- INSTA-POLL -
Poll 10 Results
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Poll 9 Results
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Poll 8 Results
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Poll 7 Results
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Poll 6 Results
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Poll 5 Results
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Poll 4 Results
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Poll 3 Results
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Poll 2 Results
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Poll 1 Results
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News: September 1999
Select another month's news:
(July-August 1999)
(September 1999)
(October 1999)
(November 1999)
(December 1999)
| September 30, 1999 - Thursday |
18:40 - [Zero] - Alright some great news! Richard Garriott was at an Electronics Boutique conference in Orlando, Florida and released some interesting info. Menion Leah reported about the scene and I have posted everything she said. I know it's long, but keep reading and you'll reach a demo release date and game release date. Sit back and enjoy.
========================================================"I have some great news about U9! I am a manager for Electronics Boutique, and I just returned from our Fall Manager Conference in Orlando, FL. Richard Garriott presented U9 in the EA vendor class. He had with him the official cloth map, and I must say it looks very nice. It is pretty close to the maps we have seen thus far on the net, but the land mass looks bigger than the shots we have seen on the web and there are more islands and such.
He also had with him a mock up of the official box. It looks good! It looks like an ornate book with a window in the front showing part of the 'acending Avatar' picture. The front flap of the box opens up and the full picture will be visible (along with multiple pages of screens and info). He also talked about the Dragon Edition, and it will be very nice. It includes all of the items mentioned so far (map, virtue cards, soundtrack CD) as well as a leather bound spell book (he said it would be an leather type material), a gold Ankh (suitable as a pendant), and "a couple of other goodies". He did not elaborate further on what these 'goodies' would be. The other Ultimas will also be in there. As to whether they will be modified to work with Win95/98, that is still unclear. The Origin rep that was with him said that it would be the same as the Ultima Collection, but that it was an updated version of that CD. Personally, I don't think any code modifications have been made. Possibly just a new configuration tool or something.
The demo, according to Mr. Garriott, will be on either the November or December issue of CGW (It ain't on the November issue, that one is out already. -Jazar). He said the issue would be out the first of November. He also said that the demo would be available for download right after the mag. hits the newsstands, and that he thought it was about 200 megs! The game looks wonderful. I am what you would term a 'hardcore' Ultima fan, and this game is a true Ultima in every sense of the word. The interactivity is wonderful. He showed the demo of the Avatar's house, and everything works and can be manipulated. Most of what we saw has been seen in the MPEGS that are on the web. He did, however, do a few little activities that show how realistic the game is. While he was showing the bow in action, he did a little target practice on a few butterflies that were fluttering around! He also went swimming and there were fish under the water, and a couple of geese cruising around the surface. He proceeded to shoot them as well, to demonstrate the interactivity. When he shot the geese, they squawked and rolled over on their sides and floated on the surface. There was more, but most of it we are already aware of.
One other thing he talked about was the estimated play time. He said that originally they were estimating 40 to 100 hours of play. Now, he said that it will be more like 40 to 400 hours of play! He said the game was huge and very intricate, and that this was much more apparent now that they had an opportunity to play the full game as opposed to bits and pieces. He also said the demo itself would be around 9 or 10 hours of play! The most exciting news, however, is the fact that the release date is November 23! He seemed very certain that this was the date, so I feel that it is pretty solid. As is always the case with release dates, however, I assume it could change. If I think of any other info I will let you know...this is all from memory and I am pretty tired. Just to say once more, the game just looks incredible and now that I have seen it and talked to Mr. Garriott, I have no doubt in my mind that this will be the crown jewel in the series. It will be a fitting end to the 'Trilogy of Trilogy's' and it definitely deserves the name Ultima."========================================================
Wow! a release date on Nov. 23 and the demo in Dec. issue of CGM! This is all most likely true, but we should all wait for an announcement on the official web page to be sure. Thank you Menion Leah and Ultima Horizons for the news.
11:34 - [Zero] - EBWorld has changed their release date from November 10th to Novemeber 24th.. grrr 14 days is alot longer than it sounds. Below is a picture of the box art that they have on their page. This may or may not be the official box; but from what I have heard, it is very close if not the real thing.
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| September 29, 1999 - Wednesday |
5:49 - [Zero] - Some late info. This piece of news has been on the Official U9 page since Monday, but we seemed to have missed it. Anyhow, over at Vault Network they have posted a Ultima IX Intelligence Report which covers a great overview of many aspects of the game. If you have been behind on Ultima 9 gameplay and such, check this site out for sure.
As Neocryte mentioned, be sure to take a look at the new poll. Personally, I'd guess I have about one more month before I completely crack and those nice men with white coats take me away for good.
