Comparing SotA to Ultima VII

You see a lovely naked woman. She is not in the least concerned that she is wearing no clothes.
Spark's eyes widen and his jaw drops.
(Iolo) "Close thy mouth, boy. An insect may fly in. And put thine eyes back in thine head. They shall look strange dangling out of their sockets."

And at the Baths

"Uhm, wait a minute. How old art thou, boy?"
(Spark) "Uhm, eighteen."
"Thou dost not look eighteen."
(Spark) "All right, I am sixteen."
"Thou dost not look sixteen either. Well, never mind. Thou canst enter. But make sure the management doth not see thee." Glenno scratches his head. "Yes, but... no! I am the management! All right, come on. Just don't cause any trouble."
(Spark) "All right! Wenches!"
Iolo whispers to you, "Methinks young Spark hath learned a lot whilst adventuring with thee!"

 

@HoustonDragon Great U7 has such a wonderful story.

 

Except that's not at all what they said would be happening or how they described their own definitions of Alpha and Beta.. where were Alpha = Feature complete, Beta = content complete.

They have NOT said.. that the final wipe signifies either. So we can't consider it means locking in all features. Once the final wipe happens we don't be in Portalarium's definition of Beta. Starr posted not too long ago the planned schedule of before and after final wipe features and content still to go in.. yes.. features.. and content. Not just polish.

 

Ultima 7 is a masterpiece. Strange that no other game to date can match it...
With SotA Portalarium would have the change to create a game that could match Ultima 7. But right now it is still very far away from it...

 

I always loved the dialogue in Ultima 7

This is one of the things I missed was the NPC interactions on this level.

 

Well, kinda as bowen said:

Basically, THIS ^

One of the trickiest challenges in maintaining a web based service is migrating production data from one state to another (and to a lesser extent, the schema it belongs to). Depending on the complexity of the change, it can require as much developer time and focus as programming any sort of feature or system. It often can require more extensive testing on the developer side of things, as sometimes you dont get a second chance to change the data in production (if something goes wrong). this is all time the developer(s) is not coding in new systems and fixing bugs. SoTA has a small team, small compared to the modern blockbuster title team size, anyway. The wipes until now were to expedite the whole development process.

This does not mean new features cant be added, and that the game cant be drastically altered, it just requires more time and energy post "final wipe" of R32. You could always be a nice philanthrophist and fund a couple of more dev's salaries and things would likely go faster. Player engagement was low due to wipes, so, among many other internal pressures Im sure, they decided it was time to have a persistent game state, and will have to be all the more careful when shipping new features. Im sure you will see some "major" additions to the game in the following 6 months (along with a likely few "major" revisions and balancings).

 

I actually wrote a very lengthy and detailed paper on this in undergrad school, for a game systems architecture course I was taking (about 10-12 years ago, but Id make all the same arguments now). Id say outdoing U7 is about as lofty as a goal gets .

 

When I first started playing UVII it was 36 hours.. stopping only for food, (semi-stopping for food).. shower and 1 hour for Star Trek.. The game that practically single handedly inspired my interest in game design & development.

 

I remember that I called my best friend the Moment I had finished the game to tell him of my feat
What a great time it was in Britannia! I couldn't wait for Ultima Underwolrd 2 to come out and continue the story about the Guardian.

 

I even have dreamed about Ultima VII - last night Really!

 

Yeah

 

Ultima 7 is freaking great! Out of all the Ultima games, I'm afraid I'm one of those dorky 6 and 7 fans. In fact, most of the games on my home computer are C64, Amiga, and MS-DOS games from back in the day and that's where I spend the majority of my time. Good for you for playing awesome games!

 

i couldn't run ultima 6 on my atari st.. i died abit.. then pc came into my life and saved me.. well kind of

 

U7 was a carefully crafted (and quite small, by modern standards) world for a single player experience. I can understand that some have found the Single Player Offline mode to be wanting, compared to U7. I can't offer advice, SotA's online world is more interesting to me. I think it might be impossible for a game like SotA to please everyone in this regard. It is indeed more of an MMO-style game, no matter how engaging the single player story is.

That being said, I think SotA will be a good experience for those who only want single player. If not, there are many current single-player games that might not have that MMO stink on them! I don't want to play them, I prefer SotA, but there you go.

ADDENDUM: I think SotA feels a lot like my first Ultima, U5. Take that for what it's worth.

 

Thanks to the links and info in this thread, I've just gotten Ultima VII and Exult and installed them. In case anyone is still confused about how to get Ultima VII and play it on a modern system (like I was), I just did it and here is how to do it:

1. Buy the game from https://www.gog.com/game/ultima_7_complete for only $5.99 (as of this writing). GOG by the way stands for Good Old Games. I find it very interesting to read the reviews for U7 there, by the way.

2. Download both U7 Black Gate and U7 Serpent Isle, both are included. (The manuals, reference cards, maps, etc, only needed to be downloaded once because they are both the same in Black Gate and in Serpent Isle.)

3. Run setup programs "setup_ultima7_2.1.0.17.exe" and "setup_ultima7_serpent_isle_2.1.0.18.exe". You can launch U7 at this time, but you'll notice the visual quality to be not very good.

4. Exult basically is made for U7, and U7 will look and feel much, much better with it. Download Exult for free here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/exult/files/ by click on "Looking for the latest version? Download exult-1.4.9rc1-win32.exe (2.3 MB)".

5. Run the setup program "exult-1.4.9rc1-win32.exe" and just follow the simple install instructions, such as locating U7 Black Game and U7 Serpent Isle game folders.

6. To launch U7, run the "Exult.exe" in the Exult game folder. For more information about Exult, you can go to the other links in this thread and find out more and download more, but the above are the simple steps to get, install and play U7.

7. You can change the video display in Exult. You can even play it at 1920 X 1080 screen resolution if you wish.

 

Yes that's true - we just want to have some U7 feeling in SotA. And isn't it also true, that there are many MMOs published without the single-player stink on them? So let's hope that SotA can satisfy both camps!

 

I couldn't agree more...and honestly I think SotA does feel a lot like U5/U6/U7. It's hard to perceive this though, because everyone's vision is clouded by the tile-based graphics of the time. A modern game will never feel exactly like those games because the perspective has changed.

But as far as freedom in the world...escaping to far-away places and learning history...the immersive towns inhabited by interesting NPCs...the fun combat system...

It feels like Ultima to me.

 

I reinstalled and it runs underDOSBox, but it runs so jittery, I think I 'll try the exult, hoping to get better results.

 

DOSBOX takes a bit of tweaking to get right...the speed of the emulation is probably too low, at default, to run Ultima7 speedily. You'll wanna look at the frameskipping and all that...I forget the exact config file options, but if you need extensive help with it send me a PM here. Exult is a good choice as well, though it does have some "innovations" and isn't a 100% accurate engine (but it's good enough for most people).

 

I'm quoting my earlier post because I just came across a good example of why I enjoy the Ultima VII dialogue better. When you talk to Guard Stanley for the first time as a brand new player, the following dialogue happens if you click on the offered key word free:


I submitted this as a bug, but from the answer I got from Lum, I understand that the key word system is to blame and nothing will be done about it. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...e-with-stanley-feel-free-to-correct-me.48887/

In Ultima VII you never receive a reply that makes no sense in the context of the conversation. I assume this is because each conversation is an entity unto itself with its own conversation tree, so all the branches fit.