Beamdog Asked EA About HD Ultima Remakes
Joystiq is reporting that Beamdog and their subsidiary, Overhaul Games, have expressed interest in doing an HD remake and update of Icewind Dale should their current efforts with Baldur’s Gate prove successful.
But buried at the end of the article, Joystiq also included this little observation:
…when asked if Beamdog would consider trying its hand at taking on the Ultima series, another old-school favorite, Oster said the company approached EA about the idea. “They told us no thanks.”
Predictably, a small debate has erupted on the Ultima Dragons Facebook page, with some people chalking this rejection up to EA being its usual evil self, and others pointing out that it just means that EA has plans for the Ultima IP and, as such, isn’t interested in licensing it to other development companies who might produce products that would compete with its own in-house efforts.
Personally, I’m with the latter group. It’s all but certain that BioWare Mythic (an EA studio) is working on something related to the Ultima franchise, something beyond additional booster packs and updates for Ultima Online (though they’re working on those too, it would seem).
And for what it’s worth, I question what Beamdog and Overhaul would be able to accomplish with the Ultima games anyway. If they can pull off an HD update to Baldur’s Gate, it actually wouldn’t be all that difficult for them to tackle Icewind Dale afterward. Both games use the same engine, and while Overhaul would have to generate new art assets for Icewind Dale, they would still be able to re-use a lot of their work on the engine itself. That’s…just not how it would work with the Ultima games. No two Ultima games use the same engine, which would limit the ability of Overhaul to re-use their work on subsequent titles.
Another option would be to just pick one of the Ultima engines — one of the later engines, note; I doubt anyone would go nuts over an HD update to Ultima 2 — and remake all the games with it. That might work, although it would probably mean sacrificing little details here and there. Using the Ultima 7 engine, for example, would probably mean that a remade Ultima 6 wouldn’t feature ridable horses.
But really, this is all just academic; Electronic Arts has a studio working on something Ultima-related; the property won’t be licensed to another developer while that is happening.
I guess it all comes down to what one’s definition of “HD remake” is. If they mean introducing modern controls such as dual-analog gamepad, high-resolution renditions of existing tilesets and “chunks”, OpenGL lighting for day/night cycles and local light sources, all the while using the existing base gameplay rulesets so it’s still 100% canonical other than interface and visuals, I’d say that would be a 1:1 awesome interpretation of any Ultima game. Introducing smooth scrolling and other superficial or convenient (in a realistic or at least Ultima-like way) features should never be a problem.
Of course, EA telling them to fuck off is another matter and is probably due to the desire not to bastardize or water down the arena for their own efforts. No surprise that a company jealously guarding their IP as they put money into developing it themselves wants to keep the city walls high and tight. Fortunately “Ultima” is just a word, but Ultima is a universe for us all to enjoy, creatively or indulgently. They own the name, nothing more.
Actually, what if EA said “No” because they didn’t have easily-recompiled source code with which to load and display the higher-resolution images and textures provided by b-dizzle? Embarrassing, if that’s the real reason. They could interoperate with open source projects which emulated the gameplay of Ultima while reverse-engineering the file formats if they (EA) had the cohones.
If EA goes Full Ultima, I want Gustavo Dudamel conducting Stones on period instruments, and no more than four. Iolo will chuckle in the firelight with crackling twigs and sound of lute as played by Sir Sean Connery. Hans Zimmer will compose with Dudamel as co-conspirator. While new rhythms and melodies will be present, subtle and overt variations and tributes to previous Ultima music will prevail. At some point James Horner will take over as composer, with Dudamel still conducting.
There is that, too. It’s considered a generally known fact that the source for, at least, the first six games has been lost, or was never backed up in any long term way in the first place.
I’m pretty sure the source code for U7/SI was lost too. That was part of the reason they never did any W95 partch or something similar for U7/SI
@ WtF Dragon @Sergorn Whatever they had would have been moved from Austin to California and then to Virginia, and there is no telling what all got lost. There was UO stuff that was lost, I know that. I’ve heard there were servers lost that had the original artwork and concept art for early UO.
Whatever was left from OSI was the thing that LOAF and the CIC help archive for Mythic a couple years ago, but even then there’s no telling what might be in these archives. Perhaps there are some source code there… but the thing about U7/SI’s source code being lost it came from OSI themselves long before they moved.
As I recall from stuff I read a while… OSI just didn’t had any specific backup policies, stuff sometimes got lost, erased, written over – basically it was a mess, and that’s because of this that some stuff like The Lost Vale are likely lost forever.