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| September 28, 1999 - Tuesday |
21:12 - [Neocryte] - Still uncertain about the April 2000 rumors? Well, they seem to be false. Check out this topic at the boards - it has tons of reasons why the date is false. Here is one by Ravage Dragon:
"Jazar has posted at Horizons that there are, as of last Wendesday, 20 bugs left to ged rid of! Any comments on this from the dev team?! Apparently it'll be here before thanks giving, which is some American holiday I guess!"
20:57 - [Neocryte] - Well, you might have noticed that the new insta-poll question is up. Please take a couple of seconds to vote. As for the last poll's results, thanks a lot to all the people who participated (and a lot did!). Click here to see the results. Or, here they are in a nutshell... $80 won with 54 votes, $60 took second with 46, Any Amount was third with 31 votes. Dragon Edition?? had 22 votes, and $100 - 18 votes.
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| September 27, 1999 - Monday |
22:09 - [Neocryte] -
Wow, sorry for the late update, everyone. Tough day. I will try to change the insta-poll question tomorrow.
As for some news, here is a new
preview of Ascension at Gamespot UK.
Here's a bit:
"While this is likely to rile the
Ultima massive, Garriot has admitted that insiders will
have some advantages, including recognising some of
the characters who are back for more, and
understanding some of the set pieces and the
background story. For the rest of the world, a museum
summarises the previous eight adventures in a huge,
beautifully illustrated tapestry."
It also talks about the release date, implying that it is around April 2000.. which definitely sounds very strange:
"With any luck more news will be
forthcoming nearer the April 2000 (proposed) release
date."
The preview also features a few new screenshots. Check these out, they caught my attention:
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| September 26, 1999 - Sunday |
21:54 - [Neocryte] -
Nothing new... Just updating the pic of the day thingy. Any ideas for the insta-poll?
00:08 - [Neocryte] -
Jaccl has been at the
boards yesterday (oh.. that's only like... 8 minutes ago, hehe), commenting on a few things.
First, here he is on swimming:
"
You not only can swim but you will have to at times. And as a matter of fact armor can have an effect on your swimming ability (Capn Bill snuck that one in) :). Anything more would be a spoiler . . .
"
And here's also Jaccl's comment on 4MB Voodoo cards:
"
The game has been tested on 4MB Voodoo cards and will run but the performance cost is pretty substantial. There is just too darn much texture swapping.
"
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| September 25, 1999 - Saturday |
12:43 - [Zero] - I've just recieved big news for most of us without a Voodoo card. For those of you who use Direct3d instead of Glide, DirectX 7.0 has finally been released!! Just surf on over to the Directx Homepage to download it. They promise tons of gaming enhancements for new games coming out on the market..ahem.. Ultima 9 ::cough:: .
So anyway, everyone be sure to go download DirectX 7.0 for Win95/98 right now!
10:38 - [Neocryte] -
Interesting comment by Ralph Dragon was made at the
boards today, concerning cutscenes:
"The total is 10 cutscenes in all. I know what quite a few of them will be
about but I don't want to spoil the surprise for you.
Suffice it to say, there will be an intro, end, and quite a
few plot relevant scene in the middle and pretty much spread
out I'd expect."
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| September 24, 1999 - Friday |
|
21:38 - [Neocryte] -
Sorry for not much updates, everyone. I am having some really busy days with school and all. Umm.. actually,
there are no news at all as of now. Yeah.. just keeping up the 'update every-day tradition' :) By the way,
if you have any ideas for the insta-poll question, I would be very happy to
hear them.
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| September 23, 1999 - Thursday |
21:01 - [Neocryte] - Umm, not
much news today worth mentioning. Still no real news on the demo. There was a question, though, about Aerial
3D Sound Support at the boards today. Here's
Colourless Dragon's answer:
"It is extremely unlikely that they will support A3D. It would classed as adding a feature and the game is feature locked, IIRC.
The game does use Direct Sound 3D which your sound card supports so you will still get 3D sound.
UIX also has some extra sounds for various things (such as foot steps) to kind of emulate EAX on cards that don't have it."
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| September 22, 1999 - Wednesday |
20:49 - [Neocryte] - Jaccl has
been at the boards today and answered the question if Ascension used MFC:
"Well Im not Captain Bill but Ill go ahead and answer . . . The U9 engine does not use MFC, relying instead upon in-house libraries to wrap most Win32 functionality. Some of us have occasionally used MFC on this project for building demo wrappers, some tools development, and for the install program, but not for anything in the game engine proper. Hope that helps! :)"
There was also a question about two little bars on the top of this screenshot... Here's what Jaccl answered:
"Without wading into the nature of the status bars (Ill leave that one to the Capn' ;)) Yobogod is correct in that there is no weapon/armor degradation in the game."
20:38 - [Neocryte] - Ok,
page 5 of the screenshots is up. Woohoo! These were taken
from the latest article from Computer Games Online. I have been browsing through my latest issue of Computer Gaming World that came today, and guess what I saw? Ascension ad! It's a big picture of LB standing on the balcony with like 8 or so little screenshots from the game on the bottom - the same ones from the official page or this page's Screenshot section.
