Richard Garriott: Proud of Ultima 8 and Ultima 9
It all started when Richard Garriott fired off a link, via Twitter, to Spoony’s retrospective of the Ultima series. This prompted a reply from one Daniel Demchuk, which offered a less-than-flattering opinion of the last two numbered Ultima titles:
@richardgarriott @youtube There is no denying that Ultima 8 and 9 were unfinished hunks of crap. No matter how much you love Ultima.
— Daniel Demchuk (@Dannydeathmetal) February 12, 2013
Lord British’s reply, however, was quite interesting:
@dannydeathmetal @youtube I often note that U8 was forcibly badly slashed & shipped. U9 had no corporate support, but I’m proud of them.
— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) February 12, 2013
Twitter, limiting statements as it does to a mere 140 characters, doesn’t offer a lot of room to weave depth and subtle meaning into statements made using it, so I hesitate to read too much into this. Still, it would seem to comport with something that both Sergorn Dragon and myself have observed in the past: Garriott will admit publicly that Ultima 8 had its failings and issues, but will typically not do the same for Ultima 9. Indeed, he seems here to defend the latter game rather more, even though he says less about it in terms of pure character count.
Make of it what you will, Dragons and Dragonettes. This much is certain: Richard Garriott is proud of the Ultima series he created and oversaw. Not just some of its constituent games, either; he is proud of all of them. As well he should be.
“No corporate support”, eh? Sounds like he’s, gasp, blaming EA.
To some degree, yes, but he’s also letting them off the hook. EA didn’t support the game, which probably means they didn’t meddle in its creation overmuch and thus can’t easily be blamed for any issues people had with it. It was Origin’s show, through and through.
They applied pressure to roll out the games before they were ready, which was all the meddling that was necessary to have a severe effect on the release versions. In any case, my biggest beef w/U8 isn’t that it was unfinished.
True, although in the case of Ultima 9 they were pretty lenient when Origin re-wrote the game…what?..three times? And when Origin fundamentally overhauled the engine. And when Origin asked for delays.
They did get tired of it eventually and imposed a hard deadline. But the deadline was far from the only — or even the foremost — reason why the game had its issues.
Ahahaha, very clever Kenneth.
He’s still blaming them. Just not for the things some ignorant fans thought they were to blame for.
I didn’t say he wasn’t. 😉
Wasn’t just EA as I recall – the game had very little support even within Origin itself.
I’m pretty sure if Garriott hadn’t been there to spearhead the development himself, the game would just have been cancelled.
Oh and I don’t think the ended up imposing the final deadline because they were tired of the game taking so long: they just were tired of spending money into a single player game when they had decided a year prior that to switch Origin to solely making online games – Ultima IX was just becoming a thorn in the side of Origin’s new direction, like a relic of times past.
Ultima has always been known for pushing the boundaries of what technology can deliver, often they have been said to be ahead of their time. Ultima IX is certainly no exception to this, in fact it is a very good example of an ambitious (for the time) game. With such a focus on delivering the wow factor with regards to the technology, somewhere along the way less focus was put towards actually developing the plot and other things which makes a game fun to play. Ultima IX was a massive influence certainly to future 3D RPG’s but I often wonder how awesome Ultima IX could have been if It was developed with the isometric overhead view. Less focus on the game engine and more on developing the virtual world and plot.
I think the surface of Britannia would have been cool to explore from an isometric perspective, but I think the dungeons would have lost something.
“Ultima has always been known for pushing the boundaries of what technology can deliver, often they have been said to be ahead of their time.”
I assume you’re referring to Ultima 6+, because the games previous to that didn’t push any technology boundaries.
Well, remember that Ultima 1-5 were developed for the Apple II and all the other versions were just ports.
If you compare them to other Apple II games they were technically very advanced for the time and did things that other games did not.
I played the Atari 800 port of Ultima III and no other game at that time had a full soundtrack like that.
