lighting or anything; it was just a very simple wall texture, something that we did in
three and a half weeks or something, so it was not exactly the most advanced piece of
software ever written. I think they basically thought it was never going to work, it
would never be fast enough, or it would never come together. And then, by the time
Warren picked it up and got excited about it, we had the play experience already there.
You could move around, you could fight, you could swing your weapon, and your stats
moved around and that kind of thing. We pitched a couple of stories and they bought into
it. And so they said, “OK, Warren, why don’t you take care of it?”
We had a huge advantage in that even though we were trying to make a hybrid
game and we were trying to figure out what a dungeon simulator was, we had all the
Ultima-ness of it to fall back on. Sure, we were inventing how to move and how to swing
your sword and all that stuff, but at the end of the day it was anUltima. You talk, you get,
you drop, you combine reagents, you use runes. We made up that spell system with the
tiles because that worked better, but even there we used theUltimarunes. I was a huge
Ultimafan. The first time I got to meet Richard, which was a year into the project, it was
awesome. It was like, wow, it’s Richard Garriott, rock and roll! I was so excited when I
got myUltima VIIbeta copy because we were working on anUltimaat the same time.
We just really thoughtUltimaswere cool on some level, and it was cool to be working
on it. I think they could tell that: “OK, these guys are trying to do the right thing.” And
the second story we brought was veryUltima, and they were like “OK, these guys want
to do anUltima.” Once Warren got involved they obviously felt that Warren could help
make sure things stayed on track, and it was pretty casual. There’s a reason it’s called
“UW,” because it wasn’tUltimaat first, it was justUnderworld. We did a lot of work on
our own assuming that that was what it was going to be but knowing we had to prove
our mechanics. And then hey, there it was...
It seems likeUltima Underworldwas very much designed around the technol-
ogy, instead of the other way around. How did the game design process work?
We’d all playedWizardry I. It’s not like we had nothing in mind. I had played tons of
Bard’s Tale 1when I was in junior high school, and we’d played the early, early dungeon
games. And we were obviously incredibly conscious of the technology. When you’re sit-
ting there timing all your assembler loops and trying to figure stuff out, there you are,
right? And it’s not like it was fast enough even with all our attempts to make it fast.
Game making is a lot different when your programmers are your designers and you
have one artist. It’s just a very different thing. You’re conscious of everything. You run
the game, and you hit the hotkey to switch into editor mode and then you attach the trap
and oh, the trap doesn’t really have the parameter you want. So you exit, change the
code, change the parameter, go back in, change the trap, go back into the game, hey that
worked, and so on. Because who are you going to talk to about it? Obviously, the three
of us who did most of the programming on the second half talked all the time, but even
so, we all built levels, we all wrote conversations, we all worked on the editor, we all
worked on the game. It’s a very different thing. Back then, one person could easily have
the whole game in their head. All disciplines, all elements, all content. Maybe not easily,
that’s probably a little glib, but they can do it. And then five years later you probably
couldn’t have the whole game in your head but you probably could have a whole disci-
pline in your head, or the story, or how it’s structured. And nowadays, if you’re a project
Chapter 26: Interview: Doug Church 505