15:46 - [Neocryte] -
There is a cool article up at Computer Games Online with twelve new screenshots! Cool eh? I will try to upload these to the page later tonight or tomorrow.
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| September 21, 1999 - Tuesday |
16:33 - [Neocryte] - The
Computer Games Online has posted
part six of the interview with Lord British, talking about violence in games. The same site also posted an
article about all of Ultimas. And they just happened to have a nice new screenshot
that can be seen below:
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| September 20, 1999 - Monday |
20:35 - [Neocryte] - The
official Ultima IX page has posted
part three of the
Virtues story, this time dealing with honesty. Check it out!
18:54 - [Neocryte] - Computer Games Online has posted
part five of their interview with Richard Garriott! Here, LB talks about the themes and ideas behind
Ascension:
"Just like the Avatar is really truly the player, Lord British is really truly me.
In other words, I really try to make him my alter-ego within the game. On the other
hand, fictionally Lord British doesn't go back-and-forth to Earth like you do, so
for all the Avatar knows, he is a permanent resident of Britannia."
Also, DurhamDragon posted an interesting note at the
boards today:
"I read a message on the Ultima Horizons messageboard from
someone who said they found out through unofficial means that
the demo itself was shipped to a magazine for inclusion on
their next CD. This is of course not official and completely
unsubstanciated but the person saying this seemed to feel he
was telling the truth. :)"
|
| September 19, 1999 - Sunday |
17:03 - [Neocryte] - Guess what?
Part four of the interview with Lord British is up at Computer Games Online. This time, the man talks about Ultima Online:
"It's a huge success. But I look at it and think it's a baby-step. There are a lot of things that are brilliant about the game, but a lot of its edges are coarse. We can do a much better game."
11:27 - [Neocryte] -
Hmmm, there is sort of a leaked release date, November 9th, courtesy of the great Terilem Dragon's page. Umm... err..
not much else is known.
I also asked a question at the
boards about why the land was named Britannia. Here are some answers:
"I forget exactly why "Britannia" came about but I do
remember reading something about when Lord British came from
Earth to the land someone asked him where he was from and he
said either "Britain" or the "British isles" and so he became
"Lord British" in some way. I forget exactly where I read
this but I read it a long time ago in either one of the books
or in the game itself." - Mudrick
"In real life, Lord British was a nickname Richard Garriott
had in college because of his roleplaying habits and folks
felt he sounded British.
Lord British in the game is said to be a human who came from
Earth (from the British Isles) and eventually became ruler
of the land called Sosaria. He set up eight towns based on
the virtues and named the land Britannia (as it was first
called in Ultima 4). His castle was located at the capitol
city so I guess that's why that town is called Britain. I.E.
the land and capitol are named for their ruler." - DurhamDragon
"When growing up in Houston, Richard Garriot lived very close
to an area called "Brittany Bay". I think he lived near
there up through at least Ultima 3." - Nausica
Thanks a lot, guys.
11:09 - [Neocryte] -
CapnBill has been at the boards today
and answered a few questions. First, on 'lighting and stuff':
"Yes, some of our trees are of the 2D-ish variety; the
artists created a couple of tree-clump objects, to reduce
poly count in forest areas, and the worldbuilders placed them
mainly in areas where they'd add visual appeal as sort of a
backdrop to some of the forests, and favored true 3D models
in forests you can walk through. The effect isn't perfect, I
admit, but we all think it looks pretty cool. Our poly
count was just getting too high.
Some of the trees in the screenshot you're looking at are
just lower levels of detail ("LODs") of our 3D models; at
sunrise & sunset, the polys on those LODs become
overly-apparent. Again, this doesn't look as good as it
could; but, it improved performance. Maybe we'll revisit the
LOD distance for trees like that, to see if we can push it
out a bit.
Water color: a few months ago, we brightened it up a little;
it made it look a lot better in dungeons, but now at night
it looks sort of nuclear glow-in-the-dark-ish. We're
planning to tune that, just haven't got to it yet."
And on the ability to rest and use a crossbow:
"We very recently added the ability to sleep & pass time; if
you lay in a bed or on a cot, time passes faster, and you
recover a bit of health.
Crossbow: no plans as far as I know; but the bow works
great! It's one of my favorite weapons."
|
| September 18, 1999 - Saturday |
12:14 - [Neocryte] - Computer Games Online has posted
part three of their interview with Richard Garriott! In this one, he talks about his next project,
mysteriously codenamed 'X':
"However, I have a game design
over there in that folder [points across the room] that I've been working on
for about two months now, and I now have regained confidence, so to
speak, in myself. It's another big research problem, but I'm a devout
believer that through intelligence and hard work, you can craft extremely
strong fiction and content..."
