Ultima IX - Retrospective Review

Over the years, a lot of cut content has come to light about the game; this is actually true of a lot of different Ultimas. But…systems and features that were removed from Ultima 9 during its development. And the assumption has kind of always been that this has been because of…whether it was difficult to implement those things, or there was just not enough time to implement them. To take one example: there’s a glitch in the game where — I believe it’s just after you get rescued from the dungeon Wrong — Raven, the pirate lady, gives you your equipment back. But sometimes, your sword…it’s actually in her hand; it’s equipped on her character model, as though she had an inventory slot there. It was rumoured that there was supposed to be a party system, with inventory management, at one point. Do you recall this feature at all? Was it cut before your time, or was that one of the things that got the axe during your tenure?

BR: Well, I can speak to the party system. I don’t know if the inventory glitch you’re describing is related to that or not. It’s entirely possible; when it comes to that codebase, I will just say that anything could be in there. Anything. In terms of party inventory management, I don’t recall there being a specific system for that, so I don’t know why she would have had it equipped in her hand; it could have easily just been a bug.

The party system was cut…I remember the meeting we had when that decision was made. And looking back, I regret that; I wish that we had not done that. At the time, we were so overwhelmed with technology and problems, and trying to keep the game moving forward. There were a lot of technical issues with having a party. There was performance — having that many NPCs always with you was going to be a performance problem. There was pathfinding — we had enormous problems with pathfinding, because our game…it was a free-form 3D world. It was a polygon soup; we didn’t have any kind of sorting of, or structural containers or quadtrees to help us sort through the polygon soup. We didn’t…I don’t think any game at that time had invented the concept of having a walkable surface, which is where you simply flag certain polygons as: “your feet go here!” That would have solved so much, if we had only thought of that. That would have been a huge amount of work to do, but if we had thought of that, that would have solved so much.

So, we just had enormous problems getting NPCs to pathfind, even around their tavern. “Can you walk around this counter and go to this table?” Sometimes they would walk over it; you’d walk into the bar and see the guy standing on top of the bar, and it’s like: “what are you doing up there?” And I remember I had an idea for pathfinding for parties, that I threw out there as kind of a joke. And it was just…maybe they can pathfind by just trying their best, and if you lose them, maybe when your camera looks away, and you look back, they’ll just be there; we’ll just teleport them to be with you. And everyone laughed and…you know what? There were games that shipped way after we did that did that exact thing, you know? Your NPC companions get stuck and then just…boop!…just teleport to you. That’s okay! It would have been okay. We just could not solve these problems, and so I think it was Richard who was just kind of on board with…”well, let’s just cut the party; we don’t really need it.”

Click to expand...

Amasius said:

Wouldn't it be better to name the original source?
"Source: GameBanshee" - "Spotted on RPG Codex."

Click to expand...

Aubrielle said:

I wouldn't know. I don't look at RPG Codex.

Click to expand...

Aubrielle said:

I wouldn't know. I don't look at RPG Codex.

Click to expand...

Amasius said:

Wouldn't it be better to name the original source?
"Source: GameBanshee" - "Spotted on RPG Codex."

But anyway, fascinating read. (I couldn't watch it for long, because of the interviewer, but the transcription is well worth it.)

Click to expand...

duerer said:

I always considered U9 as a very decent ADVENTURE game, and never really understood the hate this game received from die-hards
-snip-
(Yup, I have played it over twice and loved it)

Click to expand...

duerer said:

Heh-heh, good interview

I always considered U9 as a very decent ADVENTURE game, and never really understood the hate this game received from die-hards (especially considering the below-than-average combat in media darling U7 - which is a good one but not the be-all-end-all game most of us want to think)

Anyway, being a game developer myself, it is really fascinating to read such stories, when you realise that certain radical design decisions came from a very practical point of view: the requested feature could not be made.

Forget all the fancy conspiracy theories about…
* Garriott smoked his head off, and cared nothing about his baby,
* or became bored with the fanchise and wanted to kill it, and do something else,
* or provoked a company power struggle,
* or tried to actively sabotage Origin (which was an EA subsidiary)…

… the truth is far simpler: the design was over-ambitious, the tech was not ready, and winter was coming (i.e. Holiday deadlines)

His and his team's absolute professionalism is this: they still managed to create a fun game at the end. (Yup, I have played it over twice and loved it)

Click to expand...

Amasius said:

Well, it was written at the bottom of the GameBanshee article… I mean, you don't have to jump into the cesspool when you mention that something originally emerged from there.

Click to expand...

Ultima Codex continues providing good content for fans of the seminal RPG series, this time by offering a fairly lengthy interview with the lead programmer of Ultima IX: Ascension, Bill Randolph. Considering Randolph's role on the title, it should come as no surprise that a good chunk of the interview deals with pretty technical matters, though it doesn't make for a less interesting read (or watch, if you're so inclined). Here's a couple of interesting excerpts:

Click to expand...

Last month was the 15th anniversary of the release of Ultima IX: Ascension, the last game in the Ultima series and one of the most disappointing RPGs of all time. Kenneth Kully of the Ultima Codex is one of the few fans who disagree with that assessment, which is why he's more eager than most to commemorate the occasion of its anniversary with a series of interviews with the game's developers. The first interview in the series is with Bill Randolph, Ultima IX's lead programmer. As in Kenneth's previous interview, there's a video and a transcript, of which I'll quote a portion:

Click to expand...

Amasius said:

Wouldn't it be better to name the original source?
"Source: GameBanshee" - "Spotted on RPG Codex"

Click to expand...

duerer said:

I always considered U9 as a very decent ADVENTURE game, and never really understood the hate this game received from die-hards

Click to expand...

duerer said:

(especially considering the below-than-average combat in media darling U7 - which is a good one but not the be-all-end-all game most of us want to think)

Click to expand...