Ultima 6 Project - Archon Team Interview
Parcival, 2003-11-22

We had the chance to interview the Archon team. They have been working on the Ultima 6 Project for two years now. Though they are no where near a release date, they are ready to show us some money.

Parcival: Could you please tell us something about yourself?

ACDeveloper: Ok, I'm Steph. I joined the team about 1 month ago. I'm a developer. I'm currently working on developing the NPC scheduling system.

Parcival: Do you base the scheduling system in any way on the orr. U6, or do you design it from scratch?

ACDeveloper: Well, the template is the U6 system We want to at least replicate the behaviour of the original U6. However, we may try to add features more reminicent of U7, depending on the complexity and the time.

Rowindor: I've been on the team since Aug 2002. Started off just working with skrit but I've branched off into almost every aspect of DS. I did the research and development behind our custom dialog screen. Lately I've been level editing.

Shaddockh: I'm Shad a.k.a. Frilly Wumpus and have been on the team for about 3-4 months. I'm currently building the spellcasting system and helping out with coding where needed.

Parcival: Frilly Wumpus. Where did you get that name?

Shaddockh: Well, Hunt the Wumpus was the first game I typed into my TI-99/4A way back in the day.. So, that's the basis of it.

Rowindor: Hehe I had a Ti-99/4A too,.

Sliding Dragon: I'm Sliding Dragon. I started the Ultima 6 Project in February of 2001. I'm primarily responsible for the storyline and the website at this stage.

Zephyr: Well, I've been an Ultima fan for years. I played through U3 and U4 back on my Atari 800XL. I was a huge fan of U7, but I never really managed to get it running until Exult came out (Kudos to them, by the way). Anyway, I bought U9 and played through that, and I'm one of the few people I know that really liked it.

Sliding Dragon: That's a dangerous thing to admit to in mixed company. Liking U9 ;-)

Parcival: Join the club. My first Ultima's were the underworlds. Then came u9. I understand why people loath it, but I liked it.

Zephyr: Anyway. I went looking for some solutions to some technical and game-related problems, and I came across the Wayward Avatar. I tried joining a couple of ill-fated remakes which quickly folded.  I came across U6's remake and offered my services originally as a world builder and musician, oddly enough. I ended up starting out by attempting to extract all the conversation files, along with some help by a guy from France named Xenerkes Dragon who created the Ultimatrix program. So X and I extracted the dialog, and then I set myself to the task of trying to figure out how to get it to work in DS. We wanted to use the branching dialogue format as in U7, but it's extremely difficult.

Parcival: How long has u6p been in development? How did it all get started?

Sliding Dragon: I started the project in February of 2001. I am the founder/webmaster/storyline editor/visionary. ;-) The story has been in development for over two years. The game itself began to be created when we finally got our hands on Dungeon Siege. The story has been in development for over two years.

Parcival: Why did you choose DS to recreate u6?

Sliding Dragon: I saw the U5 page one day and thought how great it would be to see Ultima VI - the Ultima I started with - with a modern engine. So I researched Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights and DS just had the capabilities for editing that NWN didn't. At the time, Dungeon Siege was touted as this insanely easy to modify program.

Parcival: Did you know Adventures of Blackthorn changed from DS to Morrowind? Would you make a different choise, if you had to choose now?

Sliding Dragon: Yeah, I saw that yesterday. We've actually, at certain points in development, considered changing.

Rowindor: Oh no not this again!

ACDeveloper: You know, I was thinking about that this morning.

Sliding Dragon: Morrowind doesn't allow for the kind of party system we need. I don't know if Morrowind would be the way to go...

Rowindor: Don't even!

Sliding Dragon: And Neverwinter Nights has too many D&D based rules.

ACDeveloper: Plus, they have even less scheduling stuff thatn DS, from what I can see.

Sliding Dragon: The two are just incompatible with what we're trying to accomplish.

ACDeveloper: I have to agree

Rowindor: Indeed

Shaddockh: DS has hurdles, but It seems that you can do more with it.

Parcival: Critical thing is the party system, i suppose.

Zephyr: Yes indeed. You need to be able to control 8 characters. That's critical to the whole Ultima concept.

Parcival: Am I correct you finished the branching code?

Zephyr: We have finished the main portion of the functionality. Anyway, let me give you an exclusive sneak peek at the convo engine.

Parcival: How did you do this?

Zephyr: It's all done with skrit, but the skrit is actually written by a program that Martin and I wrote. This is an actual screen shot, showing the responses and branches in-game. Its just a prototype at this point. But it does branching, calls the shopkeeper interface, and has some memory functions.

