From RPGWatch.com:
| Recently, I had the opportunity to ask the co-lead producer of the U6 Project Jesse ‘Zephyr’ Strachman a series of questions as they’re working hard towards the release of their next milestone. After the tremendous success a couple of years ago of U5-Lazarus, there has been growing interest in this second remake using the Dungeon Siege engine. |
Parcival of the now-defunct RPGDot had the chance to interview the Archon team in 2003. “They have been working on the Ultima 6 Project for two years now. Though they are no where near a release date, they are ready to show us some money.”
Parcival: Could you please tell us something about yourself?
ACDeveloper: Ok, I’m Steph. I joined the team about 1 month ago. I’m a developer. I’m currently working on developing the NPC scheduling system.
Parcival: Do you base the scheduling system in any way on the original U6, or do you design it from scratch?
ACDeveloper: Well, the template is the U6 system. We want to at least replicate the behaviour of the original U6. However, we may try to add features more reminicent of U7, depending on the complexity and the time.
Rowindor: I’ve been on the team since August 2002. Started off just working with skrit but I’ve branched off into almost every aspect of DS. I did the research and development behind our custom dialog screen. Lately I’ve been level editing.
Shaddockh: I’m Shad a.k.a. Frilly Wumpus and have been on the team for about 3-4 months. I’m currently building the spellcasting system and helping out with coding where needed.
Parcival: Frilly Wumpus. Where did you get that name?
Shaddockh: Well, Hunt the Wumpus was the first game I typed into my TI-99/4A way back in the day.. So, that’s the basis of it.
Rowindor: Hehe I had a Ti-99/4A too.
Sliding Dragon: I’m Sliding Dragon. I started the Ultima 6 Project in February of 2001. I’m primarily responsible for the storyline and the website at this stage.
Zephyr: Well, I’ve been an Ultima fan for years. I played through U3 and U4 back on my Atari 800XL. I was a huge fan of U7, but I never really managed to get it running until Exult came out (Kudos to them, by the way). Anyway, I bought U9 and played through that, and I’m one of the few people I know that really liked it.
Sliding Dragon: That’s a dangerous thing to admit to in mixed company. Liking U9 ;-?
Parcival: Join the club. My first Ultima’s were the underworlds. Then came U9. I understand why people loath it, but I liked it.
Zephyr: Anyway, I went looking for some solutions to some technical and game-related problems, and I came across the Wayward Avatar. I tried joining a couple of ill-fated remakes which quickly folded. I came across U6’s remake and offered my services originally as a world builder and musician, oddly enough. I ended up starting out by attempting to extract all the conversation files, along with some help by a guy from France named Xenerkes Dragon who created the Ultimatrix program. So X and I extracted the dialog, and then I set myself to the task of trying to figure out how to get it to work in DS. We wanted to use the branching dialogue format as in U7, but it’s extremely difficult.
Parcival: How long has U6P been in development? How did it all get started?
Sliding Dragon: I started the project in February of 2001. I am the founder/webmaster/storyline editor/visionary. 😉 The story has been in development for over two years. The game itself began to be created when we finally got our hands on Dungeon Siege. The story has been in development for over two years.
Parcival: Why did you choose DS to recreate U6?
Sliding Dragon: I saw the U5 page one day and thought how great it would be to see Ultima VI – the Ultima I started with – with a modern engine. So I researched Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights and DS just had the capabilities for editing that NWN didn’t. At the time, Dungeon Siege was touted as this insanely easy to modify program.
Parcival: Did you know Adventures of Blackthorn changed from DS to Morrowind? Would you make a different choise, if you had to choose now?
Sliding Dragon: Yeah, I saw that yesterday. We’ve actually, at certain points in development, considered changing.
Rowindor: Oh no, not this again?
ACDeveloper: You know, I was thinking about that this morning.
Sliding Dragon: Morrowind doesn’t allow for the kind of party system we need. I don’t know if Morrowind would be the way to go…
Rowindor: Don’t even?
Sliding Dragon: And Neverwinter Nights has too many D&D based rules.
ACDeveloper: Plus, they have even less scheduling stuff than DS, from what I can see.
Sliding Dragon: The two are just incompatible with what we’re trying to accomplish.
ACDeveloper: I have to agree.
Rowindor: Indeed.
Shaddockh: DS has hurdles, but it seems that you can do more with it.
Parcival: Critical thing is the party system, I suppose.
Zephyr: Yes indeed. You need to be able to control 8 characters. That’s critical to the whole Ultima concept.
Parcival: Am I correct you finished the branching code?
Zephyr: We have finished the main portion of the functionality. Anyway, let me give you an exclusive sneak peek at the convo engine.
Screen shot no longer available.
Parcival: How did you do this?
Zephyr: It’s all done with skrit, but the skrit is actually written by a program that Martin and I wrote. This is an actual screen shot, showing the responses and branches in-game. Its just a prototype at this point. But it does branching, calls the shopkeeper interface, and has some memory functions.
Parcival: Where are you now in the development of U6P?
Zephyr: Let’s see, the convo engine was probably the most recent major milestone. We have recently brought on board a couple of tremendously talented world builders and another amazing 3d artist. So we’re rapidly doing all the terrain.
Parcival: Any published works / mods from them we can admire already?
Zephyr: We have no mods ready for download yet; we’re working on a lot of things in parallel. There has been discussion about releasing Cove as a demo. I’m still working on that. Cove is like 90% done. I have to move some buildings around and write a few new dialogs and stick in some NPCs. But we want to get some of the portraits done. Oh yeah; we have a brilliant new 2d artist in India.
Parcival: Why would you release it as a demo? To get some feedback, or to feed the hungry fans out there?
Zephyr: Mainly to convince people that we really are working on something 🙂 Oh, another major milestone; Shad has nearly fully designed the interface for the new spellcasting system.
Parcival: What is the spellcasting sysem about? Is it an exact copy of magic in U6?
Shaddockh: We’re looking at the spellbook interface from U7 as a model. A book that you can flip pages. As you learn spells, they get put into the book and you bring up the interface to cast with.