"Well, what's interesting is my code name for it right now is the Roman
numeral ten, or X. There are a variety of reasons in the fiction why that is
relevant, but another reason I like it is because it comes after Ultima IX.
That in my mind is a clear message to the people that are playing Ultimas
that this is the tenth game."
00:12 - [Neocryte] -
Part two of the interview with Lord British is up at Computer Games Online. Once again, this part reinforces my strong beliefs in the Dragon Edition:
"So we're actually releasing two versions of Ascension,
one is the normal edition and the other is literally called 'The Dragon
Edition.' The normal edition includes all of the normal stuff: cloth maps,
multiple manuals, the whole shtick. The Dragon Edition includes even
more, including the eight tarot cards [used by the gypsy fortuneteller in the
beginning of the game], the previous eight Ultima games on a CD and the
full orchestral score."
|
| September 17, 1999 - Friday |
15:19 - [Neocryte] - CapnBill and Jaccl have been at the boards today. Here's Jaccl's vague comment on owning a house:
"Without giving any spoilers let me just say that 'player
stashing' has been addressed in the game and you should have
no problem."
And here is CapnBill on the question if it possible to run Ascension with less than 64 MB RAM, and about hardware
testing:
"Sorry for the bad news, but the game really won't run well
with less than 64MB; it will run, but not well."
"Frankly, we haven't obtained very good results on D3D yet.
We believe it's mostly a texture density issue, so we're
working to resolve that. Once I have some concrete news,
I'll be sure to let this board know, though."
|
| September 16, 1999 - Thursday |
15:12 - [Neocryte] -
Ok, first thing... Computer Gaming World has posted an interview
with Richard Garriott, explaining the origin of virtues... so go read it. Also, as Zero already pointed out, there was tons of news from CapnBill. Here's some more....
On 3dfx vs. D3D screenshot comparison:
"Sorry, but release of screenshots or other materials by the
dev-team is taboo! I'll pass the request on to marketing,
though..."
On Spanish version of Ascension:
"At this time, there are no plans to localize for
Spanish...but things do change, so don't give up. All I know
for sure is it won't be part of the initial release."
On music heard in the trailers:
"I think it's safe to say that none of the music you've heard
in any of those trailers is in-game music. Our in-game
music is much better."
On earlier question of what is more important:
"You're all on track. There is no "one thing" that will help
your performance--you need all components (CPU speed, RAM,
3D hardware) to meet the recommended spec to get
above-min-spec performance.
Moving the clipping plane out does increase your RAM
requirement, as well as putting more of a load on your disk
I/O and 3D hardware. Typical RAM usage is around 35 - 45 MB
of physical RAM. I've seen the game use as much as 70 MB of
RAM with the clipping planes pushed out, running around
Britain! But that was on a higher-end system."
11:58 - [Zero] -
Good news! CapnBill has once again blessed us with his presence and insight at the boards. I have summed up each question, and copied CapnBill's exact reply. To begin with, here is what he had to say about the clouds and stars rotation:
"(This one is close to home, since I wrote the sky logic.)
The sky does indeed rotate during both day and night; at
night, its rotation is slowed greatly, you don't really even
notice it. In the day, it allows the impression of clouds
moving.
We considered having separate layers for clouds, moons, sun,
stars; but, one of the main barriers to this was texture RAM
(our full-resolution, 16-bit sky already takes up 1.7 MB of
texture RAM!!) So, we backed off on that. Also, using
multiple layers would have made it more difficult to create
our awesome sunrises & sunsets."
Concerning gamma correction:
We're considering that, but we're drowning in bugs!
However, U9's lighting is tuned to look best at Gamma
settings lower than most defaults, say about 1.1 or 1.2 (I
think most cards default to 1.3 or, old Glide cards used to
default to 1.7). Anyway, too dark isn't usually a problem
for us at all.
About save game slots and sizes:
"Save games are anywhere from .5 MB to 4 MB, depending upon
how far into the game you are. Average seems about 2. There is no limit on the number of slots. Richard is
playing through right now, and he's up to 70 (he ran out of
disk space)! We recently had to add a "delete" button for
save games, since they were piling up..."
Concerning international versions:
"We're localizing for French and German; translations will be
complete, both in text and audio."
Concerning the camera's interaction with the clipping plain:
"Yes, if you pull the camera far enough out, you can actually
lose sight of the Avatar. But, there are limits to how far
out you can go that prevent this."
About dungeons:
"The dungeons actually have a lot of variety; the designers &
artists have given each one its own personality, so to
speak. They don't have "levels" in the classic sense; but
some of them sprawl pretty broadly, with numerous rooms &
chambers."
Relating to the confinement of the U9 world:
"The main world map, Britannia, has no areas that you're not
intended to eventually explore (unless you count underneath
the ground, or behind walls, etc). You can stack things up &
climb them; but I wouldn't advise piling up too many objects
in one area, for frame rate considerations."
