Depictionsof the underworld, in ancient Greek and Roman textual and visual sources, differ significantly from source to source, but they all draw on a common pool of traditional mythic motifs. These motifs, such as the realm of Hades and its denizens, the rivers of the underworld, the paradise of the blessed dead, and the places of punishment for the wicked, are developed and transformed through all their uses throughout the ages, depending upon the aims of the author or artist depicting the underworld. Some sources explore the relation of the world of the living to that of the dead through descriptions of the location of the underworld and the difficulties of entering it. By contrast, discussions of the regions within the underworld and existence therein often relate to ideas of afterlife as a continuation of or compensation for life in the world above. All of these depictions made use of the same basic set of elements, adapting them in their own ways to describe the location of, the entering into, and the regions within the underworld.
The ultima underworld engine always fascinated me. In many ways it were way ahead of its time giving the player non-orthogonal walls, sloped floors, bridges, water, 3d doors etc. etc.
Add to that a huge selection of items and monsters stuffed into creatively made levels and a genious plot - and you got an underworld game.
Update: Until recently I believed that the Underworld engine was a so-called ray-casting engine like Wolfenstein, Doom and many other games from that early era of the first person shooter. In a raycasting engine the levels are basicly 2d maps and the player is then fooled into believing that the world is 3d by some scaling tricks. I believed this because the levels ARE stored mostly as 2d maps with the exception of certain items in the world.
However Doug Church was so kind to email me to clear up some things on this matter. Doug was one of the programmers on both the UW1 and UW2 team (and actually project leader on UW2 - good work there Doug!!) so I guess I better believe him :) Here are the facts in his own words :
" However, let me second what Dan Schmidt said in the guestbook back in August about the description of the UW engine you guys have up on the page. Namely, UW _was not_ a raycasting engine. While UW did use a tilemap to store the world, that has nothing to do with the rendering model. In general, I'd suggest that the "world rep" and "rendering engine" be considered separate things when discussing game technology, because they very often are. In UW, we had a tile based world. The renderer used the tiles to explore the view cone and do a high level cull operation. From the list of visible tiles, we generated full 3d polygons, in the traditional XYZ sense, and handed them off to a rendering back end and rendered each poly in 3d as is. That is also how the 3d models like the ankh shrines or benches were done, which clearly aren't "raycast" model 3d objects. Now, in practice, many of our 3d primitives did things like normal checks first, and then chose which algorithim to rasterize with based on scale/normal/etc of the surface being rendered."
Well, thanks for clearing that up Doug.
What I have done is that I have made a program which converts the 2d maps into real 3d meshes of triangles. This 3d data is more suited for the modern hardware accellerated 3d graphics cards. Because the levels are now real 3d you also get full freedom of movement which means that you can move and look in any direction in the world.
My viewer also loads the original 8bit textures and converts them to 24bit using the original pallette from the game. Then it automatically generates a set of mip-maps for each texture using a cubic filter which ensures that flickering in the 3d graphics will be kept at a minimum.
I have made a crude collision detection algorithm to clip the player against the walls. I warn you in advance that this is not a perfect algorithm, but I dont want to spend any more time on this project so I just threw it in to provide SOME realism ;)
In 1992 a game was released that set the bar for me in quality, gameplay and just pure immersion. It was a time when the PC was on the rise as a gaming platform and the other computers at the time were fading out. The Amiga which most of my friends owned and the Atari ST. My dad had just bought a 486 DX2 66mhz powered PC with, I think, a massive 4mb RAM and a 60mb hard drive. How times have changed. I remember spending a lot of time editing autoexec.bat and config.sys files to squeeze as much memory out of it as possible to run games.
Because game is a very old DOS game you can only really play it today on a DOS emulator. But you are still limited to the same old graphics and same old sound and music. Over the years several people have started projects to remake Ultima Underworld but none of them were ever finished.
