Project Update June 2018

It's been a while since the last update and I wanted to let everyone know that progress is still on-going, though things have taken a different direction. When I started this project, I envisioned a basic 1:1 remake of Ultima 1 with an eye towards eventually presenting the first three games in the series in the updated engine. As you have seen through gameplay videos, this was progressing at a decent pace. However, I hit a snag when it came to implementing the first-person dungeons that make up a good chunk of gameplay. I tackled the problem from multiple angles but never came up with something solid that I could be happy with.

This state of affairs persisted for the better part of the year, during which I took multiple breaks from the problem to work on other aspects of the project. Over time, I slowly began to become unhappy with the overall state of the project, feeling that while a 1:1 remake of the game is indeed something I could eventually crack, the vision I had for the game continued to evolve past what I was currently doing. It also didn't help that the engine toolkit I was using for the tile engine depreciated and was replaced with an in-engine Tile System with newer versions of Unity, which broke elements of the tile system I was using and I lacked the knowledge to fix those elements.

At the end of the day, I decided that the best way to proceed was to scrap what I had done and begin from the ground up using what I have learned so far to create a product that is worthy of the Ultima name and also something that is much more modern than a top-down 1:1 remake of the 2D classic. I don't have anything to share just yet, as I am deep in the design and prototyping phase and in the interest of not generating hype that I may or may not be able to deliver on, I am going to go dark (one of the many mistakes I made was hyping my vision for uUltima before it was feature complete in-engine, a mistake I don't plan on repeating).

I want to thank all of you who have sent emails and discussed things with me via the UDIC Facebook group. These conversations gave me a lot of ideas and information which are being put to use even now. I also want to assure everyone that work on an Ultima game in Unity is still progressing... though what I am working on now far eclipses anything presented thus far in uUltima. That being said, this project is not going to be completed in it's current state. Though I am optimistic that should my current endeavors bear fruit, you won't be disappointed in what I am now designing and prototyping.

Best wishes and thank you again!

-David Reese

June 10, 2018