HN is a little interesting, all these blogs always exist all the time. It's just which ones are getting placed on HN doesn't represent all things going on.
Also, it is interesting that people are playing old games and blogging about them. At the time these games were released, we didn't really have the same venues to discuss said games. So why not now?
I just think it's funny how we imagined us using technology in the future (VR and flying cars) and how we ended up using it (posting on social media platforms and discussing these posts in the comment sections).
Yes you are here discussing this rather than playing VR games.
(I suppose you could be playing a VR game that has a VR computer to access HN, but if that's state of the art in VR tech, give me well written blog posts about 30 year old games)
I LOVED UU. I had a little web page about it back in the day. UU2 was OK, but didn't get to play it as much as my computer couldn't really handle the larger screen space. This of course was a 386.
The best moment and most memorable to me was getting the taper, and having never ending light.
Didn't you have to trade a hermit for the taper? I loved UU, but I was so young I could barely read. It is one of the most defining games of my life, for sure.
I believe UW is the reason I'm in IT today. It was the first computer game I was obsessed with enough that I had to learn how to upgrade, maintain and optimize a PC. It was our family PC so, naturally, it got messed up a lot.
I remember that I was playing UW when I found out my Grandma had passed, the first family death I was old enough to remember. I was also playing it when my first GF had her friend call me to announce she was breaking up with me.
I owe my lifelong career in IT/Computers to Ultima as well - Ultima II on an Apple ][e... found in a drive in a computer lab at school in 7th grade.
I played every ultima since - and was in Beta for UO and we played MANY accounts simultaneously when we worked in Intels DRG game lab in 1997 - where the Intel campus had a T3 - and our lab had a dedicated T1 - we used to play ~6 accounts simultaneously logged in across our gaming test desks - playing on Intels latest gaming machines (This is where we first tested out APG cards and the Unreal engine against Celeron machines - to prove that a <$1,000 computer was a marketable and game-capable machine)
That was the golden days of my gaming - but I truly do owe my career to Ultima.
UU was great. I especially loved how your skills evolved with time. In the beginning, you could barely jump over the smallest rift, but by mid-game you could almost fly from one end of a big cave to another. Trick is that it was made so subtle that it grew on you naturally. I vividly remember that on restart I casually approached a chasm and was bummed when I couldn't jump over it - like, whaaat?
> Speaking of graphics… well, probably most of you are far too young to remember the Apple ][, but it had a seriously weird graphics mode, which had not only a crazy palette (black, white, green, blue, orange, and purple) but also placed additional restrictions on how you could use the colors near each other (see here if you really need to know the gory details). Paul Neurath, our CEO, never tired of telling stories of what a pain it was to work with that system when he had written his earlier game Space Rogue. So naturally we added code that would specifically look for a certain file we had planted on Paul’s computer, and if it found it, would switch to a green-blue-orange-purple palette for one frame every half hour or so. Unfortunately I honestly can’t remember whether Paul ever actually noticed it.
Please tell me this code shipped and that it is possible to trigger this mode by creating the right mock file on an emulated system!
When discussing UU one has to mention that it had simply insane system requirements at the time. If I remember correctly it required a 386DX with at least 2MB RAM, which at the time of release meant a PC worth several thousand bucks. To boot, it was also a pretty expensive game. Wolfenstein OTOH ran fine on a 286 in fullscreen, AND it was shareware. That's why everyone and his dog played it, although its engine was less advanced than UU's. It was a very deliberate decision made by id/Carmack, and it payed off big time.
Wolfenstein was far inferior, technologically. A flat, square blocky map, without any way to look up or down, or any height variation at all. The maps were actually defined as ASCII grids with different characters defining where it was a wall or open space, secret door, etc.
UU had irregularly shaped rooms and hallways, inclines and declines, the ability to be at two highets depending on where you are on the map (bridges over water you can swim under) which even DOOM, the successor in engine technology to Wolfenstein 3D didn't support, etc.
I don't like calling it "inferior" (and we didn't, at the time). We solved a much more general problem in a slow and only approximately correct way. They found a much more limited problem that they were able to solve perfectly and blazingly fast. That's a feature! There was definitely room for both approaches.
The multi-height thing was a real annoyance, by the way. For example, my path-finding code really wanted to be 2D (and of course it was mostly expressed in 2D) but had to understand that you could do things like take a bridge over (or even jump over) a gully and then walk around and cross under your original path.
