Chris at The Artful Gamer contacted me about an interview with Stephen Emond he wrote recently. Stephen Emond, otherwise known as Commander Falcon, has been working on his book, Ultima: The Ultimate Collector's Guide, for the past few years. With the book nearing completion, a copy was auctioned in a fundraising event organised by the University of Texas at Britannia Manor (Lord British's home). Chris from The Artful Gamer wrote a very interesting interview with Stephen Emond about the book and Stephen's background and meeting with Ultima developers. It seems that the book will also be published soon.
According to La Legende d' Ultima (who in turn got the news from Wing Commander CIC), John Watson has passed away. John Watson was involved with several Origin projects, mostly Ultima and Wing Commander. A permanent memorial page has been set up listing the games he was involved with, and memories written by those who knew him.
At Seven Towers, two mods (BG Keyring and SI Fixes) have been updated.
Ophidian Dragon, still Blogging Ultima after finishing Ultima Underworld 2, is now playing Serpent Isle.
The Titans of Ether website has been updated twice. Kultan, a dialogue writer, has joined the Titans. Also, a dev diary entry about Moonglow development (part 1) has been written. It is part of the forum and accessible only to registered users.
Other updates courtesy of Aiera:
Last but not least, Dino's Ultima Page has moved to a new location. The old shiftedphase site will remain online for a while until everyone updates their bookmarks, but will no longer be updated.
SB-X at Nuvie posted the first update in a year (exactly). Progress has been mainly as far as the engine core is concerned, and now a scripting engine is being used. Several spells are working, features have been added, and bugs have been fixed. Check out the Nuvie website for details on what's new!
Nikolai Faaland made an Ultima 7 Web Map "using Exult's map output feature", to quote him. Check it out!
Ophidian Dragon is currently playing Ultima Underworld 2.
Thanks Paulon for pointing out that there is now an Exult PSP port.
Also, a while ago (sorry for taking so long), Martin Metzler pointed out an article about Richard Garriott's home, Britannia Manor:
an article about Richard Garriott and his house Britannia Manor... of course the article is in german.
Taken on the same visit to Richard Garriott were the following two pictures posted in the GameStar blog by the editor who visited him.
2 days ago, Dino's Ultima Page celebrated its fifth anniversary.
Ophidian Dragon has finished Runes of Virtue.
The 5th anniversary of Dino's Ultima Page is fast approaching. Recently I bought a domain (Null Neuron - my site is the 'Gigi' one) which I'm sharing with some friends. Eventually I will move all my sites there, including this Ultima site. I suppose the URL will be http://gigi.nullneuron.net/ultima/, so I suggest you make a bookmark for later. I won't move the sites there yet, to leave some time for migration and to let everyone update their bookmarks, but eventually they're all moving. I've been on shiftedphase for 4 and a half years now, and I have to thank Eric (Edbgon) for the webspace.
This week I started work with a local IT company, meaning that even in summer I won't have much time for Dino's Ultima Page. Sorry...
At Aiera, Withstand the Fury Dragon informs the Ultima community that he will be away for a while (23rd July to 11th August), and anyone who would like to post news in his stead should contact him.
At Seven Towers, a bug with The Black Gate Keyring mod has been fixed.
New Windows build (Build 1286) of Iris2, the fan made 3D client for Ultima Online Freeshards, has been released. They have also added new Roadmap as all milestones listed in the Old Roadmap have been completed.
Efry has been working on providing CGA/VGA support for Nuvie and posted few screenshots in the project forum.
WtFD at Ultima: Aiera will be participating in the 21st World Scout Jamboree between 23rd of July and 11th of August and needs someone to help maintain the site during his absence. If you're interested, please let him know via the contact form.
Acording to Ophidian Dragon's blog Blogging Ultima, he had his computer die on him but is now back playing thru the Ultima series. He's currently playing Game Boy's Ultima: Runes of Virtue.
Ophidian Dragon has finished Ultima 7: The Black Gate. His next step will be to play Ultima: Runes of Virtue.
The latest news at La Legende d' Ultima appears to be quite interesting. My French is a bit rusty, but from what I've understood, there's a chance that EA will be working on a single-player Ultima CRPG.
Seven Towers' latest news reports that the NPC spellcasting reagent bug in the Black Gate Keyring mod has been fixed.
UV:Lazarus team member J the Yellow was present in an IGDA picnic held at Richard Garriott's property near Lake Austin. He wrote short event report and posted photos he took while there.
U6Project team has posted profile of team's dialogue writer, content manager and QA tester, WyrdWeb.
Phillip "Lanica" George has added virtual keyboard to his Exult Pocket PC port to make game playable on keyboardless Pocket PCs. He has also released 4 screenshots of exult on Pocket PC.
WtFD has overcome the problems with his computer and has resumed work on new areas of Lost Sosaria. He also posted 21 new screenshots.
Sorry for being a bit absent lately, but now I'm back. Thanks Petrell for catching up with the majority of news we've missed so far.
Ophidian Dragon has almost finished Ultima 7.
Recent news from La Legende d' Ultima includes news of a 3D client for Ultima Online (Kingdom Reborn), the U6P M3 release, a new forum, and a new domain.
At Seven Towers, Marzo Sette Torres Junior updated the Exult Intrinsic Reference, and fixed a few bugs in the Black Gate Keyring mod.
The Exult team has posted news:
Yes, we have done a lot of work in the past year:
- Our newest member, Phillip George, has succeeded in porting Exult to the PocketPC.
- Marzo has been actively working on his Keyring mod, in particular, improving Exult and Exult Studio to support further mod development.
- Many bug fixes, such as Marzo's recent implementation of missing weather effects in Serpent Isle. See the ChangeLog for the complete list.
- Support for the "Hq2x" and "Hq3x" screen scalers.
News at Forgotten World inform us that Story Writer/Editor position they announced just two weeks ago has been filled. They are still looking for Texture artists, Programmers (especially C++) and Composers though.
