Lucifuge Dragon posted an update to the Sixth Circle website last week, explaining his plans for his board game re-imagnining of Ultima 7: The Black Gate and the Unity-based online version thereof he is currently hard at work on.

My initial agenda for scripting The Black Gate was for testing purposes. Actually playing the board game on the occasional weekend can be a hassle as it obviously requires a place to play, people to play with, and a dedicated time slot of about 4 hours. While I know that sounds fun, the older you get the less likely it is for these stars to align. Having a digital version would be very beneficial to the game as I can test it alone, change number values on the fly and even reduce the time of a full play through by having a computer do all the setup, shuffling, and die rolling.

With all that being said, the official statement on The Black Gate – Unity Project is that it is going to be an online, 4-player experience for the Dragon community (and beyond) to enjoy together. It will have all the same mechanics of the board game but it also allows me to implement features that I was hoping the original version would support. Both versions will co-exist, and will reflect each other as the project develops. Neither are complete but the core mechanics are set.

This will also ensure that everyone will get to play it, the printed board game has way too many question marks surrounding it regarding distribution. It will still be available (somehow) for those who would like a traditional hard copy to enjoy.

Unity itself is, by the way, proving quite easy for Lucifuge to work with:

I don’t think that just anyone can sit down and start building a functional game, it does require some experience and know-how, and general mucking around until any noticeable progress is made. Once you get the ball rolling, you can really build whatever it is you can think of.

The nicest part of Unity, for me, is that it just feels like an extension of Maya, which is software I have been using regularly for a decade. Taking the plunge into Unity was very much an easy transition. Also having a pre-built game system to adapt to this engine has provided me with attainable goals that I can work towards right away instead of going through the design/thought process of a new game system. With all these things set in place I have been able to make some steady progress on this over the last 3 weeks and while it’s not exactly playable at the moment, it has already grown into something.

It will be interesting to see how the project develops from here.