Differences from the originals

Controls and interface — both games

Mouse look and direct controls

Mouse look and WASD movement replace the original movement interface. Cursor mode provides direct inventory and world interaction. Small interface buttons show their action and shortcut on hover; see Controls for the current keys.

Pause and startup

Escape only pauses and releases the mouse and fullscreen. It never closes a panel, skips a movie, cancels an action or discards typed text. Open interfaces, targeting and the displayed weapon remain unchanged while paused and when play resumes. The initial title waits paused for a click; Introduction is selected from the menu instead of automatically playing on first use.

Combat and shooting cursors

Ordinary, melee and shooting cursors show gray, green, yellow or red enemy-health feedback. Charging arrows have their own color progression and ready blink. These replace the gargoyle health display and UW1 charge gem; UW2 keeps its embedded compass gem. Interfaces use a gray cursor, with smooth transitions between cursor states.

Spell and status panels

Composed runes, active spells, player statistics and the carried rune bag use the revised screen layout. Active-spell panels fit the occupied icons; composition appears only when runes are present. Panel and cursor fades remain synchronized.

Message history and independent messages

The lower message box retains separately timed messages, up to four wrapped lines. A new message need not erase an earlier one. Later messages cannot expire before the messages preceding them. The scrollable log retains ordinary feedback, including pickup and received-item messages.

Dialogue readability and controls

Conversation uses a scrollable transcript, numbered choices and shared text-entry panels. Inventory browsing remains available during dialogue. Speaker labels appear when needed to distinguish multiple speakers. A short pause after a selected reply improves readability without extending an existing scripted wait or delaying a terminal farewell.

Sleep presentation

When making camp, the scene fades first while the sleep message remains readable, then the message fades. Waking clears earlier sleep feedback and displays the wake result.

Viewport flashes and frame rate

Brief translucent flashes replace opaque single-redraw flashes. A small numeric frame-rate counter appears at bottom left and scales with canvas height.

Picture and animation — both games

Manually calibrated lighting and distance fades

I personally calibrated the palette-based lighting and distance fades for both games: ordinary terrain and creatures, water, lava and other self-lit colors, and ice. This was hands-on tuning of brightness, color response, fade shape and distance endpoints. These deliberate visual refinements preserve the original artwork and palettes except for the specific reviewed changes described here.

Continuous lighting and texture filtering

Terrain, creatures, items, wall artwork and 3D models share continuous distance lighting rather than the originals' separate coarse shading steps. Texture-footprint filtering reduces distant and oblique texture shimmer. Water, ice, emissive colors and translucent effects retain their calibrated responses.

Optional display adjustments

Gamma and saturation controls apply to the game, interface and cutscenes. Both default to 1.00. Color adjustment is applied while drawing; blending of translucent elements is an approximation rather than a separate final color-correction pass.

Rock and barrel shading

All boulder sizes use reviewed ambient shading, with darker cavities and a slightly darker lower side. Matching UW1 and UW2 boulders share relative brightness while keeping their game-specific hues. Both barrels use reviewed rounded shading. UW2 barrel contrast is matched to the UW1 response while preserving its hue.

Flasks, sprites and wall artwork

Reviewed repairs improve flask cutouts and translucent glass boundaries, selected sprite pixels, animation anchors and writing placement. Selected wall writings also have reviewed left-edge pixel alignment. These changes are selective rather than a replacement art set.

Nearby waterfalls and curtains

Eligible walk-through wall-art panels fade smoothly when the eye is very close: opaque at 0.25 tile, invisible at 0.15 tile. Distance is measured from the actual finite polygon. This replaces abrupt disappearance and does not apply to doors or solid walls.

Movie fades, scrolling and captions

Movie fades use continuous full-color precision. Hardware-dependent waits are represented by consistent average timing, and panorama scrolling is smooth with eased starts and stops while retaining its calibrated duration. Captions remain readable through their associated speech without holding up the artwork timeline.

Selected movie centering

The UW2 speaking Guardian and the three UW1 incense visions have fixed whole-pixel centering corrections. Other movies and dreams retain their original placement.

Hallucination textures and altered shading

Texture hallucinations use a native-inspired approximation of corrupted texture addressing while preserving normal filtering. The originals' low-resolution software rasterization and intermediate rounding produce tearing and flicker that a high-resolution GPU renderer does not reproduce exactly. Altered shading uses plausible deterministic DOS-like data in place of unrelated machine memory. These effects affect the live 3D world, including an orb's live view, while interfaces, weapon overlays and authored pictures remain normal.

Movement and combat — both games

Continuous creature movement

Ordinary creatures retain fractional positions and move at a fixed 120 Hz. Both originals add randomized fractional offsets before rounding movement back to a coarse grid, which can make individual steps uneven. Decision and animation timing remain separate from this smoother body movement; special Void creatures have their own rules.

Player jumping and momentum

Holding and releasing Jump controls jump height, with limited steering in the air. Movement retains momentum without adding general wall rebounds. The original automatic forward ledge guard is not reproduced, so moving beyond an edge can lead to a fall.

