U9 development team interviews

This page is for the posting and archival of Ultima IX developer interviews and chats regarding the making of Ultima IX.

Developer Chats

Chat Moderator is in bold

Ultima IX Dev Team Member is in italics

Question asker is in denoted like the following: Moderator - *Asker*

December 14, 1999

Log of Ultima:IX Ascension Open House (12-14-1999, #ascension on irc.stratics.com)

Cynthe - Greetings, everyone! I'm glad you could make it tonight... we're beginning the chat now! And with that, I turn this over to our moderator, Uziel...

Uziel - This Ascension House of Commons chat is considered General Discussion, so feel free to ask anything relating to Ultima Ascension.

Uziel - I will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query Jerrith, Destiny, Xander, Niobe or Jazar.

Uziel - Some general guidelines for this chat: please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up. Also, do not send the same question multiple times or to more than one question-taker. Finally, do not msg anyone from OSI or myself -- these questions will be ignored.

Uziel - Remember that the Ascension DevTeam may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, certain questions may not be answered if the DevTeam feels that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.

Uziel - Lastly, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered through other means, such as available FAQ's. In addition, this chat may feature minor game spoilers. We will do our best to limit the scope of spoilers within the moderated section of this chat, but we cannot make any guarantees.

Uziel - Thanks for coming, everyone! We will now begin accepting questions.

Uziel - *Morac* Any ETA on the D3D optimizaton patch?

CapnBill - We HOPE to get Patch 2 before Christmas, but we've had a few delays; we want to get it right!

Uziel - *Cla75* excuse me....what type of pc you think is the ideal for playing ultima 9 ?

CapnBill - I like a Pentium III 450, with 256MB of RAM, running WIndows 2000, with a Voodoo2.

Uziel - *Wildgoose* When the D3D support is fixed, what is your best estimate as to how fast the game will actually run under D3D on a reccommended system?

Spectra - Since I haven't posted before, I just want to let everyone know that I was the 3D programmer on ascension.

Spectra - Our initial tests are showing a pretty good increase in performance. D3D is running at about the same rate as Glide with 16-bit textures right now.

Cynthe - And to add to a quick rollcall, I'm a designer on Ascension, as well as the current community coordinator.

CapnBill - And, to further interrupt, I'm CapnBill, lead programmer

Spectra - We still hope to gain some more speed, but it is very hard to give a frame rate estimate at all.

Bassanio - And Im also a designer

Uziel - *Comrade* Why did the Japanese edition of the Dragon Edition have more items inside it

• Audball adds to the roll call: <==== Audio, interface, combat, misc. programmer *

Cynthe - The packaging arrangements for the Japanese version are handled by the Japanese territories, and are separate from Origin.

Uziel - *Svartdrage* Under all the bugs I don't think the game is great. Many regard Ultima 7 has the best one in the series and so do many people I know have. Ultima 8 Pagan was hated by alot of people is viewed as the worst game of the series and a big part of the reason why they hated it was the action elements. In Ultima 9 you increased these increased these elements that made many not enjoy Ultima 8 Pagan in Ultima 9 ascension why?

Yavn - With each game our goal was to make the world more realistic. In real life when people get to a rock, they jump over...We also were not interested in doing menu bassed combat...

Yavn - We tried to make the action parts of the game non arcade-ish, so people would not have to worry about that. As for the jumping, we used a targeting cursor to help show where you would land. A huge improvement from U8

Uziel - *Jaymo* I was wondering if you are planing to change the AI? It is not too good and I don't know how hard it is to change.

Yavn - By the way I was the lead designer for the game

CapnBill - We have addressed some AI bugs that were preventing creatures from attacking; AI is more challenging in the patched version (patch 2)

Audball - Yup, AI changes are definitely being put in! We're not doing anything drastic like rewriting every creature, but we are tackling deficiciencies (sp?) of individual creatures

CapnBill - But, it was never our intent to make this a combat-based game; combat only adds to the RPG experience, but it's not the game's basis

CapnBill - BTW, we've re-written rat, the only one we'll re-write--and feedback is, it's a lot harder.

Audball - For example, we've rewritten the rat (watch out!), helped wolves react to long-range attacks (spells, arrows), and make the Winged Gargoyles more responsive

Uziel - *TydusMage* Will any of you be moving over to the UO2 team now?

Yavn - Yes. Many of the art team is already working on UO2, and several designers also also going.

Uziel - *gandhii* i'd like to hear more on why npc scheduling was left out. it would seem that all the hard stuff needed to do this was allready done for the avatar, i.e. animations and stuff,. even britain's boyer walks around town before returning to his store (after you walk off and come back) .. what was keeping this from being extended into npc schedules like we all know and love from ultima7?

CapnBill - Ah, NPCs! My favorite subject (haha)

CapnBill - You're right the Boyer moves around town.

