While Exult basically matches the graphics of the original game, this is closer to "3D Ultima VII", with rotatable views and more interactivity in the game. It gives it what looks like a kind of voxel-ish look, mixing in original sprites with newly-modeled 3D objects.
The 0.1.0 release video also has addition segments about feature improvements [1] with some examples of the 2D to 3D conversion process that are quite impressive.
[1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=25 0:25 to 0:40 has a bunch of the small scale objects being replaceable, rotatable, and animatable in 3D.
[1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=48 0:48 to 1:06 has bulk replacement of scene objects with personally chosen substitutes. (3D rotatable)
With the current state of the engine, and the extensive personal editing features, much like the comment from VariousPrograms, it could be used as a platform for doing other games, modified quests, and multi-player MMO style games.
I never played an Ultima game, but I remember that many years ago, there was a period where Ultima VII was commonly mentioned as "the best RPG of all time" by PC players. Nowadays it seems Ultima is rarely talked about anymore compared to classic SNES RPGs like Final Fantasy VI, which came out two years later.
JRPG games like FF VI are far more accessible than the Ultima games. The Avatar trilogy (Ultimas IV, V, and VI) are essentially unplayable without having all the manuals and taking detailed notes[1]. Even doing that, they are quite hard. Nearly every single Final Fantasy game is easy to beat just by taking a bit of time to grind levels whenever you get stuck.
There is a blogger who teaches a class on old games (I can't remember who) and Ultima IV was one that his students bounced off of immediately because they didn't read the manual cover-to-cover, which is a prerequisite for not being totally lost.
1: Or using a walkthrough, I guess, but IMO the main point of the Ultima games of this era was the sense of discovery.
Vaguely related but there is this whole set of videos on the production of the Ultima series on Youtube by Majuular that I've been playing while working out. Just such a different time, I almost regret missing it.
His video on 7 and serpent's isle brought back a lot of memories (although my preferred origin game was Wing Commander)
So funny to see this here, I was just looking into Ultima remakes last night, and saw this one among others. Looks really awesome. I never played any of the Ultima games back in the day, and have bounced off them when trying in later years. This should make Ultima VII a lot more accessible and playable.
I played them (starting with 4) back in the day. And 35 years later, I fixed a bug in the ScummVM version of U4. I discovered it while showing the game to my kid.
I couldn't have predicted that back then. Although as a kid, I did fix a "bug" in Ultima that required the floppy disk when you had it installed on HD.
This is pretty neat. There have been multiple attempts at something like that in the past, and of them, this is by far the best-looking one.
However, I think some artefacts can never be properly resolved (see for example the marble statue to the left at 1:53 in the video), which makes it look veird and break immersion (also the flat roofs that are supposed to be slanted/angled roofs)
Also, the U7 engine is a very complex beast so to properly implement it will take a lot of work and fine-tuning (although I guess they can use Exult as a start, which is by now pretty feature-complete)
On Ultima VII, can you play the 7th series without playing the previous ones? I mean, are these games standalone? Because Ultima IV it's always praised to be an incredible RPG to play.
BTW, Scummvm will happily play Ultima 4, 6 and 8 games too, with better controls and support.
Let me go find my collection of floppy disks, then I'll need a 32 pin connection adapter for the drive. I remember U7 was my favorite game for a long time. I received U7 Serpent Isle as a gift, but at least one of 15 of the 3.5" disks was corrupted, ordering a replacement disks cost $14 dollars per disk, and I wasn't sure how many disks might be corrupted. I gave up on the game. I should just buy it on GoG.
Rise your hand if you remember how long you had to tinker around to get enough EMS to load the game plus sound card drivers loaded into memory when being in DOS!
I definitely remember the collection of boot disks I used to load the right autoexec.bat/config.sys settings for the Ultima and Wing Commander games, and how long I spent tuning these settings. I was just a kid then, but I remember the whole exercise being pretty complicated!
I remember getting "The Complete Ultima VII" on CD and never figuring out how to get it running. I think I've still got the box, but I think the disc has been missing for years. I bought it on GOG some time ago, though.
There's a YouTuber that's been going through and making in-depth retrospectives of each Ultima game that some here may find interesting. I've found them a pleasant watch and I don't usually go for this type of content. I never played the Ultima series until Ultima Online so I don't have the nostalgia goggles that I'd need to go back and play games this old (sorry, it's the truth) so these videos are as close as I'll probably get.