I wonder if the Ultima 8 and 9 problems arose from a conflict between Lord British the game designer and Richard Garriott the business manager. Questions like “How can we bring new players to the series?” and “How can we make it easier and more action orientated?” seemed to drive design decisions. Reminds me of the current Bioware and Blizzard situations where artistic and business/profit decisions can sometimes conflict with one another…
@Alatari the Steadfast
“I wonder if the Ultima 8 and 9 problems arose from a conflict between Lord British the game designer and Richard Garriott the business manager.”
Sounds about right. It’s something he’s taken with him since, from Tabula Rasa to his current “social” attempts. He used to just make badass games, now he’s trying to finger a market for maximum impact.
“I wonder if the Ultima 8 and 9 problems arose from a conflict between Lord British the game designer and Richard Garriott the business manager.”
I think he pretty much said so himself. Ultima VIII suffered notably because Garriott didn’t have that much involvement in development because ever since he sold Origin he was stuck with having to deal with the whole corporate and business aspect of the company… and he hated it.
He did get back into the Director’s chair so to speak for Ultima IX after the whole Del Castillo debacle, but it does feels this was more of a desperate attempt to save the day and assure that hte projet survive.
But this is why when he founded Destination Games, he refused to get involved in the business aspect of the company and let Robert handle it : during his tenure at DG/NC all he did was basically direct Tabula Rasa, he did not get into the business aspect (even if TR also did suffer from corporate meddling).
This is also why I’m curious to see how URPG will turn out, now that he’s back into an independant business with likely more freedom to do thinsg as he want that he had for 20 years.
I don’t think it’s that they lost focus on developping a plot or something – if anything the plotline aspect is VERY important in Ultima IX, moreso than in many more open ended episodes of the series.
It’s more that they really just didn’t had time to polish it at they should have – dialogues feels like a first draft basically, and with the deadline to have speech recorded that kind of prevented any last minute polishing that could have helped a great deal.
Agreed, 100%, in fact, all you need to do is look at what the Guardian represents along with the sphere, cube and pyramid and how they were so relevant to the Black Gate to see the connection to what EA meant to Origin.
I was a fan and am proud to have played from U4 to UIX. The Hythloth is a dungeon that forever remains imprinted in my mind, the whole world of Britannia and the concept of the moongates was so well done.
Ultima IX was special in that it pushed by Voodoo 2 SLI system equipped with a PIII 450 to the maximum, I enjoyed the fact that they tried to push the future of technology forward.
Thanks Richard for all the great memories, the concept of becoming the Avatar is what made this game special.
While I’m pretty critical of Ultima VIII and IX because they, to me, so radically departed from what I expected due to previous titles, I think I understand where Garriott’s coming from. An incredible amount of blood, sweat, tears, and even genius was burned on both games. There wasn’t a happy ending in the opinion of many, but that doesn’t cheapen the dedication of the teams who created them. When you’ve poured so much of yourself into something, even when in the end it’s not perfect, you still love it. Maybe a child is a good analogy.
It’s one thing to stand on the sidelines and call a game crap, and another to hear its creator’s story and tell them to their face that their game is crap. Ultima VIII and IX were flawed achievements, and it was no small feat to create them. The usual line about critics applies. Easy to criticize, difficult to create.
I don’t think Garriott’s blame has much to do with anything, as I don’t think he or his team intentionally crippled either game. Projects of that degree of complexity have a life of their own and whether the whirlwind of chaos was spawned from the team or the whims of EA isn’t relevant to me anymore. They are what they are; move forward and create something better. I’m surprised Garriott even responded to that tweet, really.
Have you even played either game yet? Last time it came up, it seemed to me that you hadn’t.
@WtF Apparently there’s no way to reply to a comment at the moment, so I’ll drop it in root.
