Path: ...!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-3.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 02:21:20 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: TIL: Ultima 6 NuVIe Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2024 22:21:19 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 55 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-gTr6+jyU96i8Qngp6sXANAbxmV1+/a9XRcyRUnV1GEESp8mspfwQZzt0YCTqrVz/YfbdqMSqReg4eBC!5p+4wdW0wSVBm5b07d8BZgymyFAL/qIHnisk4iiigqMGxOQdfh5eOEe//SV0FBUSRs3KmUgF X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3124 So, today I learned about something that's sort of a dream come true for me... Ultima VI, released way back in 1990, was something of a groundbreaking game. But despite it having lush graphics, it hasn't aged all that well, largely because of its very clunky interface and extremely limited view-distance. I've often tried to go back and replay the game, but these downsides have been such a thorn that I've given up before I'm more than an hour or two into the game. Often I've wondered why nobody ever created some sort of mod or patch to this game to make it more palatable to gamers spoiled by modern amenities. Well, it turns out they did.* Ultima VI NuVIe not only allows the ancient DOS game to run on modern hardware (not that was so difficult with DOSBox, but still) and fixes its two most egregious issues. First, it greatly expands the scale of the view window**, allowing you to see more than five tiles in any direction (I find double that satisfactory). Secondly, it improves the drag-n-drop mouse control. Given how much of the game revolves around inventory management, this is an incredibly useful feature. The mod actually isn't new; it was in development over a decade ago. For some reason though, it never came to my attention, even though it is _exactly_ the sort of thing I'd been looking for. Anyway, I discovered it today, and couldn't be happier. Get it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/nuvie/ Thank you Internet! You made my day! Oh, and if you happen to have the FM Towns version of Ultima VI, it'll even use the full-speech voice-acting! Although given the lackluster performances, that may not be as much a bonus as it first sounds ;-) ---------------- * actually, there are multiple such efforts, but they all transformed the game into something too distant from its original form. One uses the Ultima VII engine, the other Dungeon Siege engine. They're both interesting projects, but don't really feel like "Ultima VI" as I remember it. ** albeit not by default. You need to tweak the config files to get the improved result