Word from Pix: Ten Things He Learned in Austin
At the invitation of the crew from the Wing Commander CIC, who were on the ground to support Chris Roberts’ announcement of Star Citizen, Origin historian Pix made the trip all the way from England to Austin, Texas. And now that his trip is at an end, he’s published a list of ten things he learned about Ultima, Origin Systems, and other things while in Austin.
Here’s a few to get you all started:
6. Contrary to what I had heard, Garriott was well aware of Escape From Mt. Drash and agreed to the Ultima branding to help out the author as Sierra wouldn’t have published the game otherwise. The downside here is this makes it official enough for me to want a copy now.
And:
8. Space Rogue wasn’t in fact the inspiration for Wing Commander but Chris Roberts did get some advice on 3D programming from Paul Neurath. Roberts already had a 2D sprite based prototype running prior to this and it definitely wasn’t a fantasy game.
And:
9. The Ultima anime series is a myth and never existed.
From all of us here at the Codex, Pix, here’s hoping you’ve had a safe trip home!
I’d like to see Roberts’ 2D sprite-based forerunner to Wing Commander. I hope it looked like After Burner in space. WC would actually look pretty cool if it used billboarded voxels to display ships and terrain (like After Burner). It will be interesting to see if the highly-detailed ship models in his latest project destruct anything like Scrumbleship: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/660532831/scrumbleship Would be nice to see Roberts’ work show people the brutality of physics on a scale he’d be satisfied with. Explosive decompression in areas adjacent the hull, for starters.
I’m back safe and sound. I don’t know how playable that prototype would have been but I expect it was little more than a partially working engine. I’m struggling to remember exactly what was said now. It was late in the evening and with my hearing, hard to make everything out with all the background noise on 6th street. I’m sure the WCCIC guys could tell you more.
I’ll write up the Portalarium visit next week. Most of it covered the usual stories but there were a couple of other things I hadn’t heard before. We could have done with some more Ultima representatives as it was a room full of Wing Commander fans other than me. There was a wall covered with Ultimate RPG concept art which is what I expect most people would like to hear about but I’m not allowed to talk about it!
I’m actually gonna doubt Richard Garriott about The Lost Vale in this case.
If Sheri Graner Ray who was the lead on the projet says it was finished, I’m really inclined to believe her instead really 😛
I agree and I did mention it. RG’s memory on Lost Vale clearly wasn’t great as he was unsure which Ultima it added onto.
He did say that he made sure to have a copy of everything Origin ever completed and 10 copies if it was Ultima so there is at least a chance he has it and we may still see it one day.
Heh that’s not a surprise, he probably had very little involvement whatsoeve with The Lost Vale in any case. Even with Silver Seed he wasn’t even credited as I recall.
Still, at least there is some hope he has a copy of it somwhere.