144 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
144 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
|
||
|:= =:|
|
||
|:= The Ultimate Ultima =:|
|
||
|:= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =:|
|
||
|:========================================================================:|
|
||
|:= Disclaimer: This file is an informative file and not aimed =:|
|
||
|:= at infringing upon the original author's rights or anyone =:|
|
||
|:= related to the making of this file. =:|
|
||
|:========================================================================:|
|
||
|:= Call these lines: =:|
|
||
|:= =:|
|
||
|:= Sands of Egypt BBS/AE.........205-979-8409 =:|
|
||
|:= Twilight AE - No Pass.........305-687-4742 =:|
|
||
|:= Atlantic Alliance BBS/AE......201-879-2693 =:|
|
||
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
|
||
|
||
As taken from A+ Volume 5 Issue 5
|
||
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
||
Typed by: City Slicker of ]:-> 4th Protocol <-:[
|
||
|
||
|
||
"Lovers of fantasy/role playing games, stop making those summer plans, and
|
||
gamesters if every stripe get ready for some tips."
|
||
|
||
======================================
|
||
THE ULTIMATE ULTIMA?
|
||
======================================
|
||
|
||
Poke holes in the rubber raft. Put those exotic European tanning gels back
|
||
into the medicine cabinet. Figure on using your beach towel to wipe off your
|
||
palms. Summer 1987 is scheduled to be the summer of Ultima V.
|
||
|
||
After nearly two years of work and a dramatic increase in the size of his
|
||
Origin Systems staff, designer/programmer Richard Garriott, aka Lord British,
|
||
is preparing to release his latest, greatest, and biggest Ultima yet.
|
||
|
||
"Up until this Ultima, I always did all the development myself," Garriott
|
||
explains in a telephone interview. "The problem is that each Ultima gets much
|
||
larger and more technologically different than its predecessor. Therefore,
|
||
they take longer and longer to produce. So this time we have a team of six
|
||
people, including myself, working on it."
|
||
|
||
By eyeing the competition, inventing new features, and receiving (and
|
||
personally responding to) mail from Ultima fans, Garriott and company have
|
||
added significant enhancements to Ultima V. "The technical improvements in
|
||
Ultima V over Ultima IV are much greater than they were in Ultima IV over
|
||
Ultima III. There's a much bigger gap technologically between them," Garriott
|
||
says.
|
||
|
||
Enhanced graphics are the most striking improvement, according to Garriott.
|
||
Ultima V has eight times as much graphic variety as the original Ultima and
|
||
twice as much as Ultima IV.
|
||
|
||
"When you go into towns and castles, the amount of detail has increased
|
||
substantially. I've got things like built-in bookcases and fireplaces and
|
||
tables and chairs, plates of food on tables. People can sit down in front of
|
||
tables and eat food, and there's animation for eating food." Dungeon graphics
|
||
have also been hand-drawn and bit-mapped to simulate brick walls, wooden beams,
|
||
or craggy caverns.
|
||
|
||
The better looking Ultima world will also be a larger Ultima world. Though
|
||
the surface map remains the same size as in Ultima IV, it has twice as many
|
||
cities to explore, some of them five levels high. "There's also an entire
|
||
underworld," reveals Garriott, "a below-ground world. Not only are there
|
||
dungeons, but at the bottom edge of the dungeons they connect to this huge
|
||
underground chasm."
|
||
|
||
Garriott also realizes, though, that bigger and better-looking isn't
|
||
necessarily better. So many of the game's new features are aimed at making
|
||
Ultima V's universe more realistic.
|
||
|
||
"Something I think is unique about all the Ultimas compared to any other
|
||
fantasy/role-playing game, even those being done today, is that Ultima is a
|
||
simulation of an entire world. You have an entire world to explore; you've got
|
||
people to talk to; you've got places to go and things to do beyond the aspect
|
||
of just building up characters and fighting," he explains.
|
||
|
||
The inhabitants of cities and castles who "just kind of moved around and
|
||
bumped into walls" in previous Ultimas now follow a daily schedule: traveling
|
||
to the office, eating lunch, returning home to bed. When those cities clear
|
||
out at night, unscrupulous adventurers can do untold mischief under the cover
|
||
of darkness, but watch out for fireplaces and street lights that can cast a
|
||
pool of luminous visibility around your thievery.
|
||
|
||
In response to Ultima players who've criticized the combat system, Garriott
|
||
has added more substance and strategy to the battle sequences.
|
||
|
||
"In all of the early Ultimas," says Garriott, "the combat systems required
|
||
brute force. In Ultima V, on the other hand, we've designed a combat system
|
||
that was play-tested for balance even on paper before we ever put it into the
|
||
game ." Adventurers can now carry and use more than one weapon, more than one
|
||
piece of armor. "For instance, you can wear a helmet and breastplate and hold
|
||
a sword in one arm and a dagger in the other--but, if you have a two-handed
|
||
sword, you can't use anything else." A newly added feature provides a cross
|
||
hair in combat sequences that allows combatants to take aim at any on-screen
|
||
character in any direction, not just the north, south, east, or west of past
|
||
versions.
|
||
|
||
One of the most notable and controversial developments of Ultima IV was
|
||
Garriott's sudden attack of morality. In place of the lie, cheat, and steal
|
||
scenarios of the first three Ultimas, the game required players to quest for
|
||
virtue and wholesomeness . Ultima V will also revolve around moral issues but
|
||
in quite a different way.
|
||
|
||
"Ultima V was my first serious attempt to put together an intricate,
|
||
interconnected story line with some meaning to it," recalls Garriott. "Ultima
|
||
IV is the first one about which I said, 'Hey, we're going to put more into
|
||
these games than just Go and Fight the Bad Guy. We're going to have a real
|
||
story with real meaning so people can enjoy the total environment of both the
|
||
story and the world.'
|
||
|
||
"Ultima V has some of the same philosophical overtones as Ultima IV did, but
|
||
it's from a different angle. In Ultima IV, you're personally going out there
|
||
to prove yourself as this glorious and virtuous person--and all of the towns
|
||
and villages are preaching or at least expounding on the virtues. Ultima V
|
||
shows the dark side. It takes on the fact that people can become
|
||
self-righteous and take these virtues too literally and too far. You and all
|
||
your friends are going to become Robin Hood-ish outlaws. The whole system of
|
||
virtues has kind of gone amok."
|
||
|
||
How long can Garriott maintain his momentum with the Ultima series? As long
|
||
as he can improve the play system and as long as the games continue on their
|
||
best-selling track (each one has outsold its predecessor dramatically), the
|
||
Ultimas will keep coming.
|
||
|
||
After eight years of designing Ultimas, however, Garriott has a few other
|
||
game ideas. With the completion of Ultima V, he plans to split his six-person
|
||
team into two groups. One will move on into Ultima VI, and the other will
|
||
begin a new non-Ultima game. "It will still be a fantasy/role-playing
|
||
project," Garriott confides, "but of fairly different overtones and genre. My
|
||
intent is to start a second game line in addition to Ultima, and that way we
|
||
can also start staggering them so that they come out every year instead of
|
||
every two years."
|
||
|
||
Uh-oh--there goes the summer of 1988!
|
||
|
||
=====================================
|
||
|
||
End of file.
|
||
|
||
Total Characters: 8068
|
||
Total Words: 1139
|
||
|
||
|