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Anyone with taste knows that Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 were amongst the greatest RPGs in the history of forever. Thus, I thought the rest of you might be interested in this link, which is an interview with one of the designers as well as scanned in development notes for Underworld 1: http://underworld.ultimacodex.com/come-on-down-britannia-is-hosed-an-interview-with-dan-schmidt/
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Mar 27, 2012 17:30
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UUW desperately needs a remake. I've tried to play it a couple of times in the last few years and it literally hurts my eyes to look at so I couldn't get far, but from what I played I think the gameplay has held up really well. There was that System Shock upgrade last year, I wonder if anyone plans to give the same treatment to UUW since it runs on the same engine?
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Mar 27, 2012 17:36
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Adam Bowen posted:UUW desperately needs a remake. I've tried to play it a couple of times in the last few years and it literally hurts my eyes to look at so I couldn't get far, but from what I played I think the gameplay has held up really well. There was that System Shock upgrade last year, I wonder if anyone plans to give the same treatment to UUW since it runs on the same engine? There are two projects mentioned at the Ultima Codex that aim (or aimed) at an update of UUW: Abysmal and Underworld Adventures. The second is dead, but the first seems to be ongoing.
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Mar 27, 2012 17:40
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Adam Bowen posted:There was that System Shock upgrade last year Wait, what? I seem to have missed this.
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Mar 27, 2012 17:45
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Over the years I've seen at least half a dozen Underworld remakes come and go. It seems like it might be suited for an iPad remake/release, that might be our best bet to see it get serious attention.
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Mar 27, 2012 17:46
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Veib posted:Wait, what? I seem to have missed this. Ok apparently it's way older than I thought and not exactly a remake, but they fixed the awful controls and added in some higher resolutions. The game is far more playable this way. http://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=211.0
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Mar 27, 2012 17:47
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Adam Bowen posted:Ok apparently it's way older than I thought and not exactly a remake, but they fixed the awful controls and added in some higher resolutions. The game is far more playable this way. http://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=211.0 Oh ok, I knew about that one since it indeed is way older than last year. It's really good. (Oh and also the Looking Glass game that needs to be remade first is Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, but that doesn't belong in this thread.)
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Mar 27, 2012 17:56
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So is Lazarus really worth getting? I've always wanted to play Ultima but the graphics put me off...a free remake in a 3D engine just seems too good to be true.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:02
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I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but the Exile/Avernum series and the Geneforge series are quite good CRPGs as well. Spiderweb Software also made Nethergate and Avadon (Currently in the newest Humble Bundle!) which are solid CRPGs. They are all worth a look.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:12
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It's been years since I tried to play any of them but i seem to remember geneforge being punishingly difficult. c/d?
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Mar 27, 2012 18:23
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I've just read through the starting pages of the thread, and saw there was talk about doing a Wizardry IV LP. I'm probably not the best person to be doing this, and I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable as Boldor is, but it just so happens that I started a Wizardry 4 LP a few days ago in the Let's Play subforum: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474130 Just wanted to point that out. 
CrookedB fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 19:05
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Adam Bowen posted:UUW desperately needs a remake. I've tried to play it a couple of times in the last few years and it literally hurts my eyes to look at so I couldn't get far, but from what I played I think the gameplay has held up really well. There was that System Shock upgrade last year, I wonder if anyone plans to give the same treatment to UUW since it runs on the same engine? Have you tried Arx Fatalis from 2002? It really captures some key elements of Ultima Underworld feel wonderfully, and is still a great game to boot. Edit: 4.99€ in Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/1700/ $5.99 in GOG http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arx_fatalis
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Mar 27, 2012 19:10
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the black husserl posted:So is Lazarus really worth getting? I've always wanted to play Ultima but the graphics put me off...a free remake in a 3D engine just seems too good to be true. Yes a 1000 times yes in fact Id say Lazarus is even better than the original some characters get fleshed out quests added and expanded upon and the music is phenomenal. Id say the only real problem with it would be the early game combat. As far as getting into Ultima goes have you tried Ultima 7/Serpent Isle? I know they still look dated but the graphics are a ton better than the previous titles.
