party? Is it 8,or limited? And if limited, is it due to some stats, like charisma etc.?

[Edit]Note: this is wrong - U5 had only 6 companions apparently. Oops.[/Edit]
8 companions. Ultima since U4 has always been about the number 8 and the number 3; there is no Charisma stat. 8 companions, 8 virtues, etc.

 

[Tolknaz]

Luckily i downloaded my copy before your site was pulled. I guess it's time to install Dung Siege again. Got any idea weather it'll work on Windows 7 64 bit?

 

[zephyrjs]

Luckily i downloaded my copy before your site was pulled. I guess it's time to install Dung Siege again. Got any idea weather it'll work on Windows 7 64 bit?

Yes, it does work, although Microsoft will tell you it doesn't. I have a laptop running it flawlessly at home.

[Edit]
You will need a fully-patched copy of DS or DS Aranna. The way I did it was I installed into C:\Program Files for both DS and U6P. Other people are saying that you MUST use the default folder for DS (Program Files (x86)) but I have it running under just Program Files.

[Edit] There's also some info here on TnL:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10895

[Edit] Also, there are still lots of mirrors that have it available, although I can't get to the links right now as THEY HAVE MY SITE HOSTAGE AUGH

Anyway *cough* There you go

 

[Jaesun]

Luckily i downloaded my copy before your site was pulled. I guess it's time to install Dung Siege again. Got any idea weather it'll work on Windows 7 64 bit?

Works fine, follow these instructions:

Make SURE you install DS in the default install directory.

1. Make sure you install DirectX 9.0c since Windows 7 doesn’t come with it!
2. Install the game like normal
3. Go into the directory were you installed it probably “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege”
4. Double click on DSVideoConfig.exe
5. It will probably say “Primary Display Driver – Hardware” change it to whatever video card you have. For example i would change mine to “NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX – Hardware” DO NOT PICK THE ONE THAT SAYS “TnL”
6. you can pick whatever resolution, shadows or filtering you want and click OK
7. Now play the game!

The above instructions will get DS to run fine in Windows 7. To get U6 to play fine, be sure you do all of the above then:

Go to your Documents\Dungeon Siege folder and copy the DungeonSiege.ini and paste that into the directory you installed U6 into (usually c:\Program Files\Team Archon\U6).

Congrats/condolences on the slashdot zephyrjs!

 

[Tolknaz]

Thank you both. At first Microsoft lied to me that it doesn't work and then it glitched most horribly, but in the end i got it working. I ran dsconfig on plain dung siege and then copied the nonproblematic driver_description line into the .ini file in U6 project directory. By the way, i have made a habit of NOT installing stuff into program files. Normally Win7 is as possessive of that folder as a hatching chicken. Will i run into problems later if i install dung siege into say "c:\games\dung siege\" and u6p into "c:\games\u6p"?

 

[mikaelis]

Shit! Can't you install it on other disk? Like “E:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege” ?

Cause I don't have much space there and all my games are on E: