WIP: Ultima parody

[Chris H]

Work is continuing -- stocking the towns with NPCs and dialogues. I do have a question for you all. What style of conversation do you prefer in Ultima games?

1. Thee/thy/thou -- old style
2. You/your/you -- modern style

[1]

1

[jjsonick]

I think 1, even tho cheesy sometimes, is appropriate since it was the style of the older (and even the last?) Ultima games. Though even in the Ultimas it was inconsistent, slipping into you, your sometimes - so you could get away with mixing them, too. Maybe save old-style for signs, more important proclamations/revelations, etc.

[bruce]

1

What he said.

Bruce

[Chris H]

After playing around a bit, I find I quite agree -- it somehow looks much more appropriate.

Not that "appropriate" really describes any of the rest of it. A couple more screenshots:





(And you thought the virtues went off track in Ultima IX!)

[bruce]

I am now totally sold on this game.

Bruce

[Chris H]

This is still going well... the towns, dialogues, and nearly all of the quests are just about done. I need to piece together the endgame stuff, and then I need to build the dungeons. I want them interesting, but I don't want this game to be a major time-sink... if something isn't funny, it should flow quickly. We've all killed enough orcs in the other Ultimas, we don't need to grind through hours of that in this one.

I'm tempted to post more screenshots, but I don't want to give away all the jokes. :)

Anyway, it's continuing to come together nicely, and it's giving a good opportunity to really test out a lot of the newer ACK features: huge dialogues, map-editing macros, and plenty of custom sounds and pictures. This is of course why there have been new patches on a weekly basis...

[Chris H]

Believe it or not, work has been continuing. At this point, all the maps are done. The dungeons are done and macros for the room traps/puzzles are just about done, although not yet tested. Maps and quests for the end-game are pretty much worked out, I just need to write the macros.

I'm trying to replace the generic monsters with funny ones, like giant hamsters and hind flayers; I'm having some writer's block on this one, so if anyone has any funny ideas, please PM me. :)

I am continuing to avoid gratuitous time-sinks... I had to play a little Ultima IV to get some ideas, and I got quickly annoyed with the number of wandering monsters that make it hard to go anywhere. I'll still throw some in, but there will be other means of transportation for those who are in a hurry.

[Chris H]

It's funny how the reagent shop owner in Ultima IV was always blind. I've decided to preserve that tradition for the sequel.

[Chris H]

All the basic game creation is done! All of the quests, maps, dialogues, etc. are done. Now I need to do the basic playtesting to make sure it's actually playable, that quests complete properly, portals connect properly, all that stuff. But I'm getting pretty close, and I'm happy with how it's coming out.

[jjsonick]

Looking forward to mutated Avatarish-ness. :)

[Chris H]

I have a video of the intro you can view, to get an idea of how the game will begin:

u4part2intro.wmv

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Wow! This is so great LOL! Can't wait for this.

BTW Chris. It occurred to me as I was reading this thread that you seem to have your own systematic method for designing a complete game in ACK already worked out that appears to be extremely efficient and productive. Which isn't suprising since you know ACK inside out. I was just wondering if you'd be interested in sharing your system with other aspiring young [at heart] ACK game designers.

I gathered a few of the general guidelines already just from reading this thread as you clearly worked on certain game aspects before others. The way ACK works kind of forces you to do certain things first of course but I noticed you mentioned having things already worked out before you actually implimented them. I'd like to know a little more about how you set about designing this game while the steps you took are still fresh in your memory. Including things you did outside of ACK like on paper or in other programs, etc.

Also which video editing prog did you use to make that video? I'm assuming Windows Movie Maker since it is in that format. I have AVS but have tried many others before that. BTW that video was awesome.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

I know this is a bit late in the game but I had another idea. I thought there might be some kind of angle for retro gaming humor somewhere in the fact that around the same time another legendary classic fantasy role playing game Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unkown took place in a town called Skara Brae. Also the fact that it was a real place that existed in ancient Scotland and about which we know very little about. I'm not nearly as good as you are at figuring out angles for adding humor to a game unless it just comes to me while designing one so any ideas?