CapnBill - But, it was never a part of the game design to have NPCs such as shopkeepers not be available at night

CapnBill - We felt that would be too annoying with this interface & plot.

CapnBill - BUT, we did try to get in some schedules...

CapnBill - Like moving between the shop & the tavern, moving between towns, etc.

CapnBill - Some NPCs do this; some don't.

CapnBill - We only got the engine's required subsytems for schedules working reliably a few weeks before we had to code freeze

CapnBill - (Subsystems like our collision system & world movement system)

CapnBill - So, since those primitives were unreliable (ie buggy) for so long, the designers didn't feel confident about putting in a lot of schedules.

CapnBill - We also had to remove a lot of schedules for performance reasons.

CapnBill - The lack of NPCs moving around frustrated us, too; we could've done some cool activities with it. But, performance was a factor, along with a lot of others.

CapnBill - People falling through the ground! Sheesh!

CapnBill - Nuff said.

Uziel - *wisemonk* will the avatar become a national sex symbol? or is it only pirates and gypsies that find him attractive?

Cynthe - Well, I don't know about pirates and gypsies, but there was this great screenshot of his backside in jeans that I kept on my desktop for a while... *grin*

Yavn - I think he's the Capt Kirk of Britannia!

Uziel - *loretian* In a mpeg released awhile back, which had Richard Garriot showing off features of the game, the actual gameplay sections of the movie were *very* smooth. Butta smooth. Exactly what system was used for this demo (so I can buy one!)?

CapnBill - PIII 400, 512 MB RAM, Voodoo 2.

CapnBill - The RAM really made all the difference.

Uziel - *Comrade* Given the public reaction to Ultima 9, do you think you have succeeded in creating the game you initially set forward to make?

Audball - The area played in and game settings might have also added to the smooth performance

Yavn - Yes, most everything we wanted from the design side made it in the game. I have no regrets about the gameplay

Uziel - *Linda* I wanted to ask about that original Ascension plot summary that is floating around on the newsgroups. Without giving any spoilers away, can you tell us some of what led the evolution from that plot to what the game currently is? Some of the changes are quite drastic.

Yavn - Every game changes as it's being made. We like parts of the original, and had some new concepts we thought were better

Yavn - With new team members come new ideas, and that's how we ened up with the plot for the game

Uziel - *Jaymo* Why did you design the interface to look the way it does. It is very pixilated and the inventory in UO looked better. Also what was the reason for not having a menu at the start of the game?

Yavn - As for no menu, we wanted the game to feel more like the world, and less like a game...we also wanted to do something unique and different

Spectra - As far as the pixelation goes, the look of a lot of the art was done quite a while back, and up until recently, the game only ran in 640x480.

Spectra - Since we increased the available resolution, the interface had to be stretched.

Spectra - There were technological issues relating to the transparency in the interface that prevented it from being smoothed out.

Spectra - If we just let the texture be filtered, then most of the text would be un-readable.

Uziel - *Araldor* What brought about the decision to end the series?

Bassanio - :) the series is necessarily ending, but evolving

Bassanio - this game is the third installment of trilogy so...

Bassanio - it had to end this particular cycle so to speak :)

Uziel - *KoalaBear* Due to the problems or difficulties in implementing D3D support, why wasn't OpenGL implemented, and will you look more favourably towards OpenGL in the future? I know that UO2 is going to support that if I'm not mistaken.

Spectra - OpenGL suffers many of the same issues as Direct3D in regards to the texture formats that we use, unfortunately.

Spectra - I would love to look at using OpenGL in general, but for Ascension it didn't make sense. We did consider it many times during the Direct3D development, though.

CapnBill - Many times!

Spectra - It still seems like an attractive option today!

Uziel - *Palius* Regarding Hythloth: A) What exactly is the (3) Nightshade I think I found there, and B) Why is there no reward for not skipping the second set of statues via the teleporter?

CapnBill - As for the (3) Nightshade, it's a bug. We were, a long time ago, considering "stacking" reagents.

CapnBill - So we put in support to have multiple quantities of reagents, like arrows & gold.

CapnBill - But, time pressures prevented this--and we didn't find all the multiple-quantity items to undo it.

Yavn - The 2nd set of statues were changed close to ship, we felt the 2nd section was a bit too difficult. We did not want to make a lot of changes at that late time

Uziel - *gandhii* as another computer artist, I can't say enough about how beautiful the environments are. I remember capnbill (for good reason) bragging about his work on the lighting system in previous posts on the bbs. But who are the main creative forces we have to thank for the texxtures, modeling, scenery, animation, and mostly the concept art?

Cynthe - We have a very talented team of artists, including Andy Hoyos and Scott Jones, who do beautiful concept work. Jennifer Davis is also a valued member, and she did fabulous work for UO as well. Then there's Scott Wetterschneider, Art Wong, Bob Frye, and many others toonumerous to list. Thanks for the compliment... we'll make sure they get it. :)

Audball - Michael Morlan works on the spell effects and cinematics

Uziel - *gandhii* Using a udma66 drive seriously slows and destabilizes the game, when will there be a fix for this?