AI intelligence and pathfinding:
"Well, we wanted NPCs to respond to weather; and, a fair
number of them do indeed respond to day/night cycles. But,
I'd expect to see a lot of NPCs getting mighty wet! Just
another of those things we weren't able to get to.
Pathfinding is working pretty well these days; but we still
minimize its use because it can consume a lot of frame rate.
People do move around, but not all at once, generally.
Creatures are able to find their way to you pretty well, too."
More on CapnBill coming soon!
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| September 15, 1999 - Wednesday |
21:33 - [Neocryte] -
Interesting question at the boards today that I thought worth mentioning was about CPU vs. RAM: which is more important for Ascension? Well, here's DurhamDragon:
"CPU and RAM are both important. From a pure framerate point
of view, CPU is the most important thing since it handles
geometry, AI, pathfinding, etc.
But RAM also affects performance because the more disk
access there is, the slower your game runs. I'm not sure how
clipping plane distance affects RAM but I assume pushing the
clipping plane further out means more data needs to be held
in RAM so it may be just as important as CPU."
15:34 - [Neocryte] - Part two of the Ascension preview
is up at Computer Games Online. Here's a small bit:
"As with almost all of the Ultima games since IV, you start Ascension in
your own home on Earth. That level will also serve as a tutorial to the
game's interface. You'll learn how to manipulate objects (fill the bathtub,
flush the toilet, bake some bread), navigate the environment and use the
combat interface." Read the rest here!
|
| September 14, 1999 - Tuesday |
19:39 - [Neocryte] -
Check out this two-week old preview of Ascension at EB World. Yeah, it's not new, but it's quite interesting. Here's a small bit:
"Like all of the other Ultima games, Ultima Ascension is filled with real world objects and effects. You can manipulate just about any object you can see on screen, playing harpsichords, baking
bread, and all the other small details that make any Ultima title complete. All of the clocks in the
game keep game world time, the twin moons change phase and move in their orbits with the
passage of time, weather systems move over the land and dump rain realistically and people in
the world go about their daily business when you're not interacting with them. The game world is
already amazingly rich, and the team continues to add details on a daily basis. 'This is a full
Ultima,' said Garriott, 'in that, to a fault, the real world has been simulated as closely as
possible.'"
There's also a small bit on release date information. Don't forget, this article is about two weeks old: "When pressed, he (Richard Garriott) did say that the product was going to
alpha test in five weeks and that one to three months after that, depending on the QA process, it
would ship."
Also, as you might have noticed - new insta-poll. Yep, this has really been a day full of updates. Click here to see the last poll's results. Basically, Release Date won with 26 votes and Demo took second with 21.
15:34 - [Neocryte] - There is
a new preview of Ultima IX: Ascension up at the Computer Games Online.
15:13 - [Neocryte] - Okay, some awesome news here... There was an e-mail sent to Richard Garriott himself asking about items coming with Ultima IX. Here is the e-mail itself:
"Hi Richard, a quick question if you have a moment. In a recent interview, you mentioned the Dragon edition of UIX and that it would contain a cloth map. Does that by chance mean that the Standard edition of UIX will NOT contain a cloth map? The fact that it was mentioned at all is what raises the question to me. 'Twould of course be a dire shame if the last Ultima didn't come with the traditional cloth map... we Ultima fans treasure them, as I'm sure you know. I will be seeking the Dragon edition myself, but if unable to find it (or if it's too pricey) I would feel saddened without the cloth map... (did that sound pitiful enough?) Thanks, Dave."
And here is Mr. Garriott's reply: "Dave, Both editions will contain a cloth map and trinket of virtue tarot cards. The Dragon Edition will have extra stuff. Like: A CD of our 50 piece orchestra music, Ultima's 1-8 and more. - Richard"
WOW!! Okay, if you wanna read some comments of very very happy fans, read this topic! So the soundtrack CD really is coming!
11:41 - [Zero] - Here's the deal on the box art. If I understand correctly, Twiggy sent Richard Garriot some 3d images (below) of what he thought the box looked good as, and Richard replied pretty enthusiastically:
"Wow, nice mockups! In fact, this is close to one of the mockups we did
ourselves. In the end, we have chosen an image of the Avatar "Ascending", with
the Guardian's hand reaching into the sky nearly wrapped about his legs."
And as Twiggy said, the image RG is talking about might be similar to this. Nice work Twiggy!
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| September 13, 1999 - Monday |
22:43 - [Zero] - Alright folks, here's a little bit of news from the boards. As it appears, there was some discussion about the U9 box, and some people even claim to have info concerning this box, which Ultima 9 will be shipped in. Here is Twiggy with some interesting news:
"We should be hearing some great news about the Ultima IX:
Ascension box in the next week or so if my sources tell me
right so everyone just keep a watch out for the
annoucement..."
