Comments for The Digital Antiquarian

Comment on Ultima III in Pictures by Jimmy Maher

Jimmy Maher — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:23:20 +0000

Well, the problem I had — and I totally recognize that mileages may vary — is that I didn’t grasp that a word enclosed in those funny brackets in an NPC’s speech was meant to indicate a new verb for use with the OTHER command rather than just being used for emphasis. But I’m willing to accept that it may be more of a borderline case than my characterization would imply. :)

Comment on Ultima III in Pictures by Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:49:21 +0000

Okay, I call total hoosegow on your description of the “OTHER” command as “guess-the-verb”.

The only element of guessing is inferring the use of brackets to indicate a new command. All of the command words are directly clued in this way by NPCs. This is rather *more* explicit than the parser IF of the time — or of today, for that matter.

The gameplay element here is trying to figure out *where* to use any given verb. That comes from a combination of NPC clues and situational awareness (pray in shrines, bribe guards, etc) — which is standard procedure in all adventure-style puzzles of this type. It’s not in essence different from any game-wide explorable mechanic where you gather more options as the game goes on.(*) Heck, I just won an XYZZY for a puzzle game whose affordances are essentially identical to this!

(* Except that new capabilities are not part of the game state — they’re all technically accessible from the start. U3 lets you skip the clue-gathering if you have a walkthrough. A modern game would probably require you to go through the motions to set the “action accessible” flag. This footnote is a quibble.)

Comment on Ultima III in Pictures by Jimmy Maher

Jimmy Maher — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:04:43 +0000

I was thinking “modern fantasy CRPGs” — which isn’t what I wrote I know. :) Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if such imagery was scrubbed even from Vampire.

I’ll leave it alone for now. I’m sure someone will chime in with a counterexample if one exists…

Comment on Ultima III in Pictures by Victor Gijsbers

Victor Gijsbers — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:28:07 +0000

“Similarly, you definitely will never see crosses in a modern CRPG.”

That’s a very bold statement! I’d have to check to be sure, but I would be surprised if the Vampire: the Masquerade CRPGs don’t have explicit Christian imagery.

Comment on The Legend of Escape from Mt. Drash by hitfan

hitfan — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:51:15 +0000

Fair enough.

An interesting anecdote, I remember scanning the COMPUTE! ad for Mount Drash back in 1999 for somebody on the comp.sys.cbm usenet forum who was looking for the game. He eventually obtained a copy in 2000.

Comment on Sentient Software by fred

fred — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:35:31 +0000

artura – sentient was crap on 64

Comment on The Legend of Escape from Mt. Drash by Jimmy Maher

Jimmy Maher — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:03:14 +0000

To be fair, I don’t have a source that directly implicates Garriott in this particular piece of misinformation about his career. As far as I’ve been able to glean from scouring archive.org, this tale dates back to the late 1990s, when Mt. Drash was *really* a Holy Grail with no known working copies. Collectors seem to have invented the tale of Mt. Drash as an illicit release then, albeit in the beginning generally prefacing it with qualifiers like “apparently.” (I could name names, but really why?) In time those qualifiers fell away and the story became accepted fan canon. To the extent that Garriott is guilty here, it’s of simply not bothering to come forward and correct the story. Considering he had plenty of other things going on — like flying into space(!) — I can’t say that I blame him much for not knowing/caring what collectors were saying amongst themselves about a single obscure old game. When finally asked directly, he did, to his credit, give the actual story.

There’s of course other misinformation floating around for which he is directly responsible. I find that much more disappointing.

Comment on The Legend of Escape from Mt. Drash by hitfan

hitfan — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:16:38 +0000

I had heard that Richard Garriott had denied for years knowing about Mt. Drash–it was interesting to read here that in reality, he had full knowledge of the game’s existence and even consented to it’s release as an Ultima game to help out his friend.

I think that considering Zabalaoui’s close association with Garriott and that Garriott himself had tacitly endorsed it’s release as an Ultima should put to rest any notion that Mt.Drash is not a legitimate Ultima release. Call it apocrypha, but it’s an Ultima nonetheless.

RG’s feigning surprise about Sierra publishing Mt. Drash without his knowledge was just a case of sour grapes and revisionist history after all. It just shows that people are not immune to bouts of ego or momentary pettiness. Even those we admire and lionize suffer from character flaws. We are all human.

Comment on The Legend of Escape from Mt. Drash by The Digital Antiquarian on Escape from Mount Drash

The Digital Antiquarian on Escape from Mount Drash — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:27:16 +0000

[...] that happened around the time that Origin Systems was founded and Ultima 3 was released. And today, he delivered on that promise with a look at the history — and, yes, fabricated stories — surrounding Ultima: Escape [...]

Comment on Britain’s Occult Uncle by Jimmy Maher

Jimmy Maher — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:32:22 +0000

Fascinating. I’m embarrassed to say I was totally unaware of that work. I don’t believe that Wheatley’s biographer Philip Baker mentions it either. Would be interesting to know to what extent (if any) this influenced Sumner in his Black Mass ritual…