So funny to see this here, I was just looking into Ultima remakes last night, and saw this one among others. Looks really awesome. I never played any of the Ultima games back in the day, and have bounced off them when trying in later years. This should make Ultima VII a lot more accessible and playable.
There's also a remake of Ultima Underworld being made in Godot: https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldGodot
Hoping for these projects to succeed, both U7 and UU sound like incredible games that deserve to be accessible to modern gamers.
There's a YouTuber that's been going through and making in-depth retrospectives of each Ultima game that some here may find interesting. I've found them a pleasant watch and I don't usually go for this type of content. I never played the Ultima series until Ultima Online so I don't have the nostalgia goggles that I'd need to go back and play games this old (sorry, it's the truth) so these videos are as close as I'll probably get.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yfJJxAM6g-4YxKGI-1...
Any thread about Ultima remakes is incomplete without mention of the highly ambitious Ultima V - Lazarus project[1], which re-made (and significantly expanded) the game onto the Dungeon Siege engine. A true labor of love!
Vaguely related but there is this whole set of videos on the production of the Ultima series on Youtube by Majuular that I've been playing while working out. Just such a different time, I almost regret missing it.
His video on 7 and serpent's isle brought back a lot of memories (although my preferred origin game was Wing Commander)
Rise your hand if you remember how long you had to tinker around to get enough EMS to load the game plus sound card drivers loaded into memory when being in DOS!
:-D
This is really nice work. It compels me to plug my attempt at an ultima vii -inspired project: https://uzudil.itch.io/enalim
Very excited about this project, U7 was my favourite game for a long, long time. These days we have BG3, and I'm dying for more of that.
Looks cool! I wonder if they reworked/fixed the terrible font. I find it borderline illegible in the original! (example https://cdn.neowin.com/news/images/uploaded/31070-ultima-vii...)
I loved U7 and 7.5, but those were the last ones I played because the series somewhat went off the rails after that. Pity.
This is pretty neat. There have been multiple attempts at something like that in the past, and of them, this is by far the best-looking one.
However, I think some artefacts can never be properly resolved (see for example the marble statue to the left at 1:53 in the video), which makes it look veird and break immersion (also the flat roofs that are supposed to be slanted/angled roofs)
Also, the U7 engine is a very complex beast so to properly implement it will take a lot of work and fine-tuning (although I guess they can use Exult as a start, which is by now pretty feature-complete)
If you want to scratch that nostalgia itch, I recommend https://lparchive.org/Ultima-VII-The-Black-Gate/
If only someone would properly finish U8 ...
Really impressive work! I'm not sure I like the perspective any better than the original game, but the lighting makes for a nice aesthetic!
I'll take this opportunity to mention another engine-upgrade to a classic Origin game that got me excited: https://github.com/Howard-Day/WCUnity
My first job ever was as a scripter on U7. Great times, and wonderful to see that there's still such an enthusiastic community
The recent Wizardry remaster encouraged me to go back and play other nostalgic games - finished Ultima I and II, but the nostalgia wasn't strong enough to keep going through the busywork and UI impedance of others.
I'll keep this one on my list for when nostalgia strikes again...
Queuing up Spoony's retrospective while checking this out :3
I forget whether it was Ultima III or IV but that turned me off of adventure games. The busy work being asked of me was offputting. May have just been a shift of interest once reaching maturity and turning interests to Women and Music. I still liked some other games but more for study breaks and occasional arcade sessions than constant activities. Gen X here checking in.
Neat, let me just find those old DOS U7 files…
Exult did this decades ago :).
On Ultima VII, can you play the 7th series without playing the previous ones? I mean, are these games standalone? Because Ultima IV it's always praised to be an incredible RPG to play.
BTW, Scummvm will happily play Ultima 4, 6 and 8 games too, with better controls and support.
This brings back so much memories!
Great initiative.
This is nice and all, but I want to revisit I, II and III!
Edit: Ask, and ye shall receive https://archive.org/details/ultima-1-gfx
My first thought was "How is this different from Exult?" (which is a relatively vanilla reimplementation of the game).
Some of the video segments here make differences clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJcOEwKJ4
While Exult basically matches the graphics of the original game, this is closer to "3D Ultima VII", with rotatable views and more interactivity in the game. It gives it what looks like a kind of voxel-ish look, mixing in original sprites with newly-modeled 3D objects.