Withstand the Fury Dragon has completed the changes that he had to make due to change of Tilesets in his project, The Worlds of Ultima : Lost Sosaria, and resumed work on new areas. Unfortunately he seem to have also ran into computer trouble. Hopefully it can be resolved.
WtFD also added additional tools he has found to Ultima : Aiera.
Render Dragon has resumed work on U3Project after almost three years of absence. His more immediate goals include:
The first two are done and WAV playback is now handled by the SDL. Next task is getting graphics engine ported.
(Thanks for WtFD over at Aiera for noticing this)
I apologise for my sudden and unexpected disappearance. Series of unfortunate RL incidents rendered me unable to post news during the past one and half months. Unfortunately Dino also got busy with his end of semester exams (that ended just few days ago) so he too has been unable to post news at the main page. But here's summary of what's been happening in the Ultima community between now and the last update (hopefully I got most of them) :
Richard Garriott was recently interviewed by The Escapist. In the interview Garriott talks about his past, his present, his plans for the future and why he thinks most games just aren't good enough.
The Ultima 6 Project has released its third milestone. It features number of new areas to explore (Spider Cave, Buccaneer's Den, Yew, Paws, and Continental Britannia), improvements to areas introduced in previous milestones (Swamp Cave, Sewers, Britain, Cove) as well as numerous enchantments to core gameplay. The Gargoyles, both winged and wingless are also now present in the intro.
Titans of Ether have posted a video of the Ship model the player will be able to sail around in Redemption. They’ve also put up New Developer’s Diary by teams lead dialogue writer and editor, Direhaggis, revealing additional details about status of the main plot and town of Britain.
Forgotten World team have found out that Ultima IX : Ascension actually supports higher textures than ones used in game and have added two new screenshots as demonstration. They’re also planning to make changes to the plot of U9A and are looking for someone very familiar with the Ultima lore to help them in the effort. For more details refer their updated FAQ page.
Since last update about Ophidian Dragon’s Blogging Ultima, he has finished Ultima Underworlds and is well on his way to finish Ultima 7 : The Black Gate. He just took 3 day side trip to Isle of Fire added by the Forge of Virtue expansion and should finish the main plot few days unless he gets sidetracked by the few areas he has not yet explored. He also added screenshots he had previously left out due to lack of time.
For past months the Pentagram team has made further improvements to pathfinding, Avatar movement, item manipulation and missile trajectories
Dark Key, the project to recreate U7 and SI in the UO engine seem to have perished.
Ranman aka. David Randall has resumed work on Ultima 5 for Ti Calculators that was put to halt due to birth his son, Garrett. He already did major reorganization to the general data format and to the shoppe talk functionality squeezing out additional 6kb from game engine that is now down to 50kb! Combat and magic still need to be implemented before first release is made.
Lanica has managed to port Exult to Pocket PC. While many issues still remain to be solved to make it playable, making it just run is major achievement in and by itself.
Scythifuge continues to work on Savage Empires Total Convertion for Exult and has posted number of new screenshots in Exult Forum featuring many new items and graphics he has draw for his project.
New and newly found Ultima fan sites :
Julie's Savage Empire Blog - A new blog where Julie talks about various things about her favourite Ultima game – The Worlds of Ultima : Savage Empire.
Hipolito's Ultima IV : The Little Shepherd - Tells a hilarious story of Shepherd Sausalito's (mis)adventures in Britannia.
Matthew Johnston's Ultima VII Mod - Another Total Conversion mod being developed for Exult.
Gruck posted a topic in my discussion area with a link to an article in which Richard Garriott writes about his recent zero-gravity adventure with Professor Stephen Hawking.
Ophidian Dragon has finished Martian Dreams, in 5 days just like The Savage Empire, though there was a bit more gameplay to it.
As Withstand the Fury Dragon posted on Aiera, there exists a mod guide for Ultima V: Lazarus by Sylore which lists the mods and provides important information about them, such as whether they conflict with other mods.
I've changed the favicon for Dino's Ultima Page... I put a favicon of the wandering warlock from Ultima 1. It's a bit more Ultima-related than the old flaming letter 'D' on a black background, and also has a transparent background. It's also a bit of a change since I've used the same favicon for around 4 years now. If anyone wants the old favicon I still have it.
Since the last mention here, Ophidian Dragon has finished The Savage Empire, in 5 days as I had predicted. His blog has also caught the attention of Stephen Beeman, who left a comment in response to Ophidian's last day playing The Savage Empire. Ophidian Dragon has now moved on to Martian Dreams.
A certain Joshua Lawrence contacted both Withstand the Fury Dragon and myself about the Adventure Creation Kit, a tool by Chris Hopkins used to make Ultima IV/V-style RPGs. Joshua is maintaining a website about the Adventure Creation Kit.
23 new screenshots of Lost Sosaria have been released, and there is also some information about the city of Gauntlet which has been built.
Aiera has also posted news about Lost Sosaria and the Adventure Creation Kit, and one of the Project Britannia files it hosts has been updated.
Ophidian Dragon's quest has taken him to some of the most interesting places of The Savage Empire. In the volcanic lands, he has finished the quests of the Jukari and Haakur. He has found the hideout of the Urali, defeated Darden, and rescued Aiela, but has not yet managed to free Fabozz. Ophidian also used Aiela's crystal and descended into the long-abandoned Underground City of the Kotl.
Ophidian Dragon has started playing The Savage Empire, but does not appear to be too impressed about it. So far he has finished the Disquiqui and Yolaru quests (and possibly another since he mentions having finished three), but is stuck on the two quests involving boulders.
Aiera has updated some of its hosted files, particularly concerning Exult, Iris and Project Britannia. An entry for an old remake of The Complete Ultima 7 has also been added to the now-renamed Cemetery.
Also news gathered from Aiera, it appears that Razimus' project to recreate Ultima 7 in Ultima Online (which has been named "The Dark Key", by the way) has released some artwork.
La Legende d' Ultima has some news regarding its recent downtime, and spam problems with the forum there.
Infinity Eternal has recruited a new dialogue writer, Theron.
