f13.net forums - Ultima V: Lazarus launches today

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July 24, 2025, 08:45:25 PM

we're back, baby

Okay I hate seeing cross-posts as much as I hate making them. But...this was just too exciting for me to keep inside much longer. I know some of you may have heard already, but I imagine several of you don't know yet.

Ultima V: Lazarus launched today. Cynics said we'd never finish it, but...we did. Cardiologists are still trying to revive me from the past few days of all-nighters.

Great to hear, can't wait to try it out.... just have to find my DS CDs around here.

Have to wait till I get home to power up my Bittorrent client, but thanks already. Nice Christmas present!

Finding Dungeon Siege is proving tricky. I think once I got the gatling gun I hurled the CD's into the ocean or something.

To my eternal shame I must admit I have Dungeon siege twice. Once the stand alone version, another legitimate copy bundled with the Expansion pack.

Porto would be more expensive than buying it in the bargain bin, though :)

You know what ? It wasn't a bad game to start with, and the lack of the loading screen was PURE 100% FUCKING GENIUS.

It's just that it was repetitive and, later, the level and exp gain was totally totally broken.

Not a good deal of fun.

Any feedback on the Ultima mod yet ??!

Never played through either of them, so I can't disagree. I play through almost everything I start. Its a compulastory thing of mine.

Quote from: Ironwood on December 23, 2005, 02:05:00 AM

Any feedback on the Ultima mod yet ??!

It's been amazing. People are loving it, bugs and all. We're even being praised on the SA forums, which kinda frightens and confuses me. o.O

I'll redouble the efforts to hunt out the CD's then.

I'm NOT buying it again, however. I mean, I'm not masochistic.

Sweet! Thanks for the update, Sly. Merry goddamned Britannian christmas!

Quote from: Sky on December 23, 2005, 07:24:14 AM

Sweet! Thanks for the update, Sly. Merry goddamned Britannian christmas!

Heh. A lot of our fans are saying this is the best Christmas present ever. But me, I got about a thousand Christmas presents when the players first started exchanging information, sharing notes, and posting spoilers to each other. Pretty sweet, I tell ya.

Still haven't gotten around to downloading it yet....but I went to check on the news and your link is throwing me into a Planet Network ad loop without ever continuing on to the lazarus page. Safari/OSX 10.3.9.

Thanks for the download link, but I was really just wanting to browse the forums and news page ;)

Quote from: Sky on January 12, 2006, 12:36:16 PM

Thanks for the download link, but I was really just wanting to browse the forums and news page ;)

No new news about patch 1.2.

Im still waiting for my Mac copy of Dungeon Snooze to come in the mail (from Canada), so they can take the time to do the patch right.
My avatar aint going anywhere and I am knee deep in Bard's Tale (the original) anyhow.
As you can see I am quite busy and content until its ready.

Lol, macintosh desktop.

Edit: It's definately time for a post your desktop thread.

Bards Tale.

I probably lost 6 years to that game. No, I'm not kidding.

I just finished to download it (and my doorbell rang and it was Civ4 and Dungeon Siege 2! Woot!). I'll write some impressions later.

The font of the intro could have used a better color, the character portraits look good and the music is also nice (really nice, but then it has some odd points here and there).

I would have enjoyed a readme in the archive telling me how to load the mod.

Btw, you are getting a LARGE (for a mod) number of fans in Italy. Our players still have a love for old-style RPGs and Dungeon Siege was released with a popular game magazine just a couple of weeks ago. So you got a nice exposition.

Now they are all crying about the bugs, though. But they love the game.

Some nitpicking. I will leave the overall comments to when I have some more time to explore the game. This is coming just from a few minutes:

- The start menu could have used some sounds for the selection and such.
- The character creation screen lags oddly and even the game. This could be a side effect of the scripting because I don't have the same lag on the original game. The starting screen is absolutely smooth, then, as you arrive to the character creation, the game starts to lag/stutter every few seconds. This is easily noticeable by moving the mouse around.
- The game could have REALLY used a better font. More readable and, especially, not that bright yellow color. Really, really ugly.
- The piano song during "The Summoning" is just wonderful. Overall the music gives a lot of atmosphere to the game by itself. It's one of the best parts of the mod.
- The whole introduction is well done overall and helps a lot to bring back the old Ultima "feeling". This is another part you got right. It feels like Ultima. I felt all nostalgic and thinking again why the new games just aren't able to involve the player so much as with Britannia, the Avatar and all the rest. The atmosphere is unique.
- As you enter the game there's a dialogue triggering after a few seconds. Here there's a flaw in the design. While you read it you receive fundamental informations. In particular it suggests what to do next, offering a couple of different options. The problem is that, once the dialogue is over, it's not possible anymore to bring it up again. Yes, you can talk again with Shamino and Iolo, but what was said in that first dialogue is lost. So, imho, you should have added dialogue options to have a quick resume of what was being said. You cannot ask the player to memorize a fundamental dialogue 30 seconds right after the beginning of the game.
- It's really, really easy to get lost. This was less of an issue in Ultima because you couldn't rotate the screen and because you moved already on a map. I don't know if it's possible but I would have tried to make the map more interactive, with a mark for your current position.
- I've seen lot of seams between some tiles, this is odd because I didn't get them in the base DS. Probably because of the integration with custom tiles?
- Again the lag. While playing the game I get some odd, frequent stutters that make me feel like I'm playing NWN. I didn't get those in base DS, so I wonder if it's another side effect of the heavy use of scripting.
- The dialogue interface is not graphically appealing but functional. Again, the font sucks. And I would have choosen to use branching dialogues more than just the single keyworld. But I guess this was a choice of style to remain faithful to the original game. So not much to object here (beside the font).
- The portraits. Some are very good. Some definitely ruin the immersion. Yes, I'm referring to the real photos. Ewww! I wish you could have kept the style consistent.
- Some of the custom art is decent, some is very ugly and the tiles sometimes don't fit well together. There's really a wide difference between good things and less good things. The quality is variable.
- I got some texture flickering with some objects (like the carpet disappearing in LB castle).
- The common peasants standing idle in a fighting stance. This is another immersion-breaking element. You should have tweaked the animations to not allow that. The guards don't do that, so you knew how to do this. It's really, really odd walking around a city and see all the people in the boxing stance.
- Some zones are really beautiful, some are barren and seem too generic or confused (like "filler" space without interesting points). Without a decent layout. Again the quality is variable.
- More feedback on some mechanics could have been good (for example by triggering dialogues with Shamino and Iolo to explain the situation). It seems that when a Shadowlord enters the screen you are ported in a dark zone with no exit. Okay. Give at least SOME feedback to what the hell is going on. 90% of the times I cannot even see there's a Shadowlord because of the camera controls of the game. Then I have no clue what to do in that dark zone with no exit. So I die. What's the point of this?
- The death sequence is not-skippable and annoying because of this.

So... The font.