Ultima Underworld 1

2012-06-05 03:56:46 am

Might be magic...

I just bought the gog.com version of Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 on special this weekend and thoughts of speedrunning came to mind.

There is an awesome single-segment speedrun of the PC version, courtesy of thecybercat (about 29m 41s):
http://bootstrike.com/Uw1/speedrun.php

And a great run of the Playstation (Japanese) version on youtube, courtesy of dandandan5 (about 34m 14s):
http://goo.gl/8CfP0

Both speedruns are really impressive and highly optimised - the playstation version does not even use any glitches. There are a few ways to potentially improve on thecybercat's speedrun:

* Use segments
* Level 2 - don't get the scroll of daylight - the Taper of Sacrifice can be used instead
* Level 3 - get the Cup of Wonder before getting the sword blade

More could be found later. It looks like it could be possible to get a total time of around 25 mins. Any thoughts, suggestions?

Thread title:

Lag.Com

2012-06-06 12:43:06 am

sda loyalist

I was planning on running Ultima Underworld at the next AGDQ, so I've been studying and replicating his route, haha. It's actually a fairly easy run, as long as you can remember the route. I already don't get the scroll of Daylight, but I didn't think of swapping the order of the Blade/Cup. It does make sense; I think he just did it like that because that way he can use the fountain to heal if he's a bit low, and the Gazer near the Cup can do a number on you if you get unlucky.

ZenicReverie

2012-06-06 01:08:40 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

I hate missing sales like this. Hopefully they'll have another one. I guess it's not too bad paying full price.

I fully support a run of both Underworld games. Good luck.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-06 02:33:08 am

2012-06-06 02:31:59 am

Might be magic...

Yeah that's true about the gazer.

I reckon there would be a few places that you could take advantage of the silver sapling too - just haven't identified any yet. I'm going to plot out all the steps on a map of each level and try to do a travelling salesman optimisation, except this salesman can teleport Tongue

gammadragon

2012-06-06 11:24:10 pm

Might be magic...

Found another few useful things:

* Those movement arrows below the compass are called "Easy Move" keys (according to the quick reference sheet). The keyboard shortcuts for these are SHIFT+WADX. I was thinking it would be really handy to use SHIFT+X to back away from monsters to give some firing room, but unfortunately they speed up to accomodate for this.

* To get the Cup of Wonder, you can play Mardin's Song of Wonder using the flute on the water square just outside the usual room (next to the mossy walls)

* Instead of making a detour to get the Reveal scroll on level 5, there is one right next to the Book of Honesty. In his route, thecybercat does not use Reveal until after getting the Book of Honesty, so it seems that some time can be saved there.

* On level 2 getting the potion of Fly - it is faster to get the yellow key than to bash the door open

Currently investigating whether the lockpicking skill can remove the need to obtain certain keys...

Lag.Com

2012-06-07 04:13:35 am

sda loyalist

You can kill Roderick with the 'debris of fireballs' without even getting him on screen, so backing up isn't really a problem. There's also a movement mode you can turn on where every press of WASDX makes you move a tile at once, that might be better for some areas. I keep forgetting how to enable/disable it.

I kept seeing that scroll during my practice runs but I never actually looked at it, haha! It would be much better to grab that one.
Is there another scroll of Gate anywhere? The current one is somewhat out of the way.

gammadragon

2012-06-08 11:18:15 pm

Might be magic...

I think the other ones might be further out of the way. The only other one I can think of is on level 5 next to the portcullis leading to the "pacman" area. I'll have a bit of a look around though.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-09 05:34:59 am

2012-06-09 05:17:55 am

Might be magic...

More interesting stuff:

* There's a shortcut that can be taken through Tyball's maze, as long as you don't mind taking a little damage - around 60 (see image below). With unlimited healing this usually isn't a problem.

