Feedback on testing (With constructive criticism)

1. Downloading worked well. I liked that I could seed the file to other downloaders. I was disappointed that I could not keep the seed alive after I had finished downloading. I would not mind lending my bandwidth to the project as long as I can turn it off at will.

2. Login worked flawlessly. Even during prime time I had no issues with my account.

3. Character creation was limited but it did work. I had no errors or issues. I was surprised by having to provide a last name but it does make sense in a hardcore roleplaying game.

4. Logging into an instance (single player online) worked flawlessly. After being logged in it was impossible to tell that I was connected to a server.

5. Conversation. I have to admit that the conversation system was the highlight of the show for me. I felt like I was going back and revisiting my M.U.D. days when I could naturally converse with the first NPC. It was fun to test the limits of the system by throwing in vulgarity and ebonics. If this system is fleshed out to be much deeper then I can see it being a major showcase of the game for old school gamers.

6. Inventory Please for the love of god improve this system. I liked that I could equip my bags but I was disappointed not to see those bags on my character. Regardless of aesthetics the bag management system felt clunky and antiquated.

I'm a firm believer that if you're going to bust on some something then you should be constructive in your criticism. To that end I propose that the bags undergo a sorting system. For instance I can easily mark a bag as my book bag and picking up any books will automatically put them into my book bag if it has room. Tagging the bags as equipment, decorations, weapons, etc would allow for much easier looting, sorting, and access to your inventory.

7. Equipment. Everything worked as intended for me. It would be nice to be able to take items directly from a chest and to put them on your character rather than using the bag as a prep. This may be planned in the future so I'll just say that everything did work as intended.

8. Player housing. I don't think there was any type of claiming or deed mechanic available. That said I was able to switch the house on the lot without error and to explore the different houses. I found a few annoyances such as being able to fall from the wizard tower and having doors cause player position issues but for the most part everything worked well. It was fun to decorate my home.

8.1 Item Grouping. Worked exactly as intended and is much needed. I would propose one minor change and that would be the ability to keep items grouped the way they were when they are put in the bag.​

9. Controls. This obviously needs a lot of work. RG and team are no doubt aware of this and are looking into ways to improve the controls. I would personally recommend locking the camera to the mouse and using a modifier key (ie, hold down ALT) to bring up your mouse. In other words either go full WoW or do something similar to X: Rebirth (terrible game I know I know) where you can hit a key to toggle between mouse cursor and mouse look.

10. Camera. Please allow me to control the camera in many different ways. The most important is the ability to zoom out more so that you don't feel like you're in a tight space. I would also recommend the ability to lock your camera to a different location such as top/down (ala classic Ultima/Diablo camera).

11. The world itself. I was impressed at what has been made so far. I'm fairly certain that the village will be way more populated than it was in the test so I won't criticize the empty feeling. The one thing that I did find somewhat bothersome was that every corner was so sharp. I'm not sure if this is something that can be fixed or if that is a limitation of the engine (meaning too many round and soft corners would degrade performance in the engine). I did find stairs to be cumbersome and annoying but that may be due to the Alpha controls.

11.1 Lighting. I hope the day/night lighting improves a lot as the product matures. I did see that it was working though so as long as plans for making that a tad bit better are in the works then I have nothing to say.​

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11.2 Textures. Ultima games have never been known to be sights to behold. The substance was always in the story and in your actions rather than eye candy. I can live without eye candy. Now that it's been said the textures were in dire need of a face lift. This may be something that community members can fix rapidly or it may be something that the team fixes before release. Regardless it's not a big concern.​

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11.3 Jumping/Falling/Swimming. Ultima 1-7 and both Underworlds did not have these features and they worked perfectly well without them. As a matter of fact the platforming in Ultima 8 was one of the most loathed aspects of the game. If jumping/falling/swimming is added to the game I hope that there is no platforming involved to these elements but rather they are added for flavor.​

12. Music. I really enjoyed the music even though it was of limited variety. After a couple of hours I turned my speakers down. When the game is released I hope to see a good variety of this type of music. It worked flawlessly for me.

Summary
I only found a couple of bugs and I did not find any that weren't already posted 100x. As for the other elements I commented on them because that's what early feedback is all about. I hope that one of the devs found any aspect of it to be helpful.

 

I'm running a 64 bit system, yet the installer is 32 bit. Am I just gooned until a 64 bit version is released? Or is there a workaround?

 

64-bit systems should still be able to run and use 32-bit programs. I am running a 64 bit Windows and had no issue with the Alpha. Its actually quite common for games to be 32bit. Very few programs take full advantage of 64 bit unless they really need the power. For games, especially ones using 3rd party engines, there is usually little reason to spend the extra time making it 64bit native. Even Steam is 32bit only; although it can launch 64 bit games.

Did you get an error installing?

 

Agreed. I'm running on a 64bit OS and I had no trouble with the Alpha. A 64bit OS can run 32 bit programs but a 32bit OS cannot run 64bit programs.

 

I don't think you're required to provide a last name. I think that was optional.

As for the inventory they said they'll have a list style inventory for R2.

 

They should look at their analytics to see how many players were on 64-bit Windows. If it's a high enough percentage, they should also consider releasing a 64-bit client with R2.

 

If you're having trouble, you may need to run it in compatibility mode.

 

I'm running 64bit windows 7 professional and everything worked flawlessly for me. I was actually expecting issues but there were none.

In regards to the textures - for me it seemed like inconsistency more than anything. Particularly noticeable on some of the houses. Basically some textures were more detailed than others.

I didn't find a lot of proper bugs - mainly just a lot of things that hadn't been added or finished yet. (invert mouse, etc). And the alpha never crashed once for me. Which was nice!