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You could condense the last line to "Ultima 9, it's loving awful". It's been a lot of time since I last played U8 and I didn't really explore it top to bottom like 7 and SI. Is the exact deal between Guardian and Titans spelt somewhere in game? Do they send him tribute in some shape or form (souls, magic materials or energy, etc)? They clearly took orders from the Guardian, what with the "invader" they "defeated" being Big Red himself taking a dive as fake as wrestling.
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Mar 26, 2019 17:28
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Pierzak posted:What are you talking about, they never made Ultima 9. 
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Mar 26, 2019 18:04
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Ultima 8 has books here and there that are a wink-and-nod reference to how disappointing Eye of the Beholder 3 was, which I knew, but what I did not know, or forgot, was the rejoinder SSI made in Wake of the Ravager, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyzWjl9f7jE&t=526s EDIT: I suppose there are spoilers, so be careful, I guess. Tokyo Sexwale fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 20:23
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Jason Sextro posted:Ultima 8 has books here and there that are a wink-and-nod reference to how disappointing Eye of the Beholder 3 was, which I knew, but what I did not know, or forgot, was the rejoinder SSI made in Wake of the Ravager, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyzWjl9f7jE&t=526s Oh my loving god. That is amazing. EDIT: Eye of the Beholder 1 is one of my favorite games. I never bothered to beat the third game. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 20:45
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"The PC must solve some drat puzzle to get the key." --Lost Vale Plot Plan. "drat Puzzle?" --Lost Vale Art List.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:17
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TerraGoetia posted:(Summarize Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness through Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle here.) I, uh, can't speak for the Ultima Underworld series, but the Worlds of Ultima games (which I think are canon to the main series) are: The Savage Empire: After restoring Lord British to the throne, the Avatar went with an old-time news reporter to a lost valley that was something out of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. United a bunch of jungle tribes in the land of Eodon and killed a giant ant-people queen. Martian Dreams: The Avatar has a steampunk adventure on Mars, and blows Grigori Rasputin apart with an M60 machine gun.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:43
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Omobono posted:Steve was not the Avatar we needed, but absolutely the one we deserved. Part of me always hoped we would see Steve the Avatar again. She will always live on in our hearts because she would probably kill us if she ever found out we forgot.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:09
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I honestly think the Guardian doesn't need an explanation. He's a big red dude who shows up in universes and conquers them, mostly using social manipulation with a side order of weird magic that doesn't seem to play by any of the rules that the Avatar's does. Having him originate from Brittania, whether he comes from the Shadowlords or from Ultima 9's weird-rear end explanation or whatever, actually takes away quite a lot of the interesting alienness from him.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:43
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Welp. I'm taking a dive into hacking my save file. I wanted to be able to change the game flags using the in-game debug menu, but it's borked to all hell. A) I killed a bunch of Sorcerers thinking it was a-okay because no one insta-killed me. Need to... un-angry the populace a bit. B) Since I can't get the debug menu working, I need another way to enable the Heart of the Earth cut content so we can see it in-game. I can tell where the flags are stored in the save file. And I have a hex-numbered list of all of the flags in the game, and their names. Some are easy to interpret, like "rhianMet". Others are a bit less straightforward, like "butthead" or "yojustchill" I need to do a little reverse engineering, but that can be fun. Funtime Edit: I was able to get the debug flag setter working. It turns out you need to install a small patch for the debug menu to work properly in this case. I guess they didn't feel the need to include such a file in the shipped version of the game? I was able to activate the Heart of the Earth cut content in a trial run. Now to map out which debug flags are set in my save file, vs. a prior file. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 23:53
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Since The Guardian is basically the anti-avatar, I like to think that he's just another idiot from Earth who happened to have a magic stone circle in his backyard and he's just out loving around and having fun. Lord British and I think Iolo and Shamino and a few others are all supposed to be from Earth originally, and old LB is basically a living god in Britannia. Theres some kind of red sun of Krypton thing where you're all shmucks at home but supermans on other worlds. This is probably putting more thought into it than Richard Garriot ever did though.
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Mar 27, 2019 01:52
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Work progresses on the Lost Vale Cut Content update. I am aiming for done by Thursday so I can leave Friday night to visit friends for the weekend.
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Mar 27, 2019 04:13
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Lost Vale was finished when it was cancelled, wasn't it? I'm honestly surprised that no copies of it have ever leaked out into the wilds of the internet.
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Mar 27, 2019 13:41
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Randalor posted:Lost Vale was finished when it was cancelled, wasn't it? I'm honestly surprised that no copies of it have ever leaked out into the wilds of the internet. Yes, it was finished. I have plenty to say about the Lost Vale. Should be up tomorrow night.