CapnBill - We don't believe this problem is in the game code; rather, its a side-effect of U9 being so resource-demanding.

CapnBill - We've had numerous problem reports with this. Some BIOS fixes appear to be available.

CapnBill - I urge you to contact EA customer support. They're excellent at diagnosing & supporting these types of issues.

Uziel - *RyanFenton* Any chances of an add-on for UIX, or eventual ports if things go really well?

Bassanio - YOu never know :)

Uziel - *Anthony* How big is the game roughly compared to another rpg such as Baldurs gate, also how long is it(in hours)given a rough estimate?

Yavn - It all depends on the player, and how much they explore...QA can "rush" through the game in around 20 hours. Most other people have taken 100+ hours

Uziel - *Kelendral* Why does patch #1 exhibit so many obvious problems that should have been picked up easily during the 14 days it was in QA "testing"???

CapnBill - To our knowledge, we did not introduce any new problems with the patch--we only fixed problems with the game.

CapnBill - There was no way to fix every bug in the game with the first patch; that wasn't our goal.

CapnBill - Also, I really don't recall stating that we QAd the patch for 14 days--If I said that, I was wrong. We didn't. Nevertheless, the final Patch #3 should fix all plot, crasher, and stuck-state problems!

Uziel - *CapnS|mIRC* How many members from the original team were still on for the game's completion?

Audball - Hmmm.. *thinks* As far as I know, original members that made it through the end are: LB himself, Gary Smitt, Herman Miller, Chuck Zoch

CapnBill - Smith, not Smitt! :)

Audball - er, Gary Smith. (Those last 3 are all programmers)

Audball - and Michelle Caddel

Uziel - *KoalaBear* What have you guys learned from a release perspective?

CapnBill - Loaded question! But I'll do my best...

Cynthe - Oh, and Scott Jones has bneen an artist on U9 since its wee days... :) (addendum)

CapnBill - The consequences of releasing a product before its time are simply not worth the pain...bottom line. There wasn't much we could do in this case...but having lived through it, I've learned a lot about it.

CapnBill - Also, I personally am amazed at just how awesome everyone thinks the world is!

CapnBill - We became pretty jaded to the look of the game, and didn't fully appreciate how beautiful it is.

CapnBill - As a result, we became worried about not being competitive enough graphically....

CapnBill - but we know better now.

Uziel - *Akashic_Baja* will any of these patches be U8 like? As in old savegames will not be compatible with the patched version.

Audball - The attempt is to *NOT* invalidate previous savegames or not be backwards compatible

Audball - However, since Ascension is so large and complex, there are some fixes that will require you to at least back up a bit to a prior savegame, to a point where you haven't encountered the bug yet.

Audball - When those situations arise, we will document them in the 'patch.txt' file we include with the patch.

Uziel - *Cabaal* has most of the problems involving NPC's falling through the ground, LB below his chair/in the ground being fixed?

CapnBill - LB being below his throne was an Alpha problem--we did fix that. We had a long-running plague of NPCs falling through the ground.

CapnBill - You'd go to talk to someone, and they'd be apparently gone! BUt, they were just subterrainean.

CapnBill - Anyway, we fixed those--but it required less NPC movement than we wanted, which was frustrating.

CapnBill - And, NPCs apparently still sometimes fall off piers & such ** CapnBill grinds his teeth **

CapnBill - If only you knew how long we worked on finding & fixing all those problems like that.....if only.

CapnBill - Anyway, they're a LOT better!

Uziel - *arlin* The swimming interface is difficult to use and often impossible to see while underwater. It is extremely hard to move up or down, combat is not an option, and I keep drowning from running out of breath. Any chances on swimming being tinkered with at all in the upcoming patches? At least making it easier to see?

CapnBill - Good news!

CapnBill - Swimming is MUCH better in Patch 2. I found a bug in my own code that made swimming harder than I intended.

CapnBill - So, we worked on it & played in Hythloth--if QA reports it's still hard, we can make it even easier

CapnBill - As for the visibility, that's much improved too.

CapnBill - We "thinned out" the fog in front of the camera to make it a LOT easier to see.

Audball - The lack of underwater combat was basically an animation decision. The spellcasting and weapon attacking animations just didn't look good underwater - Avater would stand up, do his thing, then go back to swimming. It wasn't deemed necessary to create whole new sets of animations for swimming combat.

Uziel - *Yobgod* In the final analysis, would you say that U:IX was built up from simple systems that work, or a complex system that didn't quite work? ;)

Audball - (Just shoot the fish with arrows or fireballs from the shore/edge ;-)

CapnBill - My Definitive Answer: U9 was built from a bunch of complex systems that almost, but not quite, didn't work at all.

CapnBill - Heh-heh!

CapnBill - There was a lot of legacy code--and the engine was still top-down when I started working on it.