Parcival: Where are you now in the development of U6P?

Zephyr: Let's see, the convo engine was probably the most recent major milestone. We have recently brought on board a couple of tremendously talented world builders and another amazing 3d artist. So we're rapidly doing all the terrain.

Parcival: any published works / mods from them we can admire already?

Zephyr: We have no mods ready for download yet; we're working on a lot of things in parallel. There has been discussion about releasing Cove as a demo. I'm still working on that. Cove is like 90% done. I have to move some buildings around and write a few new dialogs and stick in some NPCs. But we want to get some of the portraits done. Oh yeah; we have a brilliant new 2d artist in India.

Parcival: why would you release it as a demo? to get some feedback, or to feed the hungry fans out there?

Zephyr: Mainly to convince people that we really are working on something :-) Oh, another major milestone; Shad has nearly fully designed the interface for the new spellcasting system

Parcival: What is the spellcasting sysem about? Is it an exact copy of magic in u6?

Shaddockh: We're looking at the spellbook interface from U7 as a model. A book that you can flip pages. As you learn spells, they get put into the book and you bring up the interface to cast with.

Sliding Dragon: The book interface is very artfully rendered. Very intuitive, like Black Gate. We've gotten spells transcribed into the book.

Zephyr: and it DOES work You can actually cast spells by selecting them from the book.

Zephyr: This shows how they look before you run the 'detect' spell and then after you run it these are screen shots of the technology, not meant to be artistic, just proof of concept.

Zephyr: I also have a really cool screen shot of the infravision spell

Zephyr: So the spell system is in full swing, thanks to Shad

Shaddockh: That detect trap doesn't show very well. Here's another detect trap.

Parcival: Are you planning to make changes to the rest of the interface?

Sliding Dragon: Yes, definitely

Zephyr: Potions we did a little bit of work on. We don't have a prototype yet.

Sliding Dragon: We've been focusing on the engine more than the UI at the moment

Zephyr: But we're going to share reagents and potions among all party members and just store the number of each. So the concept is we would have a bunch of slots where the potions would be shown along with a number next to each, showing how many the party had. This is not finalized at all. Essentially we'd be totally bypassing the DS potion system and using a custom UI. I think we're probably going to keep the compass and probably automap as well. We want to create a "master map" showing the location in the world similar to the one used in the other Ultimas but we haven't worked on that yet.

Parcival: What changes on the engine are you planning ? Do you have any idea how to implement dual wield, horse back riding, the baloon etc?

Zephyr: Yes. Dual wield is not going to be implemented as far as I know and I don't think horseback riding needs to be done for a party of 8. The balloon has been the subject of a lot of discussion.  Apparently you can flag nodes as "walkable" by certain entities and we'll need to flag certain nodes as "flyable" somehow. The current plan is to only allow the balloon to be used in certain areas.

Sliding Dragon: The balloon is a major obstacle. As it is a quest item, the current thinking is to only allow its use for the quest itself. Namely, getting over the mountains.

Zephyr: Well Matt reminded me that there is horseback riding in U6, and also dual wield.

Parcival: Will u6p be single player and/or multiplayer?

Sliding Dragon: Single player.

Zephyr: I don't know whether that is one of our top priorities at the moment.

Sliding Dragon: There is already a project to do Ultima 6 as a MMORPG.

[That's Ultima 6 Online - RPGDot]

Parcival: Do you have any contact with other projects?

Zephyr: Yes, actually I forgot to mention Risen (from U5) was very helpful in getting the convo code started. So I want to send a thank you out to him.
Sliding Dragon: U5 has been very helpful. Their webmaster, Aegis, has always been available and helpful with aspects of web design. Notably getting the new forum up and running

Sliding Dragon: I've spoken a little bit with Avatus of U9. He's a very dedicated Ultima fan.

Parcival: Do you have any idea what still ahead of you? Any thoughts (hopes) on a release date?

Zephyr: Anyway, we're currently researching boats. We have a good idea how that will work; it's going to be similar to the balloon, only we THINK we're going to let you go wherever you want to in the ocean. Moongates are currently one of the largest challenges because DS doesn't actually inherently support teleporting. We have several possible approaches that should work.  The instant elevators will probably work for blue moongates, but not for the red ones. And let's see. There's a LOT of world building to get done. as we've been focusing more on the technology than the building of the world
but we're going through it rapidly.  We're going for really grand scale.

Parcival: Are you going to re use a lot of nodes from DS, or is it all custom made?

