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Ultima 1 Remade & Reborn
sheetsda writes "A company called Peroxide Entertainment(a freeware company) is remaking Ultima 1 under the title Ultima 1 - A Legend is Reborn. They're using their own engine, 'featuring most of the goodies you'd expect of a modern commercial 3d engine in the market' and recycling the overall plot but adding details."
If you buy too much food it will roll over to 0 and you'll die.
I'd actually consider finding spare time for THAT.
- Hubert
I wonder if Im going to have to swap floppies like I used to on my C64....
Q: How does the project relates to Origin Systems, legal owner of copyright?
A: Origin Systems, affiliated to Eletronic Arts has no part on the development of the game, although Peroxide has informal allowance to develop the game and gain attention of the media, since there is no marketing and financing involved.
Donate free food here
Bundle it up with revamped versions of Horace in the Caves and Horace and the Spiders and you've got my money.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
That was the beauty of the game. Some of the stories seem to transcend time, especially Ultima II, in which time travel was an integral part of the game. It was a fantasy game, after all.
Umm, there wasn't a real plot in Ultima I. You didn't really see games developing plots for some years after that.
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100% pure freak
Fans of the ultima series might want to check out Exult which will allow you to play Ultima 7, Ultima 7 II, and their add ons without using a speed limiter in DOS.
It's still development, but you can apparently paly Ultima 7, and it's expansion "Forge of Virtue" in their entirety, and most of Ultima 7 II is playable.
It does require you to have the actual game, so it's not a complete game itself, just a re-written engine.
Yeah, but what I'd really like to see is a 3D first person updating of that old Apple II, etc, classic "Castle Wolfenstein"... er... never mind.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Over at the Fans for Ultima website they have quite a bit of information about the various Ultima remakes & patches in the works.
This is yanked from that page... some info on other remakes:
Monday, September 3, 2001: Remake Mania
Hello people,
This is my first news update for FfU. Maigo and I decided to share the work, so that the site sees changes more often. This one is just a news update, the subsections will be updated soon. We're glad you've stayed tuned over the past months.
A lot has happened in the fan community, with several new and interesting projects announced. Most of them try to recapture the magic of the earlier games with newer technology, so this is both for nostalgic fans and for those who never played the older Ultimas because of their dated graphics. So here are the new projects, in "chronological" order:
Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue: The Dawn of Virtue: Using a self-written engine similar to Bioware's Infinity engine (which powered games like "Baldur's Gate" and "Planescape: Torment"), project leader Jaako Peltonen plans to redo "Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar", released 1985. The website provides several concept renderings and drawings.
Ultima Underworld 1 and 2: Twister Software is currently working on a complete remake of the two Ultima Underworlds with a new 3D Engine. Surprising is the announcement of a multiplayer mode; up to 8 heroes will be able to explore the Abyss or shatter the Blackrock dome.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate and The Serpent Isle : Like Ultima V: Lazarus, this project is going to use the Dungeon Siege engine. Interesting are the "Expected Outcome Pictures", Dungeon Siege promotional shots showing what some Ultima locations could look like.
Ultima IX: Redemption: Another project using the Dungeon Siege engine. As a response to the plotwise disappointing Ultima IX: Ascension (Dialogue/Plot patch downloadable here), Ultima IX Redemption is not a remake, but a completely new attempt at finishing the trilogy of trilogies. Avatus, the project leader, promises a rich and compelling storyline with several endings, depending on your decisions.
A similar attempt is Ultima IX: Eriadain, which will make use of the upcoming Neverwinter Nights engine.
Ultima IV: Elijah: Elijah rocks. Plain and simple.
This means that teams are working on remakes for every Ultima except 2, 3, 8 and the Worlds of Ultima series. That's a lot. It's great to see that the community is that active. If even half of these projects get finished, we'll have a lot to play in the future.
All the announcements have inspired Evil_Freak Dragon to write a pretty hilarious story featuring all the major projects. "Lazarus' Redemption Prophecy: A Legend is Reborn with the Dawn of Elijah's Great Balls of Fire" features some insider humor, but it might still be a great read even if you aren't involved in any of the projects.
-Grandor Dragon
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
Some memories are better left alone. I played the first 3 Ultimas on a C64, and was enthralled. A couple of classmates (high school) and I went as far as to write a basic, in BASIC, 2D engine for displaying Ultima-like graphics and dealing with movement, collisions, etc. It seriously helped propel some of us into computers.
