One More Underworld Story From Dan Schmidt
Dan Schmidt, former Looking Glass Studios programmer, shares one other little story from the development of Ultima Underworld:
Jon Maiara (the same guy responsible for the Pac-Man homage) was writing the conversations for [the ghouls], and included all sorts of things like the opportunity for you to make fun of Eyesnackís name, to which he would respond by making fun of your name in return. You see the edge case, of course, right?
Do read the whole (short) thing; it’s just the right kind of amusing, and I’m pretty sure it’ll make you miss the days when games couldn’t utilize more than the first 640K of memory. Good times, good times.
I love learning about the inner workings of the Ultima games. I’ve come across a few interesting things while working on nuvie. Take mirrors for example. Did you know that you lose 10 karma points if you break a mirror in u6!? It’s not something that the player would ever really discover but it makes sense when you think about it. 😉
Eric
So breaking three mirrors costs you more karma than casting Armageddon (which I think is a -20 penalty)?
Bizarre.
Strangely enough, you don’t loose any karma for casting Armageddon in U6!
Some other ways you can loose karma.
5 points when a party member dies ( but not in the case of Armageddon )
5 points for pick pocketing
5 points for stealing
5 points when the city guards are called
Funny…gulbsoft (another of the Ultima 6 remake developers) was telling me that you lose 20 karma for casting Armageddon. You can’t pass the game if you have less than 85 karma, so the idea there was to make it impossible for you to get to the Codex temple, cast the spell, and then still pass the game.
Also: Sent you an email, Eric. Please reply ASAP.