Dr. Matt Barton, an assistant professor of English at St. Cloud State in Minnesota, has researched CRPG history and has written a lengthy three part article (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) about CRPG evolution from early student programmed CRPGs of mainframe computers at the late 70's universities all the way to modern CRPGs of today. Must read for Ultima fans and CRPG enthusiastics or anyone interested in computer game history.
According to a post by Resle, Ashes engine development has slowed to a crawl due to real life circumstances. It's still too early for demo but he does plan to release more gameplay movies hopefully by the end of the month. He also lists features planned for next build.
The next build is going to feature:
- Finished, polished combat
- Finished, polished dialogues
- Reworked GUI (more practical, but arguably less nice to see - I.E.: no "live" paperdoll npc)
- Particle system
- beta magic
- beta fully scheduled NPCs
- beta menuAnd thanks to Olly, lots of new graphics.
Ophidian Dragon has finished Ultima 6. He also wrote a walkthrough by which it may be possible to complete U6 without killing a single being. It's untested though.
Check out the Files section of the discussion area for the latest world map (with fixed tiles) and tileset.
I also added some more information to the Ultima 1 info page yesterday.
Ophidian Dragon has managed to build a balloon and reach the Temple of Singularity in the Gargoyle Lands. He now has to visit the Gargoyle Shrines.
Yesterday, in the Files section of my Ultima discussion area, I uploaded the first public release of my Ultima 1 tool (map viewer, for now). You can't do much other than roam around the map and save a computer-generated world map to disk. A sample map is also among the files, and I have also started a topic with instructions on how to use it. What I did not write there is that you will also need SDL.dll. You might also notice a few small bugs in the program, some of which have already been fixed (but the latest version is not online).
Meanwhile, Ophidian Dragon has fetched the Vortex Cube and traversed Hythloth. He is now in the Gargoyle Lands and will need to assist both humans and gargoyles to complete his quest.
Ophidian Dragon, currently around half-way through Ultima 6 after nine days, has finished both the Clues quest and the Map Pieces quest. His next step will be to follow Sin'Vraal's advice and work his way through Hythloth.
At Lost Sosaria, eleven new screenshots have been released.
A quick news update:
Some news from the Ultima community on Easter Sunday:
I am pleased to report that my free-time Ultima 1 project has progressed from tile viewer to map viewer. Today I implemented basic scaling of tiles and also made the map viewer. There are four new screenshots at the discussion area of Dino's Ultima Page. Of course there are a few little bugs, like towns are appearing as signs and dungeons are appearing as towns, but that won't be too hard to fix.
I have very little spare time and therefore work on this Ultima 1 project is almost at a halt (until I have more time). This doesn't concern me much because I never claimed I'd have achieved anything with it. Maybe one day it will evolve into an Ultima 1 engine like Exult is for Ultima 7; maybe it will be moddable and even playable online... or maybe not. I simply don't promise anything with this little project, and for me any progress is more than I originally expected.
Ophidian Dragon has resumed his journey through the Ultima series after a couple of days away because of an interview. His blog entry for Ultima 6, Day 4 tells if his venturing into Dungeon Deceit, and his picking up Sherry the mouse as a tiny (!) addition to his party.
Following their release of Iris2, a trailer of Iris2 is available from the Ultima Iris website.
A pre-Easter update has been posted at Lost Sosaria. This news gives a short progress report and also includes a map of the Lands of the Dark Unknown.
There are a number of updates at Aiera concerning various remakes and mods. New Lazarus mods were spotted; Ultima Iris has released the first public build of Iris2, and several joke remakes were added. Check Aiera for details!
Exult mods Avatar Pack, Black Gate Keyring and Serpent Isle Fixes have been updated at Seven Towers.
Avatar Pack
version: 0.10.01
- Improved installation instructions.
- Added two new avatars: the bucket-headed avatar of U8 and U9 (both male and female versions) and a long raven-hair male avatar (XXXX).
- Retouched several avatars.Black Isle Keyring
version: 0.11.10
- New title screen for Keyring mod.
- Modified avatar bodies to be shape 1098.
- Merged updates from the Avatar Pack.
version: 0.11.09a
- Improved installation instructions.Serpent Isle Fixes
version: 0.15.05
- Added SI Fixes title screen.
version: 0.15.04a
- Improved installation instructions.
Ultima 4 : Virtue of Humility has been updated to version 7.0401.
Changes :
- Paying gold greater than or equal to what the Herb Lady wants, increases Honesty (Before it was Gold>cost)
- Iolo's class changed to a Bard
- Fixed Flicker, this time for good I hope. Y/ell sync to remove it if it does return
- Was told about /Z/tats removing game flicker as well..
- Fixed delay pause on load and changed resolution to 1024x768
Direhaggis posted a short progress update on Redemption at Titans of Ether forums. To sum it up : main plot about halfway done, 30 chapters in total, approx 60-80 hours of gameplay, chapters 1-6 scripted and implemented, 7-12 now being worked on, blacksmithing models and implements almost finished and some of the digitally painted 2D cutscenes finished.
I'm surprised, very surprised that no website in the Ultima community posted some stupid comment for April Fool's Day yesterday. It was a tradition. Not one that I liked, but at least it was a sign of life. Ultima fans must be in hibernation...
Meanwhile Ophidian Dragon, in his Ultima marathon, has been making some progress with Ultima 6. He cleansed a few shrines, stumbled upon the gypsies outside Trinsic, and tried to solve the Quenton murder. The next thing to do is a trip to the library.
Frilly Wumpus posted a lengthy article on the Project Britannia website about Ultima and the remakes. Inspired by a part of the article at the end which pinpoints the lack of communication between development teams, Withstand the Fury Dragon reiterated by posting another article about connecting developers at Aiera. The bottom line is that a lot of time and hassle could be saved if there were a single place for Ultima developers (from various projects) to discuss things and share resources. I offered the new discussion area at Dino's Ultima Page to serve as such a place.
In other news, Aiera has seen some updates to the site itself, which include a new "Joke Remakes" section. There is also a post by Thepal from Infinity Eternal about a demo.
