Preserving Games

Month: December 2008

  • Preservation and Emulation – A Guide to Installing “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness”

    An important method to preserve videogame content, and all content contained in electronic records for that matter, is emulation.  In order to access many DOS-based videogames, for example, one must download a DOS emulator.  These emulators are now widely available on the Internet and videogames that are no longer playable on modern operating systems can be played through this application which emulates the functionality of DOS.  Below is a guide to installing one of the most influential DOS-based games, Richard Garriott’s “Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness.”

    In order to play Ultima 1, you must first download a DOS emulator. Currently, one of the most popular DOS emulators is DOSBox 0.72, which can be downloaded free-of-charge at www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1. Choose the version of DOSBox that corresponds to your operating system, save the installer executable, and follow the steps to install DOSBox.

    DOSBox can be used to play a number of DOS-based games. Finding these games can be tricky as websites with DOS game libraries often require you to enter personal information including e-mail and physical addresses before the site will let you download a game. www.oldschooldos.com allows you to download games anonymously. To find Ultima 1, from the Old School DOS homepage click the link for “RPG” games. Listed on this page are six classic DOS RPGs including two other games that are widely considered to be foundational to the RPG genre: “NetHack” and “Dungeon Master.” In order to play Ultima 1, follow these steps:

    (Note that the following steps are valid only for Windows operating systems. Directions may vary for other operating systems).

    • In the RPG menu at oldschooldos.com, click on the link for “Ultima 1” and download the zipped file.
    • Extract all of the unzipped files into a new folder on your C:\ drive, and title the folder “dosprog”
    • Open DOSBox.
    • In DOSBox, enter the following command string: “mount c c:\dosprog\” and hit enter. I’m not totally sure about this, but in entering the above command string you are essentially convincing the emulator that in accessing the “dosprog” folder, it is actually accessing the c:\ drive. If you forget the above command string, you can also enter the command “intro mount” and DOSBox will remind you how to mount the folder “dosprog” as your c:\ drive.
    • Once you have mounted the dosprog folder, type “c:\” and hit enter. You will notice that the beginning of the command string changes from “Z:\>” to “C:\>.”
    • Now type “ultima” and the game should start.
    • When a picture of a castle appears, hit the space bar.
    • You will be prompted to create a new character or continue a previous game. Choose the former.
    • You will now be prompted to generate a character. From this point the best thing to do is follow a walkthrough. www.gamefaqs.com is a good website for walkthroughs of all videogames from all eras. A walkthrough for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/9073. This walkthrough has good tips on how to stay alive as Ultima 1 is much more difficult than the average modern RPG.  A walkthrough that takes you through the narrative can be found here: www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/562657/1804. FYI, you should definitely consult the first walkthrough before you create your character. After you designate your character’s attributes they cannot be altered and certain attributes are more essential than others depending on the race and character class that you select.
    • Once you create your character you can start playing the game.  You can command your character by hitting certain letters on your keyboard.  You can “attack,” e.g., by pressing the letter “a.”  A complete list of keyboard functions for Ultima 1 can be found here: www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/pc/ultima1/commands.shtml This website also offers a brief walkthrough and some interesting game facts.

    The walkthrough for Ultima 1 is pretty essential.  Unlike modern games, there is no tutorial element in the first part of the game, so you pretty much have to figure things out on your own.  These walkthroughs, however, are considerably shorter than a walkthrough for a modern game.  This is due largely to the fact that the narrative element in Ultima 1 is pretty thin.  You will spend most of your time simply killing monsters and trying to stay alive (which is a tall order).  Through killing monsters you will raise your attributes and acquire gold which you can use to spend on weapons, armor, and food.  Note that you must level up considerably before attempting any “quests.”  Also expect to die often, but don’t let this discourage you.  Remember that unlike modern games, dieing is just a part of the experience (one might say frustrating experience) of playing older games.

