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Development Info Underworld Ascendant Update #28: Stephen Russell, Lizardman Design, and Ultima Underworld Influences

Infinitron

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Tags: OtherSide Entertainment; Ultima Underworld; Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds; Underworld Ascendant

Ever since they announced that they'd moved on to the Vertical Slice phase back in early June, the folks at OtherSide Entertainment have been pretty quiet about the ongoing development of Underworld Ascendant. But not completely quiet. As summer draws to a close, now is a good time for a news roundup. In late June, OtherSide released a brief update announcing that Stephen Russell of Thief fame had been hired to voice Sir Cabirus, deceased founder of the Stygian Abyss colony, after which update frequency dropped down to once per month. Last month's update was more substantial, describing the evolution of the visual design for Ascendant's Lizardmen, who will appear in the Vertical Slice when it's released later this year. Here's an excerpt from that:

We've explored multiple looks for the Lizardmen over the past year and thought we'd share.

We started with a couple of different versions during the Kickstarter: A dinosaur-like take and one that loosely resembled a fishman from H.P. Lovecraft's Innsmouth. We even had a vote on which one the fanbase liked more. There was a healthy debate in the office, too.

After some time evolving in art direction of the game, we needed to come back around on how all of our creatures looked. Nate and the art team have been taking a new look at what the Lizardman might appear in this developing style.

[...] Although just clay, this is the first look at a Green Lizardman, the friendlier of the types you'll encounter.

Since they're a closely related species, we didn't want to deviate too drastically from the basic look. But as game developers we need to accomplish a few things when doing a separate species that is essentially the same. We've all seen this in games , the reds and the blues, the big and the little. In a 3d FPS game the silhouette is very important. Like spotters on ships in WWII being able to identify a silhouette at a distance can be the difference between life or death.

[...] To address this with the Red Lizardmen, we decided to adjust his shape slightly in bulk and to give them some easy-to-read attachments that Green Lizardmen don't have.
In the early study (above), you'll notice the frills on the Red's head and face... which Will wants to call it a "head sail" and Tim a "scalp tongue".

Another part we use to accent the silhouette is with armor and clothing.

In Nate's draw-over (on the right), he's added some feather attachments making it even more sharp and pointy-looking from a distance.

Now that the overall idea is agreed upon, the Red Lizardman is in the hands of art production and refinements continue to happen daily.
Today's update was about Ascendant's influences from the original Ultima Underworld games. Here too the Lizardman legacy is influential:

Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2 were ground breaking RPGs that influenced dozens of games - including, not surprisingly, our own. With Underworld Ascendant, our goals have been to do justice to those original games and be as innovative as they were at the time.

We have a number of innovative new features that we've yet to reveal (including a narrative system that our producer Chris Siegel calls "Looking Glass 2.0."), though intend to show in detail farther down the line.

But for many basic questions, like how survival elements should be handled or letting the player increase difficulty by descending to lower levels, we often look to the original Ultima Underworld for guidance. There's simply so much those games did right.

In our last update, we mentioned that the Green Lizard Men will be found in the neutral zone of Marcaul, an area featured in our Vertical Slice. That's a direct connection to one of our favorite moments in Ultima Underworld -- a game that, a year and a half before Edge Magazine famously said, "lf only you could talk to these creatures..." about Doom, let you decipher the language of a race of creatures, talk to them, and make alliances with them.

As you can imagine, we find this sequence pretty inspiring and intend to feature the Lizard Men prominently in the Vertical Slice. (We'll even drop the name "Ishtass" as a hint...)

Another one of our favorite moments in the series? In Ultima Underworld 2's Prison Tower of Tarna level, the player could: 1) fight your way through several levels full of goblins or 2) talk your way through past all the guards, access the jail on the top floor, and release a captured troll, who would then proceed to wipe out every single goblin in the place. Both were fun ways of solving the same challenge and allowed a large gameplay choice on a quest level.

As we've said before, in Underworld Ascendant, we provide players with a large toolbox and let them choose how to solve a challenge. While that's mainly meant on a moment-to-moment level, we're also seeing some interesting opportunities to feature Tower of Tarna-style quest choices as well.
The folks who have been worrying that Ascendant is going to be a pure sandbox might be happy to read that last bit. According to OtherSide developers on the game's official forums, the Vertical Slice is due for release "after summer". I suppose we'll find out what exactly that means next month.
 

Ash

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"The folks who have been worrying that Ascendant is going to be a pure sandbox might be happy to read that last bit."