Sliding Dragon: The book interface is very artfully rendered. Very intuitive, like Black Gate. We’ve gotten spells transcribed into the book.
Zephyr: And it DOES work. You can actually cast spells by selecting them from the book.
Zephyr: This shows how they look before you run the ‘detect’ spell and then after you run it these are screen shots of the technology, not meant to be artistic, just proof of concept.
Screen shots no longer available
Zephyr: I also have a really cool screen shot of the Infravision spell.
Screen shots no longer available
Zephyr: So the spell system is in full swing, thanks to Shad.
Shaddockh: That detect trap doesn’t show very well. Here’s another detect trap.
Screen shot no longer available
Parcival: Are you planning to make changes to the rest of the interface?
Sliding Dragon: Yes, definitely.
Zephyr: Potions we did a little bit of work on. We don’t have a prototype yet.
Sliding Dragon: We’ve been focusing on the engine more than the UI at the moment.
Zephyr: But we’re going to share reagents and potions among all party members and just store the number of each. So the concept is we would have a bunch of slots where the potions would be shown along with a number next to each, showing how many the party had. This is not finalized at all. Essentially we’d be totally bypassing the DS potion system and using a custom UI. I think we’re probably going to keep the compass and probably automap as well. We want to create a “master map” showing the location in the world similar to the one used in the other Ultimas but we haven’t worked on that yet.
Parcival: What changes on the engine are you planning ? Do you have any idea how to implement dual wield, horse back riding, the baloon etc?
Zephyr: Yes. Dual wield is not going to be implemented as far as I know and I don’t think horseback riding needs to be done for a party of 8. The balloon has been the subject of a lot of discussion. Apparently you can flag nodes as “walkable” by certain entities and we’ll need to flag certain nodes as “flyable” somehow. The current plan is to only allow the balloon to be used in certain areas.
Sliding Dragon: The balloon is a major obstacle. As it is a quest item, the current thinking is to only allow its use for the quest itself. Namely, getting over the mountains.
Zephyr: Well, Matt reminded me that there is horseback riding in U6, and also dual wield.
Parcival: Will U6P be single player and/or multiplayer?
Sliding Dragon: Single player.
Zephyr: I don’t know whether that is one of our top priorities at the moment.
Sliding Dragon: There is already a project to do Ultima 6 as a MMORPG. [That’s Ultima 6 Online –RPGDot]
Parcival: Do you have any contact with other projects?
Zephyr: Yes, actually I forgot to mention Risen (from U5) was very helpful in getting the convo code started. So I want to send a thank you out to him.
Sliding Dragon: U5 has been very helpful. Their webmaster, Aegis, has always been available and helpful with aspects of web design. Notably getting the new forum up and running.
Sliding Dragon: I’ve spoken a little bit with Avatus of U9. He’s a very dedicated Ultima fan.
Parcival: Do you have any idea what still ahead of you? Any thoughts (hopes) on a release date?
Zephyr: Anyway, we’re currently researching boats. We have a good idea how that will work; it’s going to be similar to the balloon, only we THINK we’re going to let you go wherever you want to in the ocean. Moongates are currently one of the largest challenges because DS doesn’t actually inherently support teleporting. We have several possible approaches that should work. The instant elevators will probably work for blue moongates, but not for the red ones. And let’s see. There’s a LOT of world building to get done, as we’ve been focusing more on the technology than the building of the world but we’re going through it rapidly. We’re going for really grand scale.
Parcival: Are you going to re use a lot of nodes from DS, or is it all custom made?
Zephyr: Mostly from DS. Considering the scale, it would be near impossible for any volunteer project to custom make everything that was required. The scale is going to be… let’s see. over 4,000 meters square for the entire overworld which is very, very ambitious. That’s not including dungeons and the gargoyle lands.
Parcival: I think you mentioned somewhere youd have 200 maps (where DS had about 30 in single player mode).
Zephyr: Yes, easily 200. 169 just for the overworld, but something like 30% of it is going to be water.
Sliding Dragon: It’s a huge scale. One of the things that was pretty unrealistic about U6 was travel time.
Parcival: Any idea on how much playtime that is?
Zephyr: Well, one of our world builders estimated that it would take 60-90 minutes to fully explore one of his areas. and we’re probably going to have, I think maybe 100 areas on land. so we’re talking possibly hundreds of hours of play time.
Sliding Dragon: Of just exploring. The idea is to make this world expansive and immerse. It’s a massive project. We’re also reintroducing elements that didn’t migrate from U5 to U6.
Zephyr: There are a lot of buildings that just disappeared. Most notably the “Temple of Virtue.
Sliding Dragon: The Temple of Virtue, gone from Cove in U6, makes a big splash in our version.
Zephyr: We have someone working on the 3d model for that as we speak.
Sliding Dragon: There’s also keeps all over the world like Bordermarch, Farthing, Windmere. These things didn’t just disappear in 20 years. We’re trying to account for the continuity lapses.
Zephyr: Most notably the opening sequence. U6’s opening sequence is just wrong.
Sliding Dragon: If you notice, the beginning is really 3 beginnings; You leave Earth, then you’re in the gypsy realm, then you’re on Britannia.
Zephyr: The other thing we’re going to try to reconcile is we’re making the world wraparound, rather than flat.
Parcival: How many extra sideplots do you have in mind?
Zephyr: Well mainly one BIG one. but I’m not sure we want to reveal that right now. What do you think Matt?
Parcival: Just a hint?
Sliding Dragon: Heh heh heh.
Zephyr: Obviously the Temple of Virtue plays a major role now.
Sliding Dragon: There will be some new plots for exploration. I mentioned a while back in an interview that there’s a property surveyor. He gets a few quests going. There’s also a hall planned where warriors can talk about quests. Kill a dragon, etc. So there’ll be new things to do that don’t effect the outcome of the game.
Parcival: Do you have any major changes to the main plot planned?
Zephyr: Yes.
Sliding Dragon: The main difference, and I’m not exaggerating that we’re not sticking with the old plot on this, is that there is now a real antagonist. When you think about it, U6’s plot originally was to find a map and then build a lens. You never get a real sense of danger, or war by the gargoyles. We’ve completely changed that. Britain is under siege, the gargoyles are actually out and about. But now, there’s a antagonist, there’s a real threat, and there’s a fully fleshed out backstory to the gargoyles that’s pretty epic in scope. It ties a lot of the events of previous and future Ultimas into the storyline in a way that really enhances the danger, and the risks. I think we also initially had plans to introduce a number of orders into Britannia – you could more fully explore being a warrior or a mage or a thief. The idea behind that was to get the Thieve’s Belt into a more fully rounded quest. We’ll see if that pans out.
Zephyr: That might be beyond our scope at this point. Obviously the scope is pretty huge already. Which is why I don’t think we want to commit to a release date at this point. There is one other concept that we’re going to address and that is…. What exactly are the gargoyle lands? In U6, they were the other side of a pancake but in U9 etc., they were underground. We’ve got an answer to that question which we’ll unveil when the time is right. Also, we haven’t finalized this but the gypsy MAY play an actual role in the plot this time.
Sliding Dragon: Yeah, we had some very cool ideas about her.
Zephyr: Here’s the thing; the gypsy in U6 send you to Britannia. Nothing plot critical, I think, more of a tangential role. AFTER you go into the red moongate but she doesn’t actually send you to Britannia, she sends you to the gargoyles!! Why? So we’re going to look at that and see if we can flesh that out a bit.
Sliding Dragon: We realize that the gypsy is a stat setter. But it almost makes sense to make her a player in this whole adventure.
Zephyr: Yes, but the way it was done in U6 was very odd in terms of the way she appeared. It didn’t fit with the opening sequences, so we’re going to try to make that fit. Essentially we’re preparing a new full-motion video trailer, mainly for publicity. We’re also working on something to replace the GPG and Microsoft opening videos. Not sure how that’s going to work, but I’ve seen some screen shots and it’s going to be pretty impressive.
Parcival: I suppose U6P will be a ‘total conversion.’
Zephyr: That’s the idea at least?
Shaddockh: It really would need to be, as we’re totally replacing whole subsystems. Convo, spells, etc. even the XP system will need to be revamped to accommodate levelling by praying at shrines.
Zephyr: We’re bypassing just about all the basic systems actually. Well, like Shad said, we’re replacing whole subsystems. Spellcasting, conversation engine, even leveling. Stats combat. There’s a lot of work to be done and we still need more people.
Parcival: How many people are on the team right now?
Sliding Dragon: Over a dozen, I’d imagine. I talk on any given day to 6 or 7.
Zephyr: Yeah, looks like 13 currently. There are some people who float in and out but right now we have 13 core members. Actually 14 if you count my wife who is helping out with polishing the dialog. She is very picky about dialect. We are going to be very strict about things like thee/thou etc. In U6 it was mixed; I think we decided to go 100% archaic English.
Parcival: How much of the original dialogue is re-used?
Zephyr: Well, I’d say most of it at the moment, but that can be changed fairly easily. We’re adding many new characters; we’ll have to see as we go what needs to go or stay.
Sliding Dragon: Filling out the towns.
Zephyr: Right, we’re going town by town and encounter by encounter.
Sliding Dragon: Populating a Sleeping Bull-type settlement called the Wayward Avatar. Jesse and I have been attacking the plot pretty rigorously. No disrespect to the original, but its plot was wafer-thin.
Zephyr: Yes. Creating a new NPC at the moment is very simple. You can just use a simple text editor and write the content and then we have a program that converts it to what you saw in the screen shot. We have someone researching the scheduling at the moment, and she’s making huge progress. She only just joined the team a couple of weeks ago and she is making good progress with that. She has managed to tackle some very technical issues with triggering NPC actions using only code. She has also figured out a way to time things so that, in theory, things happen at a certain time of day. There are many other challenges to overcome, but I just wanted to give her some credit as she’s accomplished a lot in a very short time.
[This is ACDeveloper/Steph who was present at the start of the interview, but had to leave early –RPGDot]
Parcival: Do you have any thoughts on implementing voice acting? Will it be like DS, or full speech, or will we be playing mutes (as usual)?
Zephyr: We haven’t decided on that yet as far as I know. I don’t think we’re going to have the resources to record 300 different character’s dialogs. That’s a bit excessive. I think Morrowind had a good compromise where they did voice acting for initial contact but that seemed kind of pointless, and got repetetive and annoying to me, anyway. These are just my opinions. What do you think?
Sliding Dragon: It’s not feasible. Particularly if someone wants to be my hero and translate the dialogue to other languages.
Zephyr: We might record a few grunts or screams or somethin?
Sliding Dragon: That would be hilarious. We could stick a microphone in front of us when the Editor crashes. I’m sure we could record a lot of screams and yells then.
Zephyr: Yes, we probably could. But we’d have to bleep out the swearing.
Parcival: You could concider an adult version…
Sliding Dragon: Well, U6 had prostitutes. We’re not going to get rid of them.
Zephyr: No, in fact I think we were planning to really play that up. Convo branching by gender included.
Zephyr: Oh, one note about the opening trailer. We’re going to try to avoid showing the Avatar’s physical features because we want to be able to make him multiple ethnicities/genders.
Sliding Dragon: The original clearly showed a white guy with an outstanding mullet.
Parcival: I think ive got a good impression on your current status. Any questions i realy should have asked?
Zephyr: I can’t think of anything. I think I’ve babbled enough.
Shaddockh: I guess the main thing is, development is in full swing?
Zephyr: And world building is too, We’re really cruising, but we do still need more help.
Sliding Dragon: We need world builders and a couple more 3D guys wouldn’t hurt either!?
Zephyr: We have a great 2D person but we can use more help, as it’s a really daunting task to come up with portraits for 300 NPCs.
Shaddockh: And 70 spells! – the graphics for them.
Sliding Dragon: I think we should say this: U6P is not doing a straight conversion. We’re taking liberties with the story, liberties we feel will really add to the game in a positive way. I think that differentiates us from Lazarus, who is doing a more faithful remake. Considering we’re adding a ton of elements that will be new to veterans of U6.
Parcival: Any last words for rpgdot readers?
Sliding Dragon: Alas, poor Yorick…
Zephyr: Most important thing is that they know that we are very much alive, growing daily, making real honest-to-goodness progress. And when we unveil the new website, we’re going to have a lot to show people.
Sliding Dragon: We have a ton of stuff ready to show people.
Parcival: Well be looking forward, and I would like to thank you all very much for this interview.
Zephyr: Hey shad, did you talk about the UI designer already?
Sliding Dragon: No.
Zephyr: Or the documentation project?
Shaddockh: No, wasn’t sure about that one.
Sliding Dragon: That can be another interview. Let’s just say we have a couple more BIG surprises coming soon.
And here we are with round three of Five Questions for the Team for the Ultima 6 remake team. Again it’s Sabre Edge from Team Archon who is answering the questions.
Teich Dragon: Regarding hiring NPC’s. Will you able to hire them as soon as you meet them, or will you have to meet some requirements (levels and/or missions) first?
Sabre Edge: Most of the potential party members will have the option to join you as soon as you meet them. Some of them may require you to accomplish some task first that will allow them join you in your quest. Each party member has unique strengths and weaknesses that you need to take into account, especially when you already have an 8 member party and you come across a new potential member. “Do I dismiss a current member and recruit the new one or do I decline the offer?” My personal goal is to make it as hard as possible for a player to make up his mind as to who to have in his party because all the options are so good?
Teich Dragon: What do you think (despite the new engine) will be the feature that enhances U6P the most from the original game?
Sabre Edge: We believe that U6P will be most enchanced by our story plot and constant implementation of that theme. This isn’t really a feature, but we are quite proud and excited of our improved story and storytelling methods.
Teich Dragon: Since Dungeon Siege and a lot of tools have been released for the game, news seem to be a bit slower than before about the remake. Is everyone already drowned in the editors?
Sabre Edge: Oh wow, after all the waiting, GPG has released a virtual mountain of information and tools for us to use to create a DS mod. Not only them, but other teams are sharing what they create as well! We are busy – busy digesting all this information, finishing the tutorials, and trying to become experts in our particular departments out of dedication to our love of Ultima – and to making the best Ultima mod ever seen. I’ll admit it, we haven’t been as good in posting updates this summer (our webmaster is getting married in September and his fiance has all his time blocked off), but we’ll fix that right away.
Teich Dragon: I suppose not every spell from the original game is suited to be in the DS remake, simply due to the fact that they have very different game engines. Can you give us some insight how you are going to implement the magic system in U6P?
Sabre Edge: The magic in U6P comes from one school of magic made up of 8 circles, as opposed to DS’s 2 school approach. The magic in U6P will be very similar to original Ultima magic system. Spells will require the use of reagents that can be found in different places around the world. You may even find some new reagents to aid you in your spell casting and potion making.
Teich Dragon: Looking into the distant future, when U6P will be finished someday – do you think you will start another task like this one, or do you already feel that something like this can be only once will all the effort you put in already? Can you tell us how you feel about this project right now – is it more hard work or do you still have fun on the project?
Sabre Edge: Hopefully this won’t be our only project but maybe we’ll be so busy getting paid to develop games its hard to tell! 🙂 Seriously though, we have talked a little about “the next project” but we quickly push that away and concentrate on the task at hand. It is a lot of hard work, but it also is a lot of fun. We have some really good guys that are putting a ton of effort into their work. It is great to see the project finally rolling along through production.
PS. We are currently looking to expand our team. If you are interested in helping to code features, model Ultima characters/monsters, or recreate Britannia in 3D, send us an email letting us know how you can best assist the team.
Thanks again Sabre! As a reminder, if you would like to ask the U6P some questions – just send them along!
Another round of five questions for the members of Team Archon, the Ultima 6 remake using the Dungeon Siege engine. Okay, admittedly Sabre Edge was so nice to actually answer 6 questions instead of five, but I’ll stick to the title!
Here we go with round two of “Five Questions for the Team!”
Teich Dragon: Are you going to introduce a “difficulty setting” for U6P like Dungeon Siege has one, or will the game be more like the older Ultima’s where the amount of monsters that attacked you was varied by your party size?
Sabre Edge: At this time we do not have plans for a difficulty setting. Our aim is to build a world balanced at “normal” difficulty where the Avatar will begin at level 1. At the moment, DS does not let the game dynamically spawn monsters according to the number in the player’s party. Our game is balanced from the middle onward to assume the player has fully recruited their 8 member parties. You could try and do it solo, but it will be very hard to accomplish.
Teich Dragon: Are you going to implement an intro like the original game did have? And if so, will the gypsy use that strange brewings that only appeared in Ultima VI or will you change that to the tarot cards?
Sabre Edge: We are very excited about our introduction cutscene. It will be a fully rendered version of the “slideshow” beginning that started the original. We will also have a gypsy at the beginning to determine your Avatar’s starting stats. The potion brewing is still an option but most of the team is leaning toward sticking to the original Ultimas and use cards instead of potions.
Teich Dragon: I’ve browsed over your town and map sketches recently and I think some of the town designs are looking really brilliant. How close to that sketches do you think you can implement them with the DS editor? Are we are going to see some screenshots of finished maps with the DS engine?
Sabre Edge: The world builders have been instructed to follow the “town blueprints” as closely as the Siege Editor allows. We have done some preliminary world building, but without the SiegeMax to allow us to build custom nodes, the maps are just excersises. When the SiegeMax comes out, the final piece of technology we require will be in our hands and we will be able to fully tackle the creation of Britannia.
Teich Dragon: Are you going to implement some “party-interaction” into the game, aka that members of your party are going to comment on some of your actions or maybe teasing each other? (Something like Baldurs Gate had, I think you get the idea…
Sabre Edge: There will be some party interaction, mostly handled through in game cutscenes that occur at important plot points. Also be on the look out for certain companions to have their abilities increased while in the presence of special others.