Collision and pushing

Steps and slopes use continuous collision and support checks. Pushing a heavy creature or a chain of creatures takes more effort, and creatures use their own mass when pushing. Wall injury follows inward impact speed rather than harmless motion along a wall; side contacts preserve ongoing downward motion.

Creature clearance and water boundaries

Creatures may plan through passages exactly as tall as their bodies, matching physical walking. Water-only creatures keep their full circular footprint on water rather than merely their center. Ice, dry ground and object tops do not count as water.

Creature responses to obstacles

Creatures can use carried keys at appropriate doors and avoid unsafe route edges more consistently. Acid Slugs and UW2 Despoilers approach after an observed shortfall or blocked launch instead of repeatedly attempting the same ineffective shot. Controlled flyers steer along walls without repeated horizontal crash damage. Posted guards cannot be pushed away from their stations.

Falling boulders

Falling rocks already exist in the originals. Here, resting and moving boulders use upright cylindrical collision bodies. Pickaxe-created rock fragments receive a small additional drop where space permits; rebounds are restrained. Tremor rejects a new rock whose horizontal footprint is already occupied in the same open vertical passage.

Crushing damage

A genuinely descending boulder can injure a player or creature beneath it, according to its size and speed. This direct crushing damage is an added gameplay rule, not just a visual effect.

Projectile aiming and damage

Weapon launches are calibrated to the shooting circle and full camera aim, with nearby-obstruction checks; gravity still affects the trajectory. Hand-thrown arrows and bolts do half their base ammunition damage. Physical ammunition loses half its outgoing damage after its first scenery ricochet.

Hit feedback

Creatures that leave green blood stains also have green hit splashes. Player and creature weapon strikes on water create a splash instead of a hard-surface flash; projectiles also splash on water. Hard walls remain hard surfaces even when their artwork depicts water or lava.

Items and interaction — both games

Carried weight and stack limits

Items on the cursor, including their contents, count toward carried weight. Ordinary stacks consistently support 1–999 items instead of reproducing the originals' count and bit-limit inconsistencies. Partial merges preserve excess items rather than losing them.

Automatic stacking versus explicit placement

Clicking a container icon uses automatic stacking. Choosing an empty container cell keeps a separate item or stack; choosing a compatible stack merges, while an incompatible occupied cell swaps items. Capacity and weight rules still apply.

Equipment, ammunition and tool shortcuts

Right-click shortcuts equip weapons, shields and other appropriate gear while respecting handedness. Right-clicking held ammunition stows it in inventory and fills compatible stacks first. Entering combat with a main-hand pickaxe or pole selects that tool for USE; other nonweapons retain ordinary fist combat.

Light sources

Right-clicking a held light can light and ready it in an appropriate equipment slot. World lights can be toggled without picking them up. Lit cursor-held lights consume fuel; ordinary storage and release paths extinguish paired light types consistently.

Torch ingredients and incense

Compatible ingredients can be applied with either click. A successful stack recipe processes one ingredient and stores its product using ordinary inventory and container rules, falling back to a drop when needed. UW1 burning incense can be smoked one at a time from a stack, including by using it at the mouth. UW2 heated honeycomb uses the same ingredient mechanics.

Complete container spilling

Spilling a valid world container releases all physical contents, trying alternative positions and then compact placement when spreading is impossible. Ammunition starts on local support where possible instead of receiving an unnecessary damaging fall; genuinely lower ground can still make it fall. The same support policy applies to ammunition released by a dying creature.

Persistent identification knowledge

The best item knowledge gained from inspection or NPC trade previews persists. The player's trade tray uses ordinary inventory Lore rules rather than a separate temporary difficulty. Knowledge does not disappear merely because an item changes location or ownership.

Container ownership

Portable bags can inherit ownership from their contents, and acquiring an owned bag clears ownership consistently through its nested contents in both games. Fixed containers have no effective owner of their own, while their contents can still be owned. Theft witnesses retain their normal reactions.

Trap warnings and disarming

Eligible pickup, use and open actions perform Search before committing the action. A discovered trap offers an attempt to disarm it, proceeding with the original action, or cancelling that action. This replaces the originals' world LOOK and Yes/No interaction; it does not make every scripted floor or wall mechanism disarmable.

Inspection, pickup and repair feedback

Passive LOOK describes the pointed object without waiting. Pickups and received items generate ordinary logged messages; hovering over the inventory weight number explains it in the upper description box. Equipment can be targeted directly onto an anvil, and selected hollow shapes have more usable clicking silhouettes.

Reviewed text and exchange repairs

Selected original typos, spacing errors, misleading referrals, repeated topics and broken reward handovers are corrected. Narration is distinguished from quoted inscriptions. Exchanges validate successful delivery before payment or reward completion, rather than losing items on a failed handover.

Maps — both games

Carrying a map matters

The player-centered minimap and full map require an accessible map item: on the cursor, in a hand or shoulder slot, or in a main inventory slot. A map inside a bag does not count. Visible charting stops when the map is unavailable or the location is unknown; exploration can still award experience while charting is stopped.

