TIL: Ultima 6 NuVIe

So, today I learned about something that's sort of a dream come true
for me...

Ultima VI, released way back in 1990, was something of a
groundbreaking game. But despite it having lush graphics, it hasn't
aged all that well, largely because of its very clunky interface and
extremely limited view-distance. I've often tried to go back and
replay the game, but these downsides have been such a thorn that I've
given up before I'm more than an hour or two into the game.

Often I've wondered why nobody ever created some sort of mod or patch
to this game to make it more palatable to gamers spoiled by modern
amenities. Well, it turns out they did.*

Ultima VI NuVIe not only allows the ancient DOS game to run on modern
hardware (not that was so difficult with DOSBox, but still) and fixes
its two most egregious issues. First, it greatly expands the scale of
the view window**, allowing you to see more than five tiles in any
direction (I find double that satisfactory). Secondly, it improves the
drag-n-drop mouse control. Given how much of the game revolves around
inventory management, this is an incredibly useful feature.

The mod actually isn't new; it was in development over a decade ago.
For some reason though, it never came to my attention, even though it
is _exactly_ the sort of thing I'd been looking for.

Anyway, I discovered it today, and couldn't be happier.

Get it here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/nuvie/

Thank you Internet! You made my day!



Oh, and if you happen to have the FM Towns version of Ultima VI, it'll
even use the full-speech voice-acting! Although given the lackluster
performances, that may not be as much a bonus as it first sounds ;-)






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* actually, there are multiple such efforts, but they all transformed
the game into something too distant from its original form. One uses
the Ultima VII engine, the other Dungeon Siege engine. They're both
interesting projects, but don't really feel like "Ultima VI" as I
remember it.

** albeit not by default. You need to tweak the config files to get
the improved result