Hank Morgan has created a utility that exports levels from Ultima Underworld (support for System Shock and Ultima Underworld 2 is planned) into the Unity game engine. The Underworld Exporter automates what would otherwise be the arduous task of re-creating Ultima Underworld usingUnity; it implements a new AI that mimics what the original Underworld AI was capable of, exports conversations (supporting, at present, almost all conversations in the game) and generates C# scripts in Unity to implement them therein, and even re-implements elements of the classic Underworld interface…with (as can be seen above) a few changes. Animated textures from the original game are also supported, as are light sources — which Hank Morgan is aiming to improve upon slightly, thus making having (or lacking) a torch a more central component of gameplay.

Other supported game features include lock picks and keys, edible food, useable potions, music, weapon animations and combat, animations for some objects (e.g. fountains), NPC animations, triggers and traps, fishing, Warren the spectre. Work is also being done to further improve the AI, to better support the magic system (almost all player-castable spells are supported, but additional work is needed to make the system work better within Unity), to allow the player to move between levels, and to add persistence to levels. Further on down the road, Mr. Morgan intends to implement the RPG systems of the game as well.

As you might expect, there’s now a shiny new project entry for this utility, whereat you can find a download of a sample level created with it (it can also be downloaded from MediaFire).

And here’s a demo video of an exported level: