Idea of 8 level dungeon like Gateway to Apshai

[Daemongar]

I have had this idea in my head for a while now, and next year I'll be taking Visual C++ basic & advanced so I am wondering if I can do it in Exult Studio:

The avatar starts in a dungeon a la UW1 - with bare necessities on his back. He is on a 1st level dungeon. He fights mongbats, those bubbly gremlins or whatever they are, and other 1st level creatures. It's more along the lines of Gateway to Apshai (an old action rpg circa C64.)

He finds keys to open doors, at the end of level 1 he fights a headless or some other level 2 creature, and procedes down stairs to level 2. Etc. Maybe frees a prisoner who has information. It would be solo. Mostly just hack and slash, but maybe a magic path and a fighting path.

The reason why this is sticking in my brain is because I would like to have a gradual buildup of power for the avatar, so it displays the relative importance of small bits of armor and weapons over time, as well as stress the importance of potions. On level 8, you'd probably have plate and a couple pieces of magic armor and a basic magic sword, eventually to have your set completed at the end - where you fight...who knows?

I think the dungeon design is perfect for exult. I don't know if I'd have time to do more than dabble around - but just curious if this would be doable.

[drcode]

Sounds reasonable for ExultStudio. Technically, it doesn't seem more difficult to design than the dungeons in BG and SI.

[Daemongar]

Thanks! I'll be spending the next week out of town living in a hotel for work and was trying to think of something more constructive than playing World of Warcraft with the few free hours of bored free time I may have. Oh, and I love Gateway to Apsahai (lol.) We'll see about doing something with this, as so many have said before me.

[TdI]

Sounds like Diablo

[Kensu]

The perfect environment for this would be Ultima Underworld. The interesting thing about that is that you can bind any spell to just about any item.
So you can randomly generate items, and end up with stuff like the Ring of Fly and the Sword of Paralysis...
Someone really needs to start an Underworld Exult attempt...

[DreamMaster]

If anyone were actually interested in doing such a project, something that would make it doubly cool would be to implement it a module for ScummVM. It would be cool to stimulate a fork of ScummVM for playing RPGs cross platform, and ScumMVM already has all the low level stuff implemented for cross-platform portability.

DreamMaster.

[artaxerxes]

turns out there is Underworld Adventures, an engine for UU. Turns out wjp is also involved in this project. Turns out it's not completely working yet (can't pick up objects for instance) but you can roam around already.

it's all on uwadv.sf.net

Artaxerxes

(edited after facts checking) Turns out the project is discontinued! Sorry guys! So yes, we need an Exult Underworld

[Daemongar]

UW in Exult? That would be awesome - I believe the studio as it stands would be perfect for something like this. I think it would be hard with the 3d puzzles, but there is more than enough ways to make something challenging with 2d graphics.

Oh - and the sounds like Diablo - well, in my defence and the reason I didn't use the Diablo reference is that I always thought Diablo was just a modernized version of Gateway to Apshai - but thats just me - I'm old. But I think it would be diffent than both in that with the power of the Exult engine, more dialogue and intrigue could be created.

[Kensu]

No, I was saying that the game you were discussing would work better using the Ultima Underworld engine.
I'm actually surprised there weren't ever any UU mods. Was the format that hard to crack, or wasn't the game popular enough for anyone to want to try?
I was playing around with one of the character editors when I discovered that the effect bound to a weapon or item was determined by a variable, and hence you would tons of really cool items that weren't in the game. Possibly the greatest was the first one I made: the Golden Ring of Fly.
I was considering binding Daylight to a helm, but wasn't sure if it would be any stronger than the helm of Magic Lantern.
In any case, bearing this in mind, with a good random level generation algorithm, and randomly generating the placables (for instance, the object on mark A will be a wooden shield of {nothing, good quality, resist blows} in {poor, servicable, good, excellent} condition.) you would create something that would be as far above Diablo as System Shock was above Doom 3...
Too bad that EA has the rights to the source code, this could be the new nethack...

[Daemongar]

Well, there isn't a reasonably complete UU engine so that's right out. The only alternative is using Exult for this, and I believe it would be a fun project. It could be done with the Exult engine, since the beasts, armor, items and graphics are built in.

Then, when Exult3D comes out: *poof!* we have a 3D UU right there! (lol)

It *is* a shame that the UU series does not get recognized as much as it should have, though. I loved that game to death when I first got it. But lets face it - it's 13 years old and if it's not getting some love now, it probably ain't ever gonna.

Things that stand out for me:

The magic system was pretty creative
The training system was pretty creative
The physics system wasn't too shabby
The story was fantastic, in that it unfolded pretty well and didn't get tiring by the end
The skills, the classes, the very numerous ways to solve obstacles and puzzles

There are lots of reasons to think fondly on UU.

[artaxerxes]

UU was one of the best game ever made. There is no question about it. Even nowadays it still has a lot of replay value.

It is truly a shame that uwadv is now dead.

On the other hand, to be honest, UU is perfectly playable with Dosbox so I understand the lack of interest in recreating an engine for it.

And if you guys enjoyed the music of UU, I recommend searching for the remixes created by Bart Klepka http://web.archive.org/web/200604212222 ... ocked.org/. He's done an amazing job IMHO.

Artaxerxes

[Kensu]

Artaxerxes: Yeah, UU is quite well-behaved, it seems to have been programmed better than Ultima 7 was. I was able to run both UUs and Pagan WITH SOUND on a contemporary computer as recently as Summer 2002. Back when we had Windows 9x and real honest-to-goodness soundcards.
But then XP came along with "onboard sound" and ruined all that.
(Actually, I have a real soundcard again, I wonder if I could get sound of Ultima 8 again...)