And here is Terilem Dragon backing him up:
"Your sources, eh? :)
Yes, Twiggy is right. I have some news about the box, so
keep an eye out..."
Sounds to me like these guys are holding something back... With all this news about upcoming announcements, something is bound to happen this week or the following. Stay tuned.
19:54 - [Zero] -
Ultima IX on Dreamcast? Apparently not. Here is Durham Dragon's point of view:
"No console port is planned. I will say though that a well
designed console game can be as long and detailed as a PC
game (the Final Fantasy series being a good example).
The problem with Ultimas is that they are always designed
with the power of present day PCs in mind. And consoles due
to cost considerations mainly, will always be behind PCs in
terms of raw power. Dreamcast may be comparable to typical
systems today but won't be for long. And by the time PSX2
comes out, it's impressive sounding specs will likely pale to
late 2000 PC specs."
15:25 - [Neocryte] - Ultima IX
on the newly released Dreamcast? Apparently, no: "...yeah the low ram would be a problem
also, the fact that no ports are currently being planned,
Console or otherwise. Coupled with the fact that U9 requires
a 600 meg install onto the hard drive. But no, chances for a
Dreamcast conversion are slim to none and slim just left
town." That's Fullmetal, ladies and gentlemen.
|
| September 12, 1999 - Sunday |
22:15 - [Neocryte] - Nothing major.
There was a question asked by BrigadeUnderleadre at the boards about Ascension's dungeons: "...How big are these dungeons? will they be many levels like U1-5 or just caves cut into a mountain like U6-8. I would like to see a few eight-leveled or more dungeons in UA..."
Here is what Yobgod had to say on the subject: "The U:IX Dungeons, like the rest of U:IX Britannia are completely 3D. The DevTeam has assured us that the dungeons are extensive. They appear to be both 'multi-leveled' and 'cut into the mountain'..." Cool.
09:56 - [Neocryte] - My good friend Snoekie sent me an e-mail, informing me that the October issue of the PC Gamer magazine (UK Edition) had a small bit about Ascension:
"The ninth and very definitely the last in the Ultima trilogy of trilogies, Ascension has been hanging about on the horizon for ages,
constantly skipping off whenever we get close.
The latest leap is from September to 19 November - though the fact that the date's a specific one may bode well.
When we first saw Ascension back in the dark ages, it looked absolutely gorgeous. It still does, but it may be overlooked if it misses that
release date and gets trampled in the Christmas rush."
The fact is, that PC Gamer is quite a respected company - would they make up a date? Well, here's Fullmetal's response about this from the boards: "Well, until we hear it DIRECTLY from Origin or EA, it is complete Heresay. They have said, when and if they ever give a release date, it will be said here first, or on the official U9 page."
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| September 11, 1999 - Saturday |
21:55 - [Neocryte] - Fixed a little problem with the Miscellaneous Downloads page - it would come up as a black screen for Netscape users. Sorry for any inconvinience. As for news, here is a topic at the boards that contains some spoilers and info about Ultima IX's plot. It is pretty interesting, although Yobgod mentioned this: "...much of that info is old, outdated, and has since been refuted in article and interview..." I would also like to thank Zero for doing a great job on the update!
18:32 - [Zero] - As you may have noticed, we split the downloads section into three different sub-sections and added a new page called Backgrounds. There you can find many pictures that will fit in the background of your desktop for your viewing pleasure. :)
As for Ultima 9 news, no visits from CapnBill, but over at the boards DurhamDragon discussed how we will be communicating in Brittania:
"In that case you might be disappointed because U9 will indeed use a point and click response system similar to
U7/U8, though there are some points where you are required to
make a keyboard entry (for passwords, mantras, etc)."
09:37 - [Neocryte] - Ok people, I am
getting bored of the insta-poll question. Any ideas you have are welcome, as always. Send them here!
01:16 - [Zero] - Anyone who appreciates the Ultima 9 team and all their hard work, head on over to the Official Message Boards to this topic and write some kind words to our friends at Origin. Lets make this the biggest thread ever. That's an order!
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| September 10, 1999 - Friday |
20:07 - [Zero] - If you jump on over to Gamespot you can find that our Ultima hero, the Avatar, has been voted second place of the Ten Best Heroes in Gaming. So, stop by and read up on what makes him part of the Top 10 gaming heroes here.
19:01 - [Neocryte] - A lot of questions sprang up at the boards today. Not too many worth to mention though. But here is DurhamDragon's comment on Britannia in Ultima IX:
"All of Britannia is done in this large 3D scale, buildings,
dungeons, wilderness. And that's actually a major reason
that about 50% of the landmass from previous Ultimas (such as
U7) has been cut down. It's just too far to walk and too
easy to get lost otherwise..."
