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Description: |
 Nazghul is a game engine modeled after the late-1980's game Ultima 5 (aka u5) by Origin Systems (no affiliation with Origin or its parent company is implied by that statement). The goal is to do everything u5 can do, except for the bad parts, and to do some things better.
Nazghul presents a very similar user interface and game system as u5. The main view is top-down and tile-based. Players control a party of one or more characters. The principle game activities are exploration, turn-based combat with hostile npc parties, solving puzzles and experimenting with magic and artifacts.
Although very similar to u5, nazghul has some important differences, summarized below (this is not a comprehensive list):
Unlike u5, nazghul is not the game. Nazghul is the engine which runs the game. A game is a script which the engine reads when loading a game and writes when saving a game. All object types, maps, characters, magical effects and anything else that qualifies as game data is configured in the script. The distribution comes with a sample world script which other people are free to use or modify however they like.
Dungeons in u5 were first-person 3d perspective. In nazghul they are top-down 2d like everything else.
Conversation with npc's was very limited in u5. For example, each npc could only ask one question. In nazghul conversation trees have no such limitations and npc's have many more options to respond with.
In u5 triggers were limited and special-cases. Nazghul replaces triggers with a much more generic "mechanism" feature, including the ability to link mechanisms together. Party members can be any species or class of character in the game. Different species can have different body types (e.g., a centaur, or a four-handed creature, or a creature which is all head and eyestalks) and armor and weapon types may be specific or general across the different body types.
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