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

I loved that part of the video where the gypsy asks Avatar if he's ready and he says no wait and comes back with a shotgun - lol! That totally reminded me of one of my favorite 80's horror flicks Evil Dead. Ash and his boomstick. "Shop smart - shop S-Mart!" I can see an angle for some humor there as well.

In the Evil Dead movies Ash must find the missing pages from the Book of the Dead or Necronomicon containing the Latin incantations that Ash must read to banish the demonic spirits [after first manifesting it in the flesh]. One of the pages mentions a prophecy of a hero who fell from the sky, fought evil forces and saved the day and it shows a picture of this hero with a strange looking short wide jagged edged sword with a rounded point and holding aloft some sort of stick with fire coming out of it. The strange weapons of this hero in the picture look vaguely familiar but totally out of place in the ancient or medieval atmosphere the picture is set in.

Later in the series when Ash finds himself thrown back in time through the same portal he sent the Evil Dead and surrounded by unwashed "primitives" as he calls them [lol] he reluctantly and bitterly resigns to the fact that he is the only one with the education [basic high school science and autoshop] and unique experience [from the first movies] to lead the war against the armies of darkness.

In the final scene he is horrified to realize that the hero pictured in the Book of the Dead is him! I thought that was a brilliant bit of humor there and couldn't help chuckling while Ash screamed out Noooooooooo!!!! As the camera zooms out revealing the actual scene which the picture in the Necronomicon was based upon. Lol

In an alternate ending Ash takes a potion an alchemist made for him that promised to put him into a deep sleep that would last for how ever many centuries it would take for him to wake up in his own time without aging. He takes a little too much though. When he awakens and steps out of his ancient cave he finds himself alone in the ruins of a fallen modern civilization. Again he cries out "Nooooooo!!!" Lol

[Chris H]

The video is just a capture of the ACK intro macro for the adventure. The intro macro is more or less just a slideshow...

1: MUSIC 59
2: CLRSCR
3: PAUSE 10
4: SET ESCKEY = 52
5: SHOWBMP 400
6: PAUSEK 150
7: SHOWBMP 401
8: MUSIC 0
9: SOUND 104
10: PAUSEK 100
11: SHOWBMP 403
12: MUSIC 80
13: PAUSEK 100
14: SHOWBMP 404

etc, etc, etc. (I think the whole thing is about 100 lines, spread over macros 25 and 26, if you want to dissect it when it's done)

I trust you've seen Army of Darkness also? There's at least one more reference to that, later in the game. :) It always seemed a little weird that the Avatar can bring a pocketwatch from the future, but not something more useful. And starting out so feeble was always such an annoyance.

I had forgotten about Skara Brae having appearances elsewhere, I'll definitely have to see what kind of tie-ins I can do. Some towns were easier than others to poke fun at, but some were a little harder. Magincia was easy, because humility is pretty dumb as far as virtues go.

As far as the approach to making a game... I try to think out ahead of time what the basic quests are, and I generally write out the dialogues ahead of time in a word processor where it's easier to do the editing. And I'd say I tend to do the maps first, then create the dialogues and macro scripting and stuff, then finally populate them. But for the most part I go pretty free-form, making things as I need them, and I'm constantly going back and changing stuff around if I come up with something I like better.

And I probably spend as much time in Photoshop as I do in ACK. :)

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

All good to know thanks!

[Chris H]

Well, when I started playtesting, I quickly discovered that while the core quest seemed to work fine, there were too few NPCs outside of that, and I needed to populate many of the towns quite a bit more.

I also decided there was room to squeeze in a bit more content. For example, I was doing nothing at all with the shrines, when clearly there's plenty to make fun of there. So I've actually been doing a lot of work on this lately and making good progress.

And finally -- now that I've added those additional graphic tiles, I have some room to go back and embellish a few of the towns and dungeons.

[Chris H]

Since I haven't added any screenshots in a while:





(I just noticed all the earlier screenshot links are broken, I'll see if I can fix that)

[bruce]

Since I haven't added any screenshots in a while:



(I just noticed all the earlier screenshot links are broken, I'll see if I can fix that)

YORGLE!

Chris, you are my hero.

Bruce