Teich Dragon: Here’s a question from Russ, one of our readers: “I was wondering given the popular aspect of a player owned house, will you try to include this fun idea? The lack of this in many popular games of today is embarrassing. I remember in U6 the original, I used to use the world builder to make a house and I had fun….until it dissapeared.
Sabre Edge: The Siege Engine isn’t very conducive to ingame modification by the player. The player’s house would have to be in the game before the player even fires it up to play for the first time. So the answer is eventhough this sounds like a great idea, the nature of Dungeon Siege won’t allow the player to place new house nodes while in game. Nothing stops you from loading our map in the Editor and replacing a few ground nodes with your house and exporting it back out to play. 😕
Teich Dragon: Here’s a statement by Sliding Dragon from an older interview: “By new characters we’re talking mainly about giving Britain a population explosion. Due to the limitations of the era, U6 only had about 200 people on it. It was the decision of myself and Elegiac Dragon, who has been working on the maps, to organically ‘grow’ the cities. By that we mean spread things out a bit. If you see the pictures of Cove available at our website, you have an idea what I mean. In the original, Cove is literally the healer’s, Rudyom’s, the mayor’s house and a magically locked shed. Why is this even a town? So we’ll be adding a variety of NPC characters.” How’s the work on “new” NPCs going and how many do think will be in the finished game?
Sabre Edge: Work on new NPCs has been going well. Some have been included to expand the plot. World builders and dialogue writers have been given the ability to create any number of NPC’s they’d like to help populate their towns and cities to give them more life and activity.
Just a quick note, U6P may have appeared to not have much progress in the last month or so. This is because Team Archon, like all Fan Mod projects, are at the mercy of the Real World. Summer is vacation time for students and working professionals alike and the majority of the team is just getting back from this dreaded phase of development. Expect us to get back on the fast track now that the beach doesn’t look so inviting and we’ve had our fill of theme parks?
Thanks a lot Sabre Edge!
Welcome to our first installment of a monthly Q&A with the U6P crew. I had the chance to interview Sabre Edge about their remake project and will continue this one a monthly basis.
Teich Dragon: Since Dungeon Siege has been released a lot of people expressed their concerns that an Ultima remake wouldn’t be possible with that “Hack ‘n’ Slash” engine. What do you think about these issues?
Sabre Edge: It is very possible to remake Ultima within the Siege Engine. Dungeon Siege was designed to be hack n’ slash. That is the direction Chris Taylor wanted to take his game and it turned out exactly how he planned it. That is a design issue though. The beauty of the level of modability in DS is that we can have a totally different design in place and the engine will still be suitable to pull off all the game mechanics and graphic creation that we require.
Teich Dragon: Now that the DS editor has been released, what is your first impression?
Sabre Edge: I wouldn’t say the editor has been “fully” released at this point. What we have now is a full fledged beta complete with bugs and uncertainty. My impression of the editor is that it has a pretty steep learning curve. It will take some real effort on the part of our world builders to become proficient with it but I am very confident they will do so.
Teich Dragon: Dungeon Siege doesn’t offer an overwhelming NPC interactivity. What are your plans to change this for U6P? And furthermore is this possible with the editor?
Sabre Edge: The top priority of both our Programming and Dialogue departments is to get a fully functional clickable Keyword system (a la Ultima 7) working in the Siege Engine. I believe it might be possible in through skrit in a limited capacity, but not to the extent we want with specific quest flags, dynamic states, and party member specific dialogue. Our goal is to build the dialogue engine within an external .DLL file. Hopefully GPG will include adequate I/O for the .DLLs to accomplish this goal.
Teich Dragon: There seems to be a little “lack” of musicians for U6P, at least only one musician is mentioned on the team page. How does the overall music progress? Will there be more people on the team?
Sabre Edge: It is our team’s belief that it is best to have only one person head up the music department. This person is responsible for the musical theme of the project. It is typical in the entertainment industry to have only one person in charge of the score/soundtrack of a production, be it a movie, game, television series. That way the mood and tone will be consistent throughout. We are very confident in Tanq’s ability to do this for it.
Teich Dragon: The 2D artwork we have seen so far (especially in the “trading” cards) is more than wonderful. Do you feel the 3D artists can compete with such a perfect style of “Ultima” artwork?
Sabre Edge: The 3D models in the Siege Engine will have to be created within the specifications of the engine. It wouldn’t be feasible to have the level of detail that is shown in the 2D cards be reflected in the 3D engine. There is an optimal poly count that each model should be within and we are trying to stay within those ranges. The 2D quality of the cards will show up in the party member portraits as well as the dialogue windows of NPCs.
From Andrew Bub:
Unlike books, film, or even television, computer games are a transitory medium. Think about it – you can enjoy a novel from 1910, a film from 1970, or a popular 80s sitcom without much hassle. But a classic game from 1984 isn’t likely to thrill (or even be playable on today’s machines) the way it did when it was released.
Unlike books, film, or even television, computer games are a transitory medium. Think about it – you can enjoy a novel from 1910, a film from 1970, or a popular 80s sitcom without much hassle. But a classic game from 1984 isn’t likely to thrill (or even be playable on today’s machines) the way it did when it was released.
Older fans can reminisce about the joy of experiencing “Wizardry,” “Autoduel” or “Seven Cities of Gold,” but the outdated graphics, clumsy controls and primitive system requirements trump even the classic gameplay that those, er, classics offered. But what if the original gameplay could be preserved and remade with today’s technology? Many fans pine for remakes, and not necessarily sequels (our recent remake column unleashed an unexpected tirade of feedback). Strategy fans would love a remake of “X-Com,” action fans would thrill for a modern version of “Karateka” and RPG fans would kill for remakes of most of the Ultima series.
Each and every early Ultima offered something new. Terrific story in I and II, a vast world in III, ethics in IV, a day and night cycle in V, isometric perspective in VI… and more. In the wake of the Ultima IXdisaster and the news that Richard Garriott (a.k.a. Lord British), creator of Ultima, has moved on, the prospect of more single player Ultima games, or even modern remakes, grows dim. Sure, Ultima Onlinecontinues onward, but even with the new expansion pack, its future is uncertain.