Zephyr: Mostly from DS. Considering the scale, it would be near impossible for any volunteer project to custom make everything that was required. The scale is going to be... let's see. over 4,000 meters square for the entire overworld which is very, very ambitious. That's not including dungeons and the gargoyle lands.

Parcival: I think you mentioned somewhere youd have 200 maps (where DS had about 30 in single player mode).

Zephyr: Yes, easily 200. 169 just for the overworld, but something like 30% of it is going to be water.

Sliding Dragon: It's a huge scale. One of the things that was pretty unrealistic about U6 was travel time.

Parcival: Any idea on how much playtime that is?

Zephyr: Well, one of our world builders estimated that it would take 60-90 minutes to fully explore one of his areas. and we're probably going to have, I think maybe 100 areas on land. so we're talking possibly hundreds of hours of play time.

Sliding Dragon: Of just exploring. The idea is to make this world expansive and immerse. It's a massive project. We're also reintroducing elements that didn't migrate from U5 to U6.

Zephyr: There are a lot of buildings that just disappeared. Most notably the "Temple of Virtue"

Sliding Dragon: The Temple of Virtue, gone from Cove in U6, makes a big splash in our version.

Zephyr: We have someone working on the 3d model for that as we speak.

Sliding Dragon: There's also keeps all over the world like Bordermarch, Farthing, Windmere. These things didn't just disappear in 20 years. We're trying to account for the continuity lapses.

Zephyr: Most notably the opening sequence. U6's opening sequence is just wrong.

Sliding Dragon: If you notice, the beginning is really 3 beginnings; You leave Earth, Then you're on the gypsy realm, Then you're on Britannia.

Zephyr: The other thing we're going to try to reconcile is we're making the world wraparound. rather than flat.

Parcival: How many extra sideplots do you have in mind?

Zephyr: Well mainly one BIG one. but I'm not sure we want to reveal that right now. What do you think Matt?

Parcival: Just a hint?

Sliding Dragon: Heh heh heh.

Zephyr: Obviously the Temple of Virtue plays a major role now

Sliding Dragon: There will be some new plots for exploration. I mentioned a while back in an interview that there's a property surveyor. He gets a few quests going. There's also a hall planned where warriors can talk about quests. Kill a dragon, etc. So there'll be new things to do that don't effect the outcome of the game.

Parcival: Do you have any major changes to the main plot planned?

Zephyr: Yes.

Sliding Dragon: The main difference, and I'm not exaggerating that we're not sticking with the old plot on this, is that there is now a real antagonist. When you think about it, U6's plot originally was to find a map and then build a lens. You never get a real sense of danger, or war by the gargoyles. We've completely changed that. Britain is under siege, the gargoyles are actually out and about. But now, there's a antagonist, there's a real threat, and there's a fully fleshed out backstory to the gargoyles that's pretty epic in scope. It ties a lot of the events of previous and future Ultimas into the storyline in a way that really enhances the danger, and the risks. I think we also initially had plans to introduce a number of orders into Britannia - you could more fully explore being a warrior or a mage or a thief. The idea behind that was to get the Thieve's Belt into a more fully rounded quest. We'll see if that pans out.

Zephyr: That might be beyond our scope at this point. Obviously the scope is pretty huge already. Which is why I don't think we want to commit to a release date at this point. There is one other concept that we're going to address and that is....  What exactly are the gargoyle lands? In U6, they were the other side of a pancake but in U9 etc., they were underground. We've got an answer to that question which we'll unveil when the time is right. Also, we haven't finalized this but the gypsy MAY play an actual role in the plot this time

Sliding Dragon: Yeah, we had some very cool ideas about her.

Zephyr: Here's the thing; the gypsy in U6 send you to Britannia Nothing plot critical, I think, more of a tangential role. AFTER you go into the red moongate but she doesn't actually send you to Britannia she sends you to the gargoyles!! Why? So we're going to look at that and see if we can flesh that out a bit.

Sliding Dragon: We realize that the gypsy is a stat setter. But it almost makes sense to make her a player in this whole adventure.

Zephyr: Yes, but the way it was done in U6 was very odd in terms of the way she appeared. It didn't fit with the opening sequences, so we're going to try to make that fit. Essentially we're preparing a new full-motion video trailer, mainly for publicity. We're also working on something to replace the GPG and Microsoft opening videos. Not sure how that's going to work, but I've seen some screen shots and it's going to be pretty impressive

Parcival: I suppose u6p will be a 'total conversion'

Zephyr: That's the idea at least

Shaddockh: It really would need to be, as we're totally replacing whole subsystems. Convo, spells, etc. even the XP system will need to be revamped to accommodate levelling by praying at shrines.

