Had to get this off my chest!

[Soule]

I like the Ultima 7 Engine a lot, but am more biased towards the Serpent Isle one(nicer graphics, better interactivity).

Anyway, I played u8 recently and my brother who was watching behind exclaimed "ultima 8 has such BAD graphics?" whic led me to think about it. If you compare U8 to U7, U7 has nicer colors, better looking blocks. Guess nothing beats traditional 2D graphics eh? Compared to U7, U8's speed was slower as well, the avatar has to pause for a while before he could turn, and has a slow reaction speed.
U9 is terrible..I m not going to comment about it..you can find bad comments all over the net.

I just hope Exult Studios works well and someone rebuilds U9 using it. I like journeying with my companions in the normal large crowded Britannia. Was really disappointed with U9, waited for many years and that was it?

My wish: Exult Studio used to build U8 or U9 again.

[drk]

u9 was a decent game. and being a 3d engine based game, there is always the possibility of an editor to be made for it. there's already new versions being done for u9 in several styles. i saw 2 3d engines being used for it and somewhere an unofficially announced 2d overview style like the u7 engine.

i didnt like u9's status when it arrived. after patching and using the dialogue patches, its a lot better. i dont really think this forum was meant to discuss u9 though.

u8, was slow, the graphics looked bad no matter what u did to the thing, and the story didnt feel ultima like to me. maybe im wrong but, u play the avatar. he's a being from another planet, who is a mighty warrior and can use magic better then the mages. that makes him better then the paladins which can do both fighting and limited magic. u only became the avatar in u6, and u were meant to protect britannia. what was the point in going to another planet? rg said it was because he wanted a new planet to explore instead of earth/britannia (which he said was the same in an interview.) but didnt he do that in si? and it wasnt long ago we became the avatar, and in u9 we lose that? what was the point?

i know when exult studio comes out, if anyone wishes to help me, i want to start a series based on ultima. copyrights will cause it to not resemble it with exact facts and such, but it can still have that feel and that basis. that is, if they can get exult studio to their dream status of being able to develop seperate games with their own story lines. i already have a lot of stories written down that i've wrote over the last few years just for a hobby. i just need the help of a good engine to use, and a few good minds to work with.

dunno though, all depends on how things come. i dont know much programming, just visual basic, some older basic languages, and website design. which means i dont know much on the developement of game engines, but hopefully that can change.


sorry Soule for using your thread to get some things out, but it seemed like the perfect place with the subject ya used.

if anyone has any suggestions on makin a series based on ultima, please feel free to email me at dizrkiez@aol.com

[MV]

I didn't mind u9, I liked it enough. I just didn't like the changed experience and stat building system. Killing monsters was a waste of time unfortunatly.

Got any links to that u9 stuff?

BTW, u4 was quest of the avatar.

[DragonKain]

U9 had its pro's and con's. I thought the graphics were way ahead of their time. Even the fastest graphics cards had trouble with it when it was first released (also partially due to bad Direct3d). The game was far too linear, barely had anything concerning the previous games in it, and the world was FAR too small.

...its a shame that the ultima series will never get another chance to redeem itself.

[MV]

Heh, yea, the peformance.

I was the guy with 12meg voodoo2 sli laughing at all the geforce2 owners.

[drk]

yea, u4.. u became the avatar.. i meant u5 u started protecting the land. u6 u relearned all the virtues and what it meant to be an avatar.

i found most of the u9 stuff on the fans of ultima site, i gotta find the link though. i forgot it and i gotta find my backup cd with it in the favorites archive i stored.

i played u9 on an athlon 700mhz with a voodoo 5 5500 and it still ran like crap til the very last update. last time i ran it was on a 950 athlon thunderbird, 512mb of ram, voodoo 5 5500 on a 4x agp slot and it ran smoothly with all the patches. then i lost my computer due to the motherboard freaking out so now i only play u7 on my wife's pc til i buy new hardware.

the ultima series is redeeming itself through the fans. im hoping the new company rg started will do something about the series or atleast make a new one in its memory. one can only hope eh?

and also hope for someone to make that editor or get the original from origin/ea so we could expand the land. there were people using the left over maps from the developement that was sent with the game (by accident?) which were said to be majorly bigger then the actual played version, so maybe that could be useful with an editor?

[Dominus]

he he - guess what the link is www.fansforultima.com

[Trevor_Clim]

make these inofficial dialogue patches and these other inofficial improvements U9 really better? or are they not that massiv-change?

[Dominus]

the dialogue patch really makes the game better IF you have played the older Ultimas. They tied the game more into the big story. One thing to note is that they have been limited by the length of the original dialogue so it is not as extensive as you might wish and of course you have to disable the vice playback

[Max aka Moscow Dragon]

And U9 slowliness is not due to "bad D3D", but due to idiocy of game designers who coded the game to the proprietary API of Glide, supported on Voodoo only.
So, to support U9 on cards other then Voodoo, they developed a wrapper layer between Glide and D3D, and this is why U9 is slow.
Decent 3D APIs are D3D and especially OpenGL (in fact, D3D seems to be a layer below OpenGL) - at least they are not tied to a particular hardware.

