Check Out My Ultima 6 Article For the CRPG Player’s Handbook
I was debating whether to keep this under wraps until the cRPG Player’s Handbook was published (which, granted, is not going to happen for a while yet), but Felipe Pepe (the book’s editor) evidently liked the review of Ultima 6 I wrote for it enough that he decided to publicize the piece himself.
So there it is, above; a summary of as much of what makes Ultima 6 great as I could squeeze into 3700ish characters.
Now I just need to finish the Ultima 9 and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning reviews.
Nice review of the game Kenneth. Ultima VI is indeed one of the best Ultima games (though I prefer Ultima V).
Wish they have added more floors for certain buildings. Britannia is a bit flat in this game… They could have added a mirror of the main map and do floors there, but that probably would have wasted too much disk space which back then was important (Maybe Nuvie can also fix this 😀 )
Thanks! I had fun writing this one…and really, I couldn’t say no when Felipe offered the review to me. Someone else might have gotten it all wrong. 🙂
Oh, and that is an interesting question; I wonder if the game supports that sort of layering? I suppose it must; clearly, objects can be place on top of other objects (and on top of scenery tiles, e.g. a plate on a table). Equally, the Nuvie team were able to implement roof tiles…hmmn. Time to ask Eric.
Also, U6O added multiple floors. Check it out.
Multi-level surface map is definitely a feature I’d like to add to Nuvie. It shouldn’t be too hard either. It would just be more map levels starting from 6. We’d also need to add support for up ladders or stairs on the surface level that teleported the party to an arbitrary map level.
I’m also planning to add support for map overlays on the existing maps. This way we can add new content and fix up some of the more repetitive features which become apparent when you run with a larger map window. Daniel our resident graphic artist also did some seasonal tilesets for winter/autumn summer. I haven’t gotten around to adding support for that yet either. My main focus at the moment is getting MD support in. I might look at some other larger feature requests after that. 🙂
You had me at “seasonal tilesets”.
Seasonal sets sound great. I usually prefer the vanilla versions of games over all this, but to say the truth, nuvie is becoming more and more appealing to me.
The problem with overlays for second floors and such I think would be with NPCs schedules. For instance if you are on a second floor and look over a window, you should be able to see map 5 with the objects the player has put on the ground, and with NPCs still doing their daily chores. That would look great.
Ladderes I don’t think they are a big problem, after all they are just teleporters right? it’s the same teleporting to map overlay 4 than to map overlay 6.
As for feature… I can’t seem to remember raining on Ultima 6. That and snow would be great for seasons sets too 😛
Anyway, you are right, MD should be as of now the main focus.
U6 had rain. You just needed to put on a storm cloak to see it.
I’m pretty sure I saw rain in U6 without the storm cloaks.
The drops are really small looking though, so I think you could miss that.
You may be right. I just have no recollection of it.
Clearly I should play U6 for the next 50 hours, straight. For research purposes, of course.