Those who are following Ophidian Dragon's quest to play all the Ultima games (Blogging Ultima) will know that he has finished Ultima 5, and started playing Ultima 6. I must admit that having gone through Dungeon Doom without companions is quite an impressive feat. Ophidian Dragon has also caught the attention of some PC gaming sites.
For those of you who have enjoyed plundering Lord British's castle in the Ultima games, here is an interesting bit of news: the real-life Lord British was robbed by a group of teenagers, who stole and/or drank $5000 worth of alcohol, partied on site, and left behind their digital camera full of photos of themselves.
In today's entry to Blogging Ultima, Ophidian Dragon has stumbled upon a number of useful items, completed all the shrine quests, and reached Dungeon Doom.
As Aiera has reported, Lost Sosaria now sports a new development diary as well as 15 new screenshots.
As regards my progress with reverse engineering Ultima 1 (you can find some files at the discussion area), I've implemented a basic tile viewer (that I might eventually extend into a map viewer, and possibly even beyond), and have made significant progress with decoding the savegame file format. As well as finding out where your current transport is saved, I've also found out that a good amount of the file (at least half of it) is used to save objects that appear on the map, such as monsters and transports. I have partially figured out the way they are stored. While the files I uploaded have not yet been updated to reflect my latest discoveries, anyone interested in the details is welcome to contact me.
Some interesting news from Aiera: Ophidian Dragon is playing each Ultima game in sequence, and is blogging his progress.
Ultima: The Reconstruction has been updated three times since the last mention here. The updates are about Exult translation projects, Akalabeth remakes, and the graphics enhancement mod for Ultima V: Lazarus.
Note also that I've added a new 'forum' to Dino's Ultima Page. This is not really a forum but rather a Google discussion group. I figured it was the best idea with regards a place of discussion since the forums I've written, tried or seen are worth little against spam. I am beginning to add my files relevant to reverse engineering Ultima 1 to this group, though the discussion group may be used for any Ultima-related discussion. I am adding my U1 files there temporarily because they are obviously a work in progress; I may eventually create a webpage or a website for Ultima reverse engineering.
Voyager Dragon at Ultima: The Reconstruction appears to be bringing his site back to date slowly but steadily by adding one or two projects every day. Over the past two days, project entries relevant to Lost Sosaria, The Feudal Lands and Ashes have been added or updated.
Recently I've been toying with the idea of 'reverse engineering' some old game, to learn a bit about both the file formats of old games and the reverse engineering process itself. Now reverse engineering is a vast subject, and something like Exult is more akin to it. For now I've been content with trying to decode the savegame format of Ultima 1.
I chose Ultima 1 for a variety of reasons. One is that it's a very old game, and is thus simple enough to decode (learn to walk before you can run). Another is that no documentation seems to exist about the file formats of Ultima 1, although Xenerkes Dragon seems to have cracked them before me. So far I know the general layout of the savegame files, and I can tamper with just about anything in the stats and inventory. I've also located locations where coordinates, the player name, and a move count are saved.
Something very interesting to note is that at a specific location (FF 10, FF 10) you are taken to a bizarre place which I'm calling 'La La Land' [screenshot]. This doesn't seem to be a mess you encounter at very large out-of-range coordinates, because if you vary the coordinates by one, you end up in the sea in the normal world.
Now for some news from the Ultima community...
Petrell has managed to locate the Virtue of Humility website, which was thought lost when its domain, www.wizardportal.com, stopped working. The project has seen a couple of updates since the loss of the domain:
U4 version 7.0317
- May have fixed flicker by adding code to Y/ell command - try the Y/ell command and type in sync. If not, try looking at Z/tats and see if that works.
U4 version 7.0308
- Fixed delay on startup
- Changed game resolution to 1024x768 due to many video cards not supporting 800x600 on widescreen LCD
Lost Sosaria, which was recently brought back into the light, is now seeking to recruit some new team members.
In a recent discussion at Aiera, the fate of the Web Directory on Dino's Ultima Page has been revealed. Everything remake-related (including resources that survived the demise of particular projects) will be moved to Aiera where they belong, while the Web Directory will handle other Ultima sites.
I've been working on updating Dino's Ultima Page again. Here's what I've done today:
DOSBox 0.70 has been released. This can be useful to play some Ultimas that may not run under modern operating systems, especially Ultima 8.
Today's update for Ultima: The Reconstruction is about Ultima-based engines, namely the Dragon Engine and Nazghul.
In yesterday's update to Aiera, Withstand the Fury Dragon mentions that he has added an Orphanage (dead remakes with released content) and a Cemetary (dead remakes with no released content) as new sections to Aiera. WtFD is also offering webspace (which he has in abundance) to anyone needing webspace for an Ultima project website.
Aiera has been updated again today, where several remakes have been added to the site.
As many of you probably noticed, just about every part of Dino's Ultima Page except the news has been collecting dust and cobwebs. There is much work to do but it has to start somewhere, so today I went over the info pages for Ultima 1 to 3 and did a little cleanup, removing dead links and adding new links. There are still some dead links and the pages are far from complete, but it's better than nothing.
I have many plans for Dino's Ultima Page, among which are a redesign, adding more guides, restoring the Feedback section, completing the guides I started and never finished, bring the Lost Vale fanfiction nearer to its original form, somehow change the web directory, and several other ideas. Considering the news file is nearing a size of 600KB with the weight of almost five years of news, I will also have to do something about this before Dino's Ultima Page starts loading with the speed of a snail. However, as usual, it all boils down to one problem: time.
The Lost Sosaria site, fresh from relaunch, has been updated with some screenshots of Castle Black Dragon.
Over the past few days, Voyager Dragon has been working hard to bring his site, Ultima: The Reconstruction, back up to date. On the 17th, Voyager removed some cancelled projects and added a few new ones. Other updates are about the Avatar Pack for Exult, the Ultima 6 Project and Project Britannia, Ultima 3 for Mac OS X, and a brief history of Ultima: Escape for Mount Drash followed by a mention of the recently-discovered DrashRL by Santiago Zapata.