Heh, honestly I don’t expect much from Beamdog games beyond doing the “HD Ports” of BG1&2 and other Infinity Engine games down the road. I know they’ve expressed their desire do a Baldur’s Gate 3, but frankly I’ll believe it when I see it and I have serious doubt about Atari/WotC/Whatever agreeing to some old school BG3 when there is likely more that could be made out of such a famous IP.
To be blunt I’ve been rather underwhelmed by the little we’ve seen of BGHD – it looks to be the exact same game basically, just running on the BG engine with higher res… which is basically what fanmade mods allow already. When they called than an enhanced edition I expected at least some graphical enhancement you know : better models, improved effects and background or such. But it doesn’t seem to be the case. Oh well…
That being said I don’t think the “HD Remake/Port” makes much sense in the PC market. I mean it makes sens with consoles games – PS2 era games ran at a low resolution, and just rendering them at a higher HD resolution is enough to bring a great graphical improvement. But with PC games, “HD” has been there for a long time so… 😛
If I’ve understood correctly while they have the source code and all game assests of the games they do not have the original 3D models used to make them (If they still exist, they’re in Bioware’s hands and they’re not obligated let them use them)so in order to do graphical enchantment (other than upping the resolution and adding widescreen support) they’d have to remodel everything from scrach.
Basically what they’re doing is what easytutu, widescreen mod, fixpacks and other mods have done already. Obviously they do have the advantage of having the source code and game assests so they can go further (eg redo interface to better support higher resolutions) than modders did.
I’m willing to wait to see the results before passing my judgement but I’m not getting my hopes up until they demonstrate that they are capable of doing what they plan to do .
I’m glad EA said no, for the reasons WtF gave above.
Remaking the Ultima games (from Aklabeth? Ultima 1? Ultima 4?) is such a massive job. Personally, I’d love to see remakes of U1-3, but they would probably require such huge changes that they would be more like a reboot.
Personally I don’t think there wouldbe much point in remake Ultima 1~3. Not saying this couldn’t be done well… but in the end they’d be more generic “kill the foozle” RPGs, un less you do a really faithful Ultima 2 remake with time travel which would be awesome.
But personally I’ve always felt if one wanted to restard Ultima, remaking/rebooting from Ultima IV would be the way to go.
I’m sure you could combine the first three into a game of three parts, each chapter showing the changes to Sosaria as you deal with each threat. The key would be to add content to the game, to make them a bit more coherent and to fit with the later games.
Personally, I’d ditch the sci-fi elements, but I’m sure others might want to keep those bits.
You probably could combine them, but arguably having Ultima I, II, III into separate would also means you’d be able to develop a full fledged Sosaria each time, rather than having II&III feeling like addon content.
Sci-Fi elements is a big can of worm indeed.
I don’t think it makes much sense in Ultima I no matter how you look at it.
Ultima II makes sense if you decide Minax attacked Earth and her death caused a big time reboot… but in all fairness it would feel odd.
As far as Ultima III goes… I liked the UO2 Exodus 😛
But really the series itself never really decided what happened with its scifi elements, and even Garriott tends to consider for a reason than Ultima trully begin with IV. So for me that’d really be the starting point.
Beamdog Ultima remake = taking Exult, scaling up the graphics and adding bloom effect, selling it
Heh, that’s kind of what I was thinking too 😛
I can’t believe no one’s successfully made a 3D Ultima Underworld. You can get hi-res OpenGL 3D versions of DOS classics Duke Nukem, Quake, Doom, etc but still have to play in clunky low-res choppy Ultima dungeons.
I suspect it’s because the source code was lost and/or no one in charge gives a flying fudge. UU (the first one) is one of my favorite games. I only played the demo, and it had permadeath because it didn’t let you save. The intensity was nearly unbearable, and the experience was much like my early ones with Ultima in that I really felt like it was real. I’d die/kill for an Underworld with traditional FPS mouse/keyboard controls and higher frame rate and resolution.
The lack of source code likely explains why there was no official enhanced version… but as we know from Exult there are other ways to get improved versions.
Indeed even before Doom 3 was released, I replayed the previouses Doom using a program called “Doomsday”.. and it allowed to play Doom with mouselook, texture filturing, high resuolution, smoother framerate and much more (indeed it even supported ALL the “Doom Engine” games). And it was awesome.
Ultima Underworld could really use something like this. That’s what Underworld Adventures was supposed to do, and Labyrinth of Worlds for UW2. But they both died.
Basically we just have to hope that the Abysmal Engine continue to be worked on and eventually allows us to play improved engines for UW1&2 (and System Shock too I guess, but SS already had tons of mods to improve it compared to UW)
There’s a similar engine for Duke Nukem 3D (I didn’t take my name from him by the way.. it only just occurred to me that people might think that) which does all these things plus replaces all the 2D sprites with 3D models.
The most important thing they do though is update the controls. The graphical updates are nice but it’s the updates to the control schemes which I think make the biggest difference. I’ve tried many times to get into Underworld and always end up getting put off because the controls feel so wrong these days. If somebody was going to do something similar for the Underworld games, this is the number 1 thing that I would absolutely love (running natively in modern OSes would be a plus also, obviously)
I guess the problem is that games like Doom and Duke 3D have such a massive fanbase that seeing these projects through to completion is a LOT easier – there are simply many more people available to help and if somebody leaves a team, there’s sure to be others willing to join. Ultima games, whilst loved by many come nowhere near the mass appeal of those classic shooters and so it’s just a lot harder to find enough people to get them finished. Hence, the huge number of promising looking Ultima remakes and other fan games that have died and the rest that move so painfully (though understandably) slow.
I think the existence of DOSBox has also been kind of a curse for engine “remakes”. Don’t get me wrong, DOSBox is awesome, but one of the motivation for projects like Exult and Underworld Adventure was the fact that getting Ultima games to runs under later version of Windows was getting a pain, and this would offer an easy to use native engine to play these games.
But with DOSBox the need for such engine kinda got on the wayside, even more so with the Ultima community dwindling ever since the release of Ultima IX.
That being said there is no doubt changing controls could be easily doable – Labyrinth of Worlds was in its early stages of development, and yet it offered full screen graphics, mouselook and 3D models (though in that case taken from UO3D) for Underworld 2 and it was just very impressive. I always was very dissapointed the project just stopped 🙁
OTOH, I gotta say that a good engine recreation to me should offer the option of both running the original game as it is (though with obvious filters and such if you want) or an improved version with new UI, just like the NUVIE guys are doing.
I’ll just put my faith in Abyssmal for now!
Wait, didn’t the Mythic guys give a nod to those who wanted to create ultima ports to mobil or idevices? I guess that excludes “HD” ports.
I seem to remember something like that in the midst of the Flash Ultima IV controversy. I guess it’s one of those “I’m your good friend until you need bail money” type of things. Maybe they should be called Mythick, as in “my thick skull”.
Yeah, there was a challenge put out for someone to port an Ultima title to a mobile platform. Mythic would then work with the developer(s) to get the port pushed out on the EA Mobile label.
The problem, of course, is that a lot of extant projects — which would be good candidates for mobile ports — are licensed in ways that the Apple App Store has issues with.
As in GPL, which makes Apple poop their britches because it doesn’t cower and eagerly spread its cheeks before their omnipotence. Apple’s terms for publication in their ubiquitous software repository pretty much invalidate any license that isn’t modified to support it. They’re very hostile toward anything but complete obedience/compliance.
What’s funny to me about it is just how willing people are to indulge in the fantasy without realizing the -wrongness- of it all. It’s like a bully who stays popular because he’s fun to hang out with even though he likes torturing kids for kicks here and there. I’m not even talking about the sweatshop deaths, just the licensing terms.
The short and skinny is fuck Apple. They have decent products but a seriously bad attitude.
Ultima IV is in testing on the iPad. This might be one of those deals though where it’s going to be given away for free, similar to Ultima IV on the PC.
Hopefully it will be released for free, although if someone worked tirelessly on it they should definitely get paid somehow (donations, royalties, whatever). I’m trying to imagine Ultima IV on a tablet with a touch interface… Kinda crazy, but awesome.
I do not think EA would allow someone to sell Ultima IV without some kind of approval. The Akalabeth app was done with Richard Garriott’s cooperation, but that was under his control.
This is the UA entry for Ultima IV on iPad.
I felt the Ultima IV port was done in cooperation as a part of marketing with them releasing Ultima IV for free.
I’d be fine with a reboot of Ultima 1-3, so long as the important core bits talked about in later Ultimas remain in place and are logically consistent. Not sure how the rest of the purists feel about that, though.
A big part of that may be that I never played the first two, but feel I got all I needed to know from later Ultimas.