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Mar 27, 2012 19:19
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So an RPG called Geneforge got mentioned a few times in the steam thread and people made it sound pretty neat but I'm still kinda confused about it. It looks pretty Old School, so does anyone familiar with it care to give a bit of a rundown about it?  
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Mar 27, 2012 19:27
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Lunael posted:Have you tried Arx Fatalis from 2002? It really captures some key elements of Ultima Underworld feel wonderfully, and is still a great game to boot. Arx Fatalis is good, but prepare yourself for some really godawful voice acting at times.
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Mar 27, 2012 20:03
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Quarex posted:Keef the Thief Oh man, I had that game, and wanted to love it so bad, but as you say the way they mixed "adventure" and "RPG" was really bad. I was a huge fan of both genres and could get absolutely nowhere in that game. Not an RPG-adventure hybrid, but a graphical text adventure game that satirized RPG games/adventures, and is really goddamn good to this day, was Eric the Unready. Abandonia.org posted:Eric the Unready is one of those games that you will remember for life. Once you have played the game, it becomes a part of you. You will never be able to look at anything the same way again. The game begins like any other adventure game set in the medieval era in Britain - beautiful green hills surrounding a small village with a fairytale castle on the highest point. But this is the first, last and ONLY time this game will ever look and feel like an ordinary adventure game.
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Mar 27, 2012 20:19
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I still have my complete in box copy of Eric the Unready in my closet, it really is an awesome game.
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Mar 27, 2012 20:27
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Galaga Galaxian posted:So an RPG called Geneforge got mentioned a few times in the steam thread and people made it sound pretty neat but I'm still kinda confused about it. It looks pretty Old School, so does anyone familiar with it care to give a bit of a rundown about it? It's a turn-based game where instead of having multiple characters, you control a single mage who can summon up a variety of beasties to custom-design a party as the situation demands. It's a little bit like oldschool CRPG meets Pokemon. I only played the first Geneforge, years ago, but I enjoyed it -- the writing and world design are decent, and there are good-sized demos on the Spiderweb website which give a fair impression of what the games are like.
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Mar 27, 2012 20:34
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h_double posted:It's a turn-based game where instead of having multiple characters, you control a single mage who can summon up a variety of beasties to custom-design a party as the situation demands. It's a little bit like oldschool CRPG meets Pokemon. To clarify a bit, there are three classes (more in later games, I think?). The summoner/magic (Shaper), the magic user/melee (agent) and the tank/summoner (Guardian). You don't HAVE to be a summoning mage but I really don't understand why you'd not want to. I never found the spell system to be very engaging and always enjoyed creating powerful summons. Geneforge is great. Writing has never been Spiderweb's strong suit but the mechanics are fairly solid with some mediocre at best indie (for 2000 or thereabouts) graphics. If you do get the whole pack, and there's no reason not to. I want to say the first game is the most novel, the second probably has the best mix of original story and gameplay, and all the others are kind of eh. I recall Geneforge 3 being the worst and Geneforge 5 being alright, though. I don't think I played 4. Edit: I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but maybe I missed it. Age of Decadence finally had a beta demo released about 5 days ago. http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2488.0.html It's a post apocalyptic RPG with a Roman aesthetic. It seems to be pretty hardcore given that within 5 minutes of playing the demo I was tricked into following a guy and ambushed by two not nice people. It's also kind of impressive since it's been in development so long. Sankis fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 20:39
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Is the only music in The Bard's Tale at the Adventurer's Guild and the stuff your bard plays? Its very quiet.
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Mar 27, 2012 22:28
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AlmightyBob posted:Is the only music in The Bard's Tale at the Adventurer's Guild and the stuff your bard plays? Its very quiet. The proper soundtrack is the unmistakable whirring of an Apple II floppy drive loading your next encounter.
