Ultima VII Revisited • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#41

Post by dark-star » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

ta12653421 wrote: post #27

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

the game didn't run with EMS. You needed XMS

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#42

Post by boredhedgehog » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

ta12653421 wrote: post #27

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

Oh yeah, I had to unload the CD driver and move the mouse driver to himem just for this...

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#43

Post by eek2121 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

dark-star wrote: post #10

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 com…

The one that comes to mind for me is Exult: https://exult.sourceforge.io/. It is still being actively developed to this day: https://github.com/exult

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#44

Post by Projectiboga » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#45

Post by TheAmazingRace » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

dark-star wrote: post #41

ta12653421 wrote: post #27

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

the game didn't run with EMS. You needed XMS

Fun fact. Ultima 7 was one of the few commercial titles ever made that used "Unreal" mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_mode

It wasn't particularly popular as it couldn't play nice with protected mode environments.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#46

Post by anew » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

esafak wrote: post #30

anew wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about VI, but I definitely spent an afternoon baking bread in Britannia in Ultima VII

Did you make make your own starter from flour and water? Inquiring bakers want to know!

Mos def. Well it’s more like: place flour on surface, place water on flour, instant dough! Place dough in oven until it turns to bread.

Re: Ultima VII Revisited

#47

Post by cholantesh » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

esafak wrote: post #28

vancroft wrote: post #7

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 Hopin…

UU was teh shizz. I wonder what it would look like with photorealistic renders.

Not good, I imagine; IMO part of the magic of a game from the era is that blocky aesthetic. I'm reminded of how Dracula X Chronicles completely sucks all the joy out of Rondo of Blood with ugly 3D models and weird arrangements of the compositions with 'real' instruments (or just a different synth).