Nature abhors a vacuum and enterprising computer game fans do as well; that’s why fans from around the world have been banding together to recreate the classics. At the time of this writing there are remake projects for every single Ultima game – I through IX. Many seem to be simply proposals, with little hope of being finished, but a few look quite promising.
Ultima I: The Reconstruction is a complete remake of the game that started it all, and there’s anotherUltima I remake in full 3D. Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue looks ambitious, offering full 3D artwork, new music, and other frills, while preserving the central game. Unfortunately, they failed to answer our requests for an interview. The re-creators of Ultima, I, III and V were also silent, indicating perhaps that these projects have stalled.
The people working on The Ultima 6 Project (a remake of U6: The False Prophet) responded, however. “Ultima 6 is a wonderfully immersive, connective RPG,” said U6P’s Jeremy Gess. “It has character, depth and a satisfying story. Origin used the best available technology, but today… today’s technology could completely boggle your imagination!”
Gess and his partners – there’s over 15 people working on the game – plan on sticking close to the original game. They also intend to “preserve and enhance” the story, as well as adding content to the existing story. “We want to take Ultima 6 a step further, with more characters and dialogue, more sub-plots and quests, more continuity and history.” At this time, the project consists of artwork, a trailer, and the news that they’ll be using the Dungeon Siege engine.
Looking at the websites for all these projects, one can see that love for the games is the reason they exist. These remakes aren’t for profit, and will be distributed free of charge. According to Gess: “This work is fun! It’s fun for me to do this project and interact with the other members of our team.
“I am also determined to work professionally in the game industry,” Gess additionally revealed. “Completing U6P will be a major accomplishment and a crown jewel in my portfolio that will hopefully interest future employers.” Other mod and total conversion hobbyists have the same goals and desires.
But what does the creator of Ultima think? For that answer, we spoke to Lord British himself (or Richard Garriott in the real world). “I take great joy in sitting down and looking at these projects on their websites,” he said, “and perusing how they’ve upgraded the graphics, enhanced the conversations and upgraded the technology.”
But, legally speaking, the approval of Britannia’s creator and ‘Lord’ isn’t enough. Garriott has left Origin Systems, owned by Electronic Arts, and moved on to found Destination Games, working closely with Korean developer NCSoft (creators of Lineage: The Blood Pledge). Garriott is no longer the copyright holder of Ultima, only of his character and online avatar, “Lord British”, so one might call Garriott a “lord in exile.”
When asking Electronic Arts for comment on this story, the request was passed on to its vice president of corporate communications, Jeff Brown. He politely went on record to say: “[At EA], we get a lot of feedback from fans on ways to modify our games. As you would expect, people who love the games often have the best ideas on how to improve them. The important thing to remember is that Ultima is a licensed trademark of EA and anyone who wants to use or borrow that license should give us a call first.
Garriott backs them up by saying: “If I put my ‘If I was still an employee of Electronic Arts’ hat on, clearly EA has to protect their legal trademark and copyright issues which means they have to prevent people from spoiling [the Ultima license]. Especially if people start doing these projects for profit, or in any way might take away from the salability of EA properties.
“[But] from a, ‘Is this going to threaten actual sales of anything called Ultima?’ viewpoint,” he continued, “of course not. I would encourage Electronic Arts to find a way to help these folks, versus hinder them, but I understand that the legal issues are quite complex.”
Gess told us, “These remakes could only serve as free press to EA’s existing franchise and interest potential new customers to EA’s current product, Ultima Online.” Garriott agrees: “I think fundamentally, keeping fan-interest in the Ultima property, as these sorts of projects (fan-based) tend to do, is a good thing for Electronic Arts.
But Jeff Brown reiterates: “Whether the mod is intended as a commercial product or just a pass-around, it’s still derivative of someone else’s property, which makes the people doing it obligated to touch base with EA first. Think of it like this: If you’re planning to make a show about a good-looking female CIA agent and call it ‘Alias 2’, you might want to touch base with ABC first.” EA didn’t comment on whether or not they plan on doing anything at this time.
If anything, EA should be pleased to see the fervent demand for this property remains. With a remake project for every single-player Ultima at some stage of development in existence, and multiple projects for certain key titles, then if anything, this might inspire them to revisit the idea of making more Ultima games in the future. There’s also the possibility that these projects will die on their own, as mods and total conversion projects often do. There’s even a parody site called “Ultima: Elijah,” making fun of these projects and their continuous, “Sorry for the lack of updates” messages.
Garriott did have this to say in closing: “I am personally flattered as a creator, but also as a gameplayer I’m thinking: ‘Wow! I’d love to have the ability to reflect back on those and play them in a more updated form.’?
As players, fans and RPG gamers, we all would like that opportunity. Even if legally speaking EA ultimately decides it cannot allow these projects to continue for whatever reason, hopefully that message rings loud and clear and dedicated amateur developers will still get their shot at the big time.
From Teich Dragon at UO Stratics:
I had the chance to make a little interview with the guys from The U6 Project. For those who don’t know what it is, these fans of Ultima are working on a remake of Ultima VI using the Dungeon Siege engine.
I had the chance to make a little interview with the guys from The U6 Project. For those who don’t know what it is, these fans of Ultima are working on a remake of Ultima VI using the Dungeon Siege engine. My advice is to read the homepage of them first, and then start reading here. I hope you enjoy it:
Teich Dragon: Please explain a bit how you started the redo, and what has happened so far! It seems you got a lot of help, when I look at the crew right now.
Sliding Dragon: I’ve been a fan of the Ultima series since a friend of the family gave me The False Prophet back in 1991. As a teenager, I was already familiar with more linear role-playing games like the popular Quest for Glory series from Sierra On-Line. However, I was fascinated by the way you could literally do whatever you wanted, on your own time, at your own skill level. Lead a life of virtue or stack up the body count of Trinsic guards with a well-placed cannon?
