[pantelisk]

Ultima 6 and 5 have been remade by modders for the Dungeon Siege engine (full remakes with functionality and systems not just a re-skin/tribute)

Ultima 6 - http://u6project.com/wp/ (sorry for non-https link)

Ultima 5 - https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V:_Lazarus

Worth a shot if somebody finds the originals too difficult to get into now. (Though gameplay is brutal regardless, I keep running out of food when adventuring - the map doesn't show your position, you need to use landmarks (eg; follow the edge of this lake) and the compass to orient yourself)

(disclaimer: I did some map/dungeon building some 15 years ago for the U6 one)

[bdowling]

There are also the open-source Ultima game engine remakes:

Nuvie (for Ultima 6, Martian Dreams, and Savage Empire) - http://nuvie.sourceforge.net

Exult (for Ultima 7 and 7.5) - http://exult.sourceforge.net

Pentagram (for Ultima 8) - http://pentagram.sourceforge.net, now merged into ScummVM - https://www.scummvm.org.

All of these use the original game files to play the games and offer improved user interface options, higher resolutions, graphics scaling, wider fields of view, gameplay improvements, etc. These are a great way to play these old games on a modern computer.

[Klwohu]

For those who look first at a project's last release, Exult could seem like abandoned software but it's really not - it's done and finished like xterm. There's (almost) nothing left (of consequence) to do. Which is not to say it's perfect, but it's stable, allows you to complete the entire game and all side quests, allows a bigger viewframe which of course breaks the game in some ways but is an extremely useful comfort addition, etc.

Nuvie is also good and has seen much more rapid progress in the last decade. It's great that these projects exist and of course dosbox will run both games smoothly and has for a long time too.

I'm more skeptical of the remakes myself, the original graphics in VI and VII still look great, it's one thing to give, say, a 3D shooter game the enhanced remake treatment. Real-time 3D rendering speed and quality has improved by leaps and bounds yearly or so for decades now. But pixel graphics can't really be improved with any technology ducks to avoid scaler warring and you lose all the charm by translating the games into the 3D rendered realm.

[tmp14]

There is also a project called "Ultima 5 Redux" in the works by an Ultima 5 fan. https://u5redux.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/first-dev-vlog I stumbled across it during a nostalgia binge during "lock down" last year. It appears to be under development in the author's spare time. The latest git commit was four days ago at time of writing this comment.

[mysterydip]

For you and those that played any of the 4-7 for comparison, how was the change in map scale compared to pace of wilderness? I was reading this https://simblob.blogspot.com/2014/05/map-homunculus.html?m=1 and it shows dev reasoning for the changes, but I'm curious how gamers actually took it. Was it better before or after?

[bdowling]

The single-scale, continuous world is undeniably better. It is arguably less realistic geographically, but it makes the world more vibrant and lifelike. For example, the player can follow the NPCs as they travel between towns or meet each other in the wilderness or the player can chase a creature from the wilderness into town to be killed by guards. Instead of the world feeling like a bunch of disconnected silos, everything is connected on one seamless map.

Also, even though the wilderness is geographically smaller in the single-scale games, it feels bigger because the player has to traverse the wilderness at 1X speed. Also, to make travel more interesting and to encourage exploration, the developers fill the wilderness with secrets, side-quests, hidden items, creatures, etc. The wilderness becomes part of the game, whereas in the older games the wilderness was just a bunch of blue or green on a map.