WtFD at Aiera has posted news informing that LairWare has released Ultima III 2.0 for Mac OS X. Game features improved graphics but also contains number of classic tile sets from various platforms. The demo version's only limitation is that you can't visit the land of Ambrosia. Registering costs 15$.
WtFD has also restored Lost Sosaria but apparently work on the project has to be restarted from scratch due to loss of both primary and backup copies of original Lost Sosaria. But at the same time he assures that he has learned a lot since he began the work on the Lost Sosaria and the NWN custom content community has had time to mature has released tons of custom content he plans to take advantage of. Also he has shrunk the game are to more reasonable size from 2000(!) to around 350-400 areas and now focuses only on one continent. Have to tip my hat for this guy and wish him luck on his endevours!
Infinity Eternal composer Jeremy LaMantia has released some of the music he has been working on. Released music includes two virtue themes, one for valor and one for compassion, and theme for town of Vesper.
Thepal has upgraded the Infinity Eternal site and posted a progress update :
I decided that the website needed an upgrade, so I threw this one together.
As for the progress, it goes along at a steady pace. The Wiki is taking slightly longer than I anticipated, probably because I've just started a new job and therefore am working a lot. Life doesn't seem to want to let this project progress quickly.
The good news is that two people have contacted me about joining the team. Jeremy LaMantia is a talented composer who has already written eight different themes that I've heard.
MartinLoki is a world-builder who is hard at work creating the heightmap for Britannia. If you're wondering about the size of this game, picture Britannia in Ultima 7. Then double it. Then double it again. Then multiply it by around 100. Ok... that might be a slight exaggeration. But it is huge. Those of you that have played Oblivion, we're aiming for around four times the size of Cyrodiil. For some real world figures, we're talking 8 miles by 8 miles (13km x 13km). Which is 64 square miles (165 square kilometres). And that's not including the other worlds you can visit as well. This will be Britannia like it has never been seen before.
Now's the time to contact us about joining the team. If you think you can help, let me know at thepal at etherealsoftware dot com dot au.
In other news, we once again have a forum, so feel free to drop by and fill it with posts.
Zephyr posted an update at Project Britannia site about the status of the Ultima 6 Project :
Just a quick update to let everyone know we're still alive. Sorry that we have not kept the news up to date. The U6 Project has primarily been working on their content, and they are finishing up what they're calling M3 Part 1 as we speak. No timeframe has been announced, but most of the content is in place and is being tested.
Frilly Wumpus has been busy working with WyrdWeb on revamping the Project Britannia conversation system to use what's known as Usecode. This is a more complex and extremely flexible way of editing NPC conversations. This will allow a whole host of new quest concepts to be implemented, plus a bunch of new, fun features.
The U6 Project still looking for people conversant with the Siege Editor to help us finish up their content. That is their main blocking item. All the technology is in place; they just need people to help finish building the world. They also still need portrait artists.
Stay tuned! We are very much still alive and kicking.
Also Frilly Wumpus made an addition to the previous news topic that Gileathane Dragon, a writer and QA for Lazarus, has recently joined U6P and is currently getting familiar with the toolset and will be helping out where needed in dialogue, quests, and when he's comfortable with his skills, world building.
Iris Team have abandoned development of Ultima Iris and have started project from scratch using Ogre 3D engine. Iris2 (also known as Iris-Ogre) has already been in development for 6 months and release is planned for the end of the month.
Exult mod, the Black Gate Keyring, has been updated with new SI-style avatar portraits and sprites and new "angry" portrait for Laurianna glows. The new Avatar portraits and and sprites are also available in Avatar Pack. Both Mods can be downloaded from Seven Towers.
After several months of silence, Voyager Dragon has returned to update his site, Ultima: The Reconstruction. In particular he mentions the release of Lazarus, and he also added a page for Online Remakes.
One of the online remakes is a new project, and was first seen in a comment to Aiera's latest news post. Called UO to U7, this new project aims to rebuild Ultima 7 using the Ultima Online engine.
The people at Forgotten World have posted a quick update to report that they have decoded several instructions of the Ultima 9 script format, and are capable of creating teleporters to any location of the maps.
Frilly Wumpus has posted a quick update in Project Britannia forums on how the project is progressing:
- The new areas planned for U6P Milestone 3 include Yew, Buc's Den, Spider Cave and possibly Paws
- Three new people have joined the team : Quentico (World Building and QA), WyrdWeb (Writing and QA) and KooK Dragon (QA)
There have been many improvements and enchantments to core Project Britannia systems including but not limited to :
- Enhancements to the conversation system to support some of the complex conversations in U6P
- Implemented "usecode" system that allows performing more complex actions inside conversations, banters, and dynamic right+click menus on items.
- A totally revamped banter system to allow building of complex banters reminiscent of some of the Bioware classics.
- Many, many tunings and bug fixes.
Frilly Wumpus also posted that new and improved beta tools and tutorials have been released and are available at Project Britannia Wiki.
Latest news entry by WtFD in Ultima: Aiera site informs that all site content from the old site have been fully restored. WtFD also mentions that he plans to restart work on Lost Sosaria.
Following Aiera's redesign, the site has been updated several times over the past few days. Withstand the Fury Dragon has been adding new information pages and updating the files it hosts. The old site is still up and may be used for files that are missing from the new site. Withstand the Fury Dragon also posted a TODO list for the site to show what he plans to do for Aiera.
Remember JP Morris' IT-HE Software site? Well, this is not really an Ultima-related update, since the new page added is about Deus Ex (Deus Ex: The Fourth Coming), but those who have played the game may enjoy this new section.
Vividos has announced the discontinuation of the Underworld Adventures Project :
Project discontinued
I'm sorry to say that the current status of the Underworld Adventures project is "inactive". I didn't find enough time in the last few months and years to productively work on the project. Another thing that slowed me down a bit is the fact that it should be possible without much work to get Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 to run on Windows XP and later (via the proper settings), using DosBox under non-Windows operating systems, or with using VMware (Player) to emulate the old operating systems.