    That being said, in terms of game mechanics, there is not that much difference between Ultima 1 and Final Fanasy XII, for example,  or World of Warcraft.  You have a character for whom you select a character class, a race, and a gender.  You designate that character’s strength, intelligence, etc.  You kill monsters, cast spells, go on quests, buy weapons and armor and eventually fight “bosses.”   One minor (though significant) difference is that when you start the game you will find that if you start fighting the monsters that are presented to you, you will die pretty quickly and you will be unable to progress.  If you take a look at one of the walkthroughs, you’ll find that you need to start fighting in the first level of a dungeon in order to get money and to raise your hit points.  This is a salient difference from modern RPGs in which the challenges that you are presented with are almost always tailored to the level of your character.  You get the sense, in Ultima 1, that the world of the videogame pre-exists your character and you need to figure out how to acclimate your character to the world.  This seems like a much more “realistic” approach to gameplay and one that more closely resembles the layout of a modern MMORPG than a modern single-player RPG.  Apart from this sort-of “pre-existence” of the videogame world, however, there is surprisingly little difference between the content and structure of Ultima 1 and that of a modern RPG.

    Because of this relative lack of difference in game structure,  I don’t think that someone who is familiar with the gameplay of modern RPGs will have much difficulty playing Ultima 1.  From a preservation standpoint, including a walkthrough with the emulation would be helpful, if only to convince the player to not give up after dieing a couple of times.  Also, including the list of keyboard commands is essential as I have been unable to locate one in the game itself.  Other than that, from a thirty-year vantage point, Ultima 1 is still largely intelligible and playable for a modern videogame player.

  • The Power to Create

    In a recent interview for the Wired blog, Blizzard’s Executive Vice President of Game Design Rob Pardo is asked about past Diablo games and their perceived “RAM dependency.”  The interviewer notes, “When Diablo II came out…I didn’t really feel like I got the full experience of the game running perfectly until I had something like 2GB of RAM.  With Diablo III, are we going to need 6GB?”

    Pardo’s response characterizes one of the chief, and unique, concerns for game designers.  He responds, “One of the philosophies we have is to always try to cater to a pretty low system spec.  We really wanna make sure that as many gamers as possible can play our games.  At the same time, we want a lot of our graphics and all of our features to look good.”

    This response exemplifies how daunting the obstacle of processing power can be in the design and creation of a video game.  As designers begin to imagine enormous and magnificent worlds populated with defined and stylized characters, they must always keep in mind the limitations placed on their work by the current PC technology available to the gaming public.  Obviously, as Pardo suggests, the designer’s first responsibility is to create a game that the majority of gamers are capable of running on their computer systems.  Essentially, this means crafting a game that can be enjoyed by gamers whose PCs run on below-average processing power.  But, the designers also have a responsibility to utilize the latest in design technology to create a game that can compete with other recent games on a visual basis.  Thus, as designers work on a game like Diablo III and constantly try to improve the scope and detail of the game’s visuals, they must do so remembering that their ultimate responsibility requires them to deliver a game that “caters to a low system spec.”

    I would be interested to learn how game designers are affected by what is, essentially, a lack of resources, a creative issue for which there is little precedent.  Many filmmakers, for example, often must consider how much film they are using and how much film is left.  However, filmmakers are using that film supply for one purpose: to create a visual image.  Game designers, on the other hand, must use one supply of RAM not only to create their visuals but also to run the gameplay itself.  Thus, in navigating this difficult creative path, on which imaginative visuals will almost always be sacrificed for the gameplay, do designers often find their ideas for environments and characters being limited?  Have they become so familiar with the technology that they inherently dream up worlds and populations with processing limitations in mind?  Or do they dream big at first and scale back once the magnitude of the gameplay’s processing requirements are determined?

    I would imagine that this is a particularly prevalent problem for MMORPG designers.  In creating game worlds where anything can happen, where any number of player and non-player characters can come together in one place, designers must ensure that the graphics that animate these worlds and characters do not soak up so much processing power that the gameplay runs slowly or perhaps ceases to run.  Thus, considering the requirement of creating an environment that can process a large number of gamers at all times, these game designers are necessarily limited in their power to create visually impressive landscapes and lifelike characters.  I would argue that, because of this limitation, MMORPGS will always be a step behind many other genres visually, and I would be interested to know how designers of these MMO experiences feel about working in a genre in which their visual imaginations must always be kept in check.