Also, as Zero mentioned before, there are still no 'big news.' In fact, I agree with DurhamDragon: "At this point the 'big news' was more speculation than
anything else...nothing has been officially said that would
suggest a big announcement.
Obviously there will be a big announcement regarding the
game sooner or later but there's no indication yet when that
might be." Yep.
08:57 - [Zero] - Well, its been about one week since Origin said there would be a big announcment; and still nothing. Neocryte and I are keeping our eyes peeled, and will have the news posted as soon as we hear. In the mean time, check out the pic of the day and download some more movies. :)
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| September 9, 1999 - Thursday |
21:35 - [Neocryte] - Welcome aboard, Zero! Electronic Arts now lets you pre-order Ascension in case you are interested. It is $49.95... Grab it here!
20:36 - [Zero] - Alright, just some BIG non-related Ultima 9 news. As you heard, I, Zero, will be helping with the web page news, layout, etc. You all know what this means...FASTER updates.
So, whether you like it or not, you will be listening to me blabber on about things..probably some Ultima 9 stuff too. :)
19:19 - [Neocryte] - A quick comment from Jaccl today, concerning the name of the Ultima IX graphics engine:
"Around here we usually call it 'The U9 engine', not very imaginative I know. :) The inhouse editing tool we use to build the game is called 'Ankh'. Right now we are focused on finishing U9 so I couldnt really speculate on the future if the engine. We'll just have to wait and see."
15:37 - [Neocryte] -
So... the big September 9th is here, and there's nothing new so far. Let's hope we'll get some
news later today. By the way, Zero
will be joining me in updating this page, so I changed the news design a bit.
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| September 8, 1999 - Neocryte |
21:40 - Here is a discussion at the boards on the September 9 rumors... and September 9 is actually tomorrow!
15:09 - Ok, a few things. First, DurhamDragon clarified the question about sound in Ultima IX: "It will use EAX 1.0 I believe. I'm not sure what the status
of the MX300 supporting EAX is, but the SBLive seems like
the safer choice for now."
CapnBill has also been at the boards. Here's his comment on how long the Britannian day is: "We have indeed been tuning this value. Currently, one
Britannian day is exactly 216 "real" minutes (3.6 hours). We
found the 72-minute day to be too short, so we made it 3
times longer."
CapnBill had also commented of freedom of movement: "Our engine is a completely free-form engine! The only
limitations to your movement are the slope of the polygons
you attempt to move onto, and the height of a vertical rise
(ie you can only climb a ledge that's so high). We strive to
make it as realistic as possible, and to also give you as
much freedom as possible.
You can also move objects around in the world (such as
chairs), and use them to climb over obstacles. Our collision
system uses the geometry of the in-game art for collision
detection, so if anything in the world moves or changes,
collision changes with it."
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| September 7, 1999 - Neocryte |
21:41 - Ummm.. just update for the pic. Ok, gotta go get my beauty sleep.
15:12 - JoeyJackson asked a question today at the boards about the interactivity issue:
"Will players be able to attack anyone and anything in the
game like in Ultima 7? If so will there be intelligent
town people and guards to hunt you down?"
Yobgod answered: "Of course you can't really claim to be good
unless you have the option of being bad...
You can attack NPCs and we've heard that they (and the
guards) will react appropriately. Guards are mortal but
reputedly -very- tough. Certain plot-critical NPCs will be
unkillable, but we don't know if that will be manifested
through straight invulnerability, magical escapes, or some
other mechanism. Non-critical townsfolk are at your mercy."
On another issue.. school started for me today. That means much less free time for me, so less updates
on the page. But I will try to post something new every day.
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| September 6, 1999 - Neocryte |
20:36 - Tiny little pic update. Since school is starting tomorrow, I will probably be able to make much less updates than right now - hopefully I will be able to keep up the everyday schedule, but we'll see.
18:16 - There was a question today at the boards if Ultima IX will use bump mapping (the only card capable of this is the Matrox G400). As Fullmetal said, no, because this feature came in way too late to include in Ascension. Also, if you are interested in pre-ordering Ultima IX, here is a link to EB World,
where you can get it for $49. By the way, it mentions that the release date is November 2... but it probably isn't.
11:08 - Concerning that question about SB Live vs. MX300, this is what IBobs said at the boards today: "...on current drivers, the SBLive is the better card to have for Ultima 9." Grrr... back to school tomorrow.
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| September 5, 1999 - Neocryte |
23:37 - There was a question today what Ultima IX would sound better on: Sound Blaster Live of Diamond MX300. Basically, I think there wouldn't be too much difference - both cards are about equally good. Here is a nice article at Thresh's FiringSquad reviewing the MX300 and even somewhat comparing it to the SB Live.
11:46 - Jaccl has visited the boards yesterday to answer TwiggyDragon's question about the amount of bugs. Here's a small bit: "Well some bugs take a few minutes to fix, some bugs take a few days. Some bugs get fixed by some other bug fixes and some bug fixes make more bugs." Confusing isn't it, hehe? Click here to read the rest in the General Info.