Ultima underworld is a rather big game for someone to attempt on their own so I decided to set myself a more realistic first target. Origin first released a demo of the game which included the entire first level of the Stygian Abyss which is pretty much what you can see on the map in the picture above. I set myself the goal of completing the first level of the Stygian Abyss and effectively remaking the free demo. If that went well then I could think about doing the rest of the game. I started looking for a game engine as the base for my project and found a few contenders in Unity3D, Torque 3D and shiVa 3D. I had settled on Unity3D when epic went and released the UDK. gave people like me access to the best game engine around without any up front costs which was great. So I began where my skill set was strongest and started building assets.
Fast forward to 2013 and the Oculus Rift was in the wild. I immediately ordered one and in July it arrived. It was breath takingly good for a first VR experience and it rekindled the passion for my Ultima underworld project. What if you could really be in the Stygian Abyss? How cool would that be!
So I first decided to see what I could do with the Oculus and also purchased a Razor Hydra.
Over the last few days I have been trying to get the Avatar features I had working in Unity, working in Unreal Engine 4. Here is a video of my first test with Avatar hands and arms being controlled with the .
I have been playing with lighting for the first person character and wanted to start with a hand held torch. The flames need to be much more dynamic when the torch is moved but it is a good start. Also the hand and arm IK is still a bit dodgy (may also have been too close to my hydra base station when recording this).
@n00854180t
Sounds like you are working on a good project too. Will be good too see some of the stuff you have done. Have you got a forum thread anywhere or a blog? If you have any questions about stuff I have done I will do my best to answer.
Edit: Update - inventory system is working for food related stuff now - you can pick up various foods, with different hunger restore values, and they will properly restore food. Now to hook up death and respawn, and I have a basic game loop (I like to make gameplay work as early as possible).
The reluctant Orpheus can rescue Eurydice from the underworld, on the condition he does not turn to look back at her. On their way out, however, Jupiter (who has since fallen in love with Eurydice) scares him into turning back. Eurydice vanishes back into the underworld and everyone is thrilled with the result.
Orpheus and Eurydice fall in love, marry, and are soon expecting their first child. Disaster strikes, and the young couple cannot comprehend the tragedy that has befallen them. Public Opinion arrives in a black cab and offers Eurydice a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.
Eurydice begs Public Opinion to drive her off to the countryside. There she meets Aristaeus, a handsome shepherd and beekeeper (who is actually Pluto, the god of Hades, in disguise). Eurydice is instantly attracted to him.
Cupid announces the arrival of Orpheus and Public Opinion at Mount Olympus. When Orpheus sings of his longing for Eurydice, the gods are moved. Orpheus confirms it was indeed Pluto who abducted Eurydice. Jupiter resolves to descend to Hell in order to ensure justice is done, and all the other gods decide to follow him there.
Distraught, Eurydice lashes out at Pluto and rejects the advances of drunken Styx. Styx boasts to her of his status when alive, and, admits that he now has to drink himself into oblivion in order to take orders from Pluto. When Jupiter and Pluto arrive, Styx hastily hides Eurydice. Jupiter searches the cell for Eurydice in vain, until he notices something peeping out from under the bed. He says nothing but intends to return alone later to investigate. Pluto leads Jupiter off to the party he is throwing for the gods.
A riotous Bacchanal is in full swing. All the gods are drunk. Dressed as a Baccante, Eurydice is persuaded to perform the Song of Bacchus. Jupiter forces the gods to dance a stately minuet until Eurydice leads them all in a wild can-can.
As per Trafalgar Law's account, the Underworld could be compared to a crime syndicate of tremendous scale,[2] essentially gathering the most influential figures of the world (such as the Four Emperors,[3] Seven Warlords of the Sea,[4] World Nobles,[5] and Super Rookies[6]), though any individual partaking in its activities usually acts autonomously and for their own benefit. Although it is mainly active in the New World, it may also exist in other regions, like North Blue and West Blue.[7][8]
Above all, the Underworld is based on a principle of absolute secrecy, and all connections are shrouded in mystery.[2] Ironically, this is mostly so as to avoid to catch the Marines' attention, since some agreements are sometimes common knowledge around the Underworld.[9][10] Furthermore, to ensure the anonimity of the different participants, it is customary to take an alias on.[11][12]
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