CapnBill - But, after much re-writing, most of the engine is pretty solid now. Not all, but most... ;)

Uziel - *Kelendral* Will patch #2 fix scrolls, especially duration scrolls, draining mana?

Audball - yeah, just the Capn's parts need work... (KIDDING) :P

CapnBill - Boo!

supra - Yes, duration scrolls (light, specifically, since that's the one with a problem) is fixed in patch #2. The draining mana problem existed in the release, but since the spell only lasted 10 seconds, nobody ever noticed it.

Uziel - *_CoZmO_* Whats with the Avatar disappearing when he enters buildings?

Cynthe - Most buildings in Ascension have what are called enclosed spaces, which prevent items inside the building from being drawn while the camera is outside the building. Occasionally there will be moments when the Avatar is inside the enclosed space, while the camera is outside the space.

Uziel - *rangerone* Why the decision to make the game so linear when that was one of the main complaints against Ultima 8?

CapnBill - Since Richard isn't here, I'll try to explain--hope I don't speak out of turn!

CapnBill - The plot is what Richard & Seth wanted.

CapnBill - One of Richard's goals with Ascension was to address frequent criticisms of past Ultimas.

CapnBill - He wanted to player to know what needed doing at every point in the game, to keep it focused.

CapnBill - He also wanted to open the plot up later, to allow more options to those who desire non-linear plots.

CapnBill - And, I think he achieved this well.

Cynthe - It also helped to create a steepening level of difficulty throughout the game.

CapnBill - We've received mixed feedback--some like it, some don't.

CapnBill - But Richard likes it! :)

Uziel - *Taloncor* can you please ask capnbill if they fixed the bed bug where your half on and off and your eyes blink instead of being closed?

CapnBill - Half off the bed: Yes, this is an annoying visual bug--but, we haven't fixed it, we've had bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

CapnBill - As for blinking, well the animated faces were something we crammed in at the 11th hour--we couldn't believe we were adding a feature like that so late in the cycle!

CapnBill - And, as it turns out, there were some problems like the one you mentioned that we never could fix.

CapnBill - Maybe we'll fix the blinking....you never know....it's just a question of priorities, I guess.

CapnBill - But hey, have you noticed how the Avatar doesn't fall through the bed? :)

Uziel - *RyanFenton* Any thoughts on making a Game Developer post mortem for the game eventually?

CapnBill - We do in-house post-mortems as part of the dev cycle. I don't know EA policy on published post-mortems, such as those in Game Developer magazine. I'll ask, though--it could be cool.

Uziel - *Anthony* Why does it rain inside Lord British's castle?, and also is this bug being fixed for patch2?

CapnBill - Ahh, another bug that we fixed....several times....and yet, it still happens.

CapnBill - The rain is actually created at a certain height above the Avatar--and the castle was so high in some rooms, the rain was created inside the room!

CapnBill - Rain is a huge performance hit, so we try to cheat on it all we can. For Patch 2, we raised its creation height.

CapnBill - There were other reasons, in the past, that rain appeared in certain areas indoors--those may still crop up from time to time, we haven't fixed them. They're more rare.

Uziel - *Cabaal* it was said that the game world was originally very big, and therefore scaled down, but now some "cities" (ie. Britain) are rather small to warrant a major city status, also, said cities are rather sparsely populated when compared to Ultima 7... was the decision to decrease the amount of NPC's performance based or some other reason (ie. the game was just too darn big :))

CapnBill - This was Richard's call. Early on, he told us that Ultima's in the past had been incredibly demanding to publish, because they tended to be so big.

CapnBill - So, he deliberately had the design team & art team scale the world & cities down.

CapnBill - Not just to make it more playable; but to make it more BUILDABLE. Sure enough, he was right. The scope of the task of building the world was almost beyond us! It was a huge task, with a huge team, and we barely were able to do it (right Cynthe?)

Uziel - *DragonKP* how do you guys feel about the negitive reviews so far?

Cynthe - It's disheartening to see so many people who can't play the game that we enjoy so much. Whether it's due to the technological strain or plot-stopping bugs, it honestly hurts to see that people are playing what seems to us to be a different game than what we shipped.

CapnBill - Negative feedback is useful--it's helping us patch things in the product that we know users really want to see.

CapnBill - But, it's clear that we underestimated the problems players would have.

Cynthe - We want to make sure that these problems are fixed so that people can really see the game for what it can be, which is why we're still trying so hard to fix everything that may have gone wrong.

CapnBill - The dev team is really disappointed, honestly.

Cynthe - Honestly, we're sad. There's no other way to put it. But we hope that with these patches, we can make it better.

CapnBill - We are working hard on it. That's why we can't estimate the release of Patch 3...

CapnBill - However, on the UP side, if your machine runs the game OK, we feel the game is fantastic! It's very fun, more than we thought it would be.

CapnBill - So we want everyone to have that kind of experience!

