Exactly what are the differences between System Shock 1 and Underworld?
I ask, because I just got this message, from reader Rodrigo, by email:
I am a fan of Ultima games and I have followed this site for a long time.
Maybe you know about this, but there is a recent new mod for System Shock 1:
www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=1719.0This mod allows better resolution and mouselook. These things totally change the game play for better.
Anyway, I was wondering why can’t this happen to Ultima Underworld since both titles are very similar to System Shock. But I am no programmer.
Maybe you can make a post asking if someone can adapt the mod for UW.
First, let me just note that I was in fact totally unaware of this mod for System Shock; I don’t follow that community all that closely, even though two Ultima titles use its excellent (for the day) engine.
As to whether or not this mod would work, or could be made to work, with the Underworld titles…I suppose my reply would be that there’s no reason that I could see that it couldn’t be, though of course it doesn’t necessarily follow that the mod will work with either Underworld title without modification. Mass Effect is built on the Unreal engine, but I doubt I could get a mod for Unreal to work with BioWare’s sci-fi epic. The same general principle applies here.
I can’t explicitly ask anyone to do anything, of course, but I can put up this news post and bring this mod to the attention of other Ultima fans, some of whom may even be interested in picking up this idea and running with it. There are still a few Underworld remakes and ports being worked on out there, after all.
Thanks for the information and for posting this.
I think every fan would be very glad to see this mod adapted to uw.
I don’t think this could happen for UW….
I know System Shock very well, and even though the core engine is the same, it has a lot of modifications.
Also as far as I remember, UW only supports one resolution whereas System Shock supports four resolutions already in the options: 2 VGA and 2 SVGA.
Not to mention that the 3D models of uw1 were harcoded inside the executable If I’m not mistaken, so this new mod for SS won’t work with UW
It’d be cool, to be sure.
It’d require a few things, though. Someone would have to make high-resolution textures, for one, and likely object models as well. The update appears to rely on a cracked game executable, so the same crack would have to be applied to the UW executable, which could be an easy thing or a difficult thing depending on how fundamentally different the two executables are (that is, whether UW is literally just System Shock with some alternate window dressing, or whether it is somewhat more of a modification than that).
Ah, and I see Natreg offers more and better information than my casual speculations can provide.
It would seem that things have come down on the side of “fundamentally different”.