Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - Development

Development

Ultima Underworld was conceived in 1989 by Origin Systems employee Paul Neurath. He had just completed work on Space Rogue, a hybrid title that features sequences both of 2D tile-based role-playing and of 3D space flight simulation. According to Neurath, Space Rogue "took the first, tentative steps in exploring a blend of RPG and simulation elements, and this seemed to me a promising direction". He felt that the way it combined the elements was jarring, however, and believed that he could create a more immersive experience.

I had played lots of D&D. I also read a range of fantasy: Howard, Leiber, Vance, Zelazny, LeGuin, and of course, Tolkien. Tolkien's description of Moria struck me in particular, and it seemed like a fine setting for a game.

Neurath had enjoyed role-playing video games like Wizardry, but found that their simple, abstract visuals made it difficult for the player to suspend disbelief. He believed that Dungeon Master's detailed first-person presentation was a "glimpse into the future", and he sought to create a fantasy role-playing game that built on its example. In early 1990, Neurath wrote a design document for a game titled Underworld, which described such elements as "goblins on the prows of rowboats tossed in the waves, shooting arrows at the player above on a rope bridge swinging in the wind". He contracted former Origin employee Doug Wike to create concept art. Wike created a brief, hand-drawn animation with Deluxe Paint Animation, which depicted the game's interface and a creature moving toward the player. The animation defined the game's direction, and it was used as a reference point for the game's tone and features throughout development. That spring, Neurath founded the company Blue Sky Productions in Salem, New Hampshire, with the goal of creating Underworld. Among the company's first employees was Doug Church, who was studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team was thus composed of Doug Church as programmer, Doug Wike as lead artist and Paul Neurath as lead designer. Development began in May 1990.

An early difficulty was the implementation of texture mapping. Neurath had experimented unsuccessfully with the concept on an Apple II computer in the late 1980s, but he believed that the more powerful IBM PCs of the time may be able to process it. He contacted Lerner Research programmer Chris Green—an acquaintance from his past work with Ned Lerner—who created a working algorithm. Using the Space Rogue engine, Green's algorithm, assembly code from Lerner Research's Car and Driver and original programming, the Blue Sky team completed a prototype of Underworld after roughly a month of work. Neurath described the prototype as "fast, smooth, and true texture mapped walls, though the ceiling and floor were flat shaded and the corridors and rooms were all 10' high—it looked a lot like Wolfenstein-3D in fact". The team demonstrated it at the June 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and impressed Origin Systems. Origin producer Warren Spector later said, "I remember Paul showing me that demo at CES and being totally floored by it. None of us had ever seen anything like it". The two companies reached a publishing agreement that summer, and Origin suggested that the game be reworked to fit into the Ultima universe. The team agreed, and the game was renamed Ultima Underworld. While Spector had hoped to produce the game, he was not assigned to the role; and he later said that he "sort of watched jealously from the sidelines".

After the game was renamed, Doug Church recruited Dan Schmidt, a college friend who had just graduated from MIT, as a programmer. The team abandoned the Space Rogue engine and created a new one that could display a realistic 3D world—one with varying heights and texture-mapped floors and ceilings. Church estimated that the first year of production was dedicated to creating the game's technological base. However, Neurath stated that the team spent "comparatively little" time on the game's technology, and that "most was spent working on game features, mechanics, and world building". Their ultimate goal was to create the "finest dungeon game, a game that was tangibly better than any of the long line of dungeon games that came before it". Each member of the small team assumed multiple roles; for example, the game's first two levels were designed by Paul Neurath, while the rest were built by artists, designers and programmers. According to Schmidt, Neurath contracted a writer to create the game's story and dialogue, but the relationship was a "mismatch"; and so the team decided to write the plot themselves. Alongside his programming work, Doug Church co-wrote the game's story with Dan Schmidt, and he gradually took on project leader responsibilities. Writing duties for each level were given to the person who created that level; Schmidt's role was to edit the dialogue of each level to fit with that of the others. Schmidt also created the game's sound effects, which were synthesized—no recorded sounds were used—in a graphical sound editor. Neurath, who Church said was "very day to day at the beginning of the project", became more involved with the company's business and finances.

Church explained that the core of the project was its "dynamic creation". He noted that the team had "no set of rules or pre-written plan", but rather worked organically toward the general idea of creating a "dungeon simulation". Church believed that the game's Ultima series heritage was extremely helpful, as it gave the team an anchor for their experiments. According to Church, because the team was young and inexperienced, they were "improvising almost the whole time". He said that they would "just write something" that seemed interesting, but would then "get it half done, and we'd say, 'Eh? That's not working.'" He believed that this iterative method was useful overall, but that it entailed an abnormally large workload: it resulted in the creation of "four movement systems before we were done, several combat systems, and so forth". Certain failed experiments meant that the team created " code for many ideas which turned out to be largely irrelevant to the actual gameplay".

During the first year of the game's development, Church believed that Origin had little faith in the team's ability to complete the game. He later said, "They didn't pay any attention at all, frankly". While Origin CEO Richard Garriott helped the team in fitting the game into the Ultima franchise, Warren Spector later said that the company seemed "blasé" about Ultima Underworld "for the first several months after ORIGIN and Blue Sky signed the deal", despite his own belief that it was a "change-the-world project". Neurath opined that this was due to the team's status as outsiders, whose company was "some 1,500 miles distant" from their publisher. The team was advanced $30,000 to create the game, but its final cost was $400,000. The game was funded partly by Ned Lerner, and by Neurath's royalties from Space Rogue. Throughout the game's production, the studio was run on a tight budget.

Roughly a year into development, the team discovered that their second producer—the first having quit Origin near the beginning of development—had left the project. Neurath later said that "neither had much involvement" in the game, and that, following the second's departure, the team spent time without any producer at all. Rumors circulated that Origin planned to cancel the project. Following a proposal by the team around this time, Spector, who had previously worked with Neurath on Space Rogue, assumed the role of producer. Church later described this event as "a big win for everyone". Spector began regularly interacting with the team by phone, in addition to visiting the studio in person. Neurath later said, "Warren understood immediately what we were trying to accomplish with the game, and became our biggest champion within Origin. Had not Warren stepped in this role at that stage, I'm not sure Ultima Underworld would have ever seen the light of day". Church said that Spector helped the team polish the game and "make it real", and that Spector's past experience in the industry enabled him to keep the team focused on completing the game. He explained that Spector "had that ability to help me and the rest of the guys reset, from the big-picture view of someone who has done it before".

We had about eight of us in this 15x15 room, sitting in uncomfortable red deck chairs, faxing bug lists to Origin and back, blasting music and playing Monkey Island II about 30 minutes a day to avoid insanity.

The final four months of the game's development constituted "crunch time". During this period, Neurath rented an extremely small basement office space in a Somerville, Massachusetts social services building: he sought to circumvent the long commute that several team members had been making from Massachusetts. Furniture consisted of inexpensive folding tables and "uncomfortable red deck chairs". Development took place during the winter, but the room was drafty and poorly heated. The team hired college friends such as Marc LeBlanc to bug test the game, and Spector stayed at the studio for roughly a month and a half, according to Church. Spector later said that "in that little office, that team created some serious magic. I mean, the sense of doing something incredible was palpable". Neurath summarized, "Despite the austere working environment, the game came together amazingly well in the final stretch, and we delivered the Gold Master just about two years after we had started". The game was released in March 1992.