What was the original idea for U8?

[Sparcade]

Hi all, thanks for making the greatest computer game ever come back to life.

I've got a question that maybe some hardcore fans can answer: U7 BG was made during a time when Origin/LB productions was about to be taken over by EA, and as a consequence, Serpent Isle was rushed by EA when the takeover eventuated, and the game was not considered as good as it could have been.
So... when U8 was 'finished', it too was not as complete as it had been intended (or so I've been led to believe) due to EA having control.
Does anyone know what the actual original idea was behind U8? Why did the finished game seem to suck so much compared to U7? Was it all EA's fault?

[keldorn]

expanded memory is EMS.

[Sparcade]

No no no, that was just my stupid quote.

But I hope that isn't the question that decides if you get into heaven.

[Jets Connor]

Did any of those three posts have anything to do with one another?

[Colourless]

To the best of my knowledge Ultima 8 is close to what Ultima 8 was intended to be as strange as it may seem. Even if it weren't for EA you would not have had Ultima 8 come out much different, it probably would have ended up coming out later but much the same, or not at all. If you read the history of Origin, the sale to EA had to be done as Origin was in severe financial trouble. The fact that EA was financing Ultima 8 meant that it would come out.

Lets assume that the game could be everything that Origin intended. As far as I know, party support wasn't something they were ever intending to put in. They have stated they could have put a party in if they really wanted but it was not the aim of the game. The gameplay itself was not something that was designed by EA, the game design was Origins. Jumping, real time button mashing combat had nothing to do with EA. Improved interactivity was something they wanted to put in, BUT they couldn't, not because of time, but because of the amount of disk space required. The game *had* to be shipped on floppy disks and they were bloody expensive. They are one of the factors that caused Origin to sell to EA in the first place. Ultima 8's detailed and fluid graphics were big, really big, and they needed to cut things out so they could sell the game. They could have just released the game on CD, but at the time, the market penetration of CD Rom drives was very low, and quite possibly so low they wouldn't be able to make up the development costs.

In the end it's about business. EA tends to play it safe so Origin wasn't so much forced to release the game early, but to cut things out to save disk space. As it was, the game was still late, very late, so the lack of time for development can't necessarily be blamed entirely on EA.

[Sparcade]

Hey well there you go. Thanks, Colourless Dragon.

In response to Jets Connor, I used to have a signature that asked what expanded memory was cos it is friggin' confusing! (on the original post for this discussion.)

[Kensu]

I remember reading a discussion with Richard Garriott about it, and it seemed that they planned to add functionality with expansion packs, in much the same way they built Wing Commander II up over the course of a year or so.

Since there's no world map to tinker with, it would have probably been much easier to just continue adding areas to the game by releasing expansion modules.

This also makes one wonder just what was going to be on that Enhanced Ultima 8 CD that they had intended to release, aside from full voice.

[Andar]

No world map? Do you mean there's no 'cloth map' item in the game, or something else?

Wing Commander was sooo cool when I first got it, I still have all the disks for 1, 2, special missions and secret ops 1 & 2. I don't think I've played through in a while.

[Paulon]

No, what's meant is that the game is made up of separate map zones which are loaded when you change maps.

[Scythifuge]

I remember contacting Origin back in the day, and discussing Ultima VIII with an employee. According to him, they wanted to address the complaints with the Enhanced CD version, making it more like Ultima VII, and they wanted to add SVGA graphics. The biggest complaints at the time were the lack of a seamless world and the interactivity of Ultima VII. There would have been more animals and monsters added as well. Some of these monsters would have been ones seen in early screenshots, that were missing from the "final" product. The Enhanced CD version would also have included The Lost Vale.

[Andar]

Its kinda funny, if you believe the story behind the discovered original box art (which I did anyway), they got so far as to print the boxes for the game before scrapping Lost Vale.

According the the story I read, someone who liked Ultima but worked in marketing or printing, ordered some sample boxes from a box converter. The sample they sent him was an original, printed, actual copy of the Lost Vale box! He knew, though they were tossing them as 'free samples', he had gold. I think he eBayed it for some decent $$$.

(OT: That reminded me of the guy who bought a couple old suitcases at a garage sale, jammed shut. Upon cracking them open, found a unique original Frankenstein billboard poster worth millions.)

[Kensu]

I've always wondered how that Reagent Bag would work.
I'm thinking it's a duplicator. You stick a reagent in, but whenever you take it out, it adds one instance of it your pack, but leaves the instance within the bag.
Of course you'd had trouble with more than one reagent in the bag or people trying to replicate objects...
The tiny-tar spell is pretty easy to figure out, you'd just change the Avatar's actor so it's smaller. I wonder if he could physically fight those razor-backed sloth creatures when he was in that form. (In the original game, I think you can only kill them by stepping on them)

(Hey Pentagram team: hint-hint! )

[Bobbers]

"The tiny-tar spell is pretty easy to figure out, you'd just change the Avatar's actor so it's smaller."

That's... really not as straightforward as you make it out to be. We're not talking about a modern game with a physics engine. A smaller avatar would need a smaller collision profile, and I don't believe the game as it currently exists is remotely capable of supporting that. By which I mean, there ARE mobs smaller than the Avatar in the game, and they CAN'T fit into smaller nooks than he can. So unless you just want it to be a cosmetic change, it's not going to be easy.

[Colourless]

That's... really not as straightforward as you make it out to be. We're not talking about a modern game with a physics engine.

Actually it would be fairly trivial for the game to have an avatar that was smaller. Bounding box sizes are set per-shape so to have a smaller avatar they would just need to have another smaller shape with a smaller bounding box defined.

Incidently, Ultima 8 did have a physics engine, though hardly what you'd call a modern one. It was fairly basic, tended to be a little buggy at times (I'd blame the lack of floating point), but simulated gravity and bouncing.

[Kensu]

Sorry, that should read "more than one of a reagent" in the bag, since I assume the developers expected you to just drop one of everything into it and then use it whenever you needed a reagent...

[Kensu]

Speakng of the Avatar's height, how large was the z-scale in U8?
For instance, how many z-ccordinates high was the largest building? How many z-coordinates tall was the Avatar?

[Melchy]

That's... really not as straightforward as you make it out to be. We're not talking about a modern game with a physics engine. A smaller avatar would need a smaller collision profile, and I don't believe the game as it currently exists is remotely capable of supporting that. By which I mean, there ARE mobs smaller than the Avatar in the game, and they CAN'T fit into smaller nooks than he can. So unless you just want it to be a cosmetic change, it's not going to be easy.

You could just set an invisible barrier to the hole that is only lifted when the tinytar spell is cast.