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Mar 27, 2019 14:12
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I think that for most of the magic systems in this game it is sufficient for me to list spells and their reagents / foci. Sorcery is a very different story. It involves the painstaking placement of spell components and several restrictions on what constitutes a successful spell. I am thinking that I should screenshot each spell in addition to giving a description of the placement. I find the visual approach more understandable (I even drew pictures of the spells when I played the game as a kid), but at the same time I'm worried the colorblind people might not be able to follow the placement of colored candles. Also, I think I may copy some of the maps from Pagan The Beautiful into this LP (as timgs, because they're rather big pictures). Two reasons: 1)The site is old, and it would be a way of preserving the maps if the site should go down. 2) It would probably help the viewer if they could view the maps in-thread rather than going offsite. Having maps to refer to will be necessary once we start posting the Catacombs updates. In general, if there's anything you want to see, or need me to change, let me know.
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Mar 27, 2019 21:35
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TerraGoetia posted:I'm worried the colorblind people might not be able to follow the placement of colored candles. Should've become a Theurgist instead TerraGoetia posted:In general, if there's anything you want to see, or need me to change, let me know. Pierzak fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 03:16
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Snorb posted:I, uh, can't speak for the Ultima Underworld series, but the Worlds of Ultima games (which I think are canon to the main series) are: I can stand in for Ultima Underworld since I'm a huge fan of them. Ultima Underworld 1 slots in between Ultima 6 and Ultima 7 part 1, though it has very little effect on either one (other than hinting there's been a lot of time between the first and the second). The plot thrust is: - The Avatar goes to Britannia at the behest of a dream-ghost - An evil wizard and his troll buddy kidnap a noble lass and frame the avatar for it - The avatar is banished into the Stygian Abyss (a Bad Place) by the father of said lass - Avatar navigates a failed subterranian society and collects various items/plot coupons - The avatar kills the wizard (who is the dream-ghost's brother), saves the girl, and then banishes a nasty demon into the Etherial Void Yeah, it's not the best plot. The atmosphere and setting is what makes it. Ultima Underworld 2 sits between Ultima 7 part 1 and Ultima 7 part 2. It has marginally more effect on the plot (though not much) but fits much better into the overall Ultima mythology. - Everyone important goes to Lord British's castle and has a party because they stopped the Guardian at the end of Ultima 7 part 1. - A giant dome of blackrock suddenly encases the castle, stunting magic within it and trapping everyone inside while the Guardian's forces march against the (leaderless) forces of Britannia - The Avatar searches the sewers and finds an 'echo' of the spell has created a gem that lets him travel to different worlds - The Avatar visits a number of different worlds, most of which are under the control of the Guardian. We get a lot of insight into just how terrible it is if he takes a place over, since all these places are pretty horrible in some way. - The Avatar roots out the traitor in Britannia castle and using various plot coupons and the help of a strategy guide/moon logic manages to do all the stuff necessary to shatter the Blackrock dome This one was fantastic and remains one of my favorite games. Soul Reaver fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 03:56
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LP Recording is back on track. Save game issues fixed.
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Mar 28, 2019 07:18
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Pierzak posted:The tried and true Sorcerers' way is to let demons sort them out. They'll learn to summon correctly or they will die (and probably suffer eternal damnation). I'm a lovely artist when it comes to image manipulation. I will do my best to mark up the maps with interesting locations we visit in the LP.
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Mar 28, 2019 07:21
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Sorry for not posting the Lost Vale update tonight. I'm still working on it. It may go up tomorrow (Friday) or I may push it back until Monday night. Thank you for your patience.
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Mar 29, 2019 10:33
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I'm sorry for the delays. My work life has picked up in intensity and I was kinda worn out for a few days. Work is continuing on the LP. I have a substantial amount of gameplay footage that I just need to turn into writeups and screenshots. I'm pushing to have updates done and posted by this weekend. If you catch me at all slacking, don't be afraid to crack the whip.
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Apr 4, 2019 05:44
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Apr 4, 2019 06:59
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Or don't if you're too busy. Whichever, it's all good. Looking forward to it, though. Like I said before, I'm pretty sure I've never heard anything about the Lost Vale stuff.