HOWEVER, thinking back on what was fond memories of hours, no WEEKS, lost to playing these games it is better left alone.
You can never go back. I fear all this project will do is demonstrate the reality isn't a match for my memory of the past.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Personally I always enjoyed Ultima III, but maybe I'm biased - we played that on our old Atari 130XE (or was it the 800? Whatever) so much that when I went to school (elementary school, mind you) I could hear the music everywhere. It was a wonderful bonding experience with my brother, my dad and myself.
I also enjoyed the fact that each game had a random map, so you had the cloth map to put labels on (we used right protect tabs, yes those paper things). The spell casting books were just awesome.
And, of course, the fourth adventure was where they screwed up and killed off all races but humans. I don't remember for sure, but I also think that's where you stopped having a party that you completely controlled.
Enough nostalgia for now, I suppose.
Ultima I was a great game, and I ground my Apple II+ floppy drives to dust playing it. I fondly remember outrageous playability bugs like stealing in town and then killing absolutely everyone in it with the sci-fi weapons that become available at one point. I also remember the cool downview graphics that looked like they were done with nothing fancier than a custom font. Remaking this game in 3D would rob of it of its charm.
Ultima III was probably the second best game in the series...
Played it extensively on my Commie 64... it was teh first game that i really got deeply involved in.
8 was just plain horrible, and 7 was a pain in the ass with the "feed the whining party members" thing.
... hi bingo
What we really need is an up-to-date remake with a modern 3-d rendering engine of the classic Apple game 'Lemonade'.
Nothing new here. Lots of remakes of most of the popular ultimas (1, 4, 6) are being done. Look around and you'll find them all over the place. Some look pretty promising. Most are done with the Vampire or Neverwind nights engines.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I played it first on the C64, then the Atari ST .. The Atari used 3.5" drives, which held a lot more data and was a lot faster. But you're right, the music in U3 was fantastic, anyone know where you can download mp3's or midi files of this stuff?
There are also major remakes in progress for U5, U6, and U9.
U9 has several actually.. One is just a dialog patch, which keeps the same game but redoes all the dialog to change the plot of the game. There are also plans to completely recode the game from scratch with a plot and features that are typical to ultima games (a party for instance).
As for rights, I don't think any of these games have permission. Most of them have tried and have gotten no response. They are pursuing with the hope that the non-commercial intent will fall under the radar. If they DO respond negatively, the engine and new media can be utilized for other games unrelated to the Ultima series.
As for alienating ultima fans, the series is closed. There won't be any more Ultima games as far as the Avatar in Britannia is concerned. Details can be safely invented at this stage, as long as they don't interfere with stock storylines, as there won't be any more to interfere with it later. And the long term plot tends to contradict itself on several occasions anyways, so its not a major crisis anyways.
The point of remaking these older games is to provide a way to more modern gamers to experience the enchanting wonder of the Ultima games. This way the series will be kept alive even if no new titles are released under the name.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Then we need a 3-d verson of Beer Run.
"Artisians on the roof!"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dsladic/vice/vice.html
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I guess I assume that when they said "adding detail" they meant adding graphic detail (rendering)...
I could be wrong...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
not only was it full of nasty monsters, but where the nasty mosters were, you couldnt see what you were running into because it was in the deep forests.
when i ran into those damn dragons i nearly pissed my pants.
i also remember being able to steal massive amounts of crap from dawn because of the "AI" (and i use that term REALLY loosely) of the guards in Dawn.
then i'd run out, rinse, repeat.
... hi bingo
The great thing about Pirates! is that it runs at proper speed on modern machines. All you need to find is one of the versions with the ASM hack so it runs as an executable. Pirates! Gold, on the other hand, required VESA, which blows blows blows. Quick tip: Find one relative, then find the lost inca gold. Then, find the next relative. New map, new inca treasure! Repeat for all relatives. Boom, baby!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I had it worked out so that when I wanted to play U7, I used a specialized config.sys that would load a bare-bones OS so I could have the memory I needed to play, and when I was doing work I'd boot to the "regular" config.sys, which gave me access to all my stuff.
:(
Does anyone know where one can actually buy the game these days? I think I still have the disks around, but I don't know where they are.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
When are they going to do their interpretation of nethack? I want to see my ascii characters in full 3d rendered action!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Dungeon master was remade in java
http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~alandale/dmjava/
The version supplied is a new advanture... it's really cool, but what's best is you can play the original dungeon master I levels as well. Grab the levels at http://bigcalm.freeservers.com
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Do they have the rights to this? Or is U One Public Domain?