Spectra - As the guy that did the Direct3D work, I'm pretty disappointed about them in general, but the number of them did help get me time to work on them, so it's not all bad. And of course ther are the good reviews to help balance it out!

Uziel - *Vassago* What about having access to resolution higher than 1024*768 in Glide mode?

Audball - I *think* (Spectra can slap/correct me if I'm wrong) that Voodoo2 cards can only go up to 800x600, unless in SLI, in which case they can do 1024x768.

Audball - Voodoo3 can go higher than that, I think, but I'm not sure what the limit is.

CapnBill - (Guys, I have to go. Thanks to all of you for being here! See you in the ether.)

Uziel - *Shadowhand* In previous games, the Avatar was named. What prompted you to change to calling him "Avatar" as the name?

Audball - That decision was mainly "resource related", meaning that it would have require huge amounts of work in both the script and voice recording to allow anything other than "Avatar"

Audball - We barely managed to squeeze everything onto 2 CDs (only 1 while you play, so no swapping, yay!), and that would have put it over the limit

Audball - (more CDs = more manufacturing costs, etc., etc.)

Audball - A text-to-speech solution might have been neat, but we had other larger things to consider * Audball shudders remembering Dr. Sbaitzo *

Uziel - *Laa-Yosh* Question: We know that because plot changes, several cinematics were left out of the game. Is there any way to have does movies appear for just a short time on the Origin ftp server? please :), I'm a 3D artist myself and a big fan of your work...

Cynthe - That's something we;re looking into

Cynthe - we would like to release these, but it's not something we've decided on yet. If they are released, it won't be for a little while... we'd like people to get a chance to see all Ascension really has to offer before showing them stuff that we didn't use

• Cynthe would like to thank everyone for coming! *

Bassanio - Thanks Guys for attending! Its been a pleasure

Audball - If anybody has questions that did not get answered tonight, whether it be technical issues, spoilers, etc., please post them on the official boards at http://boards.owo.com

Cynthe - The fact that this many people have taken the time to come and listen to us means a lot to us. We hope that you will find the next patch a huge improvement in gameplay, and I look forward to reading your responses on our discussion boards.

Cynthe - If anyone would care to chat about tinight's...er... chat, stop by the Horizons board at http://www.allgaming.com

Uziel - The Ultima Ascension DevTeam and the Stratics staff would like to thank you for attending this special House of Commons session. The log will be posted somewhere either tonight or tommorow, but I have yet to get the web address :)

Uziel - I'm told it will be at http://uo.stratics.com/u9hoc.html when it it ready

Cynthe - This has been quite enjoyable. Thanks again and good night all... :)

Bassanio - Thanks! Nite Everyone

January 11, 2000

Log of Ultima:IX Ascension Open House (01-11-2000, #ascension on irc.stratics.com)

Jerrith - Greetings and thank you for attending tonight's U9HoC.

Jerrith - Jerrith will be our moderator for this evening. In order to submit questions, please /msg or /query Jazar, Niobe, or Fripp.

Jerrith - Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load, and speed this process up. Do not msg anyone from Origin or myself--these questions will be ignored.

Jerrith - Remember they may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if they feel that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.

Jerrith - In addition, please do not submit any questions that have already been answered during past conferences.

Jerrith - We encourage you to read the log of the previous U9HoC, which is available at http://uo.stratics.com/u9hoc.html

Jerrith - Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

Cynthe - First, a quick introduction. I'm Cynthe, designer and community coordinator. :)

• Audball <--- Programmer *

CapnBill - I'm Lead Programmer Spectra - I'm the 3D programmer Yavn - Greetings, I'm the lead designer Trellek - And I'm another programmer.

Jerrith - *Airhed* What was the most difficult aspect of Ultima9's gameplay for you to decide on? Why did you decide what you did? Yavn - One of the bigest issues was combat. We knew we wanted to have more interaction then just clicking, but, not as complex as streetfighter. In the end we came up with a system that was easy as clicking, but gave the player a lot of choices

Jerrith - *drbob* Hi, Would it be possible to include a special 'unstick' key in the next patch (eg which moves the avatar a couple of centimeteres) to free the avatar when he is caught on invisible objects? CapnBill - We've considered that... CapnBill - We added a key to kill some lingering spells, in a previous patch... CapnBill - But, the "right" thing to do is fix the fact that the AVatar gets stuck in the first place, CapnBill - So that's what we're working on.

Jerrith - *Crom* First off I want to say thanks for a awesome game: My question is , Are there any plans on a expanstion or addon to the game itself? Yavn - Thanks!! We have talked about expansions, at this time we have all of our resources on UO2, and our next project...X We may look into this in the future

Jerrith - *Torham* Do you feel all the bugs will be worked out in the 3rd patch? CapnBill - They have to be. We won't get another chance to fix problems; we're testing this one until we're comfortable with it, both in terms of stability and performance!