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Apr 4, 2019 12:36
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The Lost Vale This is not a gameplay update, but it is important for understanding Ultima 8. Instead, we will be looking at the canceled expansion for Ultima 8: The Lost Vale. We’ll be using the Lost Vale Design Documents (available as a pack-in with Ultima 8 through GoG), as well as some leaked game pictures. I hope this look at what could have been will interest you. Ultima 7: The Black Gate started the trend of Ultima games having expansions with the Forge of Virtue. Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle would also be followed with an expansion, called The Silver Seed. It seemed natural then that Ultima 8 would receive its own expansion. And indeed, The Lost Vale was completed in 1994. Electronic Arts made the decision to cancel the project just before the duplication process. Ultima 8 simply didn’t sell enough copies for the expansion to make economic sense. Unfortunately, the Lost Vale data was never archived, and so the game is lost forever. A physical box for the game surfaced on the Internet in 2005. It later sold for just under $2,000 to a private collector. These scans were hosted on the Ultima Fandom Wiki.   The box mentions a Bag of Reagents. This is similar to the Ring of Reagents from Ultima 7 Part 2. However, in U7-2, spells were cast from a spellbook. This means the programmers could simply check to see if the ring was equipped before casting a spell, if so, it succeeds. In Ultima 8, Necromancy and Sorcery function by the placement of reagents in specific ways, so the same strategy would not work. If the bag simply allowed you to withdraw an infinite amount of reagents, this would give the players the ability to cause absolute chaos in the game world. Some reagents, like Daemon Bone, have collision like normal objects. You can “step up” onto a Daemon Bone and thereby not be on the ground. Placement of Daemon Bone can also mess with NPC pathing. It’s unclear to me if the designers thought of these issues when proposing a Bag of Reagents, or what their solution would have been. The Bag of Reagents was a point of contention in the design documents. One voice was that that Bag would be given for completing the Lost Vale content. This view is consistent with the original intention that the Titans’ magic does not work in the Lost Vale. This would have been a major kick to players, having spent so much effort to obtain and learn to cast these spells, and then have them yanked away. Another developer voiced concerns that taking the player’s powers would be frustrating and unfun. The whole point of the Lost Vale content was to give the Avatar a power boost; the Bag of Reagents should be given early on in this view. Another possible power upgrade would have been in the form of a new Zealan Ceremonial Shield. In our LP so far, we saw one of these at Mythran’s home. We also found a book in Bentic’s library pointing to the existence of six Zealan gods of emotion. We’ll see three of these gods in our LP, and the other three were to be key figures in The Lost Vale. These shields are not equipable in the base Pagan game. However, this one would be special. It would max out the player’s armor rating, allowing them to discard the rest of their equipped armor. As well as being a powerful item, this would free up several pounds from the character’s carry weight. You may have seen in this LP that we hit issues with the carry weight very early. This was a common frustration for players that this item could have helped with. This new Zealan Ceremonial Shield would prove to be very important to the Lost Vale Plot. In the documents, it is sometimes referred to as the “Magic Frisbee.” The expansion promised two new monsters: harpies and water zombies. No additional information on these monsters is to be found in the Lost Vale design documents. We learned in our LP that those lost to the sea (such as Toran, who was executed at the beginning of the game) are doomed to serve wander the sea floor for eternity. These water zombies would have been slaves to Hydros’s power. Nothing is known about the background of the harpies, except that one of the designers thought they were an unoriginal enemy and that the team should come up with something cooler / unique to Pagan. The Lost Vale Plot: Note that this is an interpretation of the plot from the Plot Plan and the Plot Synopsis, along with additional Lost Vale documents. Lord British manages to contact the Avatar on Pagan, telling him to learn more about the Zealan people from Mythran. How Lord British knows about the Zealans, or that the Avatar is on Pagan, is a mystery. Mythran at the same time gets a vision of either Lord British or Nystul, telling him that someone is going to seek him out for knowledge about the Zealans. When the Avatar visits, Mythran tells the Avatar of a guy named Galjeron who sought the Zealans in the past. He suggests that Galjeron is behind the double doors in the Plateau Cave (we'll see those later in the LP). Depending on the source, the door is opened in one of two ways. Either the Avatar solves "some drat puzzle" (Not pictured: any puzzle design), or the Avatar uses a composition of reagents to contact Galjeron, whose ghost gives you the key. One the Avatar gets through the door, he finds that the way to the Lost Vale is sealed off by the powers of the four elemental Titans. To pass through this barrier, the Avatar must find the four elemental gemstones (called the "coupons" in the