Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld

Re:Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld by deng on Friday February 01, 2019 @02:37PM (#19057663)

When discussing UU one has to mention that it had simply insane system requirements at the time. If I remember correctly it required a 386DX with at least 2MB RAM, which at the time of release meant a PC worth several thousand bucks. To boot, it was also a pretty expensive game. Wolfenstein OTOH ran fine on a 286 in fullscreen, AND it was shareware. That's why everyone and his dog played it, although its engine was less advanced than UU's. It was a very deliberate decision made by id/Carmack, and it payed off big time.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld by kbenson on Friday February 01, 2019 @03:15PM (#19058053)

Wolfenstein was far inferior, technologically. A flat, square blocky map, without any way to look up or down, or any height variation at all. The maps were actually defined as ASCII grids with different characters defining where it was a wall or open space, secret door, etc.

UU had irregularly shaped rooms and hallways, inclines and declines, the ability to be at two highets depending on where you are on the map (bridges over water you can swim under) which even DOOM, the successor in engine technology to Wolfenstein 3D didn't support, etc.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld by dfan on Friday February 01, 2019 @03:34PM (#19058258)

I don't like calling it "inferior" (and we didn't, at the time). We solved a much more general problem in a slow and only approximately correct way. They found a much more limited problem that they were able to solve perfectly and blazingly fast. That's a feature! There was definitely room for both approaches.

The multi-height thing was a real annoyance, by the way. For example, my path-finding code really wanted to be 2D (and of course it was mostly expressed in 2D) but had to understand that you could do things like take a bridge over (or even jump over) a gully and then walk around and cross under your original path.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld by kbenson on Friday February 01, 2019 @03:56PM (#19058500)

Far enough. I guess what I was going was inferior feature-wise, but I wasn't clear and inferior is a loaded word, so it would have been better to phrase it as "Wolfensteign 3D supported far fewer cutting edge features" or "UU supported far more cutting edge features."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld by TheLoneAdmin on Friday February 01, 2019 @03:35PM (#19058271)

It's kinda like VHS vs Betamax. The cheaper hardware requirements allowed Wolf3D to win...

[ Parent | on HN ]