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What happened to Ultima 9???

Started by September 10, 2002 05:43 PM
13 comments, last by Jeffno10 22 years, 3 months ago
I can''t even get hold of it!!! Not even the demo! I think there is a lot of potential for RPGs of that style, what exactly happened with Ultima 9?? The oficial sites are useless... I''d really like to develop games of that style...
Ultima 7 was far better than Ultima 9. I don''t like the way the NPC are always stuck at the same place in U9.

But despite of that, it''s still a very good game (too much action-oriented perhaps).
Darkhaven Beta-test stage coming soon.
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It lacked the story of the previous Ultimas, it had virtually no plot of any kind (go to dungeon, clean out dungeon, repeat), the ending was complete rubbish, the system requirements were too high for the time(and even on a high end PC it was slooooow), and it was riddled with hoardes of bugs. Poorly designed indeed. You might want to check out some of the people who are remaking previous Ultimas in a 3d world. http://members.aon.at/hacki-ultima/english/links.htm has some info on a few. Haven''t really checked it out.
______________________________"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" - J.J. Rousseau
Yeah... Ultima 9 was apparently a real let-down. But it was a let-down for the developing team too. Although they were very satisfied with what they achieved - and some of it is really impressive, especially for back when it was released - they couldn''t do everything they wanted to, the storyline was butchered, and so on... mostly through publisher pressure to release the game before it was ready. Now, this may well have been Origin''s fault for taking too long, and many say they should have licensed an existing 3D engine instead of coding their own, which was full of bugs. I don''t think that it''s fair to say it was ''poorly-designed''... more ''poorly-managed''. Ultima games have always tried to be state of the art and to push the boundaries... and in this case, it just happened to be too much for the team.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]
hey, jeffno, I have a copy if you want it!

15 US dollars!
"Luck is for people without skill."- Robert (I Want My Island)"Real men eat food that felt pain before it died."- Me
Ooh it''s tempting black_mage_s, but sadly I''m just moving to go study at university which means i have no money and no fixed address so it''d be a bit awkward! Thanx anyway though!
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I was also somewhat dissapointed of U9. I was expecting a "top-down" 2-D ultima a la U7 and U8 but with better graphics and the ultima typical excellent storyline and RPG elements. Something like Diablo II graphics mixed with U7 would have been great. But being the hopeless ultima freak that I am, I bought it anyway and after installing the patch, I didn''t find it as terrible as I heard from most people. Sure, the world is sorta small, Britain consists of about 10 residents and rats appear to be carrying money... but it was beautiful and fun to play anyway. I had absolutely no error related problems with the game.

Look into the german game "Gothic" for what a 3D ultima 9 should have been like: www.gothic.de
It''s absolutely excellent.
get ultima underworld instead.... one of the best dungeon RPGs i have ever played.
Ahem...

I have played akalebeth, ultima 1-8 and both underworlds...
I rank Serpent Isle as the best, then the Underworlds.
I just wanted to finish off the series ! What i''ve heard about Ultima 9 suggests that it doesn''t conclude it very well after the previous few games.

Ah well.
ya origin is based here in austin, and from what i hear
they got a rather abrupt notice that the project was to
be finished or cancelled by a certain date.. they were only 60%
complete with the game at that point. it shipped with far too
many bugs, but there was nothing they could do about it (except
have the project terminated and lose all the money they''d already
put into it).

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

::evolve::

-eldee;another space monkey;[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

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