Plot Plan). Now the Avatar has to go get the gemstones from a dungeon. The documents do not specify where this dungeon would be, but we do know it would be divided into four sections, each designed after one of the elements. There was talk of there being an "interesting NPC" here that would be a servant of the Titans, there to block your progress (and establish a villain?). From what I can tell from the art list, this NPC was never created and the concept was probably scrapped. Bear in mind when reading the Lost Vale documents (or this update) that the schedule given was April 15th to August 1st of 1994. That is not a lot of time to design and develop a product. That being in mind, these documents are not necessarily accurate to the developed product. They represent the Lost Vale as it was at on point early in the production of the expansion. Elements could have been added, removed, or repurposed on the fly to create the best game they could within the timeframe they were given. Once the Avatar has disabled the elemental forces with the gemstones, he enters the Lost Vale proper. It is described as "once lush and beautiful, but now barren and desolate." One of the designers expressed concern that a barren landscape could be boring to the player. The unnamed designer pushed for the addition of interesting ruins to give the area flavor. The Avatar finds that the Zealans of the Lost Vale have split into two feuding factions, with a High Priestess that is shunned by both. In the Plot Synopsis, Ezrekel, the High Priestess, will only meet with the Avatar if he brings her a representative from both of the feuding groups. This requirement does not exist in the Plot Plan. The "speak excerpt" document highlights a discussion within the team on how Ezrekel would talk to the Avatar. She talks a lot like Yoda in my opinion, with lines like "Accused her of lying the people did." It makes me cringe to read her dialog in this document. The first group of Zealans are hostile to the Avatar, and--at least in the Plot Plan--imprison him. The Avatar is forced to undergo a test to prove his is not a Pagan / to earn their trust. The test is (depending on the source), either to kill a dangerous monster that has made a nest near the group's mushroom farm, or the test is the "Test of Rutbaga." The test involves a plant with long, poisonous spines that houses a delicious fruit. The Avatar is to get the fruit for the group. He fails the test and is poisoned. He can only be cured by Ezrekel, but the group warns him that Ezrekel can no longer talk to the gods (aka: she can't help him). The Art List shows there was work planned on "Test Tree/plant/fruit," so the team probably decided with the Trial of Rutbaga instead of simple monster slaying. This restructured the story. Instead of needing to make friendly with both factions, the Avatar only needed to be poisoned by the first to meet Ezrekel. This makes for a somewhat more selfish story (save yourself, instead of saving the society) and probably fits in better with the dark and destructive nature of Pagan. However, it does make me a bit sad that a chance to act Avatar-ly was scrapped. When the Avatar meets Ezrekel, she tells him that she can no longer speak the the Zealan gods. If she could talk to the gods, she could cure the rutbaga poison. Long ago, during an annual gathering of Zealans called the Great Council, the elemental Titans attacked the present Zealan gods. Those present were sealed in the shrine (called the Shrine of the Wheaties in the Plot Plan). Furthermore, a ceremonial shield is needed to speak with the gods. Ezrekel had the shield, but it was broken, and later stolen. The background further states that two men with the odd names Snori and Hoskuld possibly stole the shield. Snori's family blames Hoskuld's; Hoskuld's family blames Snori's. This feud is possibly meant to mirror the Zealan feud. It is unclear to me if the Snori/Hoskuld feud is actually what is causing the Zealan feud. The Lost Vale Character List gives more personal reasons, such as the Female Elder who hates group #2 because they sell liqour to her alcoholic brother, and the Male Elder of group #2 who blames group #1 for his wife's death. Unfortunately, the Character List's characters are not referred to at all in the Plot Plan or the Plot Synopsis, so it's not clear to what degree the characters were actually implemented in the expansion. Regardless of why the feud is happening, the Avatar is primarily concerned with healing the rutbaga poison. Ezrekel tells him that the gods are the only ones who can help. She tells him to climb the Cliffs of Insanity and reach the home of the gods in the Cloud City. The cliffs are infested with harpies, providing some challenge to the adventure. In the Cloud World, the Avatar would find a message for the Zealan gods of Hate, Love, and Apathy (which we will meet in this LP), stating that the captive gods need their help. The Avatar also finds the two halves of the ceremonial shield on the bodies of two warriors. Upon bringing the shield halves to Ezrekel, she says that restoring the shield would require the faith of all of the Zealans. The Avatar convinces the two groups to come together with Ezrekel at "the Sacred Smallish Unsual-Colored Rock." In a cutscene, the shield is restored, and the ghosts of Snori and Hoskuld appear. The ghosts tell the audience that they both stole a half of the shield, wanting to take the shield to the gods and get it repaired. Thus, the two sides reconsile. So now the Avatar and Ezrekel find the gods encased in "an amber like resin." Ezrekel calls upon the power of the united Zealans, and the gods become free. The gods set the waters flowing, restore the land's fertility, and dispense some wisdom. It's not recorded in any of the documents, but hopefully they remember to heal the Avatar's poison! The ending of the Lost Vale was also recommended as a place to clarify the ending of Pagan a bit, and maybe even tease Ultima 9. Though we have enough source material to make a strong guess as to what The Lost Vale would have been like, there is a lot we cannot be sure of. We do not know the spacial aspect of anything--what dungeons would look like, the layout of the Vale or the Cloud City, or even WHERE many game elements would fit into the map of Pagan. There are contradictory statements about whether Pagan magic would work in the Vale. There is no clue to whether the Character List represents implemented characters or just ideas. There were rumours of a "tiny-tar" spell that would have shrank the Avatar, allowing him to slip through cracks. We have no documentation suggesting what new spells or items might have been added aside from plot-essential things like the shield. There is so much unknown about The Lost Vale, and so many murky points in the official documents. Its final form is a mystery to Ultima fans. If ever a pressed CD of the expansion were found, it would be an amazing journey to compare the result to the documents we have. That concludes my review of the cut Lost Vale expansion. Next update, the Avatar will take on the Slayer dungeon. Stay tuned. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 5, 2019 03:26
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It's painful to know that the work on the expansion was totally completed but then just... discarded. The CD was ready for pressing and everything. That said, I also feel that Ultima expansions are all, almost without exception, pretty much official cheat codes that totally and utterly break the game's challenge. The Forge of Virtue gave you (double!) max stats and a sword that could kill anything just by you asking it to, as well as a bunch of other stuff. The Silver Seed let you cast spells with minimal effort, a helm that eliminated any need for torches, and all kinds of other extremely powerful items. Most of those rewards are so great they basically eliminate trivialize entire chunks of the gameplay (combat, spellcasting, etc etc). It sounds like the planned rewards for The Lost Vale would have followed suit and broken the game even further than it already is. Honestly, I think the game designers never really considered balance when designing their expansions.
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Apr 5, 2019 03:52
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Soul Reaver posted:Honestly, I think the game designers never really considered balance when designing their
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Apr 5, 2019 04:21
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Screenshots are done for the next update. Just need to do the writeup. Expect it posted tomorrow at some point.
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Apr 6, 2019 00:00
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Man... Electronic Arts.   It's hard to imagine just how myopically profit-oriented you would have to be to spend all the money required to fully develop something, and then not spend the extra little bit to actually live up to your job description of "publisher" and release the thing so that you can make money from it. Or maybe Ultima 8 sold so poorly that it would have been kind of a sunk cost fallacy to release The Lost Vale at that point, I don't know. It still seems bizarre. I guess it was 1994 - no digital distribution back then. They would have had to pay for printing/shipping/etc. These days it'd probably be more like: - Monday: DLC1 for Game X released on Steam. - Tuesday: Developers of Game X shut down by publisher/parent company. Anyway, wow; look at those system requirements on the back of the box: a 486DX/33+MHz and 50MB HD space. Come to think of it, 1994 (or maybe early 1995) was when we finally got a family computer; a 486DX2/66 with 4 whole MB of RAM, a 512MB HD and a 2X speed CD-ROM drive. What a beast.
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Apr 6, 2019 00:21
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Antistar01 posted:Man... Electronic Arts. The most impressive thing to me is that they managed to lose it or whatever. Like I'd have thought they'd lock that poo poo in a "just in case" vault to bundle with a re-release of 8 if the series kicked back to life.
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Apr 6, 2019 04:47
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ZypherIM posted:The most impressive thing to me is that they managed to lose it or whatever. Like I'd have thought they'd lock that poo poo in a "just in case" vault to bundle with a re-release of 8 if the series kicked back to life. It may be rare, but it's not unheard of for a game's source code to be lost over time. Beamdog can't find Icewind Dale 2's source code as of 2017. Blizzard lost the source code to Starcraft for years (some guy bought it with some Blizzard memorabilia on eBay and generously gave it to the company). Kingdom Hearts art assets were lost over time and had to be redone for the HD Remix. There's no central body that preserves video games for the ages. If a company can't keep track of their assets, these things can--and do--get lost over time.