U9 runs fine for me on PIII-800/133/256MB/GeForce2MX 32MB.
Complex areas like Britain are slow a bit, but switch antialiasing off - and you will have huge speed at the cost of hardly noticeable quality degradation.

[a gimp]

Wow. U9 runs well on that machine, Max?

I'll have to reinstall it in about a week once I get my new machine thrown together... Athlon 1.3ghz/512mb PC133 SDRAM/GeForce2MX400-64mb/blah/blah ^^

I played it on a REAL ugly machine when it was released. Even with the details all pretty much off it still ran nastily. 'Fog mode', as I call it was the only way to get a framerate >10fps.

[fliend]

didn't like U9 when it released, but do now to some extent. Graphics are incredible and -some- of the acting is decent. I like Raven's acting and even the Avatar's who was knocked by so many people. Shamino was reminesent of LB in SI intro. I don't, however like most of the town resident's acting they in fact -wern't- acting, but were reading a que card bored out of thier mind in a dull studio saying "PulEEZe let me go home now!" I have played all of the Ultimas except 6 and SI(last half) but still do not wish to use the dialogue patch, it ties up a lot of history even some neglected and unpopular compaginions disappearence, however, at some places it sounds too 20th/1st century Earth(eg. Move it, Avatar, I ain't got all day, get dressed!) However, I am glad thier is a patch out there somewhere for an alternate plott and for those who didn't like the original dialogue. It would be nice to be able to install the patch and be able to turn it on and off. Voodoo actually runs worse on my game than the ATI Radeon, I can get decent frame rates with 1600 x1200 at 32 bits with the Radeon and it is drop-dead gorgious. where as the Voodoo only runs at 1024 X768 at 16. Voodoo Anti-alias is not as good either. Fog tables are better on Voodoo though. On my old PC I used the Diamond V770(non-ultra) and actually got decent fps out doors, but not in castles, townes ect. Personally I think D3D looks better. I Set Graphics Apeture(BIOS) to 128 but wouldn't recommend that kinda thing to just anyone.

[DragonKain]

U9 runs smooth as silk on my pc even at the highest resolutions. For some reason after a few hours of play, it gets choppy. Ive got an Athlon 1ghz@1.2ghz, 512mb PC2100 DDR, Geforce2 GTS.

[Soule]

Well, as pointed out, U9 is too SMALL. I really enjoyed interacting with my companions, even annoying things like Iolo shouting "Avatar?!" when you take someone else's things. The NPCs hardly change their reactions.(The roadsweeper in Britain accuses me of messing up her rubbish evry time without fail"
I dun want to discuss U9 any further..but it would have been better with companions. i was really disappointed when companions were once again taken off in U9.
Exult Studio reperesents the next step for Ultima! I am sure fans will actually remake U9 when's it done!

[drk]

well, it would be nice to go beyond u9 instead of remaking it. the idea was good to make the avatar an ethereal being.. but wouldnt it be better to let him come back now that he's more powerful? either way, there's 2 3d versions of u9 coming out. one is on its own engine. plus the 3d remakes of the older ultima's 1, 5, and 6. maybe you should put exult to a better use instead of remaking u9, you should make an all new edition of the series.

my voodoo 5 5500 ran smoother then any d3d card i tried. but i also have a first edition v5 when the cards were worth something. the later released cards seemed to run a lot worse then the original v5's. i'd probably still be playing on my athlon system if it didnt screw up mysteriously.. maybe it just didnt like u9 heh.

[DragonKain]

There is a new version of Ultima 6 coming out??? Sorry.. im out of the loop. Can you provide any more info?

[drk]

its talked about on the fans for ultima site that was mentioned earlier (www.fansforultima.com).

[duckie]

Ermm, drk, one using its own engine? You are talking about Eriadain and Redemption right? Redemption uses the Dungeon Siege engine and Eriadain uses the Neverwinter Nights engine.

[a gimp]

Those Dungeon Siege remakes look nice. If they ever get completed I think I'll pee my pants, or something.

[XxVenomxX]

Cant say much, but there's a LOT being done behind the scenes with Redemption. I'm on the worldbuilding team, so I have a little while left till I get to contribute my part. But I have *extremely* high expectations for this. We have a huge team, and great leaders
Oh, and by the way, my good friends at Horizons Tavern were kind enough to send this link my way, because I couldn't remember it:

http://members.aon.at/hacki-ultima/english/index.htm

Here you will find a very detailed list of most, if not all, of the inaccuracies in U9. It makes for a good read.
I just hope more wars dont start over this, but hey, I can sit back and watch

[Tim]

U9 ran smoothly for me on an Athlon 800 MHz/128MB RAM/32MB... maybe even 16MB video card.

I liked it. I thought the story was pretty good, even though it was a bit shallow. I would have loved to see the original one though.