I still haven’t played either game (and probably never will), though that is by choice. I watched my friend play Ultima VIII and have seen enough videos of Ultima IX to qualify myself as having experienced “lost time” sans the usual excuse of alien abduction or alcohol-induced blackout. If you’re insinuating that one can’t really speak insightfully about a game without having played it you’re mostly correct. Unfortunately I suffer from a level of gamer OCD that requires me to conduct extensive research (including exhaustive gameplay videos) before taking the time to download, unfuck (thanks GoG for removing that step mostly), and finally play a given game. I did the same for Ultima Online, which I also have never played.
I’m not trying to be hostile, but your response is a bit off-topic with respect to the content of my post and not the sort response I was hoping to elicit. What is the point of your question? Am I ill-qualified to speak on the subject without risk of appearing to be talking out my ass?
I think it’s more that in the case of U8 and U9, you really can’t go by what views of either game other people present. Watching “lets plays” and the like can give an impression, but one that will invariably be shaped by the person doing the “lets play”. Even watching over someone’s shoulder isn’t the same as actually getting into the game yourself. Experience doesn’t happen by proxy!
And that’s true of any game, really. But especially where U8 and U9 are concerned, finding an objective presentation of either game online is nigh-on impossible, so you can’t really trust the impressions of the games these led you to form.
Small example: I hated Diablo, hated Diablo II, and was convinced I would hate Torchlight because it was a Diablo clone made by people who worked on Diablo 2. Boy, was I wrong…Torchlight was like crack to me.
You just never know, with any game, until you throw yourself into it.
You’re right, but this is a specific case, the case being myself. I don’t trust or even observe the impressions. I trust the pixels. I break the game down into its base mechanics and their interactions. Spoony is funny; sardonic humor at the expense of the game, but not real information. I’m talking about breaking a game apart into its programmatic procedures with respect to what they allow the player to do. I try to reverse engineer a game by observing it.
I see what you’re saying and agree with it for the general population. Maybe you didn’t underestimated my use of the phrase obsessive compulsive disorder. I vivisect games, whether through playing them or observing them being played.
I agree that even for people like myself there is unique value in playing a game. I just don’t have the time unless the game really speaks to me. I suspect many developers are like this, though it would be the last thing they’d ever admit to. The mantra is, “Oh yeah, I play games ALL THE TIME!!!” What time is that when you’re employed and have a family? On your iPhone while taking a shit for five minutes? I’m sure that’s a rewarding experience. So, I agree with you, but it’s not the only way.
Actually, the bathroom at home is usually the only time I’m not likely to whip out my phone. I tend to game in the evenings, after the kids go to bed. Or on my commute to and from work (an hour or so each way).
I do game a lot on my iPhone, though, and do find it fulfilling. That’s not to say that my PC doesn’t see it’s share of use as a gaming platform, though.
Does this qualify as news? Of course he’s proud of those games, it’s been known for a long time. I probably would’ve been too – not because they’re good games, per se, but because of all the effort that went into their making and all the hurdles they faced. Doesn’t mean that Ultima 9 still wasn’t a complete travesty of a game, though. Betrayal!
There’s lot to be proud of Ultima IX.
Ultima VIII though… not so much.
I disagree. I enjoyed U8 quite a lot. (Granted, I first got it on the CD version with patches, so I didn’t ever experience Super Avatar Bros…)
Don’t get me wrong. I like U8 very much (altough it grew on me over the years to be fair – my first pre-patch playthrough was torture), but as much as I love its graphics and atmosphere it’s very much a step back from Utima VII in most aspects, and I wouldn’t call any of its aspects revolutionnary nor particularil ambitious.
While Ultima IX as flawed as it may be, oozes with ambitions – it basically aimed to be unlike any 3D RPG before (or more to the point, bringing a fullblown Ultima experience in 3D), and while one might argue it failed, it definitly gets kudos for trying.
Greetings!