Zephyr: We're bypassing just about all the basic systems actually. Well like Shad said, we're replacing whole subsystems. Spellcasting, conversation engine, even levelling. Stats combat. There's a lot of work to be done and we still need more people.

Parcival: How many people are on the team right now?

Sliding Dragon: Over a dozen, I'd imagine. I talk on any given day to 6 or 7.

Zephyr: Yeah, looks like 13 currently. There are some people who float in and out but right now we have 13 core members. Actually 14 if you count my wife who is helping out with polishing the dialog. She is very picky about dialect. We are going to be very strict about things like thee/thou etc. In U6 it was mixed; I think we decided to go 100% archaic English

Parcival: How much of the original dialogue is re-used?

Zephyr: Well, I'd say most of it at the moment, but that can be changed fairly easily. We're adding many new characters; we'll have to see as we go what needs to go or stay.

Sliding Dragon: Filling out the towns.

Zephyr: Right, we're going town by town and encounter by encounter

Sliding Dragon: Populating a Sleeping Bull-type settlement called the Wayward Avatar. Jesse and I have been attacking the plot pretty rigorously. No disrespect to the original, but its plot was wafer-thin.

Zephyr: Yes. Creating a new NPC at the moment is very simple. You can just use a simple text editor and write the content and then we have a program that converts it to what you saw in the screen shot. We have someone researching the scheduling at the moment, and she's making huge progress. She only just joined the team a couple of weeks ago and she is making good progress with that. She has managed to tackle some very technical issues with triggering NPC actions using only code. She has also figured out a way to time things so that, in theory, things happen at a certain time of day.
There are many other challenges to overcome, but I just wanted to give her some credit as she's accomplished a lot in a very short time.

[This is ACDeveloper/Steph who was present at the start of the interview, but had to leave early - RPGDot]

Parcival: Do you have any thoughts on implementing voice acting? Will it be like ds, or full speech, or will we be playing mutes (as usual)?

Zephyr: We haven't decided on that yet as far as I know. I don't think we're going to have the resources to record 300 different character's dialogs. That's a bit excessive. I think Morrowind had a good compromise where they did voice acting for initial contact but that seemed kind of pointless, and got repetetive and annoying to me, anyway. These are just my opinions.  What do you think?

Sliding Dragon: It's not feasible. Particularly if someone wants to be my hero and translate the dialogue to other languages.

Zephyr: We might record a few grunts or screams or something
Sliding Dragon: That would be hilarious. We could stick a microphone in front of us when the Editor crashes. I'm sure we could record a lot of screams and yells then.

Zephyr: Yes, we probably could.  But we'd have to bleep out the swearing.

Parcival: You could concider an adult version...

Sliding Dragon: Well, U6 had prostitutes. We're not going to get rid of them.
Zephyr: No, in fact I think we were planning to really play that up. Convo branching by gender included.

Zephyr: Oh, one note about the opening trailer. We're going to try to avoid showing the Avatar's physical features because we want to be able to make him multiple ethnicities/genders.

Sliding Dragon: The original clearly showed a white guy with an outstanding mullet.

Parcival: I think ive got a good impression on your current status. Any questions i realy should have asked?

Zephyr: I can't think of anything.  I think I've babbled enough 

Shaddockh: I guess the main thing is, development is in full swing!

Zephyr: And world building is too, We're really cruising, but we do still need more help.

Sliding Dragon: We need world builders and a couple more 3D guys wouldn't hurt either!!

Zephyr: We have a great 2D person but we can use more help, as it's a really daunting task to come up with portraits for 300 NPCs.

Shaddockh: And 70 spells! - the graphics for them.

Sliding Dragon: I think we should say this: U6P is not doing a straight conversion. We're taking liberties with the story, liberties we feel will really add to the game in a positive way. I think that differentiates us from Lazarus, who is doing a more faithful remake. Considering we're adding a ton of elements that will be new to veterans of U6.

Parcival: Any last words for rpgdot readers?

Sliding Dragon: Alas, poor Yorick... 

Zephyr: Most important thing is that they know that we are very much alive, growing daily, making real honest-to-goodness progress. And when we unveil the new website, we're going to have a lot to show people.

Sliding Dragon: We have a ton of stuff ready to show people.

Parcival: Well be looking forward, and I would like to thank you all very much for this interview.

Zephyr: Hey shad, did you talk about the ui designer already?

Sliding Dragon: No.

Zephyr: or the documentation project?

Shaddockh: No, wasn't sure about that one.

Sliding Dragon: That can be another interview. Let's just say we have a couple more BIG surprises coming soon.