I'm a huge fan of Majuular, these videos are amazing. I like that he dives deeply into the history behind each game as well - like the company, Richard Garriott (Lord British), etc.
His other videos on other games are great as well!
As someone who played these back in the day and enjoyed them, I don't think I could even recommend them to myself today. Ultima VII is everything the other comments say it is... but it's also one staggeringly large nested fetch quest, with nothing much breaking it up.
I'd recommend some combination of the Bethesda open world games and the JRPG genre today. They're not the same, nothing really quite fills the Ultima gap that I know of, but between those two I'd call it close enough.
I forget whether it was Ultima III or IV but that turned me off of adventure games. The busy work being asked of me was offputting. May have just been a shift of interest once reaching maturity and turning interests to Women and Music. I still liked some other games but more for study breaks and occasional arcade sessions than constant activities. Gen X here checking in.
The recent Wizardry remaster encouraged me to go back and play other nostalgic games - finished Ultima I and II, but the nostalgia wasn't strong enough to keep going through the busywork and UI impedance of others.
I'll keep this one on my list for when nostalgia strikes again...
Any thread about Ultima remakes is incomplete without mention of the highly ambitious Ultima V - Lazarus project[1], which re-made (and significantly expanded) the game onto the Dungeon Siege engine. A true labor of love!
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 55.2 ms ] threadSome of the video segments here make differences clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJcOEwKJ4
While Exult basically matches the graphics of the original game, this is closer to "3D Ultima VII", with rotatable views and more interactivity in the game. It gives it what looks like a kind of voxel-ish look, mixing in original sprites with newly-modeled 3D objects.
[1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=25 0:25 to 0:40 has a bunch of the small scale objects being replaceable, rotatable, and animatable in 3D.
[1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=48 0:48 to 1:06 has bulk replacement of scene objects with personally chosen substitutes. (3D rotatable)
[1] https://youtu.be/Nmy4ClXXI84?t=67 1:07 to 1:25 has fixing broken geometry and creating fully textured 3D replacements.
With the current state of the engine, and the extensive personal editing features, much like the comment from VariousPrograms, it could be used as a platform for doing other games, modified quests, and multi-player MMO style games.
There is a blogger who teaches a class on old games (I can't remember who) and Ultima IV was one that his students bounced off of immediately because they didn't read the manual cover-to-cover, which is a prerequisite for not being totally lost.
1: Or using a walkthrough, I guess, but IMO the main point of the Ultima games of this era was the sense of discovery.
His video on 7 and serpent's isle brought back a lot of memories (although my preferred origin game was Wing Commander)
https://youtu.be/0NyaGRNH2zE
There's also a remake of Ultima Underworld being made in Godot: https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldGodot
Hoping for these projects to succeed, both U7 and UU sound like incredible games that deserve to be accessible to modern gamers.
I couldn't have predicted that back then. Although as a kid, I did fix a "bug" in Ultima that required the floppy disk when you had it installed on HD.
However, I think some artefacts can never be properly resolved (see for example the marble statue to the left at 1:53 in the video), which makes it look veird and break immersion (also the flat roofs that are supposed to be slanted/angled roofs)
Also, the U7 engine is a very complex beast so to properly implement it will take a lot of work and fine-tuning (although I guess they can use Exult as a start, which is by now pretty feature-complete)
On Ultima VII, can you play the 7th series without playing the previous ones? I mean, are these games standalone? Because Ultima IV it's always praised to be an incredible RPG to play.
BTW, Scummvm will happily play Ultima 4, 6 and 8 games too, with better controls and support.
Edit: Ask, and ye shall receive https://archive.org/details/ultima-1-gfx
:-D
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yfJJxAM6g-4YxKGI-1...
His other videos on other games are great as well!
I'd recommend some combination of the Bethesda open world games and the JRPG genre today. They're not the same, nothing really quite fills the Ultima gap that I know of, but between those two I'd call it close enough.
I'll keep this one on my list for when nostalgia strikes again...
1: https://www.u5lazarus.com
I'll take this opportunity to mention another engine-upgrade to a classic Origin game that got me excited: https://github.com/Howard-Day/WCUnity