Please allow me to respond in MORE than 140 characters. Of all Ultima’s, Ultima VIII is the one I wish I could go back and fix. I felt we had many strong ideas, which had they been refined and completed, would have made a great game. But we were “strongly encouraged” to continue cutting and cutting first features and then polish in order to make a Christmas release schedule. In the end the overland map made no sense, the story did not connect properly, and the movement system were hamstrung in a way to make game play miserable. Oh, what an additional 6-12 months would have made for that game. Yet, Ultima’s took a long time, and were expensive, so I also understand the pressures being put on us, were not without cause. Still sad, we could not deliver it properly finished.
Ultima IX is a completely different story. EA did not even want me to start U9, due to U8’s lack of success. It only got made due to my stubbornness to see the trilogy of trilogies through. While I think it was much better finished than U8, it still suffered from a general lack of support, but minor in comparison, as I was not going to listen to the naysayers as much this time, and instead just kept moving forward ignoring the politics around me. I just replayed part of Ultima IX last week, and again assert, I reflect positively on it, and all the Ultima’s.
I hope you will all keep an open mind as my team and I do our best to rekindle the spark that created the series. My team and I are hard at work now on the prototype of a game I hope will make you proud! We hope to show you soon.
Your say:
•Name •Job •EA •Prototype •Christmas •Heal •Bye
Richard,
It would be great if you could grab the U8 code and redo it like you wanted. I know this sounds silly and probably would be a legal nightmare, but I can dream……..
Thanks for the wonderful world of Ultima,
Jack
Perhaps Richard would want to join the Pentagram team 😛
Oh my. What an honnor to see you posting there!
Thanks for these clarifications.
If I may be so bold though, there is one nagging question I gotta ask – and I think many fans wonder the same thing.
There have been multiples versions of Ultima IX before we got to the game as it.
Now, according to Bob White the isometric 3D version was very advanced by the time the team got moved to UO (nearing alpha stage, 80% of the world map complete and more) which stalled development for a year after what the game evolved into this full 3D version of Britannia.
Now I’m saying this as an actual lover of Ultima IX as it – and a love of the breathing 3D world that it created : U9 was ahead of its time, it paved ways for games like Gothic or Skyrim and in fact still remains more advanced in term of world simulation that many modern games.
But I’ve gotta wonder : in hindisght don’t you have regret about shelving the “isometric 3D” U9 to basically start anew ? Couldn’t this version have been completed and still felt awesome ? (I mean with added 3Dfx this would basically have been a NWN/DS engine years before them!) Or did it really reached a point where basically the game just *wouldn’t* have gone forward had this switch to a full 3D game had not happened ?
That being said I am eagerly looking forward to hear more about your ULtimate RPG and I cross my fingers that we’ll see some formal annoucement or something before the end of the year! I have some skepticism as well, but I would have to say one thing : please don’t forget what made the single player Ultima games special. From the sounds of it, your Ultimate RPG sounds like it aims to be a great spiritual successor to Ultima Online (which is good : UO still is the best MMO that ever was created as far as I’m concerned)… but to really be an Ultimate RPG, I think it would require to offer the same amount of depth we’ve come to love from single player Ultima games : ethics, moral dilemas, living breathing worlds (night/days cycles, living NPCs with schedules, interactivity), compelling words and characters, and plotlines. This what made already made Ultima THE Ultimate RPG of its time. And if you could somehow manage to bring both this and the multiplayer aspect of UO into a single game… well that could certainly be the best game ever!
Looking forward to it!
Richard,
Thanks for stopping by…it’s quite the honour! And thanks for that explanation of events as well.
I second Sergorn’s curiosity about the isometric version of the game, and hopefully you can find some time in your busy schedule to tell us all a bit more about it. One of the great mysteries of Ultima, that.
“and the movement system were hamstrung in a way to make game play miserable.”
Now this is interesting. I’d never heard that the movement system for U8 was unfinished, complaints about the jumping notwithstanding.
What sort of movement system was originally planned for U8?
Dear RG,
Let me add to the wishes that pop up when someone in the “know” pops up (and seems to scare them away to never answer more ;)). Don’t answer these questions up there, no, no… Give us the Lost Vale, so the Pentagram team can implement it 😉
Lost Vale = Holy Grail of Ultima 😉
(Honestly I doubt legal stuff couldn’t allow you to hand that over even if you still have this, so better answer the others questions instead ;))
Well… I’ll add a few cents into this also.