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Apr 6, 2019 05:07
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EA and Origin had a very contentious relationship dating back into the 80s, during which time Origin wasn't entirely innocent. I'm not necessarily saying that it was a personal vendetta or anything like that, I think EA was just very ill-disposed towards doing Origin any favours by 1994.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:06
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If people want to go into the EA / Origin Systems relationship (I don't know too much about it), I would happily aggregate that into an update. My hope is that if this LP makes it into the lparchive that such discussion would be preserved.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:19
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I'm just going to throw this in: https://www.filfre.net/2016/02/the-road-to-v/ And the salient bits (settle in, it's a long but great read): quote:The origin of Origin’s EA problem dated back to August of 1985, about a month before the release of Ultima IV. By this point distribution was starting to become a real issue for a little publisher like Origin, as the few really big publishers, small enough in number to count on one hand, were taking advantage of their size and clout to squeeze the little guys off of store shelves. Knowing he had a hugely anticipated game on his hands with Ultima IV, one that with the proper care and handling should easily exceed the considerable-in-its-own-right success of Ultima III, Robert also knew he needed excellent distribution to realize its potential. He therefore turned to EA, one of the biggest of the big boys of the industry.
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Apr 6, 2019 06:44
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ZypherIM posted:The most impressive thing to me is that they managed to lose it or whatever. Like I'd have thought they'd lock that poo poo in a "just in case" vault to bundle with a re-release of 8 if the series kicked back to life. From the company's perspective, the game got canceled. A smart company would've kept backups for 30 days or whatever, but at some point, their IT staff would've had a sunset date because they had to recover storage space. Storage wasn't as cheap in the mid-90s, and games weren't so widely accepted as something to be preserved. Publishers were also so busy gorging themselves on game studio corpses that they didn't worry about archiving any of it right away. So if the company doesn't save it, what about the individual employees who worked on it? They had multiple issues:
Jason Sextro posted:I'm just going to throw this in: http://sherigranerray.com/?p=13 is also a fun read from the perspective of one of the designers, including this gem: quote:One of the tribes, we (and … actually I’ll admit it.. it was my idea.. ) decided to make them talk like Yoda. This seemed like SUCH a funny, good idea … in the beginning. After three months of writing the dialog.. Lisa gave up and said “Here.. YOU translate it…” so I ended up having to go through all the conversations for that tribe and making them all sound like Yoda.. OMG.. SUCH a bad idea!!!!!!
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Apr 6, 2019 08:03
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Sheri's recollections drive me nuts, because her account on a few things differs from any of the documents. This makes it even harder for me to be sure of what made it into the expansion.
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Apr 6, 2019 08:18
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LoreOfSerpents posted:Oh, boy. This is actually more realistic than you'd think, even without company politics/spite tactics. I mean, I understand how and why it happened. I think it is important to take into context how big of a franchise Ultima was back in the day though, and for EA to have shoved that poo poo into a vault. I'd expect the story to be "EA never went through their vault and the floppies/tape they stored it all on had degraded" (like you'll see with movie negatives and such) instead of just being missing.
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Apr 6, 2019 13:02
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ZypherIM posted:I mean, I understand how and why it happened. I think it is important to take into context how big of a franchise Ultima was back in the day though, and for EA to have shoved that poo poo into a vault. I'd expect the story to be "EA never went through their vault and the floppies/tape they stored it all on had degraded" (like you'll see with movie negatives and such) instead of just being missing. I totally forgot about the degradation of backups, but you're absolutely right, that was also a big problem before cloud storage. It's easy to expect a software company would've known how/why to preserve their stuff back then, but the tech industry is so young in general, a lot of people were just making wild guesses while the industry itself played out some Highlander-inspired "there can be only one" fantasy. Some companies got it right and have a lot of history, but others didn't. Even so, a lot of the history we've got from those early PC era video game companies came from employees who were either very organized or hoarders.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:42
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Hi goons. I'm heading out for the weekend. I have the screenshots and the writeup done for the Slayer update, so I should be able to post it Sunday. We'll be heading into the Upper Catacombs soon.
