Still crunching, but we should be done by the beginning of next week.
One very positive thing I’ve noticed is that I am itching to get back to work on Planitia. I recently fired it up and took a look at it, and you know what? It’s a cute little game and it deserves to be finished. So it will be!
I missed another of Warren Spector’s lectures. Turns out the one I missed last week was with Id Software designer Tim Willits, not Richard Garriott like I thought. That is upsetting, because I’ve read Masters of Doom and I would have loved to have heard him talk about that same time period.
The one I missed this week was with – sob – Seamus Blackley. It would have been fantastic to hear about the development of the original Xbox straight from the horse’s mouth.
Ah, well…there will (probably) be a DVD at some point. At least I haven’t missed the three I’m looking forward to most: Reggie Fils-Aime, Doug Church and Paul Neurath.
And who’s up next week, when I’ll probably be able to go back? Richard, of course. Not that I have anything against Richard (quite the opposite); it’s just that since he lives here in Austin, I get to hear him talk a lot. And frankly, I’ll be very surprised if he can tell me anything about the development of the Ultima series and the history of Origin Systems that I don’t already know. (Good Lord, was that a conceited sentence or WHAT?)
Your mention of Ultima gives me an excuse to deliver the following rant:
Why hasn’t EA ported Ultima to new platforms?
Specifically, haven’t they ported 5-7 to the DS?
Recent years have seen hand-held ports of final fantasy, phantasy star, breath of fire, sword of mana, etc… it’s like there’s a handheld RPG-porting free-for-all going on the nobody told EA about.
Is market research seriously telling EA that Ultima ports wouldn’t turn a profit? Or have they just entirely forgotten they own those games?
Interestingly, Wikipedia just told me they released Ultima 7 for the psp.
Not a native port, but an emulated copy of the wretched snes port.
Eww.
Ultima isn’t mainstream, so they probably figure they can spend their money better elsewhere. (Like suing ultima remake hobbyists..)
oh, there’s going to be a dvd? sweet! if you get any details on that, please make sure to post about it! i’d be more than happy to dish out some cash for something like that.