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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="3">Inside 
                        Origin Systems</font></i></font></b><br>
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 

                        <a href="mailto:tim@damarr.freeserve.co.uk">Tim &#147;Damarr&#148; 
                        O'Malley</a></font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 11<br>
                      February 7, 2000</font></b></h5>
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              <loonystart>
              <p>&nbsp;</p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">For <b>Ultima: 
                Ascension</b>, Origin choose to design their own 3D engine rather 
                than license one from another company. While they may have needed 
                to do this due to <b>Ultima IX</b>&#146;s special needs, it did 
                prove costly. The engine was seriously incompatible with some 
                3D cards, and only people with 3dfx-based video cards had any 
                real chance of getting it to run properly. On top of that, there 
                were many crippling bugs in the game, such as invisible walls, 
                or blocked entrances. Indeed, in one dungeon, the entrance refused 
                to open again, and a bottomless pit was behind the player, leaving 
                them stuck, with no choice but to restart the game with patches 
                in place. Even now, while looking at the release notes for the 
                patches, there are still many &#147;This will not work if you 
                have already entered the game world&#148; beside many fixes, but 
                none of those bugs are very serious, and it has to be said, the 
                patches so far have fixed virtually all problems with the game 
                for those with fresh installs of the game.</font></p>
              <h3 align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
                Current Projects</font></h3>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
                Current projects under development at OSI include<b> Ultima Online 
                2</b> (due for release sometime in Winter this year) and the mysterious 
                project &#147;<b>X</b>.&#148;</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So far, 
                very little information has been released on <b>UO 2</b>, let 
                alone any screenshots, but the game looks as though it will be 
                every bit as fun as its predecessor, but with a new 3D engine, 
                although its not known what view/perspective the game will use. 
                The beta is expected in late Autumn/early Winter, so it&#146;s 
                a long wait yet for everyone who&#146;s looking forward to playing 
                it. The beta will be offered to current <b>UO</b> subscribers 
                before the general public, so get in there if you want to be one 
                of the first to get into the beta test. </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At the 
                moment, one of <b>UO 2</b>&#146;s biggest issues is whether or 
                not the game will contain a PK (player killer) switch, so people 
                can choose whether or not they want to become involved in battle 
                with other players, as is used in <b>Asheron&#146;s Call</b> and 
                <b>EverQuest</b>. OSI is going after the idea of &#145;zoning&#146; 
                the game, with non-player vs. player (PvP) areas that contain 
                much smarter monsters, and PvP zones, which will of course, be 
                rampant with player killers and thieves. How they&#146;ll overcome 
                this problem and keep everyone happy is yet to be seen, and may 
                well be impossible. Richard Garriot won&#146;t be overseeing<b> 
                UO 2</b> himself: instead Starr Long (Lord Blackthorne in the 
                <b>Ultima</b> games) will be the producer. In charge of designing 
                the characters will be cartoonist, Todd McFarlane, creator of 
                the Spawn series of comics. McFarlane has been commissioned by 
                RG to design several of the game&#146;s creatures, which RG has 
                said look amazing at their current stage, so it must be impressive.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Project 
                &#145;<b>X</b>&#146;, (X being the Roman numeral for 10) is said 
                to be a futuristic style online game, and it may even have a name 
                change to <b>Ultima X </b>at the last minute according to Richard 
                Garriot. But as he has said before, Britannia and the Avatar are 
                gone and finished, so it will be interesting to see what story 
                line the game will take. According to Garriot, identity will play 
                a large part of the game. He recently told GameDaily: </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&#147;For 
                example, one of the most successful attributes of<b> UO</b> is 
                the personal identity of the characters; you can tell who the 
                cool players are because they are well accessorized and they act 
                well. That's one of the features I really want to push.&#148;</font></p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 2000 Joachim. This article is &copy; 2000 Tim &#147;Damarr&#148; O'Malley. 
  All other content is &copy; 2000 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction 
  is prohibited. So don't do it, or we'll make you cry, sissy.</font></i></p>
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