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Apr 13, 2019 00:24
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The Slayer When we last left off, Devon and Mordea had a showdown at the docks. Mordea was defeated, and Devon walked off to ponder things.  The three guards are dead, and they didn’t even have the kindness to drop any loot.  Darion and Shaana are alive.    Let’s head back to the Palace.  Devon’s already here? I guess he didn’t need to think too much before taking his new job anyway.  Hello there, TerraGoetia. Hello, Devon. All is well, I hope. Any news? Only that Mordea was more corrupt than I ever thought possible. I am spending all of my time undoing her wrongs. Goodbye. Farewell, friend TerraGoetia, and good luck.Devon doesn’t have much to say to us now, but—as the new leader of his people—he definitely will in the future.   We have a nice weapon in Korghin’s Fang, but we can definitely do better. Let’s head back to the Cemetery Road. There are two things I want to accomplish there.  Oh, in case you forgot, if you’re not maxed out in combat stats, kill ghouls. They’re free experience at this point.   The first is killing this hostile guard and checking out the ruined home he inhabits. Because of their pole-arm, guards can hit from further way than you can. The guard will also get knocked back as you hit them. This makes fighting guards in open ground an annoying prospect, as you’ll have to continuously move forward.  Use terrain to your advantage when fighting enemies with long reach. By standing at the corner of this door frame, the guard has to walk out of the building to attack us. Another great way of dealing with long reaching enemies is to back them up against a wall; they’ll still play their knockback animation, and you can just beat on them until they die.   Guard loot can include melee weapons, explosives, and some coins. The chest in the corner is locked; the backpack on the table holds the key.  Boom, of course. A bunch of explosives is the highlight of this chest. The green bottles do the same amount of damage as fire gems and death disks. The big grey bottles do significantly more. Both bottles are used the same way; set them on the ground and double click them to ignite (timed explosive), or double click the bottle and then throw it (grenade). Explosives deal fire damage. This is important because fire damage cuts armor in half. Fire damage is an important type of damage: daemons and golems are immune to it, seekers take additional damage from it, and skeletons killed by fire damage will not resurrect. Explosive type weapons are your only source of fire damage for most of the game. I do not take explosive weapons due to the carry weight; it generally takes two to kill a skeleton (one if you get very lucky). Seekers are assholes, though, and if you want fire damage to kill them more reliably I will never judge you for that.  So what happens if you light an explosive in your backpack and don’t do anything with it?  Looks like Beren’s out of a job.  Looking at our stats, we’ve almost maxed out our str, and are close behind with our dex. This game isn’t very long, especially compared to other Ultima games, but we still have a ways to go. We’ll be spending most of the game with maxed out combat stats. This means we’ll soon be able to ignore opponents we don’t want to fight.  You may remember this little ruined home. When we last approached it, the Guardian warned us not to go near. Before, we were not ready for the challenges inside this hut. Now, we are ready.  But first, let’s steal this jewel from a safe distance.  And we fall in to the obvious trap…  And we are in the Slayer dungeon. Technically, the map’s name is Treasure Cove, but there’s only one treasure here. We start the dungeon locked in this room with a troll. Trolls are among the upper tier of enemies in this game, sharing the spot with daemons and golems. Trolls have the largest pool of hit points in the game, and the highest max damage. They are the easiest of the three monsters to deal with; there’s no tricks to them, they just hit you with their club.   Chug a purple potion and get in its face right away. Do not stop swinging. Pretend you’re playing Diablo and click your way to glory.  Trolls generally have good loot. This one dropped 43 coins and an invisibility potion, as well as a knife. You can rack up the cash rather fast if you have a good source of trolls.  The chest in the corner is locked.  Most of the bodies have nothing on them. A few have helpful potions. I’ll try to point them out.  Among the pile of bones in the NW corner of the room is a set of boots. We already have better armor than this, but if you took on the dungeon early, these might be helpful.  The key to the chest is here, under some bones. It can be hard to see, and you may need to move some bones around to actually be able to take it.  The chest explodes, of course, and gives us the key to the door out of this room. Now is a good time to chug a few yellow potions and dump empty bottles.  By the door is our first book.   Alright then.    Let’s use our key to unlock the large door and head out in search of the next book. The hallway before us heads to the West, and eventually forks left and right. Let’s head left.  There’s a platform here with the next book on it. Not so bad!   This book is a lying piece of poo poo. The path behind this platform DOES diverge, but the third book is not down this way at all. There is a key down this way that we need to get, so let’s check it out anyway.   These skeletons are currently still. They will activate if you trigger them by taking the path they are protecting.   Taking the left branch here, we come to ‘another’ branch, this time with some spiders. We continue to the left…    and find this room with three peasants and a troll. The troll is hostile, but the peasants are not. They are oddly under the protection of the Town Sorcerer, even down here. If we attack the peasants, Beren will kill us, and the troll will attack Beren. The interesting thing about this is that Beren cannot instantly kill the troll like he does with us; he will actually start casting Sorcery spells and fight the troll legitimately.  