*Raises hand*

It was an interesting update. They have a hell of a lot to live up to, and I sincerely hope they pour their heart in and deliver, even if the masses don't recognize the ingenuity. I would like to remember this in 20 years time as a classic, as well as be able to cherish it until my time in this objectively shitty yet kinda awesome in ways world is up.
 
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Excidium II

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What is perhaps most surprising is the game's massive success despite it having some notable flaws, lacking key features such as trading, and getting by with a bare bones AR implementation. The Pokemon license is certainly a factor. At the same time, there have been 30 Pokemon games released over the past decade and none has had close to the same impact.

What then is the difference maker? We believe it springs from Pokemon Go's innovative blend of location-based gameplay and AR, which results in a genuinely new kind of game play experience.

We're fans of game developers who innovate. Too often developers are reluctant to take creative risks. Yet some must take these risks to keep our industry vibrant. So a shout out to Niantic for bringing Pokemon Go to life!
^
:stupid:

Maybe it has more to do with the fact it's a free game on a platform everyone owns. Dumbass.
 

Ash

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Yeah, the pokemon segment raised an eyebrow, but they're probably just being modest/humble. And it is innovative, even if it's the type of innovation we oppose. Not all innovation is good, especially not the business innovation of the game industry in recent years.

As for your question, Spector coined the phrase in his Deus Ex postmortem and it stuck. LGS themselves may or may not have used it beforehand.
 

Ash

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They're very much their own thing and deserving of their very own genre label imo. "Genre busting" is right, they do (or did) so much.

Link to the postmortem if you're interested: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131523/postmortem_ion_storms_deus_ex.php

"Conceptually, Deus Ex is a genre-busting game (which really endeared us to the marketing guys) -- part immersive simulation, part role-playing game, part first-person shooter, part adventure game."

And part stealth. Also on a much smaller scale, part platformer and puzzle game too, but those elements only appear very occasionally.
 

Ash

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However, to be clear I don't know when it was warped and began to be used to mean "LGS-Style game", because Spector didn't use it in that context. He said "part Immersive simulation", as in part design elements you'd find in something like a space sim. Either way, some kind of simplified descriptor given to what LGS accomplished was needed. The fans probably took the phrase out of context and ran with it. *shrugs* Even the game press has been using it for quite some number of years.

Edit: no, he does outright call it an Immersive Simulation game in the postmortem. I read it years ago now and should have skimmed over with ctrl + F, my mistake.
 
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DeepOcean

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People needed a label for a FPS that it isn't a corridor shooter/multiplayer game or you risk all those CoD players actually playing something good and you can't allow that, it would confuse their programming.
 

Ash

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"doom clone" was the phrase used back in the day (if I am not mistaken), perhaps unfairly. :lol:

I fucking love 90s shooters.
 

Cynicus

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I'm not sure of its origin, but the term "immersive simulation" has been used in computer science for some time and is just a high falutin way of saying "virtual reality." Any game that attempts to realistically mimic a real-world space and put you in it as if you were actually there is technically an immersive sim.

As for Ascendant, still waiting and seeing.
 

Crescent Hawk

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Odd, I don't remember ever reading the term before this year.

I saw it first 5 or 6 years ago maybe more, right during the videogame dark ages. Saw it on 4chan during that time to describe Looking Glass games. The trinity Deus Ex, Thief , System Shock, people started to really long for those games and the buzzwords , 0451 games, immersive sim started being throw around for them.

Did a quick search Warren Spector actually created the term on his Deus Ex post mortem.
 
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Luka-boy

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Oh hey, an update about Lizardmen. Neat.
Nate's a guy who likes to feel what he's making, so the initial investigation into the style started with actual sculpts. The idea from there is to figure out how to replicate the sculpt in a 3D program and to experiment on what granularity to make the objects.


ca_02.jpg


:hmmm: Paging sexbad?
 
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Excidium II

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^
:stupid:

Maybe it has more to do with the fact it's a free game on a platform everyone owns. Dumbass.

Yeah, there are so few F2P mobile games and any new one that comes out is a guaranteed hit.
In relation to other pokemon games that are generally restricted to nintendo consoles or don't show up outside of japan, nigger. That's the "difference maker"

AR is obviously a factor but the real important bit is one of this generation's cultural icons having something closer to a proper but also dumbed down game on phone.
 
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Crescent Hawk

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I am curious with how this is going to end. These kind of games take a lot of dedication instead of simply raw money.
It might surprise people.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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Paul Neurath used the term immersive simulation to describe not a game but the Looking Glass philosophy and the secret sauce that nobody else was working on at the time (or very much since). He was right.
 

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