General News - Richard Garriott Interview @ GameDaily

[Myrthos]

Richard Garriott still has plans to return to gaming according to an interview he gave to GameDaily (http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/exclusive-richard-garriott-talks-games-after-space/?biz=1), but not untill he said goodbye to space.
Garriott: If I was guessing, yes. Do I have a plan that I can tell you now? No. I'm still finishing my space flight. I am literally still in the middle of NASA and ESA medical experiments. I am literally still in the middle of my earth observation analysis, as well as the particle crystal growth stuff we're wrapping up. And that's going to take me some weeks and months to wrap up.
But, some day in the future, it's hard not to assume I will get back into gaming. I still personally believe I have lots of great ideas and desire to build games. It's just today, it's space.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=11155)

[Moorkh]

"Ultima for the Consoles"???? What's wrong with those people?

Anyways, I'd sure still be looking forward to revisit Britannia anytime, singly, maybe with a limited co-op option à la BG, if British himself were to try his hand again.

[zakhal]

Sackavatar jumping up and down the castle with a mexican hat? Just add motion controls with karaoke battles and it will sell millions.

[Sir Markus]

The last decent game Garriott was involved in was Ultima 5 and that was, what, back in 1988? Pardon me for being a skeptic, but I say it's a long-shot that he does anything remotely appealing to hardcore CRPG fans.

[curious]

ultima v was my favourite ultima, though as far as it being the last "decent" game he was involved with i think the only people who share that view with you either haven't played any of the games after that or are more likely no longer of this earth--ie they've boarded their last moongate this side of the underworld.

[rune_74]

Yeah like ultima 7 wasn't any good.....

[wolfing]

The last decent game Garriott was involved in was Ultima 5 and that was, what, back in 1988? Pardon me for being a skeptic, but I say it's a long-shot that he does anything remotely appealing to hardcore CRPG fans.
If you said Ultima 7 I might believe you, but then you'd be forgetting about Ultima Online. Or was he not involved in those 2?
Now, after Ultima Online then yes, he's sucked, but that was about 1998 or so.

[skavenhorde]

Imo U7 wasn't any good compared to U4-6. I didn't like how it went to real-time, although many people loved it.

[zakhal]

I liked U7 but always thought the combat was ackward if not awful and ridiculous. RG should have sticked to TB. Eschalon book 1 is a good example of the direction ultima should have gone imho but somhow RG thought realtime was the best option. Looking at ultima8 it makes me wonder if he wanted to turn ultima series into a diabloish hack slash.

[blatantninja]

The real time style was pretty much in it's infancy, so it's definitely not an ideal implementation, but the story more than made up for it.

I've been playing Ultima VI right now and the combat in it, which is some bizarre mix between real-time and turn based is pretty hard to manage. I finally turned it to command mode for all my npc's, but strangely enough, it doesn't seem to go in any particular order as to who gets to go when!

I'd love to see him go back to the Ultima Universe, even if it is console. It would be great for him to revisit Ultima XI and make it the game it should have been.

[Atrachasis]

I've been playing Ultima VI right now and the combat in it, which is some bizarre mix between real-time and turn based is pretty hard to manage. I finally turned it to command mode for all my npc's, but strangely enough, it doesn't seem to go in any particular order as to who gets to go when!


In what way does the combat in Ultima VI involve real-time elements? Some combat animations are pretty quick, so NPCs take their combat turns in very rapid succession at times, but the mechanics have always seemed solidly turn-based to me. Characters take turns moving, and the action stops and waits for your input whenever the active character is in Command mode.

I suspect that there must be some underlying action point system determining when a character gets to move; I seem to remember that very dexterous characters received more frequent turns in combat mode.

[BillSeurer]

I loved Ultima VII until I hit a game stopping bug right near the end. Tech support suggested fix was "start over". Sigh.

[blatantninja]

In what way does the combat in Ultima VI involve real-time elements? Some combat animations are pretty quick, so NPCs take their combat turns in very rapid succession at times, but the mechanics have always seemed solidly turn-based to me. Characters take turns moving, and the action stops and waits for your input whenever the active character is in Command mode.

I suspect that there must be some underlying action point system determining when a character gets to move; I seem to remember that very dexterous characters received more frequent turns in combat mode.

It's sort of real-time turn based I guess. If you don't command all of your party, everything keys off you making your move, but then what happens between that move and your next move is more real-time. An NPC or enemy may get to go more than once or not at all during that period.

Plus if you do as I'm doing, and have them all on command, it doesn't go in any discernible order. Dupre may get to go three times before Iolo even gets to go once and the enemy seems to attack at random. It might be the DEX thing, but it doesn't seem that way to me.

[blatantninja]

I loved Ultima VII until I hit a game stopping bug right near the end. Tech support suggested fix was "start over". Sigh.

I had a similar deal. My dad had a 386SX and for some reason (not sure if it was the chip or overall PC), there was a point where it would just hit total lock up. I think it had something to do with the telescope near the Lyceum, but it's been so long I'm not sure. Origin sent me entire new disks to try to fix the problem, no dice. I went off to college a few months later and bought my own PC, a Dell 486SX. Played right through, no problems at all.

[rune_74]

Its funny, those problems date back to dos. I remember the nightmares it was with autoexec and config.sys to get things working....computers today even with all the complaints offer not even half the difficulties of back then....don't even get me started on expanded memory.

[blatantninja]

Getting U7 to run was a major undertaking. Voodoo memory manager. Can't think of another game that used that!

[zakhal]

Its funny, those problems date back to dos. I remember the nightmares it was with autoexec and config.sys to get things working....computers today even with all the complaints offer not even half the difficulties of back then....don't even get me started on expanded memory.

There were pretty good setups of those files that run most of the games. Mostly you needed to change one or two lines in the files if you had it all good.

[rune_74]

Yes, however, remember the internet back then....not so good. And you had to use memory managers to try and get that 6k back you needed t o run....

I can honestly say I do not miss that at all.

[zakhal]

I never cared about those problems because the games were so good - nowadays all is so carefully made generic. Why cant they make a new betrayal at krondor or ultima underworld? Looking Glass, Sierra and Origin Systems where are you...Looking Glass alone was the Leonardo da Vinci of computer games - they made so many good games. But it was a team effort, once the team was broken it was no more..