
Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld - doppp
https://www.filfre.net/2019/02/life-off-the-grid-part-2-playing-ultima-underworld/
======
dfan
I'm the Dan Schmidt mentioned in the article. A few years back I wrote a few
anecdotes about the technical side of working on Ultima Underworld:

[https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/20/the-dangers-of-self-
modifyi...](https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/20/the-dangers-of-self-modifying-
code/)

[https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-
bugs/](https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-bugs/)

[https://dfan.org/blog/2011/03/17/one-more-ultima-
underworld-...](https://dfan.org/blog/2011/03/17/one-more-ultima-underworld-
story/)

~~~
vanderZwan
> _Speaking of graphics… well, probably most of you are far too young to
> remember the Apple ][, but it had a seriously weird graphics mode, which had
> not only a crazy palette (black, white, green, blue, orange, and purple) but
> also placed additional restrictions on how you could use the colors near
> each other (see here if you really need to know the gory details). Paul
> Neurath, our CEO, never tired of telling stories of what a pain it was to
> work with that system when he had written his earlier game Space Rogue. So
> naturally we added code that would specifically look for a certain file we
> had planted on Paul’s computer, and if it found it, would switch to a green-
> blue-orange-purple palette for one frame every half hour or so.
> Unfortunately I honestly can’t remember whether Paul ever actually noticed
> it._

Please tell me this code shipped and that it is possible to trigger this mode
by creating the right mock file on an emulated system!

~~~
dfan
I am 95% sure we removed it long before ship, unfortunately.

------
kgwxd
I believe UW is the reason I'm in IT today. It was the first computer game I
was obsessed with enough that I had to learn how to upgrade, maintain and
optimize a PC. It was our family PC so, naturally, it got messed up a lot.

I remember that I was playing UW when I found out my Grandma had passed, the
first family death I was old enough to remember. I was also playing it when my
first GF had her friend call me to announce she was breaking up with me.

~~~
samstave
I owe my lifelong career in IT/Computers to Ultima as well - Ultima II on an
Apple ][e... found in a drive in a computer lab at school in 7th grade.

I played every ultima since - and was in Beta for UO and we played MANY
accounts simultaneously when we worked in Intels DRG game lab in 1997 - where
the Intel campus had a T3 - and our lab had a dedicated T1 - we used to play
~6 accounts simultaneously logged in across our gaming test desks - playing on
Intels latest gaming machines (This is where we first tested out APG cards and
the Unreal engine against Celeron machines - to prove that a <$1,000 computer
was a marketable and game-capable machine)

That was the golden days of my gaming - but I truly do owe my career to
Ultima.

(I was there when Lord British was Assassinated)

------
deng
When discussing UU one has to mention that it had simply insane system
requirements at the time. If I remember correctly it required a 386DX with at
least 2MB RAM, which at the time of release meant a PC worth several thousand
bucks. To boot, it was also a pretty expensive game. Wolfenstein OTOH ran fine
on a 286 in fullscreen, AND it was shareware. That's why everyone and his dog
played it, although its engine was less advanced than UU's. It was a very
deliberate decision made by id/Carmack, and it payed off big time.

~~~
kbenson
Wolfenstein was far inferior, technologically. A flat, square blocky map,
without any way to look up or down, or any height variation at all. The maps
were actually defined as ASCII grids with different characters defining where
it was a wall or open space, secret door, etc.

UU had irregularly shaped rooms and hallways, inclines and declines, the
ability to be at two highets depending on where you are on the map (bridges
over water you can swim under) which even DOOM, the _successor_ in engine
technology to Wolfenstein 3D didn't support, etc.

~~~
dfan
I don't like calling it "inferior" (and we didn't, at the time). We solved a
much more general problem in a slow and only approximately correct way. They
found a much more limited problem that they were able to solve perfectly and
blazingly fast. That's a feature! There was definitely room for both
approaches.

The multi-height thing was a real annoyance, by the way. For example, my path-
finding code really wanted to be 2D (and of course it was mostly expressed in
2D) but had to understand that you could do things like take a bridge over (or
even jump over) a gully and then walk around and cross under your original
path.

~~~
kbenson
Far enough. I guess what I was going was inferior _feature-wise_ , but I
wasn't clear and inferior is a loaded word, so it would have been better to
phrase it as "Wolfensteign 3D supported far fewer cutting edge features" or
"UU supported far more cutting edge features."

------
kbenson
_Yet it is a trait which Ultima Underworld shares with the two great earlier
pioneers in the art of the dungeon crawl, Wizardry and Dungeon Master. Those
games too emerged so immaculately conceived that the imitators which followed
them could find little to improve upon beyond their audiovisuals._

While not quite as early as Wizardry (or even a few of its sequels), I always
found Might & Magic 1 and Might & Magic 2 to be far superior to Wizardry in a
few areas, such as exploration and world building.

