Let's celebrate Ultima 7's 20th birthday

[Dominus]

The good people at Ultima Codex (formerly Ultima Aiera) put together a tribute page at Ultima 7′s 20th Anniversary to celebrate!
With many design documents and more....

[monotremata]

Well great there goes my day off!

[drcode]

Cool! There's a lot of new information there, including a description of the original 'usecode' language!

[Mortegro]

*raises a glass of Moonshade's Ice Wine*

[MeddlingMonk]

Best damned game box ever. Ditto for the game manual. I'm pretty sure that it was the first and only time I ever started up a game without a freaking clue what it was the objective was supposed to be. You're just dropped in, and there's the dismembered body. Cope with it, Jimmy.

[Silver B. Venom]

@Mortegro

No match for "Vintage wine"

[internet person]

Conversation Style Guide was very interesting. They took conversations very seriously. Looking at the map sketches made me realize the C in Cove can look like L when written by hand, which then spells Love. Love/Cove the city of Compassion. I wonder if that's why they called it that.

Nice find!

[Wanderer]

Thanks for sharing that! Wow, tons of info. Best RPG ever.

[Crowley]

Where's the fourth picture (the one before Exult 3D) from? Feudal Lands?

[Dominus]

When you scroll down that page you will see that it is indeed from Feudal lands

[Crowley]

Ah, silly me. Thanks!

[Crowley]

Things that caught my eye about the design documents:

The emps are stated to be nocturnal, but there is nothing about that in the game. Nothing mentions it, and the emps themselves have the same schedule throughout the day.

The original layout for Empath Abbey looks like it deliberately followed Ultima 6. The abbey being on the east side of the main road and the graveyard on its north side match that. Castle British looks to have had bigger and more elaborate design in the beginning, with things like guard quarters. They never change the guards or have them sleep currently, do they? In fact, I think the guards everywhere in the game keep going 24 hours a day...

[n]

Longtime lover of Ultima (bought VII the day it was released), about due for a replay. Just caught this thread... are these design documents online anymore? I don't seem to be finding them at the site indicated.

Also, THANKS TO THE EXULT TEAM.

[WtF Dragon]

The design documents were moved here: http://gallery.ultimacodex.com

[agentorangeguy]

Did anyone look at the npc lists and descriptions? It is neat, it shows who (if any) the npc's were based on, and it even mentions some npcs that never made it to the game (Zadmir in Britain, a drunk/bum in the pub).