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Mar 27, 2012 23:31
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SpRahl posted:Yes a 1000 times yes in fact Id say Lazarus is even better than the original some characters get fleshed out quests added and expanded upon and the music is phenomenal. Id say the only real problem with it would be the early game combat. Excellent! Do you have the same high praise for the Ultima 6 project?
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Mar 27, 2012 23:37
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Lunael posted:Have you tried Arx Fatalis from 2002? It really captures some key elements of Ultima Underworld feel wonderfully, and is still a great game to boot. Yeah I've gotten more than halfway through it more than once. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't think it's a very good game and I always get bored pretty quickly.
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Mar 27, 2012 23:47
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The perspective in The Bard's Tale is throwing me off. If I look down the street, the building that I'm standing next to looks like its 1 step ahead of me, but if I turn, I'm standing right in front of it.
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Mar 27, 2012 23:50
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AlmightyBob posted:The perspective in The Bard's Tale is throwing me off. If I look down the street, the building that I'm standing next to looks like its 1 step ahead of me, but if I turn, I'm standing right in front of it. Those old 1st-person RPGs did that to better give you a sense of where you were. In a true 1st-person view you'd only see the step ahead of you and the walls to its side; if you could see a little bit off to your left and right it made it easier to map. The city in Bard's Tale 1 is a bit difficult to navigate; fortunately there was a map in the inside cover. Dammit now I want to break out BT again. I never did get past that evil dungeon in BT2 where no magic works... Also when it comes to the music, basically with any really old CRPG (or game in general for that matter) made before 1990 or so you shouldn't expect to get much in the way of music at all. Those were the days before sound cards where the best you could get was blips and bloops out of your speakers. Back then the tinny music from DOS games you got with a dedicated sound card was mindblowing.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:14
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Genpei Turtle posted:Those old 1st-person RPGs did that to better give you a sense of where you were. In a true 1st-person view you'd only see the step ahead of you and the walls to its side; if you could see a little bit off to your left and right it made it easier to map. The city in Bard's Tale 1 is a bit difficult to navigate; fortunately there was a map in the inside cover. I guess I'm just spoiled by modern games. I'll make it through this bad boy.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:23
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Genpei Turtle posted:Also when it comes to the music, basically with any really old CRPG (or game in general for that matter) made before 1990 or so you shouldn't expect to get much in the way of music at all. Those were the days before sound cards where the best you could get was blips and bloops out of your speakers. Back then the tinny music from DOS games you got with a dedicated sound card was mindblowing. What Bard's Tale (and especially BT2) managed with the PC speaker was loving awesome. The theme song to BT2 is so catchy I still find myself whistling it from time to time. Of course I also hum the soundtrack to the NES game Willow when I'm hiking so take that for what it's worth.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:33
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Fintilgin posted:Anyone with taste knows that Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 were amongst the greatest RPGs in the history of forever. Thus, I thought the rest of you might be interested in this link, which is an interview with one of the designers as well as scanned in development notes for Underworld 1: Haha, I wonder why Origin didn't let "unobtainium" through? It's in the original Might and Magic. Not to mention the Avatar movie (which does not have anything to do with Ultima). eithedog posted:The funny thing about Elvira games was that you had a limited carrying weight, but the game didn't include weight of items inside containers (this is actually something that most of games do - M&M6 if I'm not mistaken) MM6-MM8 use a grid inventory system, not a weight limit system. The old Infocom games, including the original Zork I, permitted you to nest items inside of containers inside of containers. This led to any number of bugs which Infocom spent many patches trying to fix. Some of these are not fixed even in the latest releases; once you get to 8 levels of containers inside of containers in any Infocom game, it will crash. They did properly account for the weight of such items despite the bugs. It should be mentioned in those days the