I thought Ultima VIII was quite interesting. I got to play outside Britannia for a chance, while disconcerting at first, eventually I grew to enjoy the chance to play in Pagan. Not just that, but meet new NPCs, learn new Lore about the Pagan world. The idea of rising one’s self to take on the Titans and become the Titan of Ether was, I thought, unique to Ultima and an adequate goal. I also didn’t even mind the fact that the Avatar had to abandon some basic Virtue concepts. After all, Pagan had been conquered by the Guardian, do you expect the Guardian or his flock of minions to be playing by the rules?
I suppose what was disappointing is that nothing in Ultima VIII carried over to Ultima IX at all. None of the items, not any of the lore, it would have been good to gain something special out of the whole ordeal. Even if it was just an obscure magical power you could use once per game day or something.
In any case, RG should have no cause not to be proud. Overall and including U8 and U9 he created a rich gaming world which I have enjoyed for well over a decade. WELL DONE and thank you Richard Garriott!
AA
One more thought to share on the “redo” of Ultima IX. Ultima IX did go through a major rewrite, but for good cause I believe. Originally, we were developing Ultima Online and Ultima IX at the same time. Early on, once it was clear that UO was going to be a huge success, EA insisted we stop development of U9 and put all its staff on UO. A year later, when we brought the team back onto U9, technology had moved forward a full year without us. The tech which U9 was originally using would have been insufficient for commercial release. Thus we overhauled the whole game engine, and basically lost the initial engine investment of time and money. To me, we started fresh a new game, to EA we were now an extra year late and over budget. Thus, we hunkered down and powered through to finish it, come hell or high water!
While my favorite Ultima’s are Ultima IV, Ultima VII and Ultima Online, I hope to bring the best of all of these games to our new game, in development NOW!
So was the original U9 set on the Guardian’s homeworld (being a separate world from Britannia), or on Britannia (with the Guardian always intended to be the Avatar’s evil half)?
Of all the questions people have about U9, this has to be one of the most pressing and hotly debated.
That’s certainly a question we’d wonder about – while we’ve heard bits and pieces about that “Crusader engine” version of Ultima IX (mostly thanks to Jason Ely I think), we’ve never known for sure what it would have been about and as I recall the only official mention of Ultima IX taking into the Guardian’s homeworld came from the UVIII hintbook, which may or may not be relevant.
I, myself, am very interested to hear more background on the “Ultima” species concept envisioned for Hawkwind and partially for what the Avatar and Guardian might be have been an approximation of.
Was this concept originally thought up during Ultima 7 or did it come much later? Whose idea was it? Was this concept still partially intended in U9 but was never properly explained/introduced?
I think it would have been a great tie-in for the series name as a whole.
Anyway, it is great to hear from you.
Thanks for the insight! Looking for to your Ultimate RPG (or whatever it’ll eventually be called ;))
And here’s hoping we’ll see Lord British ingame too!
“Insufficient” and “outdated” 2D isometric technology didn’t stop Baldur’s Gate from being a smash hit. That was a year before Ultima IX’s release. The writing was on the wall, Mr. Garriott.
I do have to say, that to me the isometric engine doesn’t really look outaded by 98’s standards. There was this hi res screenshot that got leaked… was it last year or the year before ? Not sure… but it looked pretty damn good, and I think just adding 3Dfx to it would have made it look stellar had it been released in ’98.
It is true however that the industry back then was pushing for full 3D graphics and forgetting about isometric, especially in 3D. Which is why I gotta wonder if EA was pushing toward having Ultima IX in full 3D or something amongst those lines.
Thanks for the in depth answers. Something that doesn’t happen to often, really much appreciated.
Sergorn, what leaked screenshot was that?
I hadn’t heard of it.
