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Ultima Underworld: The Stygian
Abyss was released in 1992, and marked the first foray
of Ultima into the world of 3D adventure gaming. For its time,
its 3D engine was remarkably advanced, featuring an advanced
drawing method and several features not included in other 3D
games of its era, such as sloped floors. Ultima Underworld is
not always considered a canon Ultima, for while it certainly
fits into the storyline of Ultima, it adds nothing to the overall
plot arc.
Ultima Underworld saw the Avatar wrongly accused of kidnapping
the daughter of the lord of a new city in Britannia, built upon
the Isle of the Avatar near the entrance to the Stygian Abyss.
The Avatar must navigate the perils of the Abyss to find her
and defeat the evil wizard Tyball, who is madly bent on bringing
a great demon, the Slasher of Veils, into Britannia.
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Morrowind: Underworld
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Produced by: DarkIllusion
Website: Morrowind: Underworld
Releases:
* pending...
I was alerted to this mod by an anonymous contact, and I have to say that it is certainly an interesting development. This appears to be an essentially completed Morrowind-based remake of Ultima: Underworld (the project authors note that there are a few bugs to correct on their site, mostly related to combat damage).
It has been abandoned since 2004, but they did release a beta and a patch for the beta, which hopefully can be tracked down in the next few weeks and hosted here.
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Ultima Underworld for Pocket PC
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Produced by: ZIO Interactive Inc. (defunct?)
Website: Ultima Underworld @ PocketGear
Releases:
* Slide Show Demo
This remake of Ultima Underworld for the Pocket PC seems to work fairly well on most main-line Pocket PC models. While the developer, ZIO Interactive, seems to have gone belly-up, the game itself is still available for purchase from PocketGear. A "demo" of sorts is available, although it is little more than a slide-show of in-game screenshots and graphics.
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Ultima Underworld - Morrowind
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Produced by: Taz
Website: Morrowind Summit
A project to re-create Ultima Undeworld as a mod for Morrowind.
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The System Shock Hack Project
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Produced by: Jim Cameron
Website: TSSHP @ SourceForge
Releases:
* TSSHP 0.2.10 (Win)
* Source
* SDL Graphics Library
While the link between System Shock and Ultima might seem...inobvious to many, it is actually less tenuous than it seems. One of the major similarities is the engines used by both games - it's the same one. Oh, and apparently Warren Spector worked on System Shock 2.
Jim Cameron is working to reverse-engineer this rendering engine, and in doing so has put together a lot of technical information on the Underworld engine, and has also released an open-source version of it. Note that you'll need the SDL Graphics Library to use it.
The project is now hosted through SourceForge, and development on it has resumed!
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Ultima Underworld 1 Remake
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Produced by: Twister Software
Website: Twister Software
Releases:
* Demo 0.1
* OpenGL Test
* Abyss Test
A remake of Ultima Underworld by Twister Software. Currently, their site is "under construction", so check back soon.
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Underworld in NT
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Produced by: Moscow Dragon, Sir Cabirus Dragon
Website: Sir Cabirus
Releases:
* NT Patch
Windows NT (and NT-derived systems like Windows 2000) are not always game-friendly platforms. Moscow Dragon came up with a patch that allowed Underworld 2 to run under the NT/2000 environment, and this was later expanded upon by Sir Cabirus Dragon to support Underworld 1 as well.
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UW1 General MIDI Patch
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Produced by: Panzer Dragon
Website: The Other Codex
Releases:
* MIDI Patch
This patch adds MIDI music to Ultima Underworld.
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Underworld Patch
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Produced by: Origin Systems Inc. (defunct)
Website: Origin Systems (redirects to UO site)
Releases:
* Patch
While this patch should not be necessary if you're running the CD-version of the game, it corrects several known bugs in the disk-based version of the game (including the "Inventory Bug").
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