Was it created before 1923? If not, it's under de facto perpetual copyright, as Congress has an unwritten agreement with Disney Enterprises to pass a bill every 20 years that extends the term of all subsisting copyrights by 20 more years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Isn't 'Ultima' a trademark from Origin/EA?
Are they forgoing it? Do these companiese have to pay them to be call their products like that, or are they just waiting to sue them afterward and capture all the profit, if they're succesful?
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
i dont think that anyone could squeeze anything of value into 64k.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nice sentiment... and it's something I'd love to see myself. However, let's look at Hollywood as an example. They remake movies from old movies or TV shows all the time, knowing they are working with a proven idea, and also they can cash in on the nostalgia factor. The problem is that with few exceptions, these remakes suck!
I wouldn't have any high expectations for a remake of something classic like the old Ultima games (for the record I played 2, 3, and 4, and recently picked up the reissued bundle of the whole series). However, I would be ticked to be proved wrong. Some remakes are good.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
all I want for xmas is a side scrolling space shoot-em-up. Or an omnidirectional multi-fire shootem-up. Or pretty much any shootem-up. As long as they are fast, have LOADS of powerups, a LOUD soundtrack, and endless streams of baddies in formation punctuated by over-rendered bosses.
I would pay through the NOSE for that [mental image you DIDN'T need].
I miss my amiga sometimes. It liked to run 3-d games as much as I like to play them: not at all.
in the Beer sense? How about speech (ie opensource?)?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Hello,
Answering to some of the concerns posted here:
"too bad they aren't using a decent well-tested engine though"
-If you are stating this from playing our Tech Demo 1.0, this demo uses a build of the engine that is long outdated. A tech demo 2 will be released in the upcoming months featuring a much more powerful and polished engine, with some of gameplay code already avaible.
"I'm worried about their claim of "adding more details"."
"If they make all of those changes, how can it still be considered Ultima?"
- This has certainly been a concern that has been talked over in our message boards, and more than frequently end up in purists vs revisionists discussions.
My views are that this is common for any kind of franchise and remake projects, which require revisions of the original subject. This is another time, the technology has evolved drasticly, and people have today different expectations about what a game should offer. Creating new content and revising the old is unavoidable in the Industry.
We certainly take artistic liberties, but we try to keep our changes within the context and make this game feel like an Ultima when being played. While we unfortunately do not have Richard Garriot working with us, we have die hard Ultima fans who know the storyline extensively, countless Internet databases, and our own belief that we can make a compelling and involving storyline from the overly simplistic aspects of the original.
Please feel free to visit our boards to discuss this subject.
"Are there so few new ideas in the world that we have to pick up the old ones?"
"This just seems to be a marketing scheme to pimp their new 3d-engine"
Actually this is something that has little to do with lack of ideas, much less money-making. This project is being made by Ultima fans who would like to celebrate the series and make a tribute to the fan community by remaking the original game and bringing up once again the experience of visiting Sosaria.
We have each several ideas for different kind of games and original plots, but liking Ultima so much, we have all been brought together to work on our own version of the first Ultima, pretty much in the same manner many of the other fans would make their own if given the chance to.
"You can never go back. I fear all this project will do is demonstrate the reality isn't a match for my memory of the past. "
I cannot agree more.
Certainly all of us have good memories of playing Ultima for hours at some point of our lives. We are not attempting to replace these memories. You can naturally play the original U1 today and it wont be the same experience. We are trying to make though a whole new experience, but that still relates to the previous trips to Britannia, in context and looks.
To those who would not like to let go the original U1 and what they feel at playing it, they can always stick to the original, and there's something quite cool about it. Without a doubt, we cannot please every fan, though we attempt to hear all.
With your input, I'm pretty sure we can make a better game. Please feel welcome to visit our boards and post your views there. You'll certainly be heard.
-Ralph Damiani
Artist/PR Peroxide DK.
If an omnidirectional multi-fire shootem-up is your bag I do hope you own the wonder that is Bangai-O for the Dreamcast. Treasure are keeping the insane shooter alive almost single-handedly these days.
If its PC-based scrolly shooting you need, get after Star Monkey from Small Rockets. Fancy 3d lighting effects from your graphics card, but its still a vertical scroller.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Thanks for the heads up, but no tv => no dreamcast. I will check out star monkey tho.