I think he’s referring to a screenshot that Ben Lesnick tweeted. For the life of me, I can’t seem to find it again…but the man does tweet a lot of photos.
Aye that’s the one, here it is :
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2198/u9dungeon.png
That’s the highest quality image of the “Original” U9 we ever got – so I would assume it’s a director capture of the game (all of the others versions are mediocre magazine scans).
And I think this looks damn good.
I mean just imagine adding 3Dfx support to this, and this would have looked very good even in 1998 IMO.
I can’t save that from within the WordPress app, but I totally am once I get back to my hotel.
That image looks strange, like its color depth was originally higher and was forced lower.
I dunno. Keep in mind the game was likely have only using 8 Bits textures (ie 256 colors) – the final game had 16 Bits textures in D3D, but I’m pretty sure this got implemented rather late in development.
Perhaps the art WAS created at higher depth and downgraded though.
Yes it looks like it was a 16 or 32 bit image converted to 256 colours.
Honestly I think those graphics probably look OK to us *now* but in 1998 they probably were starting to look outdated. Compare that screenshot to the Ultima 9 that actually got released – there is a huge leap in visual quality.
I dunno – I mean this is software rendering, just adding 3D acceleration would have gone a long way to improve the visuals .
3D acceleration ain’t got nothing to do with it. It needs more color depth. Baldur’s Gate had 32 bits in 1998. I find it hard to believe this game was capped at 8.
U9 shipped with 8 and 15/16 bit color images with resolutions of usually 64×64 bit even though the game supports 256×256, which is why you see such massive improvements in Beautiful Britannia.
@Infitron – Keep in mind that this screens dates back from 1996. Now my memories about technical details aren’t exactly precise, but wasn’t 256 colors still the norm in 1996 ?
As for 3Dfx, all I’m saying is that it would have been an obvious to improve the game graphically without having to overhaul the whole thing. More color depth would obiously have been another, and considering they did add 16 Bits graphics in the final game there’s no reason it couldn’t have been possible with the original version of the game (keeping in mind the final engine is essentially an evolution fo this one).
If you’re dealing with a old engine that doesn’t support 3Dfx though, do we know how easy/possible it is to make that work?
Ah but you see: the old engine WAS ported to 3Dfx’s Glide API.
The way the story goes, Mike McShaffry began experimenting with Glide on its spare time while the team was focused on UO and when he demonstrated the results, everyone was baffled by the result both in term of performance and visual increase. Reportedly Herman Miller (which had kept working on the engine a well during this time) began experimenting with new viewpoint and after a day of coding he brought the camera behind the character pretty much as it stands now… and that’s upon seeing the result that it was decided to drop the top down view and rewrite the engine to focus the game and gameplay on the over the shoulder view.
Now reportedly (this is based on comments and interview made in ’99), this is what rejuvenated the interest in Ultima IX and the project very much mght have died without it… but it does means that theorically they likely could have went on an completed the “Bob White” version of the game with added 3Dfx (but of course I guess things are never that easy).
The colours in that screenshot are definitely not accurate; the other shot of the world editor BanditLOAF tweeted has the same issue, and so did early screenshots of UO. According to the October 1996 PC Gamer preview, U9 was already running in 16-bit colour, and there are plenty of other screenshots from the same era that don’t exhibit that whacky palette.
I agree, the mind boggles at how far they could have taken that engine with 3D acceleration.
I spoke with LOAF about the screenshot a little bit, and it was evidently taken from a pamphlet that Origin produced to attract new hires, circa 1996 or 1997. Some of the odd colour may be the result of the fact that the image is a scan of a printed screenshot, which…isn’t necessarily an indicator of high fidelity.
It isn’t a scan though, it’s an actual screenshot. As others said above, it looks like the colour depth has been truncated; I can see that happening if it was captured from a windowed mode and the desktop was only running at 256 colours.
Cropping.