The fight with the troll is the same as the one at the beginning of the dungeon. We drink a purple potion and give him the business.  The backpack in the corner has a key. Let’s add it to our keyring.    Heading right from the spider intersection, we find a tower door with an evil guard inside. Use the same tactics on him we used on the guard on the surface. We take him out and explore the room.  The chest has useless equipment in it.  The zombie on the bed, however, has a black potion and a purple potion. These are very useful.   In the far corner of the room, the backpack has a purple potion; the desk has 10 obsidians.    Retracing our steps back to the skeletons, we head right from there, through some ghouls, and find that the hallway has collapsed, leading to a dead end.    Retracing our steps further, we pass by the platform and head to the right. The switch here will lower the gate…   and spawn a ghost to block the path. This is why we wanted Korghin’s Fang before doing this dungeon—ghosts are immune to normal weapons. The ghost will summon three ghouls to fight us. The ghouls are not much trouble; I recommend focusing on the ghost. The ghost’s explosive head projectiles cannot miss—if one explodes, it will do damage to you. However, it does seem to be possible to kill the exploding heads if you hit them before they explode. Like guards, the ghost will back up as you damage him. Keep advancing and stabbing until it’s up against a wall, then finish it off. Due to our high dex, the ghouls won’t be able to hit us reliably. This makes them a much lower priority than the ghost.  The ghost drops some coins and a potion. We head through the new opening and continue to explore the Slayer Dungeon.   As we reach yet another split pathway, the screen shakes and a spike drops down, killing a spider. Consider that a demonstration; we’ll be seeing lots of falling spikes as we explore.  Taking the Westward path from the split leads us to the same collapsed hallway we found earlier. Let’s head East instead.    This is a seeker. They’re motherfuckers. They have long reach, just like guards. However, they attack much faster. They have health and damage ranges that make them nearly as dangerous as daemons. What keeps them from being upper-tier enemies is their weakness to fire damage. It can take a few grey bottles to put them down, but that might be preferable to actually fighting it out with one. They explode when they die, but this doesn’t actually do any damage to the Avatar, I guess because they’re already unpleasant enough to fight. I’ve also never found loot on one, making them much more of a hassle then they’re worth.  With a black potion, we can pass right by this monster; this also saves our purple potions for fights with more tangible rewards, like trolls.   Here we find the third book.   From the book, the path South leads to a dead end. A changeling spawns behind us.     Heading North, we come to a jump. It’s pretty simple. Climb up on the ledge, jump over, then climb up onto the platform.  At the top of the platform, a ghoul will rise.    Continuing to the North, we’ll reach a jumping puzzle. If you watch and wait, you’ll see the platforms sink into the waters, only to rise later.  This platform up here doesn’t seem to be sinking...  Jump to this platform next…  Then to the other side of the water. We circumvent all of the moving platforms this way, making the jumping puzzle kind of easy.  One of the bodies here has a black potion. Drink it, or use one of your own.   Not too far down the way is another seeker, and the fourth (and final) book) The key we got from the troll/peasant room is used to unlock this door here.   Heading through the door, we are confronted by two skeletons. If you don’t want them to bother you, lead them around the outer ring here… and then run away when they’re near the back. The benefit of doing this is that we can see the position of the Slayer—on TOP of the final room.    Once you’ve dealt with the skeletons, head into the room they were guarding, but DO NOT go into the door there. Instead, climb up onto the roof and grab the Slayer. The dead zombie on the roof also has a red potion, if you were hurt.  Now we have what we came here for.   Enter the room under the Slayer…  and you’ll be transported to the ruined house at the NW end of Cemetery Road! So what makes the Slayer so great? Well, it does slightly less damage than Korghin’s Fang on average. And many monsters take half damage from blunt weapons. It makes up for this with an absurdly good ability: 10% of your hits will outright kill the target. This ability does not apply to ghosts, skeletons, or ghouls, but it does give us a 10% chance per hit to kill kith, trolls, seekers, and golems. The weapons that replace the Slayer don't have the instant death ability, but make up for it with absurd damage. Now we have a weapon worthy of the challenges ahead. Next time, we explore the Graveyard and the Upper Catacombs. Stay tuned. Major Maps of This Update  (Map of the Cemetery Road)  (Map of the Slayer Dungeon / Treasure Cove) TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 16, 2019 01:48
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TerraGoetia posted:Some online sources will say that undead are immune to the Slayer’s power, but… well, that ghoul looks dead to me. And good to know those fuckers can be permakilled by fire, I'll try that next time instead of fiddling with necromantic totems. Also, you shouldn't put the dungeon maps in the beginning (or at least put them behind a link), that's pretty spoilery.
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Apr 16, 2019 13:06
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Waaaaaait, fire permakills skeletons? I've played Pagan every few years, ever since I first got the Ultima Collection back in '97, and I've never clued on to that fact  I'm guessing that kid-me just figured out you couldn't kill skeletons, and just ran past them ever since.Also, super stoked to see an Ultima 8 LP!
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Apr 16, 2019 14:19
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