Added: Ultima 6 Mod for Exult
The Houses of Healing in Paws
A while ago, I stumbled over another mod for Exult that attempts to recreate Ultima 6 using the Ultima 7 engine. I’ve been lax in getting it posted, but its up now; I just added the project entry for it.
According to the most recent update to the project site (dated December 2010) a goodly portion of the mainland has been mapped out (apart from small details like the Fens of the Dead), and things like NPC schedules are working (although not fully usecoded as yet). A number of NPC conversations have been implemented, and the shrine-freeing quests are under development.
agentorangeguy, the producer, plans to make the game a tad more linear than the original, and plans to use Ultima 7’s more advanced scripting in order to ensure that experienced players can’t just skip ahead by e.g. freeing shrines without first learning the mantras, or digging for Hawkins’ treasure without first finding all the pieces of the map. He also plans to add one or two additional recruitable NPCs to the game, and might even have a go at implementing a side quest which would let the player solve Quenton’s murder. He also plans to flesh out the presence of the gargoyles in Britannia and enhance the presence of the Royal Guard in hot and/or strategic locations, to give the game a more proper sense of a land at war.
All in all, it sounds interesting, and it looks like he’s making decent progress. Here’s hoping he is able to continue doing so!
“agentorangeguy, the producer, plans to make the game a tad more linear than the original”
This annoys me. It annoyed me that U6P rendered Ultima VI much more linear for no reasonnables reasons. And it annoys me now. Hopefully this one will not limit the PC to the main land and allows the player to start the Hawkins side of the plot right away if he wants to…
Ultima VI was designed to be fully non linear and it works this way – rendering it more linear has no point since this is not how the plot was meant to unfold.
Oh and trully: the Avatar should really know the Mantra, he learned them in Ultima IV damn it!
yes, either you are a new player and you need to find out the mantras or you are an experienced Ultima player and you know them and want to use them right away… Just because my virginity gets restored on each red moongate travel doesn’t mean my brain gets scrambled 🙂
As a matter of fact there were even a couple of NPCs in U6 finding it odd if the Avatar asked about the Mantra
Very, very interesting! I’d love it.
I agree with everything said here. More linear is -always- bad. Other than that, cool idea. Would be nice however if someone would toss in some new textures for the landscape, trees and buildings just to give it a different feel. The one bad thing about using an existing engine is using all its old assets. Makes it hard to tell it apart from the original.
As long as he keeps the two main quests — shrines and pirate treasure — separate and independent of each other, the game probably won’t feel any more linear to the average player; it would just limit one’s ability to shortcut an NPC conversation by simply quoting the mantra from memory.
If he makes the treasure quest dependent on the rune quest, though…bah.
As regards textures and whatnot, I gather that he is getting some help making at least some of the in-game objects, sprites, and paperdolls look a little more…faithful, let’s say, to the source material.
I don’t think “more linear” is necessarilly bad, but the linearity has to fit with the story your are trying to tell.
And Ultima VI is not fitted to be linear.