Talk:Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle

Serpent Isle in Spanish? The Wikia says Serpent Isle was orginally released in Spanish, but Aiera http://www.ultimaaiera.com/category/serpentisle/ suggests that the Spanish and Italian translations are fan projects. Any enlightenment? Dungy 16:09, September 20, 2010 (UTC)

The origins of Serpent Isle

I believe we had a discussion about how development on Serpent Isle started somewhere with the usual theories (Two games cut in halfs, separate game shoehorned in the Guardian saga...) but I can't remember on what page so I'll post this here, since this is appropriate in any case.

Basically in order to try to clear up all the misconceptions about Serpent Isle, I decided to take a gamble and I e-mailed Bill Armintrout to see if he could clear some things up about how development on Serpent Isle begun. I'm not sure about posting his whole answer here (I've asked for his permission so I'll see what he says), but the ghist of it is this:

Serpent Isle originally started as a World of Ultima type game basically conceived a fantasy pirate game (Note that I am not sure if this was meant to be set in the Ultima universe or as a separate thing like Arthurian Legends - I'm trying to get more details on that). Early in development it was decided to turn this game into a follow up to Ultima VII (which was nearing completion at that time and whose engine was deemed stable enough). This version kept the "Carribean Pirate" aspect of the original project and this of course the one that Sheri Graner Ray has mentionned on her blog in the past, focusing about VoDun magic.

Later on, when the original project director Jeff George left Origin - it was decided to start from scratch as the team felt the pirate game would not work in the Ultima VII and they create this new story deeply tied to Ultima past and mythology, with Sheri Graner Ray coming up with the concept of the Ophidian Virtue. The rest as they say, is history.

So in other words - Ultima VII and Serpent Isle really were not a single game to begin with, and the later was basically a last minute addition the Guardian Saga. I'll be proceeding to rewrite the development part of the article in light of these new informations. --Sergorn 15:15, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

That's more or less how I figured things went. It's great to now have confirmation from an official source and it was very cool of Bill to shed light on the matter. --Terilem 15:23, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

I agree, it's great that Bill would answer this kind of fan questions about ancient history. And it is also interesting to have a deeper understanding on how the concepts of SI evolved.--Sega381 17:20, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Music

The Ultima VII music is generally said to be composed by Dana Glover, though the credits in the game manual for The Black Gate weren't 100% clear. Here is what is printed in The Black Gate game manual: "Audio Direction: Martin Galway. The Audio Team: Dana Glover, Marc Schaefgen, Nenad Vugrinec. Additional Music: Raymond Benson, Herman Miller, David Watson, Cathline Jones, Kirk Winterrowd." The game manual for the Serpent Isle is clearer, however -- it specifically says "Music Composed, Arranged and Conducted by Dana Glover," and has the same list of musicians under "Additional Music By". -- 99.239.102.34 09:33, 10 January 2011 (PST)

Serpent Isle Intro at night?

While I was browsing in my very old computer magazines, I found something very intriguing. There's a picture of an up-coming Serpent Isle game with the Serpent Pillars and the Avatar's ship, but....at night. Just as it was at the beginning at Lord British's castle. Not misty as you can see in the final version of this game. I shall scan this. Has anyone seen something like that? --Arthgon 03:04, 2 January 2013 (PST)

That's something I want to see. Could also be just a shitty shot (magazines were full of them back then).--Tribun 05:28, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Finally after some problems with the scanner: --Arthgon 06:37, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Well, I can say right away that it just is a shitty screenshot. The shot is from the original intro, but so bad that it looks like night (trust me, I recognise these at once). The magazine probably didn't get anything better, it was badly photogrpahed directly from the screen with bad lighting. Compare it with a shot directly from the raw material.--Tribun 07:36, 2 January 2013 (PST)

It's indeed 'a bit' shitty, but the interesting part is that the magazine had access to the original intro as a preview around the year 1993. Just before Origin scratched the original intro. While the raw material was from around 1998 or something, right? --Arthgon, 08:07, 2 January 2013 (PST)

You got it wrong, the raw material IS from 1993, it just was converted to a video in 1998, but it pretty much is what Denis Loubet created for the original intro and what was dropped because it took too much space. So what you have is really just an especially bad screenshot.--Tribun 08:19, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Yes. I know it is bad. Oh. Yes. Let me rephrase it. The raw material is from 1993, but Denis Loubet made the original animation available in 1998. The preview of this game in the magazine is around 1993. Just before the intro was dropped. --Arthgon 08:32, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Yes, that's exactly it. And there never had been a night shot. I think this means case closed.--Tribun 08:37, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Case closed, indeed. Oh. I really have to double-check my grammatical and spelling activities. That means, I changed my last post. --Arthgon 08:56, 2 January 2013 (PST)