Nevertheless Underworld Adventures was a fun project and I learned much about open source development, licenses, people, doing script and graphics programming. Hope you enjoyed trying the early versions of Underworld Adventures!
Withstand the Fury Dragon has returned. While away he switched jobs four times, got himself engaged (Poor chap. My condolences ;-p.) and has had more than his share of computer problems. Now that he's back he plans to upgrade Aiera site to, among other enhancements, allow the developers to submit news by email.
The Ultima Digital Music Archive at Dor-lomin: The Realm of Hurin has been updated with Ultima Online music. Thanks goes to Peter Haytko for reporting this piece of news.
The latest Ultima information collecting effort is The Codex of Editable Wisdom. This wiki was once dedicated to Ultima V: Lazarus, but had died, and is now being extended to Ultima in general. Anyone willing and able to contribute information is encouraged to do so.
Santiago Zapata has created an arena-like game called Drash Roguelike, which borrows elements from several Ultimas. For example, there is the background story of Ultima: Escape From Mount Drash; the graphics are from Ultima 4 and there is music from Ultima 8. Basically you are thrown in an arena and must fight your way out. It can be quite a fun game.
In other news, the Titans of Ether are seeking to recruit 3D designers and worldbuilders.
Nazghul 0.5.6 has been released. Version fixes a crash when dying upon exit from a cave and various other minor bugs.
Thepal has posted news on Ultima IX - Infinity Eternal site informing that he's soon ready to start assembling a team for the project. But first he'll be creating Wiki based Encyclopedia of Britannia where he plans to add the most complete collection of information on Britannia and the worlds it has been in contact with, as well as everything he has done thus far for Infinity Eternal. It'll be for the teams use only and Thepal estimates that it'll take another month to complete.
Anyone interested in helping can already contact him but the wiki won't be available until it is closer to completion.
Contrary to the activity level that has become the norm lately, there has been a good amount of news from Ultima websites over the past couple of weeks.
Ultima IV Multiplayer is changing web host, and warns that the forums are down and some links may not work.
The Ultima 6 Project has released some screenshots of the work of Riptzen, a worldbuilder on their team.
News from the Seven Towers website: there have been several fixes to the Black Gate Keyring mod.
A couple of updates from the Titans of Ether give a little idea about what's going on, as well as provide 4 new tunes to listen to.
The Dragon Press, silent for a long while, has been updated with some new content, namely Ovo's "Dead Ends" and the completion of Shadow of Light Dragon's "The Black Ankh".
A short update to the Pentagram page introduces Brian Tietz, the newest member of the Pentagram team, who improved pathfinding in Pentagram. Some fixes are also mentioned.
So Christmas has passed... I hope you enjoyed the Christmas lunch based on torax... er... turkey and that Santa Claus brought you several wonderful toys.
The Forgotten World team also thought it fitting to provide a nice little Christmas present, and released two new screenshots showing off their self-written terrain editor.
Ashes : Two Worlds Collide team has been interviewed by Stefa RPG. Team also released 7 new screenshots.
Nazghul 0.5.5 has been released. Major changes include multiple saved games; more meaningful use of character stats; basic character creation; and new dungeons, quests, NPC types, and characters. Unfortunately only compiled version available is for Arch Linux; rest of us have to compile it from source or wait until compiled versions are released for our platform.
David Randall has finished the tileset for his Port of Ultima 5 for Ti Calculators and posted 2 screenshots in project forums to allow comparison between TiCalc and PC versions.
According to Gordon McNutt's blog, the release of next version of Nazghul is planned for December 22. The new version will feature, among other things, a new quest aimed at the early game.
Marzo Sette Torres Junior, a member of the Exult team, has just launched his new website: Seven Towers. In this new site one can find two of his Exult mods, as well as some documentation for the Usecode C used by Exult. Note also that this new site has been added among the Specific Info Sites in my Ultima Web Directory.
My list of Exult mods, ever growing, has been updated.
According to what he wrote on his website, La Legende d' Ultima, Sergorn seems to be pretty disappointed with Gothic 3. He added a review of the game to his website, as well as a gallery.
Forgotten World team have managed to make normally invisible objects that are used to trigger scripts, items and monsters in the game world visible. 4 new screenshots were added to give us a peek at what this feature does.
They've have also figured a way to add music to U9A and are now looking for talented composer to join their ranks
ShadowMoses has posted an update on the status of Ashes: Two Worlds Collide stating that while the project has been dormant for a while due to commitments imposed by real life(tm), the project is very much alive; and to prove it he posted a progress report:
...I finished importing all the creatures, monsters, critters (or whatever you like to call them) into the game. In total there are over 40 variations from chickens to stone golems and some will include sub-classes such as -shamen , -ranger and -warrior.
On top of this the men of the Ashes world have been joined by women and we're not sure whether this is a direct result or not but some of the men have at the same time become fatter while others more muscular... and inevitably children have arrived too, both boys and girls. Family dynamics are finally starting to show!
NPC's are also much more skilled these days, they can for example operate a grindstone and sharpen their swords, cook in the kitchen, repair their houses, farm their lands and even go to church. NPC's aren't fully developed however. they still have much too learn.
ShadowMoses also states that while they can't show the stuff now due to project being between builds, he hopes to have something to show by christmas.
Hubert Maier has ported Nazghul to AmigaOS4 (PPC).
A new Ultima 4 Multiplayer shard is available at http://www.demarco.com/ultima/.
An Economy and Sales update for Ultima 6 Online has just been released. Trade dialogues have been implemented, and you can mark items as not for sale to prevent selling them by mistake.
Hawkwind from the Forgotten Worlds project reports that their team has managed to decode the file format for the models used in Ultima 9. They have released a new 'screenshot' with the following description:
"After spending a lot of time on decoding the file formats, we finally managed to unravel the file format for the models used in U9. The picture below shows a render scene from blender, a 3d modeling program using the models and textures from Ultima IX Ascension. We are using a self-written Python script to import models to blender where we can pose and modify them."
The Forgotten Worlds project has also extended its team openings.
Forgotten World team have managed decode Ultima IX Ascension model file format and are now looking for 3D-modellers and texture artist (in addition to talented programmers mentioned earlier) to join their ranks. They also announced the openings in various Ultima forums including Ultima 5 : Lazarus, Exult and Titans of Ether
-Direhaggis- posted a small status update shedding some light on the current state of development of the Ultima IX : Redemption.
RPGWatch have posted a lengthy interview with Lazarus Team Lead Ian "Tiberius" Frazier.
Many cRPG players see Ultima IV through to VII as a revolutionary period. The work to bring Ultima V to life with a modern engine - Dungeon Siege of all things - must surely be one of the most ambitious mod projects ever undertaken and successfully completed. If you haven't played U5: Lazarus, you owe it to yourself to experience this amazing work that really does succeed in recreating the atmosphere and soul of Ultima. Jesse Rink interviewed project lead Ian "Tiberius" Frazier to provide this in-depth retrospective on the project.
From the most recent news at UltimaDot, it appears that the entire RPGDot team has left the Jolt-owned RPGDot to start a new, independent site called RPGWatch. This probably means that we won't be seeing Ultima-related news at either of the two sites for a good while.
The latest news at La Legende d' Ultima is about Gothic 3, the U6P Milestone 2, and the Lazarus French release.
The Second Milestone of The Ultima 6 Project has been released and is now available for download at http://www.u6project.com/.
One of the latest features at Gamasutra which Hoki-Aamrel the Cherry-Red Dragon kindly emailed me about was the Gamasutra Quantum Leap Awards, which explores some of the best RPGs ever in the quest to find the one RPG that made the biggest 'quantum leap' in the history of RPG gaming.
While the Ultima series did not make it among the top five, this was really because so many of the Ultima games were voted for that no one game got enough votes to rival other RPGs. The Ultima series received an 'honorable mention' and one can read several interesting commentaries about some of the best installments in the series.
Matt Hutaff, of the Ultima 6 Project, announced that the release of Milestone 2 is very near. It should be released this weekend if everything goes as planned. This new release features Cove, Britain and a new dungeon.
Meanwhile Corv, leader of the Titans of Ether, posted about the continuing forum and provider problems, and also wants to recruit a 3D artist and a dialogue writer.
Unfortunately I have not completed my Savage Empire guide, but I am releasing it anyway. Since I am about to start University and it's not likely that I'll have much time to work on it, there's no reason to keep it hidden, considering a big part of it is finished. If I resume work on it I'll post an update.
Ultima IV : Virtue of Humility has been updated. The update fixes possible crash that could occur during rune creation.
Forgotten World Team is looking for talented coders to join their ranks and help them with the project.
The French version of Ultima V: Lazarus has been released. You can get it from their downloads page.
Some words from The Red Mage about his project, Ultima 8 Revisited:
Ultima VIII using the NWN engine is back on schedule. After several personal set backs the project is in full speed ahead.
In fact The Red Mage has already released a demo of the remake. Meanwhile The Red Mage is looking for talented people who would like to help and are members of the Bioware/NWN community. Such people should visit the project's guild website.
Last night I finished the walkthrough in the Savage Empire guide. Today I upgraded the guide to XHTML 1.1, which means it uses a more recent standard than the rest of Dino's Ultima Page. While the walkthrough was the largest page in the guide, I still have to work on some of the other pages, such as Items, Bestiary and Places. The Dialogue page is the only one that will be partially finished when the guide is released, because it will take a while to collect all dialogues and implement them in PHP. At this rate I might release the guide in about a week. I hope not to take longer than 2 weeks, because in 2 weeks' time I start University, which means I will no longer have time to work on the guide.
The page dedicated to the Ultima 5 for TI Calculators has been updated to reflect some of the latest features of the remake.
It looks like The Red Mage, who had released a demo of Ultima 8 for Neverwinter Nights and later cancelled his project to give space to the Exile remake, has resumed his effort after Exile's demise. The project has its own website, which is currently empty, but if you check back later, there should be some new material. You can also check out the project's NWVault page, where a couple of files are already available. Note that I have updated this project's entry in my web directory.
As a followup to the last newspost's info about EA releasing Ultima 7 for the PSP, Gruck pointed out a blog entry that will probably kill all excitement. It's extremely likely that the PSP version of Ultima 7 will be the dismal SNES version.
La Legende d' Ultima has added a page dedicated to Ultima V: Lazarus, featuring a map of Britannia, a screenshot gallery, a downloads page (currently empty) and quite a bit of info. Also, in the news on La Legende d' Ultima, Sergorn notes that the French version of Lazarus should be available by the end of September.
Has it really been three years since the last hidden thing in Ultima 8 was found? Looks like it, but it's not over. Heiko Fischer provided me with a treat for the "Objects Hidden Behind Walls" section. He found a hidden key blank that can open several doors all over Tenebrae. Check out said section for more information and screenshots.
The Savage Empire Guide is progressing nicely. Although I haven't worked on it today, yesterday I made great progress in the walkthrough and also finished implementing all cutscenes in the guide. That's right; you will be able to view the cutscenes as they are in the game, online, when the guide is released.
In other news, it seems that EA will be re-releasing Ultima for the Playstation Portable (PSP). According to a PDF document that Steve Sander pointed out, Ultima 7: The Black Gate will be one of 14 'old' games to be released for the PSP by EA.
You might have noticed that the forum here has been temporarily closed because it was being inundated with spam. I am currently working on an update to the forum script, and until then, the forum will remain closed. All topics have been backed up and nothing will be lost.
Another thing of note is that I have finally resumed work on the unreleased Savage Empure Guide, after a year-long break. I have found a way of loading images directly from the tileset, which saves a lot of work because I don't have to stay copying images, pasting them into a new file, and setting transparencies.