* There's another shortcut that can be taken in the ethereal void (see image below)

* It seems like even with 30 lockpick skill and high dexterity, the important locks can't be picked, so no point trying that

* An interesting bug that I found - if you fireball the moonstone to destroy it and then cast Gate Travel you sometimes appear outside the normal map. It seems like you can't do much here though and the game crashes after a little while in this zone. Fun to try though - on some levels you just die but it worked on level 8

* I was trying to find a way to teleport inside the central chamber on level 8 without having to get the keys of courage, truth and love. One of my attempts was to drop the moonstone at the door, freeze time, throw objects on all surrounding squares so they are hanging in midair, then use gate travel. This makes you appear on the closest non-obstructed square, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to allow you inside the central chamber

Maze shortcut - red spots are insta-death and yellow spots do some damage.

Void shortcut

More interesting stuff:
[spoiler]
* There's a shortcut that can be taken through Tyball's maze, as long as you don't mind taking a little damage - around 60 (see image below). With unlimited healing this usually isn't a problem.

* There's another shortcut that can be taken in the ethereal void (see image below)

* It seems like even with 30 lockpick skill and high dexterity, the important locks can't be picked, so no point trying that

* An interesting bug that I found - if you fireball the moonstone to destroy it and then cast Gate Travel you sometimes appear outside the normal map. It seems like you can't do much here though and the game crashes after a little while in this zone. Fun to try though - on some levels you just die but it worked on level 8

* I was trying to find a way to teleport inside the central chamber on level 8 without having to get the keys of courage, truth and love. One of my attempts was to drop the moonstone at the door, freeze time, throw objects on all surrounding squares so they are hanging in midair, then use gate travel. This makes you appear on the closest non-obstructed square, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to allow you inside the central chamber

Maze shortcut - red spots are insta-death and yellow spots do some damage.
[url=http://postimage.org/image/86fwtp669/][img]http://s16.postimage.org/86fwtp669/Maze_Shortcut.jpg[/img][/url]

Void shortcut
[url=http://postimage.org/image/ehxzcldoh/][img]http://s16.postimage.org/ehxzcldoh/Void_Shortcut.jpg[/img][/url]
[/spoiler]

Lag.Com

2012-06-10 01:22:07 am

sda loyalist

I've been taking that pain maze shortcut, hehe. I was wondering about the void myself - I thought it was full of invisible walls and magic didn't work there... so you just have to keep fly on from before getting gated?

The moonstone gate thing is interesting indeed. When you destroy it, what tile does it try to put you on? My instinct says that it would either try to put you at (0, 0) or just pop two arbitrary values off the stack and put you there, which is potentially very useful.

About getting inside the chamber, that would certainly make things a bit shorter; wouldn't ever have to go to Smonden etc. Maybe you could use Kal Mani to fill up lots of squares with monsters, before trying to port inside?

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 05:34:34 am

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 01:37:49 am

2012-06-10 01:35:45 am

Might be magic...

That's a good idea - actually I think there is a Summon Monster scroll in one of the rooms at the North-West end of level 6 that could help there.

One other thing I was thinking of was maybe finding a bug in the Roaming Sight spell... from memory you can use it to move through walls and see what's on the other side. If you could also drop a moonstone in the chamber at the same time, that would make it worth getting 5 mana upgrades to be able to cast it.

Lag.Com

2012-06-10 01:38:44 am

sda loyalist

I forgot how Roaming Sight actually functions! If it lets you carry your inventory then yeah it would be broken as hell.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 02:29:56 am

2012-06-10 02:28:59 am

Might be magic...

I had a bit of a go at Roaming Sight. There are a few interesting features:

* You need to be level 15 to cast it, which is pretty much out of the question for a speedrun

* You float above the ceiling which makes things hard to see

* It is possible to get inside the central chamber on level 8 with this spell and you can see the Slasher of Veils

* Interestingly, flying around the whole level makes your experience go up

* I couldn't figure out a way to cast the spell and have an item on the mouse arrow at the same time. Pressing F8 does not work while an item is picked up and clicking the runes also doesn't work

* If you die while the spell is cast, you appear in the ceiling above the silver sapling and the game crashes

Lag.Com

2012-06-10 02:30:32 am

sda loyalist

Does anything odd happen if you save while the spell is active?

