The tileset posting continues! Ultima 5 boasts 512 tiles (compared to the 256 of Ultima 4), and one can easily tell the difference when playing both games. Overall, however, there is a lot of wasted nonsense like the pink "Shadow Realm" tiles, "sitting down" tiles, and the four-frames of animation for everything.
The class sprites are greatly reduced, no more Tinkers, Druids, Paladins, Wizards, Rangers, Fighters, Shepherds, or Bards... instead characters use either the "Rogue," "Knight," or "Wizard" sprite. Yet, with the lack of diversity, the artist uses space within the tiles more more effectively by filling in more space (so there is less black) and making everything look realistic through shading and eliminating the representation of unimportant/awkward sprite features such as necks.
As far as gameplay is concerned, I'm making good progress in Ultima 5, although some of the new mechanics are annoying at best. Picking up loot has become a veritable chore, and the DAY/NIGHT system is poorly implemented as far as I can tell. Basically there is nothing new to explore at night, and the towns and shops close down in the dark.
On the positive side, the player is no longer burdened with protecting his or her Avatarhood, and can lie, cheat, steal, run away from fights, and murder like the good old days of Ultima 1-3.
Posts
6 comments:
Exactly why do you think that the sitting and animation tiles are "wasted"? Certainly they add a great deal to the immersion of the game. Are there other graphics you think they could have been replaced with?
Oh, and I should add that if you think you can lie, cheat, and steal your way through Ultima V, you will quickly find your progress severely retarded, and possibly even blocked at some point.
Yes there are: I would have preferred more variety in the classes or even male and female sprites.
Maybe the 4 frames aren't a waste, but the shadow realm, at the very least, would have been the same for me if it was brick walls and floors.
The sitting animation has grown on me since last night (sitting across from a shop dealer is pretty cool), but they use 12 tiles for sitting in 4 directions...some directions have people drinking and it seems like they could have replaced 4 frames with another character.
Shadow Realm, if cut and replaced with generic tiles would add 4 more characters.
Also, giving the land beaches uses a lot of tiles which Ultima I-IV didn't have to use--I'm somewhat up in the air about it, but that could have been 4 more characters.
So that's potentially 9 character sets without being super-picky.
Also, I haven't found any deterrent from stealing so far--I guess we'll see what happens! (But maybe I should ease up on it).
I'm not playing with any guides so most of my work has been decoding the alphabet, messing around with moongates, and trying to accumulate gold (but failing pretty hard).
Starting over would probably be a good decision at this point, but I'm having too much fun to stop.
I share your disappointment about the lack of variety in player character types, and agree that more types and tiles would have been a welcome addition. However, I'm not convinced that the sacrifice of some other tiles would have been worth it—the beach tiles make the world so much less blocky than past games. Though now that I think of it maybe you have a point with the eating tiles; nobody protested their absence from Ultima VI.
As with the stealing and other unavatarlike behaviour, I think you're speaking too soon when it comes to your criticism of the shadow realm barriers. You haven't yet reached the point in the game where their difference with ordinary walls becomes apparent.
The pink "Shadow Realm" tiles are not wasted nonsense :)
If you look carefully, you'll notice they're the masks for the water tiles on their immediate left! That's how the water part of the water tiles animate. They just reused them also for the "Shadow Realm".
That's also the usage of those other weird tiles you don't see anywhere in the game, they're special 'flame masks' for the animated parts of torches, braziers, fireplaces, campfires, candles, streetlights, etc..
If you lie steal and murder the game will be much harder, for example if you keep your karma up to 99 if and when you die you won't lose stats
Post a Comment