(edit: I forgot to put the game name on the topic title,
the title should have been "Ultima Underworld: My two cents on controls" )

I often read how difficult the controls for UW are, given that WASD is not really fleshed out, so here the two cents on the controls from someone who played this game in 1994.

Just as an experiment, and as unusual as it sounds, don't use WASD, don't even use the keyboard. Using only the MOUSE and its TWO BUTTONS you can do 97% of everything in Ultima Underworld.

--- Movement, mouse only without keyboard ---

To MOVE, you keep the LMB pressed, you will move accordingly to the cursor position in the world window.
- Upper Window = Move Forward
- Lower Window = Move Back
- Left/Right of Center Widow = Turn Left/Right
- Left/Right of Upper Window = Move Forward Left/Right
- Left/Right of Lower Window = Strafe Left/Right

The more the Cursor is far from the center of the window, the faster you will move! This means you can move at ANY SPEED between sneaking excruciatingly slow to running very fast.

To JUMP, additionally press RMB: this means that, depending on the velocity with which you are moving, your jumps will be accordingly long or short.

--- Interaction with the World ---

For all other ACTIONS you can select the according Side Menu Icon and press RMB.

But once you have the hang of it, I suggest the CONTEXT SENSITIVE DEFAULT MODE, i.e. with all the icons in the Side Menu unselected.
In this case, when the cursor is on an object / door / lever / npc
- Short RMB click = Look
- Hold down RMB = grab object and hold until release
- Swipe with RMB = the game will use, press, push, open or talk to what the cursor is pointing at, according to the situation.

--- And for those remaining 3% of the times ---

Keyboard 1 and 2 = Tilting your view up / down, (3 to reset)
Keyboard E and Q = Levitating up / down (only once you have the respective spells)
A-Z, 0-9 = Type passwords and stuff in conversations ;)

---

I find, the gradual control of speed and the context sensitive interacting system incredibly clever. Sure, it's not what is standard now, but you can literally play this game one handed.

you have fully adapted to their control scheme. and make it work for you.

but, if you were to modify the game and improve its controls or other systems in one way, what would it be?

Cool question. Conforming to what we are used to now, if there's ever going to be a faithful remake, the answer is obviously the use of the modern mouse-look /WASD - except I'd use the mouse-wheel to gradually control the sneaking to running speed.

I'd really love if the the paper doll and the inventory on the side-tab were kept. The side-tab could be reached through toggling/undocking the mouse pointer with whatever key press (e.g. ctrl). If you drag an item from your inventory into the main window it's immediately placed in your hand and the mouse is locked back into mouse look.

Then again, an inventory belt could be scrolled by shift + mouse-wheel.
Just brainstorming.

I've read there is mouse-look mod and maybe it does something similar or has resolved the issue even better.
I agree that the native UW-keyboard-scheme for moving around is awkward, I don't use it, but an option to remap the keybindings should be mandatory for every game. The mouse-scheme still works for me because it's totally different and just two buttons, rather than a primitive attempt at WASD that forces rebinds in my head.

the mouse look mod is my project. it is here:
https://github.com/JohnGlassmyer/UltimaHacks

i'd be curious to hear whatever feedback you might have on it. rebinding the controls is something people have asked for but i haven't had time to implement yet.

the mouse scroll wheel is interesting. i guess it didn't exist on mouses in use at the time, so games didn't include it, but i think modding functionality mapped to the scroll wheel into these games wouldn't, in general, be very hard; i think the scroll wheel is handled in a standard way in the DOS environment.