Far enough. I guess what I was going was inferior feature-wise, but I wasn't clear and inferior is a loaded word, so it would have been better to phrase it as "Wolfensteign 3D supported far fewer cutting edge features" or "UU supported far more cutting edge features."
Yet it is a trait which Ultima Underworld shares with the two great earlier pioneers in the art of the dungeon crawl, Wizardry and Dungeon Master. Those games too emerged so immaculately conceived that the imitators which followed them could find little to improve upon beyond their audiovisuals.
While not quite as early as Wizardry (or even a few of its sequels), I always found Might & Magic 1 and Might & Magic 2 to be far superior to Wizardry in a few areas, such as exploration and world building.
Edit: Clarified that I found M&M superior to Wizardry in a few areas. UU and M&M2 are some of my all-time favorites, and I would be hard pressed to state which one I like more, since they scratch different itches. I've gone back to play both multiple times before.
Looking back, it‘s amazing how much progress was made in this type of computer games between Alternate Reality (1984), Dungeon Master (1987) and Ultima Underworld. In the same timeframe (8 years) there hasn‘t been any noticeable progress lately, just sequels and reiterations with slightly better textures.
I think the mouse-based gameplay of Ultima Underworld could work surprisingly well on mobile or tablet, given that it has a much slower pace than 3D shooters.
OTOH, the thumb would obscure part of the screen. One could fix that by using a scheme similar to how the DS port of Mario 64 worked: wherever you tap-and-hold is the center of a simulated analog joystick, and the strength of the movement depends on how far away you move from the center of this point.
The rest of the UI would also need some modifications obviously (given the lack of a right click mouse button).
Still, I wonder if a slightly updated port would be successful.
38 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 94.4 ms ] threadAlso, it is interesting that people are playing old games and blogging about them. At the time these games were released, we didn't really have the same venues to discuss said games. So why not now?
(I suppose you could be playing a VR game that has a VR computer to access HN, but if that's state of the art in VR tech, give me well written blog posts about 30 year old games)
The best moment and most memorable to me was getting the taper, and having never ending light.
(I backed it)
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/underworld-ascendant
I remember that I was playing UW when I found out my Grandma had passed, the first family death I was old enough to remember. I was also playing it when my first GF had her friend call me to announce she was breaking up with me.
I played every ultima since - and was in Beta for UO and we played MANY accounts simultaneously when we worked in Intels DRG game lab in 1997 - where the Intel campus had a T3 - and our lab had a dedicated T1 - we used to play ~6 accounts simultaneously logged in across our gaming test desks - playing on Intels latest gaming machines (This is where we first tested out APG cards and the Unreal engine against Celeron machines - to prove that a <$1,000 computer was a marketable and game-capable machine)
That was the golden days of my gaming - but I truly do owe my career to Ultima.
(I was there when Lord British was Assassinated)
https://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/
Ultima V
ANY Bards Tale
Masters of Orion
Bard's Tale here[2]
Master of Orion has not been reached yet I think (It was released after UU).
1: https://www.filfre.net/2016/02/ultima-v/
2: https://www.filfre.net/2014/06/of-wizards-and-bards/
Great game. UU2 was ok too.
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/20/the-dangers-of-self-modifyi...
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-bugs/
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/03/17/one-more-ultima-underworld-...
Please tell me this code shipped and that it is possible to trigger this mode by creating the right mock file on an emulated system!
UU had irregularly shaped rooms and hallways, inclines and declines, the ability to be at two highets depending on where you are on the map (bridges over water you can swim under) which even DOOM, the successor in engine technology to Wolfenstein 3D didn't support, etc.
The multi-height thing was a real annoyance, by the way. For example, my path-finding code really wanted to be 2D (and of course it was mostly expressed in 2D) but had to understand that you could do things like take a bridge over (or even jump over) a gully and then walk around and cross under your original path.
While not quite as early as Wizardry (or even a few of its sequels), I always found Might & Magic 1 and Might & Magic 2 to be far superior to Wizardry in a few areas, such as exploration and world building.
Edit: Clarified that I found M&M superior to Wizardry in a few areas. UU and M&M2 are some of my all-time favorites, and I would be hard pressed to state which one I like more, since they scratch different itches. I've gone back to play both multiple times before.
OTOH, the thumb would obscure part of the screen. One could fix that by using a scheme similar to how the DS port of Mario 64 worked: wherever you tap-and-hold is the center of a simulated analog joystick, and the strength of the movement depends on how far away you move from the center of this point.
The rest of the UI would also need some modifications obviously (given the lack of a right click mouse button).
Still, I wonder if a slightly updated port would be successful.