Again, I asked LOAF about it, and that’s his explanation of the image he originally tweeted…which I am pretty sure was this image. It may be that this is a different version of the same image, an actual screenshot rather than a scanned, cropped, and re-posted image…but I’m going by what LOAF (who initially publicized it) has said.
Another possibiliy is that the game simply had both 8 Bits and 16 Bits Color Depth much like the final version did, and this is simply a capture from 8 Bits Color version.
Be that as it may, the fidelity of this particular image is far too high to have come from a scanned print. For lack of a better phrase, I can tell by the pixels. 😛
Looking at it rather more closely in GIMP, it doesn’t seem to have any of the artifacting one might expect of a scan, so yeah…more likely to be a screenshot. Which I suppose re-opens the question of where exactly LOAF got it.
Another possibility is that this was taken straight from a development build, one into which high-quality textures may not yet have been incorporated. I’m given to understand that the layout of 3D environments in games tends to begin at a much earlier stage than the generation of the textures that will be applied to those meshes for the release version of the game. We may be looking at older textures being used as “stand ins”.
Interesting theory about stand-in textures. Something else I noticed is that if you convert the image down to the standard 16-color EGA palette with no dithering it loses very little detail. Kinda strange for something drawn from a much richer palette to look so similar.
Here’s a side-by-side with the original palette on the left and the EGA palette on the right:
http://eightvirtues.com/misc/u9dungeon_original_vs_ega_palette.png
Don’t know what that means, but it’s damn weird.
The image very well could be a bad scan of printed material (scanners at the time were horrible), however I noticed some things that indicate it -could- be a direct screen grab.
First the PNG image has 186 colors. There is no bit depth that produces that number, as the number of colors follow 2^x (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc.).
Second even if the scanner was scanning at only 8-bit color depth (256 colors), due to the imprecise/analog nature of scanning it is likely that areas of solid color would be read as slightly different RGB values by the scanner. For example a large area of 255,0,0 (red) might be read as 254,1,0, 255,0,0, 253,1,1, etc. If you sample the color pools in the PNG image for the chair legs, chair seat and table legs you’ll notice they’re all identical values.
My theories are that 1) the image was scanned from print and later badly post-processed, thus reducing the color palette, or 2) the image is a direct screen capture. In the latter case, it’s possible that a unified, 256-color palette had not yet been chosen for the different palettes used by each texture image and a rough algorithm was being used to create an 8-bit palette on the fly.
It’s also interesting that the image’s resolution is 626×474, which is 14×6 pixels shy of being 640×480. The difference doesn’t align with Windows 98’s window border sizes, however, so I’m not sure what it may mean.
Here’s I first blurred, then halved the resolution of the image:
http://eightvirtues.com/misc/u9dungeon_blurred_scaled.png
Looks much nicer and is probably more representative of what the game was meant to look like (though super low-res).
Perhaps some imagery might illustrate my point better. This is what I was referring to by early UO screenshots. Same fluorescent Day-Glo weirdness:
http://www.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/MULTIMASCR06.png
http://www.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/MULTIMASCR12.png
These are what scanned prints of the isometric U9 engine look like:
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/images/1/1f/U9-1.jpg
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/images/9/9b/U9-2.JPG
This is what a direct screenshot looks like with accurate colours:
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/images/9/9f/Cove4.jpg
Sorry…this ended up in the spam filter. Lotsa links, you know.
Wow those images look *much* nicer. I’m now trying to imagine this with a rotating, zoomable camera and yes, I can see where Sergorn is coming from now – with 3Dfx support, this probably would have looked just fine.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. The game doesn’t look quite as good as the Infinity Engine games, but it’s at least on par with Fallout, another successful RPG from the period. And this is while it was still in development.
spambot?
Yeah, one got through.
Well…this escalated quickly. Maybe I should watch what I say on twitter.
Hey, it was a welcome thing. I mean, c’mon…even Richard Garriott stopped by to say his piece!
And since I’m posting this from the admin backend…if that email address you used means you’re local to Edmonton, I might just have to meet you for a beer some time.