Additional map information

Charting includes doors, suitable bridges, stairs and ladders. During ordinary exploration, a concealed secret door looks like a wall until revealed. Overhead bridge slabs leave the terrain below visible. New minimap ink fades in; known changes and the full map update immediately.

Door-aware discovery

Closed solid doors block discovery and its exploration credit beyond them; portcullises do not. The originals' discovery checks ignore door objects. Updates occur at a fixed rate rather than once per rendered frame, so exploration experience can differ from the originals.

Level edges

Both originals can mistake a position beyond a left or right boundary for a tile on another map row, affecting outlines and exploration credit. Underworld Web checks both coordinates separately to prevent that unrelated discovery. This is not a claim that the originals wrap freely across the top or bottom of the map.

Map notes

Writing, selecting and erasing notes follow the visible cursor position, with consistent selection when notes overlap. Wheel and held-key browsing provide direct page controls.

Sound and music — both games

Continuous positional sound

World-sound volume and panning update as the listener and source move, rather than remaining fixed from the moment a sound starts. Splash sounds remain at the water-impact position as the player leaves. Suitable object interactions use the object's location rather than a listener-centered cue.

Impacts and feedback

Gentle landings are quiet, and impact strength follows the contact. Successful magical-scroll use has an audible casting cue. Played instrument notes use sound-effects volume independently of background music.

Music continuity and device choices

Selecting the current track does not restart it. Weapon-ready music returns after a conversation if the weapon remains drawn; an item placed on the cursor lowers it. Compatible Roland synthesis is available with the user's own ROMs, and music-device changes preserve musical position and held notes. UW1 saves also retain musical position on loading; synthesizer envelopes and reverb may restart. A fresh UW1 campaign starts dungeon music after character creation.

Magic and character progression — both games

A carried rune bag is required

Composing and casting require a rune bag somewhere in carried inventory, a carried bag or the cursor hand. Losing the last bag clears the composition, while learned runes and already-active effects remain.

Symmetric targeting and continuous motion

Forward-area spell targeting uses a precisely rotated square rather than coarse heading-dependent tile bounds. Movement-magic trajectories use continuous, symmetric calibration. These choices can change which targets are affected or where a moving subject lands.

Progression counters

Training-point counters do not wrap at a byte boundary. UW2 experience-cap checks occur before training points are published, and earned levels are evaluated consistently.

Safe effect admission and enchanted debris

A full active-effect list refuses a new effect before applying its movement, camera or quest side effects. Destroying an enchanted item does not leave a reusable spell payload on otherwise ordinary debris.

Ultima Underworld 1

Creature self-healing

Eligible enemy spellcasters can heal themselves; their healing casts had no effect in the original game. This behavior is enabled by default and can be changed in Preferences.

Vampire-bat eyes and selected sprite repairs

Vampire bats have brighter scarlet eyes to distinguish them from their bodies, without making the eyes self-lit. Worm and humanoid sprites have reviewed pixel repairs; cropped goblin heads and missing walking poses are restored.

Dialogue ink and introduction captions

Player dialogue uses a slightly darker shade from the original orange-brown family. Introduction captions have reviewed wording changes to match the recordings. The original artwork timeline is retained; captions do not introduce extra scene delays.

Fresh random state

Fresh games use a live initial random seed rather than always beginning with the same native seed. The game is not repeatedly reseeded during play.

Browser saves and original-save import

Pause saves the current UW1 activity in browser storage, and matching progress resumes automatically on startup. Save and Load use compressed Underworld Web .save files that preserve engine state and cannot be opened by the original games. Load DOS imports a save folder from the original UW1. Restart saves before returning to the title, where Journey Onward remains available. Original files are never overwritten.

Ultima Underworld 2

Void compass and Blackrock gem

The compass wanders in the Ethereal Void instead of staying frozen. Blackrock travel uses contact with the gem's eight physical faces instead of the surrounding trigger volumes, and its glow pulses smoothly.

Bounded Void creatures

Most special Void creatures remain near their authored homes. Lightning, spirals and the two special Void fish remain stationary while animating. These are deliberate movement adaptations, not a claim that every Void actor uses ordinary creature movement.

Ice and duration arithmetic

Ice has reviewed grounded rebound and airborne-steering adjustments. Paralysis duration and progression counters avoid the originals' narrowing and overflow errors; experience-cap handling is corrected.

Selected dialogue and artwork repairs

Broken dialogue links, mismatched news questions, repeated topics and unsafe exchanges have reviewed corrections. Selected creature and inventory artwork, wall coverage and platform-object placements are repaired. This does not imply that every remaining story branch is finished.

Compatibility limits

Bridges and ordinary 3D furniture remain fixed scenery; boulders are the narrow moving-scenery exception. Ordinary loose items do not receive direct item-to-item projectile collision damage or momentum transfer; eligible area effects remain separate. Exact DOS pixel rounding, rasterization artifacts and hardware-dependent animation pacing are not reproduced. The continuous movement, lighting and interaction policies above are intentional adaptations. Remaining unsupported systems and story paths are not presented here as deliberate improvements.