Tool for converting Ultima Underworld and Shock 1 Levels into Unity.

[67411d3518eefhank morgan]

Probably wouldn't be too hard for shock.org to restore the sprites in citadel, if that's what people want.

The 100% focus on Underworld is definitely for the best. No way both these classics of this scale are simultaneously manageable by one guy.

Totally. For me the last few months have been a reminder of the importance of keeping things simple..

That said. I do want to port my tools to support loading Shock files in Unity directly so I've taken the first step on that road and I now have an SS1 map viewer of sorts running in my experimental dev environment. No textures or objects just yet. These should be forthcoming though. I will likely do a separate release of this in a clean dev environment if anyone is interested in picking it apart.

Since I've last posted the main dev highlights:
I can now support loading of Underworld 1 demo and Underworld 2 data files from the same code.
I've added in a basic in-game editor for changing  tilemaps and objects on the fly.
I've solved my problems with critter/weapon animations so these now load on the fly with the original game files.
I've finally aligned the textures on doorways to be seamless <-- this is huge for me since I've spent more time than is reasonable on doorways over the years!
I've started to redevelop the conversation system to implement the conversation system virtual machine* from the original games.

All in all, all is good.

*see UW-formats.txts for details,

[67411d3519193Carrot]

Hey Hank, gave your demo a try tonight.  Great stuff, this has come a long ways!  Not sure if you're looking for feedback, but I'll throw some up here, just incase

Also, to preface, I have never played much of the original, since the interface was so difficult for me to get past (one of the reasons I'm so excited about this project).

- When I picked up a skull, I didn't seem to be able to drop it afterwards
- The movement speed in the original looks like it was based on how far the cursor was from the center of the view screen when pressed.  In yours it seems to just be mapped movement keys, with a very quick ramp up when pressed.  Will you eventually implement a run toggle, or sprint key?
- Sometimes when talking to people, the color of the text seems to mess up.  When asking certain questions, the text will go back to the black/brown default and you will get the added <color=red>,</color>, etc messages.  The next response/question usually changes it back.
- I noticed the test config at launch let me re-map the movement keys, which was nice.  I'm assuming this was part of Unity tools?  I was wondering if you eventually will add things like toggle mouse-look, or any of options/talk/get commands as hotkey/remapable?  That would be great for comfort and useability.
- Even with the graphics quality turned to fantastic, the images didn't quite look the same as the original.  Do you notice that too?  Maybe something to do with the renderer, or some smoothing dosbox is doing?

Again, thanks for your work so far, this looks great.  Much more playable from a UI perspective.  I'm very excited to see your future releases.

[67411d3519334hank morgan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Not sure about the issue with the skull. You should be able to drop. It's possible you were in use object on mode?
Not much done with movement speed. All WIP when it comes to that side of things.
Text colour is a known bug. Should be an easy fix when I get around to it.
Control editing is built in unity. I've only done basic controls. Now that I think about it I may not have documented the full list include the flying controls when casting levitate. About the only control conveniences I've done is pressing E to toggle mouse look and the context sensitive mode.
There are a few differences in how I'm rendering.  I'm probably a bad judge of these things at this stage since I can't see the wood from the trees.  Of course the original art is 20+ years old now displaying it at modern fidelity is a challenge. Most object art is about 16x16 pixels in size.

[67411d35194d4hank morgan]

Slightly off topic. As I mentioned in earlier posts I'm porting some of my older SS1 tools into Unity in order to make them available to anyone who is interested.

I did a small bit of work on one tool a few years ago while I was getting familiar with .res files but I never released it because it tended to crash out on me

It's a map loader for Terra Nova.

Image: http://imgur.com/a/hRrj0
Image: http://imgur.com/YpluZcM

It works in Unity so I've set it to generate a fairly complex mesh of 513x513 tiles using T Nova textures I had lying around from another tool (Gigaquad?)

For the curious I've absolutely no plans to go further with this. But I do have a question for anyone who is familiar with the Tnova file formats. Where is the game palette stored? What file and what chunk? As I'd like to poke through the art files properly.

[67411d35196e5icemann]

I still say that it doesn't hurt to have SS1 support. Though I'd say to get Ultima Underworld 1 100% done first.

End of the day, yours could be a all in one engine for all of the games that used the underworld engine. That's at least 3 games right there. Wouldn't surprise me if there was more. Though I did a quick google search and couldn't find anything on it.

Doom does just fine and that has like 5+ source ports available for it. Fair enough, most people mainly use Zdoom, Doomsday or GZdoom.

[67411d3519808Carrot]

Odd, tried the skull thing again, and dropped it just fine.

