For anyone who got that disappearing-land bug when using the map -- Apple mercifully agreed to give me an expedited review and already approved the update, so version 1.0.6 should be in the store shortly. If you experienced this bug please try the new version and let me know if it is solved or not? It should be but I would like to confirm.
Hi Bob - I've just downloaded the update, will give the game a spin again this evening and report back. Thanks for the speedy turnaround!
As someone who's first gaming memory is Ultima III, this was an insta-buy for me. I was around 8 at the time & had to save up all my dishwashing money to afford the $40 (I think) to buy it. There were no hard drives yet & it came on 4 floppy disks that you had to swap out every time you went into a city. This game also feels much more Ultima-y than the first with open world movement & exploration. I had the deep water bug too, but glad to hear that has been fixed. Any chance of Lowlander, Serpent Isle?
Agree on both counts. Loved the first one and was loving this and will love it again when I get past the stealth part
@Stonemane, me too! I remember seeing the ad for Ultima III in SoftTalk magazine and waiting in anticipation. Before that, I had only played Ultima II at my friend's house. One of my first programming projects was writing an Ultima III map-editor with my friend.
@eksaint and other, ha I'm sorry about the stealth, I know it is annoying but for some reason I decided to keep it in there. You can delay doing that part for quite a while, if it bugs you, although eventually you have to do it. If you use the minimap to see where they are and just stay on the other side of their circular posts then it's not too hard to avoid them.
Beta tested, but didn't get as far as I would have liked, and bought. Do you ever plan to take a shot at something with an Ultima III feel?
Thanks Collin! By Ultima III you mean the party of characters that expands to fight groups of monsters for each battle, and managing the party's equipment and stats? Or do you mean more visually with the blocked out line of sight? I don't know, really. I've avoided the party system partially because all those battles used to tire me out. Probably why I never made it through Ultima 5. But if it could be done in a way that didn't slow the game down so much, then perhaps. It is fun to raise multiple character stats with their different abilities in battle, equipment, etc.
Lowlander I was awesome, loving this one. The cloud save is a little... odd. Any chance it could become an automatic save or something that doesn't require codes?
@Tulki it is just a way to back up games and transfer them between devices. You give the save a name but it also attaches a timestamp. @paulmeyers yeah, it is a little wonky with the code. Maybe I can figure out a better way to do it within Gamemaker. They don't have connections to iCloud/Dropbox/etc. As I say though, the 'code' is just a timestamp -- might make it easier to remember going between devices. Like, 06160141-mygame means someone uploaded a game last night at 1:41 AM using the name 'mygame'. Using codes does have some advantages -- like you can transfer games between accounts, devices and platforms, like iOS, Android and Mac.
Yes, the combat (starting with U4) was ahead of its time, but such a grind, especially U5 endgame, where the difficulty was high and restarts inevitable.
Yeah - even the vaunted IV was pretty tough at the end. I never finished it on my Apple II+. I could only do it a few years ago through an emulator on my laptop, where you could save and restore the game state.
How do I save my game? I completed two quests (the first two), and then got busy with life. When I started the game back up, it didn't save my progress. I don't see any way to manually save the game either.
Hey phred, I'm sorry that happened to you. I guess the app was terminated before you went back? It saves automatically when you enter a town or a dungeon, and you can save from the outside world at any time. But because you start the game inside a town, you actually have to exit town to save the first time. There should be a character near your house that tells you something like that. So, if you do it again, just make sure you walk outside the town and come back in, or just save from outside...
Aha! Thanks. Yeah, the first two quests were in the town, so I never left. I'll try again when I get home. Thanks again.
Love the game but I'm stuck trying to find the ship. Any hints on where to find the key for the key for the ice mine dungeon?