Edit: Clarified that I found M&M superior to _Wizardry_ in a few areas. UU and
M&M2 are some of my all-time favorites, and I would be hard pressed to state
which one I like more, since they scratch different itches. I've gone back to
play both multiple times before.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
UU was great. I especially loved how your skills evolved with time. In the
beginning, you could barely jump over the smallest rift, but by mid-game you
could almost fly from one end of a big cave to another. Trick is that it was
made so subtle that it grew on you naturally. I vividly remember that on
restart I casually approached a chasm and was bummed when I couldn't jump over
it - like, whaaat?

Great game. UU2 was ok too.

------
rhacker
I LOVED UU. I had a little web page about it back in the day. UU2 was OK, but
didn't get to play it as much as my computer couldn't really handle the larger
screen space. This of course was a 386.

The best moment and most memorable to me was getting the taper, and having
never ending light.

~~~
Einstalbert
Didn't you have to trade a hermit for the taper? I loved UU, but I was so
young I could barely read. It is one of the most defining games of my life,
for sure.

------
m_eiman
Some of the people who made UU are working on a new game:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underwor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underworld-
ascendant)

~~~
sanj
Sadly, the reviews are miserable: [https://www.pcgamer.com/underworld-
ascendant-review/](https://www.pcgamer.com/underworld-ascendant-review/)

(I backed it)

~~~
samstave
That sucks -- Thief being one of my other most favorites... and they made that
as well.

------
devindotcom
I wasn't familiar with this site. Some great stories about some great games
here:

[https://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/](https://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/)

~~~
samstave
Some notable missing games in that list:

Ultima V

ANY Bards Tale

Masters of Orion

~~~
aidenn0
Ultima V here[1]

Bard's Tale here[2]

Master of Orion has not been reached yet I think (It was released after UU).

1:
[https://www.filfre.net/2016/02/ultima-v/](https://www.filfre.net/2016/02/ultima-v/)

2: [https://www.filfre.net/2014/06/of-wizards-and-
bards/](https://www.filfre.net/2014/06/of-wizards-and-bards/)

------
lazyjones
Looking back, it‘s amazing how much progress was made in this type of computer
games between Alternate Reality (1984), Dungeon Master (1987) and Ultima
Underworld. In the same timeframe (8 years) there hasn‘t been any noticeable
progress lately, just sequels and reiterations with slightly better textures.

------
vanderZwan
I think the mouse-based gameplay of Ultima Underworld could work surprisingly
well on mobile or tablet, given that it has a much slower pace than 3D
shooters.

OTOH, the thumb would obscure part of the screen. One could fix that by using
a scheme similar to how the DS port of Mario 64 worked: wherever you tap-and-
hold is the center of a simulated analog joystick, and the strength of the
movement depends on how far away you move from the center of this point.

The rest of the UI would also need some modifications obviously (given the
lack of a right click mouse button).

Still, I wonder if a slightly updated port would be successful.

------
benologist
I saw recently there is a new Ultima Underworld but the reviews aren't good...

[https://www.humblebundle.com/store/underworld-
ascendant](https://www.humblebundle.com/store/underworld-ascendant)

~~~
homarp
Sample "it's not good" review: [https://www.pcgamer.com/underworld-ascendant-
review/](https://www.pcgamer.com/underworld-ascendant-review/)

------
trynewideas
There's a rough Unity engine port:
[https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter](https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter)

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Huh, I never knew The Stygian Abyss had a PSX port. Fascinating.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I really wish we could get a System Shock: Enhanced Edition version of The
Stygian Abyss and Labyrinth of Worlds.

------
nickchuck
Dang that guy has some real interesting posts. Fell down a bit of a rabbit
hole there

------
mkio
We went from 2D to 3D and instead of playing VR games in 2019 we discuss blog
posts of people writing about playing 30-year-old games.

~~~
rhacker
HN is a little interesting, all these blogs always exist all the time. It's
just which ones are getting placed on HN doesn't represent all things going
on.

Also, it is interesting that people are playing old games and blogging about
them. At the time these games were released, we didn't really have the same
venues to discuss said games. So why not now?

~~~
mkio
I just think it's funny how we imagined us using technology in the future (VR
and flying cars) and how we ended up using it (posting on social media
platforms and discussing these posts in the comment sections).

~~~
PhasmaFelis
There's millions of people gaming with VR headsets these days, a lot more than
there are reading articles about Ultima Underworld.