Jerrith - *Darksharp* Question for the team: Regarding D3d and some textures (espcially masked textures such as trees) looking incredibly pixellated and non-anti-aliased (is that a word?...heh). this is in 800x600, mip-mapping medium, 16-bit txtures. I did not notice this problem using my glide V2 setup. Will Patch 3 address this D3d texture issue? Spectra - This has been addressed in patch 3. For most Direct3D cards, these textures will now be filtered like the other textures in the game. Spectra - Unfortunately, there will be some cards that do not support this mode, most notably off hand is the Matrox G200. Spectra - People with cards that don't support the feature will still have to deal with the pixelly textures, I'm afraid. Cynthe - just a sec Cynthe - oops.. wrong box. :)

Jerrith - *Shimfizzal* Will the third patch be available as download or will it be the promised disk sent to registered users? CapnBill - Patch 3 will be available for download, AND will be mailed out to registered users in the form of a NEW replacement CD1. CapnBill - It's also going to be the version that ships in Europe.

Jerrith - *Honest_Dragon* Will there be additional patching after patch 3? CapnBill - There better not be! ;) CapnBill - Actually, we're planning for NO patching after patch 3; we're testing it sufficiently to give us confidence that we've fixed the problems. CapnBill - (And that we didn't introduce new problems.)

Jerrith - *_Galron_* Can you give us a defintive time frame for a message or response from Richard Garriot? Cynthe - I spoke with Richard at length today on many issues from the boards, so there I should be able to provide some thoughts from him very shortly... within a few days. :)

Jerrith - *Belor* question for capnbill: what crashes were addressed in patch3, specifically anything about valoria crash? CapnBill - A lot of crashers....we're thinking, to try to remember 'em all... CapnBill - Today, we fixed one related to EAX... CapnBill - Various spell crashers... Audball - pretty much any savegame we've been sent that has a crasher has been fixed. CapnBill - I don't recall a specific crash in Valoria. CapnBill - Your crash may have been caused by any number of problems we've fixed. CapnBill - Crashes aren't always geography-specific, but they feel that way when you're playing. CapnBill - We'll alert our QA guys to exercise Valoria a lot, though.

Jerrith - *Warfrat* Will the Phase 3 patch coming on Cd support A3D? My sound card doesnt support EAX? Audball - Unfortunately, no, we will not be adding support for EAX. Our intentions with the patch is to *fix* all technical problems, and not to *add* new features. Audball - You might try sending some email to Aureal bugging them about when their drivers will support EAX (I think they've alluded to the fact that there will be EAX support in future drivers, but I'm not positive on that one.) Audball - whoopsie. Audball - Change my first sentence: "not be adding support for EAX" should read "not be adding support for A3D". My bad. Bad Audball.

Jerrith - *Terilem* Has the infamous "Invulnerable Valorian Demons" bug been fixed? CapnBill - Yep! CapnBill - So has the Shamino bug.

Jerrith - *Starless* what was the targeted audience of the Ultima IX design? RPG fans or even wider? Cynthe - As Yavn said in an earlier post on the boards, we wanted to appeal to as many players as we could. Old Ultima fans, new Ultima fans... there was no reason to exclude anyone. :)

Jerrith - *drbob* I'm in the uk and I registered my US dragon edition electronically (via internet) - can I expect the new cd? CapnBill - Honestly, we don't know for sure.... CapnBill - I think EA support would be able to answer that, but not until the mail-out actually starts...sorry! Cynthe - All registered users will receive the CD, but those not in North America may need to register by regular mail. Cynthe - Those who live in countries that aren't listed can register by simply writing in their correct information and sending it in.

Jerrith - *KolathDragon* Why was the 3D engine deemed important enough to sacrifice NPC scheduling, the original plot, and other important items that most people feel made Ultimas Ultima-ish? Cynthe - Richard has always wanted to present a seamless virtual world that you can actually feel like you're living in. CapnBill - Well, the 3D engine is a free-form engine, unlike a lot of our competitors. CapnBill - A huge amount of dev time was spent just getting it to perform acceptably CapnBill - (and we're still working on tuning that in the patches) CapnBill - This meant there wasn't as much dev time for NPC schedules as we needed CapnBill - We made feature-vs-time-vs-performance trade-offs every day, tough decisions Cynthe - The immersiveness was his absolute first priority, and that sometimes meant that other things had to be sacrificed. CapnBill - NPC schedules were part of the design from the beginning; but to actually get the debugged would have taken a few more months. CapnBill - As for the plot, that element wasn't affected by the engine decisions.. CapnBill - That was a separate decision. RG felt the current plot is superior to the original one.

Jerrith - *Terilem* Is it at all possible to convince RG to let you guys put in some form of explanation of what happened to the companions after SI? Cynthe - Richard is satisfied with the plot that was presented in Ascension, and there won't be any additional backstory added.