simple concept of having a weight limit on inventory was a marvel of technology and innovation. You can nest containers in Ultima 6-7 and Ultima Underworld 1-2, and the game will properly account for the weight of anything in them. If you try this in U6 or UUW1 be sure to have the latest patches applied, as those games can go bonkers if you either put too many items inside a container, or put too many containers inside of other containers. Nethack will also let you put containers inside of containers, with no limit. Strange things can happen if you do this, including with weight, but it's deliberately programmed into the game. Peas and Rice posted:What Bard's Tale (and especially BT2) managed with the PC speaker was loving awesome. The theme song to BT2 is so catchy I still find myself whistling it from time to time. Of course I also hum the soundtrack to the NES game Willow when I'm hiking so take that for what it's worth. The pinnacle of PC speaker music was the original Secret of Monkey Island. I thought you'd know this with your avatar.  After around that time, it was assumed you owned a sound card, as at that point the cheap ones didn't cost much more than one game.Also, humming the music to the NES Willow (not the PC Willow, which is an entirely different game) is not weird, because the music in that game is awesome. It's not Castlevania 3 level awesome, but it's close.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:47
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Fintilgin posted:Arx Fatalis is good, but prepare yourself for some really godawful voice acting at times. "Do you think that Falan Orbapl... Orbapl ... Falan Orbaplanax. Falan Orbaplanax ... Falan Orbaplanax. 'If you're feeling gas, or indigestion--Orbaplanax can help!'" I really do not remember the voices being notably bad, actually, other than maybe the protagonist (if you were not silent, honestly I forgot at this point). The trolls were awesome. AlmightyBob posted:I still have my complete in box copy of Eric the Unready in my closet, it really is an awesome game.  Genpei Turtle posted:Back then the tinny music from DOS games you got with a dedicated sound card was mindblowing. 
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Mar 28, 2012 00:59
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Boldor posted:The pinnacle of PC speaker music was the original Secret of Monkey Island. I thought you'd know this with your avatar. Monkey Island was one of the first games I played with my best friend's brand-spanking-new AdLib card (on his machine I should point out). I'm not actually sure if I've ever heard the PC speaker music.  Castlevania 3 had such a great loving soundtrack. That was actually the game that made me realize just how much more a developer could squeeze from a console or a set of hardware if they were really truly innovative. Limited options, but by god if you were good at making games you could really push the graphics and sound and gameplay to do some incredible things. Edit: quote:The first game I ever played on a computer that had a sound card was King's Quest V. Somehow, the game so utterly failed to impress me that I spent more time being fascinated by Encarta's "spoken encyclopedia entry" feature than playing that game. That's not really surprising because it was a really bad game, especially compared to KQ6 (the high point of the series in my opinion.) The voice acting on the CD version is so hilariously atrocious - if you ever get a chance to listen to it, try to see how long you can last. I'm pretty sure they had the people who packed boxes in the warehouse reading lines at some points and were using someone's handheld mini tape player to record them. quote:Oh no, my whole life revolves around things I got into around 1991 1988-1996 but yeah.
Peas and Rice fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 01:05
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Quarex posted:
Found it at a goodwill maybe 7 years ago
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Mar 28, 2012 01:19
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Quarex posted:my whole life revolves around things I got into around 1991 Thread title?
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Mar 28, 2012 01:55
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Peas and Rice posted:What Bard's Tale (and especially BT2) managed with the PC speaker was loving awesome. The theme song to BT2 is so catchy I still find myself whistling it from time to time. Of course I also hum the soundtrack to the NES game Willow when I'm hiking so take that for what it's worth. True enough. Interesting factoid that you may or may not know--some of the BT music is actually remixed pieces of classical composers. I learned much later that my favorite bard song from BT1 was in fact Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre." Though the music in BT1 may have been great, I like it better on real instruments. 
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Mar 28, 2012 02:03
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Need to hurry up and get my conjurer to level 3 so he can heal, doing it at the temple is so loving expensive.