I was looking for U9: Ascension information in the beginning of this year and found that the Peroxide team was remaking the first Ultima. I was blown away by the look and feel and, most importantly, a desire to do something that ties together all the lore we’ve come to know and love. While reading through their message board I found the web site for the Lazarus project. When I saw that, I knew I could do U6 the way it should be represented for today’s market. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with a team the feels the same way.
Thanks go to Project Lazarus for the initial help in drumming up support for U6P.
Sabre Edge: Sliding Dragon came up with an idea to redo and update one of his favorite games using the Siege Engine. Personally, I responded right away, because I wanted to work with a talented team, make a game I could be proud of, and frankly, I just love making games.
TD: What is your intention on redoing an old Ultima? A lot of other project like this sprang up the last time, do you think this is out of an annoyance to newer games, a wakened interest in the older ones or a mix thereof? Or just an RPG-renaissance?
Sliding Dragon: When I decided that The False Prophet should be translated through the Dungeon Siege mod, I did so because the story, while fine, was lacking in several areas, most especially continuity. I’d like to fill those gaps with some integrated and enhanced storylines.
From a gamer’s standpoint, the Avatar is the one head of Virtue travelling war-torn lands. But where’s the war? Aside from various NPCs mentioning how frightened they are and occasionally killing some gargoyles at the shrines, there isn’t one. We’ve got plenty of ideas that bring the gargoyle menace a little closer to home, while at the same time remaining completely logical and true to the story.
Also, geography: what happened to Windmere? Bordermarch? Farthing? The Temple of Virtue in Cove? It’s only been twenty years since the events of Warriors of Destiny. Should these buildings have disappeared so suddenly? The excuse is the great upheaval sank them all. That’s a pretty weak rationale.
I don’t think that these MODs could possibly irritate new gamers; role-players are sophisticated and understand the importance of a story over graphics. I still play Final Fantasy 2 from time to time. I think that the new fans will be drawn to it because of the largesse of the project; it’ll be something of a curiosity. Old fans will play it to see how faithful of an adaptation it is. In the end, the motivation of the player isn’t as critical as the fact that they’re enjoying an Ultima adventure reborn.
RPGs in general are feeling a heightened stage at this moment, I believe. I think that’s excellent, because anyone that’s using their mind to discern a fantasy plot instead of figuring out the best way to annihilate the other team in Death Match is choosing wisely.
Sabre Edge: I believe that, with a few exceptions, the current games are more interested in shock value, benchmarking, and technological one-upsmanship than they are with creating a fun game with an original, interesting premise, backed by good gameplay design. Ultima is a perfect way to return to great gaming and the Siege Engine is our vehicle of bringing it to the present.
TD: Are you in contact with other groups who work on remaking an Ultima?
Sliding Dragon: Lazarus was instrumental in getting us on our feet; we talk to them on occasion as their project is based around the same software as ours. The U1 remake is a different matter. We’ve also seen people discussing whether or not to add our link to their sites since many MODs now deal with porting the existing game to other OSes. 🙂
Sabre Edge: We are in contact with the Lazarus project who are redoing Ultima 5. I could say I haven’t dropped in on other Ultima remake discussion boards, but that would be lying.
TD: You state on your website there will be: new characters, improved weaponry, improved plot, enhanced dialogue…. Can you give us a hint what you have planned for these features?
I think the weaponry in U6 was quite impressive as far as I remember… and what kind of new characters can we look for ? (NPCs or Companions?)
Sliding Dragon: By new characters we’re talking mainly about giving Britain a population explosion. Due to the limitations of the era, U6 only had about 200 people on it. It was the decision of myself and Elegiac Dragon, who has been working on the maps, to organically “grow” the cities. By that we mean spread things out a bit. If you see the pictures of Cove available at our website, you have an idea what I mean. In the original, Cove is literally the healer’s, Rudyom’s, the mayor’s house and a magically locked shed. Why is this even a town? So we’ll be adding a variety of NPC characters.
There will also be some new locations and a revisitation of ones dropped in the format change from U5 to U6 (the seamless environment of U6 couldn’t handle them I suppose). The Wayward Avatar is a Sleeping Bull type establishment set up between Cove and Minoc on the King’s Highway. There’s a quest there that I devised myself involving some visitors from another dimension.
But that’s “expanded” plot. We’ve got a ton more of that. There’s going to be the Official Property Surveyor in Britain – you ever wonder how people get their land? They get it from him. He’s the impetus for a couple cool side quests. He might even sell the Avatar a house if the price is right.
The improved plot mainly deals with making the Gargoyle “menace” seem much more natural. Try as you might to think about it, they really aren’t that frightening because they really aren’t around that often. We plan to tighten that up, offer some more so that their fight is better realized and more visual (AND interactive).
To do so, the game will lose a bit of its linearity at the beginning, but we think that the player will appreciate that the unfolding story actually unfolds as the Avatar explores new areas to gain access to others. The biggest change to the game I think people will feel is restriction on the black orb. At the beginning, the Avatar will not have the ability to zap himself all over the globe. The orb will begin to work once the Avatar has visited regions with shrines in them. Lord British’s castle will always be a location, however.
We’re also thinking about stressing classes: are you a wizard, a bard or a fighter? Do you cast a spell to fight/flee, or do you master the art of stealth to avoid detection? Or perhaps your use brute force?
TD: Improved plot: How will you make sure everthing will fit to the classic game? And how much enhancement will you go for? And how are the guys working on the plot work?
Sliding Dragon: I’m writing the majority of the dialogue. Jesse and Xenerkes have been fabulous in decoding the originals, which is a huge time saver and a great boon in general. With regards to the plotting, we’ve submitted sidequests and storylines through online meetings, chats, e-mails, etc. As you can see from above we are diligent in making sure the plot is the same (get the runestones, the Gargish tablet, make the balloon, save the universe) but with added twists and story outcomes that are logical and proper. I’m a writer by trade, so I’m trying my best to fill in all the plot holes inherent in the original while maintaining the story.
DeMagus Dragon is our Continuity Expert; he’s making sure we don’t breach continuity.
