WIP: Ultima parody

Ice Cream Jonsey · Joined: 27 Apr 2002 Posts: 14232 Location: Colorado

Hahah, just caught that for the first time - that is frigging excellent, Chris!
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the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

Okay, I've finished that second round of "adding basic stuff".
I made some changes to Skara Brae, some big changes to Cove, and as for Buccaneer's Den -- well, you'll see what I did to that.

Now I'm having another go at playtesting. I'm sure I'll find more opportunities here and there to add decorative NPCs and stuff, but they won't be core to the quest.

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

Well, I've completed my playtesting play-through; I of course had to clean up some macro bugs and improve a few things, but it ended with me able to play to the end of the game.

I'll probably spend another week or so poking at it, then I can start opening it up to a slightly broader audience -- anyone interested in beta testing this adventure? :)

jjsonick · Joined: 10 Apr 2007 Posts: 134

Me, me!

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

Great! I'm off the hook for working this weekend (planned server upgrade was postponed, they couldn't allow me enough downtime) so I should be able to do my final playtest (and finish writing the walkthrough) and then get it to you.

Make sure you're patched up to v3.242 for ACK... there are a few bug fixes in there you'll need.

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

This adventure is officially in beta... JJ, I just e-mailed you a download link. :)

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

First of all, many thanks to jjsonick for his beta testing help -- I'm still waiting for his final report (I've been making his life difficult by adding features while he's still trying to beta the damn thing) but he's already found enough bugs that, coupled with the ones I've found, I think give us something close enough to the finished product that I'd like to open this to anyone else who wants to test and/or tinker with the game.

I'm not going to actively promote beyond this forum yet, so if you're just interested in playing the final version of the game, feel free to hold off until the "official" release. But for those of you that want to try it out and/or help me test, I'm opening the beta up to anyone who wants to check it out.

There's a download link on this page:

http://www.80sgaming.org/ultima-parody

Make sure you're using the latest (3.245) version of ACK.

Note that saved games from this beta version probably shouldn't be used for the release version, depending on what gets changed between now and then.

Chris H · Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 252 Location: California, USA

Hi everyone,

The game is now officially released! During the beta, jjsonick made some excellent suggestions regarding the flow of the plot -- it's always great to have some outside eyes on these things -- and I've rearranged the storyline somewhat from the beta, reordering some of the quests to make it much more sensible. I've also identified a few more bugs, both to the game and to the engine (hence the need for ACK v3.250 or higher to play)

I'm quite happy with the finished product. It's a bit longer and larger than I had originally planned, but since I also wanted to demonstrate something of a much larger scale than the ACK demo adventures, it works out fine. I will make a walkthrough available later. As for the easter eggs (there are many) you're on your own to find those.

I'm going to close this thread (since this is no longer in-progress) and start a new one: the link to it is here: new thread

And a link to the game itself: Ultima Parody website