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Mar 28, 2012 02:55
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Started playing Might and Magic 1 last night after buying the first six games from GOG on the weekend after reading this thread. After getting thoroughly lost just in the starting town, I decided I had to do this right so went and bought myself some graph paper today. Going to get my old school game on tonight, however much my boyfriend may laugh at me for playing crappy old games. I know deep down inside that what I'm doing is cool.
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Mar 28, 2012 03:32
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the black husserl posted:Excellent! Do you have the same high praise for the Ultima 6 project?
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Mar 28, 2012 04:37
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Is anybody willing to write up a primer for combat in darklands? Following rope kid's advice I went to jack up some thieves and found the combat interface to be totally baffling. Three of my party members got their asses kicked immediately while my beefiest fighter killed all of the thieves without me successfully giving him any orders. I really want to get into this game but there is a definite learning curve associated with the UI. Edit: also one of the banking clans gave me a quest to kill a raubritter as soon as I walked in the door, before I had done anything. It was literally my first stop after character creation. andrew smash fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 05:11
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seorin posted:There are two ways to "fix" this, if I understand what's happening. First would be to play on a lower resolution, second would be to raise your character's perception (just hack the character if it bugs you too much). The game only lets you see so far and it originally ran at a fairly low resolution (800x600 I think?) so if you're playing it at a really high resolution it might seem really weird and restrictive. I understand similar (though different) problems happen in the Fallout games when you play them at a very high resolution - something about far away stuff being buggy because you're not supposed to be able to see it. This is from a few pages back but I finally figured out what my issue was. For whatever reason when my PE was less than 10 I could see anywhere but as soon as I increased it above that it would limit me as intended. I guess it's just a weird bug. Arcanum ended up being a lot of fun though!
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Mar 28, 2012 08:57
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zedar posted:Started playing Might and Magic 1 last night after buying the first six games from GOG on the weekend after reading this thread. After getting thoroughly lost just in the starting town, I decided I had to do this right so went and bought myself some graph paper today. Going to get my old school game on tonight, however much my boyfriend may laugh at me for playing crappy old games. I know deep down inside that what I'm doing is cool. That's the spirit of the thread right there.  Phoix posted:This is from a few pages back but I finally figured out what my issue was. For whatever reason when my PE was less than 10 I could see anywhere but as soon as I increased it above that it would limit me as intended. I guess it's just a weird bug. Arcanum ended up being a lot of fun though! Glad to hear it! Arcanum is one of my favorite games of all time. I just love the music and the style, and all the little details, and oh god I'm gonna go play it again now aren't I.
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Mar 28, 2012 09:45
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DrManiac posted:
I finished Wizardry 8 over the new year, and the most appropriate words I can find to describe it is god-drat charming. Found it in a charity shop for £3 ages back, and sat on it for far too long. Now that I'm up to date with this thread I wish it it was still installed so I could make some screenshots and do a proper write up, but for a decade old game it runs perfectly, has brilliant graphics, is a great RPG, and is the first fantasy game I've played where I passed navy seal selection for space rhinoceroses. The only negative thing I can think of is a slight hump midway through the game where the random encounters are slightly too many and well-matched, but after not too long the game gives you a mechanism to avoid most, and it works well. It still has an active community, and a mega-mod was recently released that adds a ton of new stuff (like monsters ripped from the Morrowind files), though I don't recommend it for first time play. About once a year I ask the following question about The Elder Scrolls: Arena and noone has ever known what I'm talking about - if anyone here does I would be eternally grateful. As I remember it, the main plot of the game consists of exploring about 16 dungeons, alternatively containing directions to, and pieces of the broken Magic Staff. Each time I played I would get to about 5 pieces, sleep in an inn, and be shown a cutscene of being killed by an assassin, game over. I couldn't identify any clues to why this was happening or how I could prevent it. This was 1995 and installed from a pile of well travelled, pirated floppies, so my best guess then was that it was some devious copy protection, but if anyone knows a proper reason, I'd love to hear. (BG talk - started playing Tutu, doing the usual restart-5-times routine, and every single time I think -this time- Gorion will win )
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