Sabre Edge: Since we, and our fan base, are great U6 fans – who obviously love the story and the characters, it’s our intention to maintain the integrity of the original Ultima 6 as much as we can. We plan to enrich the U6 game play, to make our “Phoenix” U6 rise enhanced – not changed – to an even greater game. Since technology has improved immensely and game-playing has reached new levels of maturity, limiting U6P to only original play would actually be a disappointment to you, the game players, and a major lack of foresight on our part.
TD: Will magic work the same way as it does in the old game, or are you going for a revamp of this part of the game?
Sliding Dragon: Depends on the Siege Editor. Well, first thing, I want “Séance” to actually work. I have a feeling that spells used more often will have a higher potency as your familiarity with the spell increases. And the class thing I talked about earlier might affect what spells you can learn and how well you use them. A bard might be more inclined to use spells of distraction and invisibilty to move amongst his foes. A wizard might choose the same or cast a variety of deadly spells to get at their pursestrings. A fighter/paladin would only be interested in essential spells to complete the game. We’re still working that out.
The spells themselves should still exist, although if I looked at the spellbook right now I could probably nick 10 that no one would miss.
Sabre Edge: Magic in U6P will be based on the spells used in the original. You will collect spells and use reagents just as you did before. What will really shine now is the actual animation and effects that will take place as you cast the spells. Lightning wands will shoot out crackling bolts, fireballs will soar through the air, etc. We are also planning on working in a few new spells for the players to discover and use throughout their adventures.
TD: Even there are some articles concerning the DS Engine out now (mags), I haven’t read how much world-interaction is possible. What do you intend to have in this matter?
Sliding Dragon: As much as possible.
Sabre Edge: Our goal is to make the world of Ultima 6 as real as we can. We want lots of buildings to enter and exit, lots of people with interesting characteristics, and environments that react to interaction. It is important for us to include all the little things of U6, like the ability to pick up nonessential items (like inkwells and water pitchers) just because they are there.
TD: Will there be a “beta” test?
Sliding Dragon: Unknown at the moment. We still have to get Dungeon Siege and become familiar with the Siege Editor.
TD: Since you mention you need to have DS installed on your PC (which is quite obvious), you also say you must own U6. Are you going to use files from the old game?
Sliding Dragon: Maybe for copy protection purposes, nothing more. I think U6 is probably filed under “abandonware” now that Origin is no longer. We’ll see.
TD: The DS-engine seems slowly becomes more and more ready. Are you in contact with the programmers, or do you just wait until it’s in the final stage?
Sliding Dragon: Sabre Edge is in contact with them frequently. He also haunts the Siege Editor bulletin boards that Gas Powered Games seems to enjoy wandering into from time to time. While we’ve asked for a copy of the Editor (stressing the awe factor of having a fully playable MOD at release time), the Editor itself goes through revisions and is therefore unreleasable to the public. 🙁
Sabre Edge: We have made some contacts, but they are tight lipped at the moment, and rightly so. They have their need for secrecy as they finish up their development and we can only speculate as to the actual specifics of the Siege Engine.
TD: Since DS isn’t out yet, how are you working anyway on the project? I bet the plot writers have to do a lot of work anyway?
Sliding Dragon: Music is being written, story ideas drafted, dialogue written. We want to get everything but the actual game done in time for the September release.
Sabre Edge: All games need plenty of Pre-Production work to be successful. We are at the point of designing exactly what we want so that we can hit the ground running and know exactly what we need to do and how to go about doing it when the Siege Engine is released.
TD: Music: What kind of music can we expect, and what format will they be? And is anything ready for us to hear?
Muzexia: The music will be entirely in MP3 format, consisting of the classic tunes from the original U6, many of which are being restored by Guss, as well as plenty of new material that I will compose, like Cove. I will also be arranging many of the original U6 pieces and hopefully making them sound more interesting in the process. Although my earliest training was in classical, I rapidly became fond of jazz and other more contemporary styles, so my material will probably touch upon several styles, while focusing on classical and medieval folk. When composing, I come up with ideas on my keyboard/piano and then when I have something I like, I start recording via MIDI into the sequencer on my PC. The best way for me to write instrumental music is to start recording my ideas and then build from there. Arranging music will involve a much more experimental approach as I try out different combinations, making the original sound different and the same all at once.
TD: Are there some type of cut-scenes intended for the game?
Sliding Dragon: Intended? Sure! We’d like to redo the beginning intro of the Avatar’s escape, although that could be less a cut scene than NPCs moving around spouting expository dialogue. The beginning will change just a tad, and we want to explain that.
TD: In comparission to “full-price”-products, what do you think, how much playtime do you expect in the end? (with or without sidequests)
Sliding Dragon: Difficult to say. I know I spent a solid week killing people the first time around. Then I learned the joy of SPAMSPAM and spent another week building an island in Britanny Bay. (Will SPAMSPAM be in the game? Maybe…) It’s up to the user. You might be able to beat it in a day of solid playing – I doubt it. The new story elements and sidequests (many for glory, others for cool weapons/armor) will certainly make the world seem more robust. As with all RPGs, you set your own pace.
Sabre Edge: I really have no idea, I expect it to be in the medium range (40 hours) with all the side quests adding significantly more time.
TD:What sources are you using for the remake? The game itself, websites, books?
Sliding Dragon: A ton of websites. Of course, I still have my handy Compendium in my desk drawer, too. The game is the inspiration; I take notes when I’m playing. But aside from that, my greatest resources are my team.
TD: In the original game, you couldn’t read gargysh runes, until you learned it. Will this stay?
Sliding Dragon: Oh, yeah. And other stuff, like asking about stuff you shouldn’t possibly know (getting the map piece from the mayor of Trinsic) won’t be triggered until you have heard in a previous conversation about it. Makes sense, don’t you think? 🙂
TD: How large do you expect the download to be in the end?
Sliding Dragon: Dunno. Big! In the range of 50-70 megs? Depends on what file format we use for the music.
TD: I think there was an unofficial add-on for U6, any plans to use that?
Sliding Dragon: We tried to track it down to no avail. No, there are no plans to use it.