If you haven’t yet heard about Underworld Exporter, well…my apologies for my part in that, because I have not kept up with news about the project. And that’s a shame, because it’s an exciting project indeed; it allows you to export information from the original Ultima Underworld game data files into the Unity game engine, resulting in a fully playable version of Ultima Underworld using said engine.

The current version, 1.07d, was released at the end of February; change notes for it are as follows:

• • AI has been overhauled in this release.
  • Vanilla save-game compatibility has been improved.
  • Game load times have improved.
  • NPC poisoning has been restored. Narvey Night-eyes will shove your s*** in if you have low defence.

Let’s highlight that point: this project will give you a fully playable, from start to finish, port of Ultima Underworld that uses the (modern, cross-platform) Unity engine. And in addition to that, Underworld Exporter also supports several other Looking Glass Studios games to varying degrees:

The following Looking Glass Studios games are supported to various levels. Original game files are absolutley required to play however in the interests of full disclosure some UI assets and sound effects are bundled with this download.

1.1 Ultima Underworld 1 (UW1).
UW1 is fully supported and can be completed from start to finish. Save games are both forward and backwardly compatable with the original dos version.

1.2 Ultima Undeworld 1 Demo Version (UW0)
UW0 is a freely available demo of the first level of UW1. It is fully supported with the following exceptions:
-The rolling demo is not supported.
-Weapon animations are not currently working (combat still works)

1.3 Ultima Underworld 2 (UW2)
UW2 is partially supported with full support to come in time.
-Game saves (loading of vanilla saves is possible)
-Some traps and triggers are not implemented.
-Many new conversation functions are not implemented
-UW2 specific HUD is not implemented.

1.4 System Shock 1 (SHOCK)
SHOCK is currently enabled in a map viewer mode. Developement of any SS1 focused releases has been postponed pending completion of Underworld 1&2.

1.4 Terra Nove Strike Force Centrauri (TNOVA)
TNOVA is implemented as a side project map-viewer. There are no plans to develop this game any further.

The project author, Hank Morgan, hasn’t gotten into the habit of updating a project changelog on its Github repository, but he did include a full set of instructions on how to actually install and configure Underworld Exporter as part of the latest release announcement, as well as some notes on the default controls used once Ultima Underworld is up and running in Unity.

You can grab the latest release of Underworld Exporter — along with its source code — over on Github. Links thereto are also available at the project download entry here at the Codex.