WHAT IS UULTIMA?

uUltima is a top-to-bottom remake/port of the 1986 MS-DOS game Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness to the Unity engine.  I am using uUltima as the foundation upon which to teach myself Unity and have been working on it since the beginning of March 2017.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
My goal is to perform a 1:1 conversion of the game into the Unity engine, making as few changes to the overall gameplay mechanics as possible.  This will present some challenges which I hope to overcome, namely preserving the first-person dungeon exploration and space ace components.  I have limited knowledge of C#, so part of my task in learning Unity is learning C#.  I don't have access to any kind of reverse-engineering documentation and lack the knowledge to reverse engineer the game myself, so my design philosophy will revolve entirely on how well I am able to translate what I experience from the original game into uUltima.

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PLANNED FEATURES

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• Utilization of the XU4 tileset designed by Josh Steele for all overworld and town maps, which will replace the classic 16-color EGA tileset used in the original game.

• Simplified user-interface utilizing icons instead of keyboard keys to interact with the game world.

• Planned releases for both PC and Android with platform-specific control schemes (keyboard+mouse for PC and touchscreen for Android).

• Utilization of modern Ultima music tracks where appropriate and available.  I have been listening to the U5: Lazerus soundtrack while working on this and feel some of it's tracks match the mood of the game so I plan on reaching out to the composer at some point in the hopes of securing permission to use the soundtrack.

• Implementation of a quest log/journal which should ease the initial learning curve/difficulty of the game and make it more accessible to new players.

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WHEN CAN I PLAY IT?

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At this time, I do not have a time frame on when the game will be released.  As I work full-time in the automotive industry as a delivery driver, I only get a few hours a day to work on the project along with my days off.  In addition to this project, I also maintain a fledgling YouTube channel, NeoRemix Gaming. 

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I do plan on having a few people test the game at various development milestones over the course of the project.  Be sure to subscribe in order to stay up-to-date on the latest developments with the project as well as announcements regarding testing.