Jerrith - *Fireball* Are we going to have to restart the game to enjoy most of the fixes of Patch 3? CapnBill - No, wherever possible, we've made changes only in the code; this means that they apply as soon as you run the new EXE. CapnBill - Some changes required map changes; for example, we made a change to a lift in Yew that made it more reliable, and you'd have to restart the game to get that change. But that change isn't required to finish the game. CapnBill - Very few changes were made to the map, mostly just the code.

Jerrith - *Honest_Dragon* A favorite question for Yavn: Why is Gwenno such a wuss? Yavn - Everyone was effected differently by the columns, in the case of Gwenno, she bacame a wuss!

Jerrith - *Darksharp* Another question: Why does the Avatar continually whistle and clear his throat....he seems to do this in the heat of battle quite often which really brings down the immersiveness. Is there a fix for this in Patch3? Or does this work as intended? CapnBill - No, this is a bug. Audball - What? *cough* You don't like the Avatar *sneeze* doing those things? *scratch* Heh, we'll look into it. CapnBill - We're actually looking at that more--we hate it too.

Jerrith - *Pyro* will there be improvements in the way that the game engine loads the world? I have heard it runs faster on dual hard drive systems than on single hard drive systems. CapnBill - Ascension's continuous world environment is its blessing & its curse. CapnBill - We've made some caching changes that improved performance, but didn't make any major architectural changes CapnBill - Yes, it's true, the game runs better on a two-drive system. Disk I/O is not our friend.

Jerrith - *drbob* Will there be a fix for the (all too tempting) potions bug (as in they work indefinately if you drink one save then reload before the potion has run out)? CapnBill - Hmm, we didn't find that one....we'll fix it now though! Thanks! Cynthe - There goes another exploit... *hehe*

Jerrith - *Raz* do you drink out of pint glasses that have an origin logo on them with 'we create worlds' ? Cynthe - As often as possible. :) Yavn - I do, and the EA ones also! CapnBill - Hey, I use a two-pint glass! Bassanio - yup I love mine :) Spectra - I have a whole set! Yavn - Bill has one for each hand! Trellek - I drink tea by the cup. What would I do with a pint glass?

Jerrith - *Airhed* Are there any plans to either a)Implement U9's (tweaked) innovative engine in future Origin games (AKA UO2) or b)Sell the engine to third-party developers for use in 3-d RPGs? CapnBill - Nope, no plans to re-use the engine in-house. But, we've had some nybbles on possibly external use of it. CapnBill - Also, the dev team is rolling over onto "X", and we'll no doubt use our U9 experience & knowledge, if not the actualy code.

Jerrith - *VolatiosDragon* Will problems in enemy AI be fixed? Ie, will I be able to shoot a bandit before his dialogue takes place, or will my arrows still bounce harmlessly off his plot-armor, keeping me from saving the damsel in distress? Audball - We found it quite desireable to exclude the Avatar from combat while in conversations (it's not fun to die while your talking... it's just rude, ya know?). The way the code was written, it affects any combatant in conversation. We'll ponder whether it's actually beneficial to exclude other NPCs from the this feature, but I don't personally think it's a big enough issue to worry about.

Jerrith - *Starless* What is happening with the possible Ultima IV remake with the Ascension engine Richard was talking about not that long ago? Yavn - It's something that would be nice to do, in house, or out. For now we have no emediate plans to do so.

Jerrith - *daWraith* Why the massive re-org of the continent? Wrong is in the "wrong" spot, as well as Empath Abbey... What are the ruins NE of Yew? Nimrond - Most of these decisions came from the need to spread things out nicely in the smaller world space. I know there were some game-flow and plot issues as well, but there were just as many changes made for the sake of beauty. The ruins you are referring to were simply points of visual interest. Cynthe - By the way, I'd like to introduce Nimrond, our lead artis :) Cynthe - er artist

Jerrith - *Batfink* What was the lowest point in UIX's development? The "arrgh how are we going to carry on" point? CapnBill - Several come to mind, actually; the worst was in November of 98... CapnBill - We'd undertaken the rewrite of most of the engine, starting in June. CapnBill - I underestimated the required time, by at least 4 months. CapnBill - So, when RIchard & our other executives had to give a formal presentation on U9 to EA, in California,.... CapnBill - they had a very broken version of the game to take with them. CapnBill - We slaved for many long hours, many weekends, and many all-nighters to make it...not suck... CapnBill - and we just barely DIDN'T pull it together. Yavn - Yes, we all spent 40+ hours straight working before that meeting.... CapnBill - The presentation was...not well received. The programming team had let every one down, we felt. CapnBill - We felt really bad, really bad. Trellek - I'd have to concur, that was probably the lowest moment in the project. CapnBill - SO, the pressure was cranked up after that; and soon after, things did fall into place, and the engine came together. CapnBill - The result is something we're really proud of (minus bugs!) CapnBill - But, the pressure was extreme, and did not let up after that. CapnBill - Moral: DO NOT ADD ENTIRE NEW SUBSYSTEMS TO YOUR ENGINE THE NIGHT BEFORE A BIG DEMO!!! Especially a 2AM!!