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| September 4, 1999 - Neocryte |
22:57 - A question at the official boards asked if the new chip from NVidia, the GeForce 256 would really improve Ultima IX's performance. Stefan30 said that the improvement would be quite big: "With this, ALL the graphics are processed on the card. This will offload a ton of info from the CPU...", but DurhamDragon disagreed: "The geometry acceleration however requires special coding to the graphics engine to take advantage of.
U9 is already nearing release and a rewrite of the graphics engine at this point is not possible without delaying the game significantly." And here is the whole topic.
10:25 - Today, at the official boards, ProgrammerDragon vainly attempted to get the Guardian Theories topic frozen, or closed down. The topic has 378 posts on it right now, with almost everyone having had a post on it. Hehehe,
Come see for yourself!
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| September 3, 1999 - Neocryte |
21:11 - There is a nice new topic opened by ProgrammerDragon. The title is: 'What attracts you to Ultimas?' Check it out!
12:49 - Woohoo, more of CapnBill! First of all, here is CapnBill talking about the bugs discovered in Ultima IX. Here's a small bit: "Another somewhat humorous bug that we fixed a few weeks ago was that fish had a tendency to swim up onto land!" Hehehe. Click here to read the rest in General Info. Ok, CapnBill also explained why they didn't include OpenGL support into Ultima IX. Read it here. Thanks CapnBill!
11:34 - There was a question at the boards today about which card would run Ultima IX better: Voodoo3 or TNT2. Here is a great article from Tom's Hardware about testing the Voodoo3, TNT2, and the G400 Max on an 800MHz Athlon. The article is about a week old, but worth the read. It seems that the Voodoo3 rocks at lower resolutions, but the G400 is the best at the higher ones. As for the REAL news.. umm.. just read yesterday's news, hehe :) Nothing more.
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| September 2, 1999 - Neocryte |
22:32 - Thank you all for voting, please continue to do so :) Ok, for the news... DurhamDragon closed up a lot of the topics today at the official boards. I also forgot to mention that CapnBill said something about the 'bug-in-the-sky' issue that came up a while ago: "Yup! It's a bug. I'm sure our lead artist will be thrilled....(heh-heh)." Cool! If you want to read the whole topic, click here. Thanks for all your news, Capn!
21:45 - Yay! CapnBill has been at the boards today. Here he is on the Glide vs. D3D issue: "Well, our D3D is pretty far along now. It looks really
good! In fact, it looks better than Glide in some cases.
The only visual difference is in fog; D3D doesn't support
true pixel-by-pixel fog, it only supports vertex fog. There
isn't a huge difference; but Glide fog just looks a little
more realistic.
Performance: Glide still beats all our D3D cards in 8-bit;
in 16-bit (which is required by a lot of D3D cards), the
Matrox G400 is the champ. The TNT2 is pretty cool too. Both
these cards beat a Voodoo2 running 16-bit. But neither is
as fast as a Voodoo2 (or Voodoo3) running in 8-bit.
But, we're still tuning D3D speed, so these results aren't
final by any means!" Ha! But that's not all. Here he is again on the issue of Celeron vs. P2/P3:
"Works just fine. Feels like the equivalent PII. I'm sure
some parts of the game might be faster on a PII, if I ran
them side-by-side...but I couldn't tell any major difference
the times I've tried it." Double ha!!! That's not all either... Click here to read his remarks about Ultima IX's bugs - according to him, there are about 2400 bugs right now! (too long to post in news) Heh, and here is what he said about geometry acceleration.
10:55 - New insta-poll question. Here are the last poll's results... Linux/Unix won with 21 votes, Don't Care is second place at with 14 votes, the rest is pretty close...
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| September 1, 1999 - Neocryte |
21:39 - Sorry, but nothing really new. There were questions though if Ultima IX: Special (or Dragon) Edition would be available not from EA Site only, but from 3rd party retailers also. Here's the whole topic. And here are some thoughts from Yobgod on the 'upcoming news:' " Well we weren't to expect a demo until the game was -ready-
for release (ie: being sent to the printers).
We will probably see the demo before the game is actually
released, but it won't be until after they've finished
tweaking it (so that the demo will accurately portray those
tweaks that affect performance).
Anyway, I agree that it seems too soon for either an actual
release or the demo, but they may be close enough to announce
a real release date so that we know what we're looking at.
Of course more screenshots/movies and concrete info on
special editions isn't out of the question either..."
09:10 - New month. The calm before the storm continues... After the last few days' "news," everything seems to be
quiet again. Can't you just feel it though? Something big is hanging in the air... like you can feel that the
thunder storm is about start, when there're thunder clouds around you, and the wind blows off your hat into a pool of mud.
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