Re: Why No Ultima VI?

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

>Still, even a stripped down version would have been
>nice, just to complete the story on the Apple before going to the
>pseudo 3D Ultimas which really began a new era of Ultima.  Ultima VI
>was always the missing ending that the Apple II never got.

Because of the way the tiles in U6 are designed I perceive it as the
first pseudo-3D Ultima. U7 is of course even more consequent in this
aspect.

About the doability of a port in comparison to the C64:
- more RAM (the game could've utilized 128K - standard by then)
- faster disk access
- less colors (with standard hi-res-mode - double hi-res would be too
slow, imho)
- music and sound like U5
- optional mouse support (which is quite rare on the C64)


The PC-version is written in Turbo-C with (a lot?) Assembler
subroutines. A fictive A2-port probably would've required tight
Assembler code, anyway - reducing memory requirements.
The Apple graphics modes require less memory - resulting in much
smaller resource files (tiles, portraits, fonts etc.).

So it would've looked less colorful - but that's about it.
If they really wanted to do a *playable* conversion I'm convinced they
could've made one.

As others said - it probably was a pure economical decision.

bye
Marcus