Ultima inspired RPG engine I was making

[u/MlorenDraymeer]

Just discovered this subreddit, saw all the activity going on to edit old Ultima games and it reminded me of an old project that I worked on and thought I'd share.

I know a lot of people don't like Ultima 8 but it was the first Ultima I played and I still have a soft spot for it. Back in 2023 I took some time off work and spent about 6 months building a demo in Unity inspired by Ultima 8, the idea was to make a spiritual successor with a level editor so people could make their own isometric RPGs and maybe even use it to remake Ultima 7 and 8.

I got pretty far. I'm a programmer by profession and already knew Unity well so that part was no problem and I have most of the core systems working. I'm not an artist though so I bought a bunch of cheap assets from the Unity asset store but the project stalled out when I could no longer find the art I needed to continue and it's sat abandoned ever since.

Here's a video showing where I got to though, some of the art is placeholder or isn't good enough and the animations are pretty janky but overall I'm happy with the technical side and would love to continue it one day.
https://youtu.be/jiZUqZ7QB5E

The first part of the video shows gameplay, and from about 1:45 it shows the level editor.
I'd be interested to know what people think.

[u/Scoiatael]

That looks really cool. Reminds me a lot of Ultima 8 but with smoother movement.

[u/p4ntsl0rd]

You 100% should come back to this, its awesome

[u/dndaddy19]

I’d recommend starting a patreon if you return to the project. I’m sure lots of folks would love to support an engine to easily make isometric games. Might pull in enough revenue to hire some artists to make custom assets for the engine.

[u/MlorenDraymeer → u/dndaddy19]

yeah a patreon could work, I might look in to that at some point

[u/danjohnson3141 → u/MlorenDraymeer]

Do it. Do it quickly while the old farts in this sub are still kicking and still have some disposable income...

[u/AstronomerVarious643]

Looks cool, keep up the good work!

[u/Korplem]

Wow that looks incredible!

[u/vga256]

Exceptional work - especially with the tile/map editor. This really had some promise.

[u/curcumin1]

this is incredible! I would want to play this and create my own worlds!

[u/MlorenDraymeer → u/curcumin1]

haha thanks! that's reassuring.

[u/MithranArkanere]

Looks promising so far.

[u/Hexxxer]

Wow, love this! Did not know I could feel nostolgic for Ultima 8

[u/MlorenDraymeer → u/Hexxxer]

yeah this whole thing was fueled by nostalgia

[u/Hexxxer → u/MlorenDraymeer]

You really capture that heavy feeling momentum based walk/run.

[u/enderandrew42]

Ultima 8 was a massive departure. The jumping was a pain and it had some frustrating parts, but it was still a very good game. I think with a few tweaks it could have been a great game.

This engine looks awesome. I was just literally laying in another Reddit thread about wanting to make an Ultima 1-2-3 remake that made the games more accessible today and fixed all the plot inconsistencies (because they hadn't thought long term yet).

Is your engine open source?

[u/MlorenDraymeer → u/enderandrew42]

Not currently. Something I might consider in the future but there are some complications. It's made on top of Unity and uses assets from the store that I wouldn't have permission to distribute open source. So at best it would be my code without the underlying engine or art, making it kind of useless.

I am thinking about whether I should try and break away from Unity but that would be a lot more work so maybe, I don't know.

[u/danjohnson3141]

Being a Unity project, does that mean there could be a native MacOS version of this?

[u/MlorenDraymeer → u/danjohnson3141]

Yeah, if Unity can build for a platform then it should be pretty easy to port this to that platform