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 02:37:34 am

2012-06-10 02:35:30 am

Might be magic...

You can't save as the F1 key and clicking the icon in the top left are disabled. Interestingly though, you can sleep using F10! This makes you fall asleep but when you wake up you are still in the ceiling and can't do anything as per the spell, but you can't disable the spell either as it has disappeared from the spell list.

If you then die while in the ceiling, you respawn in a black room unable to move anywhere and still with the same restrictions as though the spell had been cast.

All in all the spell seems to be very buggy, but not the right kind of bugs to help us.

Edit: Hitting CTRL+S while the spell is cast gives the message "You cannot select options partway through an action."

Lag.Com

2012-06-10 02:40:47 am

sda loyalist

It's a shame UW1 doesn't have Vas Ex Ylem. :p

gammadragon

2012-06-10 02:42:17 am

Might be magic...

I know! That spell makes the UW2 speedrun feel like a Portal speedrun Smiley

Lag.Com

Edit history:

Lag.Com: 2012-06-10 02:55:27 am

Lag.Com: 2012-06-10 02:55:12 am

Lag.Com: 2012-06-10 02:54:17 am

2012-06-10 02:53:26 am

sda loyalist

Can you cast Time Stop, throw in the talismans, cast Roaming Sight, cancel Time Stop...?
Not sure why it would be helpful but it sounds amusing.

Also does Gate Travel still function while the moonstone is moving? Say after being thrown?

gammadragon

2012-06-10 02:58:45 am

Might be magic...

It worked fine and I was sent to the ethereal void, except that I couldn't use the mouse for anything while there. I used WAXD to get to the green portal and things went normally from there.

Gate travel does work after the moonstone is thrown - it teleports you to the square that the moonstone currently occupies.

Lag.Com

2012-06-10 03:08:24 am

sda loyalist

I'm running out of ideas for breaking stuff. I take it you can't go up stairs with Roaming Sight on? It would be really nice if it were possible to 'accidentally' go down stairs while on Level 8, because that would just plonk you in the void.

Have you noticed any kind of pattern about where Gate puts you (or tries to) when you destroy the moonstone?

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 03:18:55 am

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 03:18:40 am

2012-06-10 03:16:42 am

Might be magic...

Actually, yes - it puts you in the bottom left corner of the map (which I assume is 0,0). See this screenshot of the map:

From there you can also use roaming sight and move through the wall into the main area, but the only way out is to die.

Lag.Com

Edit history:

Lag.Com: 2012-06-10 03:30:00 am

2012-06-10 03:29:44 am

sda loyalist

Oh by the way, in the void you can pretty much just fly directly to the moongate if you go northeast - there's a few invisible walls round the side of the moongate platform, but you can get onto the path slightly to the south of it with no issues. You do need to go upwards a little also.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-06-10 03:46:30 am

2012-06-10 03:45:33 am

Might be magic...

Handy, just need to make sure to have Fly on before entering, as you said before.

Another interesting Roaming Sight quirk - you can move your character around while it's active by using WADX (mouse arrows only move your ceiling view). If you fall in the lava you will die as normal, but then respawn in a black room with no mouse controls.

I'm giving up on Roaming Sight now and going to focus on the actual speedrun.

gammadragon

2012-06-10 03:57:40 am

Might be magic...

Good spotting with the void - Here's the new shortcut.

You actually don't even need to use Fly because there is a ramp from the floor to the gate.

Lag.Com

Edit history:

Lag.Com: 2012-06-10 04:00:01 am

2012-06-10 03:59:31 am

sda loyalist

You're right. I wrote my own program for viewing the maps, don't know why I didn't just look at it. :p

Strange how the red and blue paths actually have a big wall around the end areas, but the green one doesn't.

gammadragon

2012-06-10 04:03:10 am

Might be magic...

That's awesome - is it something you can share? How did you make it?

I've been using Peroxide's 3D viewer available here
http://www.ultimainfo.net/Downloads/Uwviewer.zip

You can use either M or F5 to get a good view from the top down.