I was barely walking under my own power at the time you worked on this, by the way. Probably the same for many others who have fond memories of old games and get to meet the people behind them.
(Side note: Did anyone on HN happen to work on Jedi Knight? Modding that game was my first under-the-hood exposure to computer software, from modding to hacking around the asset checksums to cheat or do other shennanigans in multiplayer on MSN Gaming Zone).
Thanks
https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/16/when-coding-style-surviv...
Here are some of my Ultima Underworld stories:
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/20/the-dangers-of-self-modifyi...
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-bugs/
https://dfan.org/blog/2011/03/17/one-more-ultima-underworld-...
Edit: EDMS/SOLITON.CC confirms above is correct (speculation about origin of the name is still speculation, however)
Seamus's physics system was really ahead of its time, but unfortunately a ton of the work of getting a physics system to work in a real game is dealing with edge cases, numerical stability, etc., and we had huge problems getting everything to an industrial-strength state. (You will probably not be surprised if you look at the code.) Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri's full biped physics eventually had to be replaced by run-of-the-mill sphere physics just to make sure that things worked 100% of the time instead of 95%. Flight Unlimited was the real culmination of Seamus's physics work.