Good Old Games - EA Games Added - Including Ultima Underworld 1/2

Dhruin

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GOG has added EA to their catalogue, including Dungeon Keeper and Ultima Underworld 1 and 2:
In a ground-breaking, earthshaking, and jaw-dropping deal we've managed to sign with EA and will be releasing more than 25 legendary classics from the globally renowned publisher. With today’s announcement three widely known and much awaited brands get the revival treatment from GOG.com: Wing Commander: Privateer, Dungeon Keeper and Ultima Underworld 1+2.
We will be adding more than 25 titles from EA over the next few months, so the games will be unveiled gradually, but we can already reveal that the next upcoming titles from this huge deal are: Crusader: No remorse, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Magic Carpet.
While the agreement between Electronic Arts and GOG.com brings back many acclaimed and well known franchises, it doesn’t include the much anticipated System Shock or Syndicate series at this time. After releasing the first six Electronic Arts classics, we will take a break from the concentrated awesome until later in the summer.
Thanks also to Capt. Huggy Face and other forum posters for similar news.
More information.
 
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Alpha Centauri!!! The parachuting settlers are baaaack! (Errr, soon.)

I wonder if we'll get Archon and MULE? Those might be a bit TOO classic...
 
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I got UW to play #2 since I never played it. I hope all the Wing Commander games make it out, I would love to play those again. I like Magic Carpet on the PS, never played the PC version, not an RP but a good game.
LB
 
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I hope all the Wing Commander games make it out, I would love to play those again.

Seconded... plus Strike Commander and Pacific Strike would be awesome :) .
 
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Well this is certainly great timing for me: I was just thinking about replaying UU but couldn't find the box for it. UU was my first RPG experience, so that title brings back a lot of fond memories - even though many parts of the game haven't exactly aged well ;)
 
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Not sure if I could get into UU at this point. I never played it back in the day, so I wouldn't have the nostalgia factor going for me.

Can someone post their impressions of the GOG version when they get a chance? Is it tweaked at all to look smoother than the original?
 
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Meh, most of these titles have been easy to find on the net for free for a long time and almost all can be played easily with dosbox....All this will do is make the abandonware sites remove them and force people to buy them....

If it generates some excitement for them though I guess thats a good thing.
 
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Well, there's something to be said for having everything you need w/ one no-hassle exe. For 5.99, i'll let them figure out the rest.

Dungeon Keeper installed fine and runs well on 7x64 (at least in my short test). It's key that you hit alt+R (no pun intended) when playing this game to switch it to high-res, or the game will look truly horrible. It does not include the Deeper Dungeons expansion, however. No big deal, I dont think I've ever heard a good word said about DD.
 

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Not sure if I could get into UU at this point. I never played it back in the day, so I wouldn't have the nostalgia factor going for me.

I think that's very true, my personal opinion is that UU would be very difficult to get into if one had not played it before - I don't think that it's a title that can be enjoyed without some form of "nostalgia factor" due to some rather rough edges that don't hold up very well. It is still a very important classic game, but it didn't age as gracefully as other classic titles. However, if you really want some classic, old-school dungeon-crawling with an absurd amount of secrets to find, UU is worth a shot. (Although Arx Fatalis - also on gog - is a game that is heavily inspired by UU that is much more fun to play if one is not familiar with UU)
 
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Buying these games will likely profit EA directly, which means I can't justify the purchases.

They're not only not deserving of any support, but they also managed to rid themselves of some of the absolute top-talent in the entire industry. We're talking Looking Glass and Origin here.

That said, the Ultima Underworlds are top-notch games - even with the archaic visuals and awkward interfaces.
 
It would be great if someone could make a patch that allowed for higher resolutions in the UU games, similar to what was done for System Shock. In fact, I'm sort of surprised it hasn't been done yet, given the popularity of the game.
 
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It would be great if someone could make a patch that allowed for higher resolutions in the UU games, similar to what was done for System Shock. In fact, I'm sort of surprised it hasn't been done yet, given the popularity of the game.

Actually, you can get UU to look much better with the correct filters in DosBox.

It's never going to look "good", but if you have the right mindset going in - I think the game is still very playable.

The two biggest issues are probably the small "viewport" and the awkward controls.

Given how the game's engine is not "fully 3D and vector-based" like System Shock, I think it's much harder to modify the code to support higher resolutions. In SS, Looking Glass had already written the engine to support high-res - but computers were MUCH too slow to handle our current resolutions. So, it was "just" a matter of tweaking already implented stuff.

For UU, you'd probably have to write your own renderer - which is a ton of work in comparison.
 
Are the controls considered awkward due to the UI, or not being able to reconfigure keys… or both?

Both :)

I don't know if you can reconfigure keys through some mod or ini-file, but the worst part of the UI - to me - is that you have to mouse-click on specific buttons for "pick-up/look/interact" and some such. It's not context-sensitive like modern games, so there's a lot of fiddling with extra clicks.

It's the kind of thing that drives me crazy.
 
I never played UU2 so I got the GOG version. It runs ok, but the mouse support is poor. There are long pauses in mouse response, which is not unusual in games running with DOSBox. I feel this would make the game unplayable for most newcomers.

Has anyone tried the WC:privateer? Does it have the same problem?
LB
 
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There are long pauses in mouse response, which is not unusual in games running with DOSBox. I feel this would make the game unplayable for most newcomers.

Do you need DOSBox to play the GoG version of UU?
 
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It runs ok, but the mouse support is poor. There are long pauses in mouse response, which is not unusual in games running with DOSBox.
I haven't noticed this with DOSBox. Last time I played UU with DOSBox (albeit not the GoG version) I had no problems what so ever with mouse response. Have you tried increasing the CPU cycles (via CTRL+F12)? That ought to help with responsiveness.
 
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Do you need DOSBox to play the GoG version of UU?
AFAIK, DOSBox is included and "built into" the GoG version. At least that's how it is with their other DOS era re-releases.
 
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I think that's very true, my personal opinion is that UU would be very difficult to get into if one had not played it before - I don't think that it's a title that can be enjoyed without some form of "nostalgia factor" due to some rather rough edges that don't hold up very well.

I think I have to gree : I started it several years ago for the first time using DOSBOX, and I had *huge* troubles accommodating myself to it.
 
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my personal opinion is that UU would be very difficult to get into if one had not played it before - I don't think that it's a title that can be enjoyed without some form of "nostalgia factor" due to some rather rough edges that don't hold up very well.
While I have to admit, that you may be right, I'll still have to disagree with you. For principle's sake if nothing else. Because I would hope, that someone interested in old cRPGs could look past the aged graphics and enjoy the game "as is". I would hope that it wouldn't require any form of "nostalgia factor" to make this game shine, as it is a classic cRPG and deserves to be played even today with or without previous experience with it. If, and that is a big if, one can get past the clunky controls, there's loads of dungeon-crawling fun to be had with UU.
 
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