I was reading recently about Ultima IV, which I've never played myself,
and was struck by the similarities to NetHack in the lead-up to the
game's climax: your character in that game must acquire a bell, book,
and candle from various locations in the game world, bring them to a particular spot, and apply the items in a specific order. Doing this successfully triggers an earthquake and causes the ground to split open, revealing a staircase leading down to the final dungeon of the game.
There are even similar messages triggered as each item is used (e.g.
"the bell rings on and on!" -- cf. NetHack's "the bell issues an
unsettling shrill sound...").
Here's a video of the sequence in Ultima IV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0AaT8j4s7A
Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had never heard of a particular inspiration for the invocation ritual beyond the general "bell, book,
and candle" reference -- anyone know if the Ultima IV endgame helped
inspire the invocation ritual?
- Michael
I was reading recently about Ultima IV, which I've never played myself,
and was struck by the similarities to NetHack in the lead-up to the
game's climax: your character in that game must acquire a bell, book,
and candle from various locations in the game world, bring them to a particular spot, and apply the items in a specific order. Doing this successfully triggers an earthquake and causes the ground to split open, revealing a staircase leading down to the final dungeon of the game.
There are even similar messages triggered as each item is used (e.g.
"the bell rings on and on!" -- cf. NetHack's "the bell issues an
unsettling shrill sound...").
[...]
Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had never heard of a particular inspiration for the invocation ritual beyond the general "bell, book,
and candle" reference -- anyone know if the Ultima IV endgame helped
inspire the invocation ritual?
I see that Ultima IV is from 1985, and assuming the rite that you
describe was already there. I recall the version of Nethack that I
played around end of 1980's beginning of 1990's didn't have the
invocation rite.
Right, so Janis is correct: ultima isn't the source of the thing,
it's the other way around. Nethack is the source for Ultima. Nethack
predates ultima.
It's likely a feature in a previous version of nethack, hack, or
rogue.
If we had an expert on those games (or on previous versions of
nethack) we could see the year and date implemented.
On 02.08.2021 22:25, Michael Meyer wrote:
I was reading recently about Ultima IV, which I've never played myself,Chris gave a [non-gaming] reference for the rite, but I wouldn't
and was struck by the similarities to NetHack in the lead-up to the
game's climax: your character in that game must acquire a bell, book,
and candle from various locations in the game world, bring them to a particular spot, and apply the items in a specific order. Doing this successfully triggers an earthquake and causes the ground to split open, revealing a staircase leading down to the final dungeon of the game.
There are even similar messages triggered as each item is used (e.g.
"the bell rings on and on!" -- cf. NetHack's "the bell issues an
unsettling shrill sound...").
[...]
Maybe this is common knowledge, but I had never heard of a particular inspiration for the invocation ritual beyond the general "bell, book,
and candle" reference -- anyone know if the Ultima IV endgame helped inspire the invocation ritual?
be astonished if another game was the paragon; there are a couple
references to other games in Nethack.
I see that Ultima IV is from 1985, and assuming the rite that you
describe was already there. I recall the version of Nethack that
I played around end of 1980's beginning of 1990's didn't have the
invocation rite.
Janis
Right, so Janis is correct: ultima isn't the source of the thing, it's
the other way around. Nethack is the source for Ultima. Nethack
predates ultima.
It's not an accusation of plagiarism or anything. I just think the similarities are intriguing and I'm interested in whether it's been
discussed before as a possible inspiration.
I don't recall any mention of its origin in any discussion here. The
definite answer may give someone of the Devteam who remembers and is
still around here in RGRN; as far as I see Pat Rankin is the only one
from these times who still posts here occasionally.
I've been reading about some older CRPGs recently and it's been fun to recognize elements similar to NetHack as they crop up in some earlier
games.
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