I know you probably have a decent list of things you still want to implement, but wanted to ask one more question.  I noticed in the original game there were sounds/music for moving forward, opening doors, and dropping items.  Have you looked at implementing any of that?  Or is it something potentially difficult?

[67411d3519922Carrot]

Oops, I did mean to mention one more thing.  In the original there was obviously no mouse look.  With your demo there is, and it's very nice for moving around and interacting smoothly.  One drawback is you can now look down on items, and the 2D of the sprites becomes more glaring.  Have you ever considered doing something like mouse look, except locking the vertical, so you only turn with it.  This might give more ease of movement, but preserve the feel of the original.  Perhaps it would feel weird though too, just a suggestion to try.

[67411d3519b18Gawain]

You can look up and down in the original...

[67411d3519c6eCarrot]

You're right!  Like I said, haven't played a whole lot of the original, but I just looked through the manual and found the tilt commands you're talking about.  I would still argue that the tilt angle in the original is something like +/- 45%, where as in unity is more like +/-60 or 70.  It seems like you can't look down on stuff and see the flatness as much in the original.

[67411d3519db4icemann]

Was watching the ADG review of SS1 again last night and it occurred to me of how odd the controls are. I always just used asdx for movement then used the mouse for crouching/standing/looking around corners. I wonder if many people did the same or just used the keyboard controls entirely. So many keys to remember.

[67411d3519f24JosiahJack]

I always just used the keys.  They were faster too if you held shift.

[67411d351a079hank morgan]

Just dropping in to note that I've enabled basic loading of SS1 data from the original game files in my working environment. It's fairly basic stuff. Just the level geometry, textures, sprite art and objects in their correct positions (z-pos is not quite right for reasons I can't grok).
Just enough so I can show that the process can work.

[67411d351a2bchank morgan]

Haven't posted in a while. Between taking a short break from the project (playing Prey & Hitman 2016) and then having spent most of the development time working on fiddly file research stuff means I haven't had much to show off.
So since I last posted I spent a most of the time looking at the save game format of the original underworld and filling out the gaps in what is documented. So following a bit of trial and error I know have a mostly working save game system that is backwards compatible with the originals. So I can both load a save game that has been created in vanilla underworld and also save a game that can be loaded within vanilla underworld. There are a few gaps in my knowledge of the data and conversation data is not working correctly (due to the way conversations are currently set up) but I'm overall happy with progress in this area.

Image: http://imgur.com/a/2OKrI

[67411d351a3e3JosiahJack]

  

[67411d351a4daicemann]

Very impressive.

[67411d351a644Eric]

Where doe's the UW1.zip folder go?

[67411d351aaf8hank morgan]

Hi,

just dropping by for a general update. Things are progressing well and I'm currently working through a Underworld 1 focused test plan with the goal of an proper public release of a working Underworld 1 game. I'm very hopeful of this release happening in August.

Since I last posted the main highlights are
+Implementation of a "virtual machine" for interpreting and running Underworld 1 & 2 conversations
+Underworld 2 support has advanced a small bit and a number of underworld 2 features are now implemented including basic loading of Underworld 2 save games.
+Loads of under the hood bug fixes and improvements.
+Almost complete loading of original game files.
+Full save game compatibility with Underworld 1 (including all auto-map information and a load of previously undocumented plot flags.

Where doe's the UW1.zip folder go?

Anywhere. Just unzip. Change the config.txt files to point to your UW install as described in the included instructions and run UW1.exe

[67411d351ac5dicemann]

I've never played through all of Ultima Underworld 1 or 2. Will have to give the first game another attempt when this is done.

Another one added to the todo list.

[67411d351b0f8Marvin]

UW1 is an all-time great and still very fun to play. UW2 is a much less coherent, disjointed experience but still worth a try.

[67411d351b2f5Al_B]

They're both great games.  There's no doubt that UW1 has a much tighter focus in its plot and level design but I really enjoy the variety in the UW2 locations.  Of the two I have gone back to the second game far more often than the first.

(Basically, play both of them )

[67411d351b47ahank morgan]

I'm feeling brave today.

Release 1.0 of Underworld Exporter (UWE)

https://github.com/hankmorgan/UnderworldExporter/releases/tag/v1.0

Fully playable Ultima Underworld 1, partially playable Underworld 2, map viewer for System Shock 1 and Terra Nova SFC.
Requires original game files to play.

[67411d351b627Join2]

Congrats.

More details, though? Is this finally a fully functional version of UW with mouselook, because if so this calls for celebration.

[67411d351b752hank morgan]

Fully playable Underworld 1* , backwardly compatible with the DOS originals with full-screen and mouse-look.


*Some non-core systems still need work.

[67411d351b860icemann]

We need a news page. This is front page worthy.

Big time congratz hank .