Ultima VII: Revisited

[ryandrake]

Reminds me a little of the Ultima V - Lazarus[1] project, where volunteers re-implemented the entire game in the Dungeon Siege 3D engine. They also added tons of new characters and dialog, side quests, a richer plot, and new artwork and music. They did all this and managed to keep the major plot and game elements the same. They actually managed to greatly improve on what is unarguably :) the best Ultima of the series.

1: https://www.u5lazarus.com

[conception]

How do they handle hidden dialogue options? One of the most amazing things about the series before 3d was you just talked to people about things and often they had something to say about the topic. Like you can ask just about anyone about the avatar or blackthorn. There’s a donkey that figures out he’s inside a video game, etc.

[frost_knight]

I think Lazarus is one of the greatest game mods ever made. They even added the option to become an evil Avatar and side with Blackthorn.

[websg-x]

the download links are all broken. try

https://ultima5.ultimacodex.com/ultima-5-lazarus/

[kibwen]

And if anybody's looking for a new game with the Ultima vibe, I highly recommend Moonring, a free indie game from one of the creators of Fable: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2373630/Moonring/

[this_and_that]

Moonring is indeed absolutely top-notch! There’s a Mac version as well, and it runs on the Steam Deck. It’s definitely a plausible spiritual successor to Ultima IV. I’m shocked that the existence of an absolutely free game in this genre hasn’t made more of a splash.

[fnordlord]

Wow. Thanks. It’s amazing that games like these exist for years on Steam and never surface when I search for new games with those tags.

[ralfd]

How could it be free? Is there a story behind that?

[hinkley]

Ultima VII ran in real mode and it wanted every single kilobyte of memory that it could steal away from DOS.

They had some fancy optimized version of HIMEM that worked a little bit better than the stock DOS one and people started using it on all of their boot disks not just the one for Ultima VII.

[Dwedit]

Ultima VII doesn't run in Real Mode, it runs in Unreal Mode.

https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Voodoo_Memory_Manager

[jgoewert]

This and Strike Commander are why I used a really weird serial port mouse driver I found on a BBS but used like 1/10th as much memory as the default mouse driver that came with the mouse.

But it got over the last hurdle of not having enough space.

Formatting config.sys and autoexec.bat was an artform.

[CSMastermind]

I never played the Ultima games but I did have a crippling Ultima Online addiction in high school for two years.

This video definitely brought back some memories.

[chongli]

Same! I played a ton of UO and met many friends on it. Never played any of the single-player series for more than a few minutes. Played some Ultima Underworld which appeals to me but it didn't stick.

I have played a lot of Ultima-inspired games though. The Exile and Avernum series by Spiderweb Software [1] are childhood favourites. I also really loved Arx Fatalis [2], a love letter to Ultima Underworld.

[1] http://www.spidweb.com

[2] https://www.gog.com/en/game/arx_fatalis

[idiotsecant]

To this day my ringtone is 'stones' played just how it did from the midi setup in my family PC. It still gives me a sense of magic and possibility, all these years later. To everyone else it's just a weird old man with beeps and boops for a ringtone.

[holografix]

“Eat that kal vas flam and have a side of in nox you PK sob!”

[atroche]

This is awesome, keep up the good work! Have liked and subscribed =)

After this section…

> Ultima VII was in development from 1990 to 1992 (shipping in April ’92), and even though software 3D was taking off at the time, it hadn’t been designed as a 3D game (even though it used a 3D world) and that contributed to its issues.

> But software-rendered 3D games with isometric perspectives started coming out very soon after Ultima VII, and every time I saw one I thought, “This is what Ultima VII should have looked like.”

…there are clips from three games: Dungeon Keeper (June 1997), Myth II (Dec. 1998) and Grandia (Dec. 1997). Not sure if that really counts as coming out 'very soon' after Ultima VII!

[ChrisArchitect]

Related:

Exult: Recreating Ultima VII for modern operating systems

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43140645

[MrJagil]

Whenever i see a Dungeon Keeper pic i am immediately inclined to go play again. If you havn't seen, there's a wonderful fan expansion fixing basically everything: https://keeperfx.net

[vanderZwan]

> 2024-09-24 5 months ago

> xtremeqg shared his PR that allows KeeperFX to be natively compiled on Linux. It still needs a lot of work, but a Linux release is getting very close!

Exciting!

[0] https://keeperfx.net/history

[layer8]

It’s still isometric, luckily. I always wanted to have Ultima VII with Ultima VIII perspective, and this is kind of a superset of that.

[hinkley]

I gave up on Ultima VII when some wolves attacked my party in the forest and I couldn't find my downed party member.

That was the day and age when you only had the manual to help you figure out UI problems instead of asking people on The Internet. By the time I had access to somewhere to ask I was too busy playing Starflight. Which for the kids is the second version of No Man's Sky, or No Man's Sky is the third version of Starflight.

[steanne]

this is just a recreation, not an expansion, but xu4 is playable on linux without wine.

https://xu4.sourceforge.net/

[hinkley]

Dear Larian Studios,

I have been a very good boy this year, and for Christmas I would like...

[gfkclzhzo]

This is remarkable. I tried to replay U7 over the pandemic and it was just too clunky, even with Exult. This looks like it addresses my issues while perserving the original aesthetic.

AI voice acting on-the-fly from in-game text would be slick.

Tangent - Do any games let you set a speed multiplier for in-game speech? I'd love to run dialog at 1.5x like I do for podcasts.

[txdv]

Dungeon Keeper I had really good graphics for those PC requirements.

recommended system: 133mhz cpu with 16MB of ram

I even played it after II came out because it felt so snappy and fast

[gokaygurcan]

Just uninstalled Akalabeth, Ultima 1, 2 and 3 last week. I was planning to play again but couldn't find any time because of many reasons. Plan was to continue with the rest of the series afterwards. If you're looking for them, GOG is your friend.

On a totally irrelevant note, I know at this point it doesn't mean much to Broadsword to invest more into UO, but I really can't justify the lack of macOS client.

[UberFly]

Akalabeth was my first experience as a kid seeing a dungeon crawler game and I still feel the excitement and wonder of it.

[creamyhorror]

Ultima VII was an absolute joy of childhood. It will always stand apart as a landmark in immersive game writing and design with soul. And the Ultima V Lazarus remake was a stunning community achievement.

I'd be interested in seeing a living, breathing game world simulated by AI under game writers' guidance.

[HenryBemis]

Irrelevant, but just in case it rings any nostalgic bells, when I see graphics like that I remember Dink Smallwood!!! What a nice game that was!!

[orthoxerox]

I've always found U6/U7 perspective especially vertiginous. Maybe the new engine will finally allow me to play them.

[Paul_S]

Does anyone know a game where 2d sprites sit on 3d chairs? This is something this engine will have to tackle.

[seasluggy]

Ultima online was my one and only Ultima and it’s weird to get pangs of nostalgia from Ultimas that I’ve never played.

[jghn]

IIRC the UO alpha looked even more like U7

[hinkley]

Did anyone else ever get the glitch where the game switched from color to red and black? That was truly sinister.

[Galatians4_16]

I spent many summers playing Ultima Underworld 1&2. Only got to try U7 one weekend.