Hello,

I restored an Apple ][ and Mac SE recently, and I've been doing a lot of "retro gaming". The game that I played and enjoyed the most was Ultima IV. Ultima VII was one of my favorites as a young teen, and elder gamers would always tell me how great Ultima IV was, but the graphics really turned me off, heck we had Quake 1 to play at the time.

But I finally sat down to play the game all the way through (on an Apple ][e) and I found it very interesting. The most interesting aspect is that the game has nothing to do with defeating a big final boss, but rather, you become the in-game jesus by mastering the "eight virtues".

In any case, it inspired me to do a little work towards "porting" the game to the terminal, which I did using the "chafa" library. I wrote an article about the "making of" which includes video captures, https://www.jeffquast.com/post/u4_engine/

If I continue the project, I will be working towards making it like Minecraft's creative mode, to allow editing the world by direct in-game manipulation. I should be able to create worlds, levels, dungeons interactively in-game, and create an NPC and program their responses. I'm just not very inspired for a game concept right now.

I programmed it in Python because I get to use my own terminal libraries and I was able to create it very rapidly, less than a weeks' work into the current state of the game. It's a bit of a mess, though. But I *really* like the terminal-based graphics. Not only because it opens the possibility for multiplayer and telnet, or cross-platform (by bundling with any terminal emulator), but the way it *looks* and *feels*. It's surprisingly fast, too. It's just my BBS Nostalgia but I really like it more than sixel graphics or SDL Game window would offer. It also allows players to use their preferred terminal emulator and font size. one of the most difficult parts of programming games is getting the aspect ratio and accomodating all kinds of screen sizes, while terminal emulators have this stuff built-in really well.

I also added support for "scaling" through libchafa, you can see some of these effects at the end of this video, https://www.jeffquast.com/u4demo3.mov though, as expected, as the tileset is 16x16, the most "crisp" graphics are at 8 cells wide, but they can be reduced to as little as a single cell with pretty good fidelity which can be useful for minimap (or "Peer Gem" spell in Ultima IV).

Anyway, has anyone played Ultima IV? Is there any interest in a Terminal Graphics game?







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Anyway, has anyone played Ultima IV? Is there any interest in a Terminal Graphics game?

I love the idea and the implementation steps as described in the article.
Back in 90s I played U6-8, not completed any but it was among the classics of the era. U1-5 were legacy back then and graphics and general user experience was rather mediocre to even think about starting them.

3-4 years ago I dared to start playing Ultima 1 and I absolutely fell in love to this game and promised myself to complete all of them.

But I got stuck in U2 as it has some strange time travel mechanics and very difficult combat to untrained apprentices. But I know that IV is the best from 1-5 as recognized by many and I'm sure I'd enjoy it when I find time to come back to the original series.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a mere copy.

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I played all the original Ultima games when I was a kid. Before you think I'm too old -they were all on a CD-ROM. The games were revolutionary for their time, but as a kid I didn't know that. V was my favorite, and I didn't get to play it from start to finish until 2015.

Richard Garriott's senior project in high school was to write an RPG program
to run on his schools computer, so your project follows in good footsteps.


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"Anyway, has anyone played Ultima IV? Is there any interest in a Terminal Graphics game?"

I've played Ultima IV through on my Atari ST. Loved it. I also did the
same for Ultima III and Ultima V. I have Ultima VI as well, but have not completed it on my ST yet.

I absolutely love III, IV, and V. Some of the best RPG's ever. The back
story, the concept, the characters, love it all. :)


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Dark><Lord
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I've never played any Ultima game, but I did play my share of Roguelikes.
I've even wrote one as an experience in learning Rust. https://smokku.itch.io/roguelike

Does Ultima IV differ much from a typical Roguelike?
as these are very popular now. People are writing a ton.
There even is an annual event - see https://7drl.com/

I was thinking about bringing my game online, but I could not reconcile the turn-based nature of Roguelike with real-time nature of online gaming.
One player cannot wait indefinitely for other player turn.

--
smk
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Re: RE: Ultima IV Terminal
By: smokku to Darklord on Wed Apr 03 2024 08:37 am

I was thinking about bringing my game online, but I could not reconcile the turn-based nature of Roguelike with real-time nature of online gaming.
One player cannot wait indefinitely for other player turn.

There is a multiplayer roguelike based on Angband. They make it work because they use a ticking clock.

Basically, the game takes a turn and everybody goes at a given time interval. If you don't issue a command before a tick, the game takes a default action for you (so, if you are being pounded by an orc and you don't issue a command for whatever reason, your character bashes the orc by default).


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gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
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On 2024-04-03 0:16 Arelor said...

There is a multiplayer roguelike based on Angband. They make it work because they use a ticking clock.

To me this approach takes worst of both worlds.
It is neither turn-based, nor real-time.

You cannot analyze all your options and take best approach in a rogulike fashion,
nor can you proceed at your own pace like in a real-time game.

Sounds like a compromise (noone is happy), not a solution.

--
smk
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On 03 Apr 24 08:37:29 smokku wrote...

I've never played any Ultima game, but I did play my share of
Roguelikes. I've even wrote one as an experience in learning Rust. https://smokku.itch.io/roguelike

Does Ultima IV differ much from a typical Roguelike? as these are
very popular now. People are writing a ton. There even is an annual
event - see https://7drl.com/

I was thinking about bringing my game online, but I could not
reconcile the turn-based nature of Roguelike with real-time nature of online gaming. One player cannot wait indefinitely for other player
turn.

-- smk --- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.14-beta (linux; x64; 20.11.1) * Origin: X65.zone (21:1/222)

To which Darklord replies...

I've played a handful of Rogue games or "Rogue like" games. I like
NetHack a lot. Rogue on the Atari ST is pretty good as well.

The Ultima series is really a different genre than Rogue and it's ilk,
IMHO. Ultima 3-4-5 (my favs), have a far greater variety when it comes to gameplay. With Rogue you've got...a dungeon. With the Ultima series you
have got a dungeon (or multiple dungeons), as well as a surface world,
towns, castles, lakes, rivers, even pirate ships that you can fight and capture. It's great "old school" stuff. :)


/\
Dark><Lord
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On 2024-04-04 2:02 Darklord said...

gameplay. With Rogue you've got...a dungeon. With the Ultima series you have got a dungeon (or multiple dungeons), as well as a surface world, towns, castles, lakes, rivers, even pirate ships that you can fight and

Roguelikes evolved much since the bare Rogue/NetHack.
Most popular ones follow the Diablo formula of overworld/town and randomly generated dungeons. For an awesome example try "Caves of Qud". You may find it a lot alike Ultima IV. It even has similar graphics.

Even my own little Roguelike starts in a seashore town, then you enter the forest, before going dungeons. :-)

--
smk
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