Jerrith - *Airhed* Nimrond: What part of U9 do find the most visually appealing? Did you put together the sunrise and sunset sequences? Nimrond - I sure did! Cap'n Bill, myself and the other artists were quite proud of the day, night, sunrise cycle. We worked very hard together to pull that off with the right lighting, painted sky and other special effects. That is one of my most favorite pastimes,... just watching the sun rise or set in Britannia!

Jerrith - *PolarisDragon1* The TNT vs TNT2 numbers CapnBill posted seem odd, TNT is very close to TNT2 performance. Could that be a Nvidia driver issue or is the P350 test system the bottleneck? Spectra - Much of that speed is determined by the system itself, as the game does not usually push most modern cards to their limits. Spectra - One of the biggest speed factors for the cards is how they handle their textures. Spectra - Since the TNT and TNT2 have very similar architectures, there isn't that much of a difference. Spectra - You will notice a big difference based on the amount of memory on the card for textures. Spectra - You will also see an improvement at higher resolutions with the TNT2 because of its higher fill rate. Spectra - And, as always, the drivers have a lot to do with that. Spectra - Under directx7, we had nearly a 20% speed improvement on the TNT2 by switching from the Detonator 2.08 drivers to the Detonator 3.53 drivers. Fairly noticeable. CapnBill - Hey, all, I have to go--it's been a lot of fun--thanks for showing up! Bye!

Jerrith - *VolatiosDragon* Massive applause to Nimrond on the artwork - the game is visually specatacular and I'm playing mostly to explore right now. One question: With New Magincia spontaneously having crystal towers, were there any other times where you considered an interesting new look for, say, Britain, but withdrew it? Nimrond - We played around with alot of new looks,... and pretty much ended up using them all. I was carefull to stick with alot of tradition , but was also given alot of free reign. Nothing really ended up on the cutting floor.

Jerrith - *Crom* This question goes to the Artists, This may sound like a stupid question but I am wondering. Is the art in the game drawn directly on the computer or is done on canvas or paper then scanned in? Either way I am so impressed with the beautiful artwork I think some of it is museum quality! Nimrond - We created most of the art in LightWave and Photoshop. We scanned alot of stuff in , altering it for our needs, but a great deal was hand-drawn. Thanks for the compliments !

Jerrith - *pdragon79* Lets say there is an Add-on, will issues such as how the companions returned... old items (shade blade for example) return? I really do miss the mage bane. and how bout more side quests? Is this a possiblility? Bassanio - there are no plans currently for addons, but you never know what the future will hold :) Jerrith - *Asmo|Work* "I LOVE the movie quality in Ascension, was it produced by the same team that did the Ultima Online Intro movie, and will they be asked again to do more movies in the future?" Thanks. Nimrond - The flics were a combination of in-house artists and several out-of-house sources, pretty common for this type of stuff.. but , yeah, we intend to use most of thos guys for future work..

Jerrith - *Starless* What was the definitive point that made you decide to choose slot-based inventory over the weight-based inventory system? Yavn - After playing previous Ultima games, we felt that it was easier to find objects in slots. As for the weight, we had a lot of debates on that, and we voted to simplfy the system, and remove weight. Yavn - We had a lot of debates on this issue.

Jerrith - *Airhed* What specific food is used most at the office on those long nights? :) Audball - Spectra likes lunchables ;-) Trellek - Peanuts. Raisins. Popcorn. Stuff like that. Bassanio - shiner (beer) Yavn - Pizza mostly, although we ate anything that was delivered! Trellek - (The gerbils love raisins too!) Spectra - Hey, they're the only thing around at 3:00 am, and they go well with beer. Kinda. Audball - Caffeine was the all-important ingredient for us programmers though. supra - And anything that comes out of a vending machine. Nimrond - and my flying squirrel loves people's fingers !

• Audball would have gladly used a caffeine I.V. setup if available * Bassanio - barbeque was a favorite :)

Spectra - Chocolate covered espresso beans were a real savior towards the end. Cynthe - Rice crispy treats. :) Nimrond - Chinese take-out ! Audball - yeah, and Trellek's wonderfull candy/chocolate bowl!

Jerrith - The Ultima Ascension DevTeam and the Stratics staff would like to thank you for attending this special House of Commons session. The log will be posted somewhere either tonight or tommorow. Cynthe - Thank you all for coming!! Nimrond - It was nice talking to everybody ! See ya later ! Have fun !

• Audball echoes Minrond's sentiments *

Trellek - It was lots of fun. See you again some time! Yavn - Thanks everyone! Audball - g'nite all Bassanio - Thanks everyone!! Bassanio - nite!! Prescient_Dragon - Thanx for coming OSI guys! :) Spectra - Good Night!