David Randall, who is developing the Ultima 5 for TI Calculators remake, posted in the old Ultima news topic that he has just finished the cutscene that comes up when the whole party dies and Lord British resurrects it. The next step is the "Hole Up & Camp" Cutscene.
La Legende d' Ultima has undergone a maintenance update, which includes updates to the Ultima 8 (particularly regarding the Lost Vale), Arthurian Legends, Ultima Underworld, Gothic 2, and Other Universes pages.
Also, an update to Ultima 6 Online has been released, where horses have been added, weapon damage has been changed, dialogue has been improved, several new places to live have been added, and several bugs have been fixed.
Project Britannia team will be releasing unstable builds for public testing as they work toward projects 3rd milestone. Feature list provided by Frilly Wumpus is rather impressive. For information of build status and downloads visit Britannia Wiki.
The members of The Feudal Lands development team have been working hard toward their first stable public release. Their goal is to get it released within a week.
Anyone who still checks the forum probably already noticed the large amounts of spam that have been plaguing it for a while. I am working on an upgrade to the forum script, but I will need people to help me test it before I can use the new script. Later this week there will be a public beta test where everyone can poke around the new script and report any flaws. Anyone interested in taking part should contact me by email. It won't take too much of your time, and your contribution will be vital in improving the forum and keeping spam at bay. You can also try out the new features, such as account registration, on the forum before I actually release the script to the public.
La Legende d' Ultima, which has been silent for months, has a couple of new newsposts. They speak of Ultima Online and of the Lost Vale box that surfaced a while ago.
According to latest update posted by David Randal in the Ultima News topic, the Ultima 5 for TI Calculators is 82.5% complete. Latest completed features include :
- Summoning and killing the Shadowlords is working.
- All shrine quests are complete.
- Finding Lord British's items is complete.
- Using all special stones is working.
- Falling into the Underworld is working.
Ultima 6 Online has been updated. While main focus of the update is bug fixing and balancing, it does include number of new features including horses, 'returnbody' command for returning players dead body to place of his death and improvements to 'look' command. For full list of changes visit U6O Forums
The Nuvie project is still alive, as is confirmed by news that appeared on their website a few days ago. After almost a year of silence, making many people think the popular project had some sudden demise, there is now a list of what has changed in Nuvie, on the Nuvie website. There is also a new section in the navigation with a link to the Changelog, and links to very organised Progress pages for each game.
Take a look at the Ultima News topic. David Randall, author of the Ultima 5 for TI Calculators remake, has been hard at work on the Shrines quests and the Codex, as some new animated gif demos he posted in that topic demonstrate.
According to Ultima 6 Online page next update is coming on August 19th.
Ultima IV Multiplayer developer Johnny Wood has been employed by Midway Games and had to move to Austin, Texas and thus have not had any time to dedicate to the project. Fortunately he should be again soon. In the meantime he has been able to enlist Steve Conley to help him in with the project and Steve has already managed to port both the server and the client to Linux and Solaris and is now working on scripting support and stronger database integration. They also plan on scripting all of the Ultima IV specific parts of the game so that the engine itself can be used to easily create early Ultima style mods.
Titans of Ether site is down once more due to technical difficulties. While waiting the site to come back you can still visit their forums.
According to Nazghul Devblog having fixed all reported bugs in project CVS, Gordon McNutt is now focusing on introducing number of new features into the engine. Currently they include character creation, text coloration, mini sprites in UI and NPC's as light sources.
A couple of months ago, an audio interview with Zephyr from the Ultima 6 Project was added to the IKickPuppies site. Now, the same site has released a new audio interview with Tiberius from Lazarus. You can get both interviews from the audio page at the IKickPuppies site.
Zephyr from the Ultima 6 Project posted a screenshot showing that there will be gargoyles in the Milestone 2 release.
Zephyr from the The Ultima 6 Project team has posted an update stating that they won't be able to release the Milestone 2 at end of July as planned and no new date will be set, instead it'll be "done when it's done." He did give a quick rundown of what has been done and what is left to do :
* The town of Cove is fully populated, and is somewhat expanded over the original U6.
* Britain is nearly fully populated. Most of the houses are furnished. We still need to finish the museum, the town hall, the mint, and the conservatory.
* NPC shopkeepers need to have shop inventories populated.
* NPC houses need to be stocked with items that are interesting (such as things you might be able to steal, etc.).
* A few of the NPCs that live in and around Britain are not going to make it in to M2.
* The drawbridge for the castle works. Niko recently completed the last piece of it, which I still have to get in-game.
* The "getting out of the castle" quest is not yet implemented.
* Some additional plot points need to be revised.
* A brand-new encounter will take place in Cove. No work has been done with this.
* Lots of in-game unit testing will need to happen before we can play-test.
* One of the dungeons needs to be fully stocked. This dungeon is roughly 2/3 stocked at this time.
* Guards need to be added to all three of the major locations: Castle Britannia, Britain and Cove.
* About 2/3 of the NPC portraits for Britain need to be completed.
Zephyr also reiterated teams need for additional portrait artists and world builders good with the Siege Editor. Those interested should make a post in their forums.
David Randall, the author of Ultima 5 remake for TI-calculators, posted two new gif animations in the Ultima News topic showing new features that he has implemented : clocks can be looked at to check what time it is in game, musical instruments can played and troll's now lurk beneath bridges of Britannia and may demand toll from innocent travellers and passer-by's. Two additional gif's can be found in his Ultima 5 topic in TI-Freakware forum, one showing random enemy generator in action and the other showing how torches can now be used to increase viewing distance in dark areas and crystal ball to view the mini-map.
Titans of Ether site and forum are now back online and the forum has a new look. According to Corv, the downtime was result of serious hacking attempt that, hopefully, have now been taken care of. In another topic, Direhaggis, the project lead dialogue writer has posted a mini update. He does not go into detail but assures that progress has and is being made in all areas.
Nazghul version 0.5.4 Mac PPC binaries have been released. Universal Binaries for Intel Macs should also be available soon.
Ultima Iris Developer Framework 0.4 has been released. New in this release :
-Grannyviewer 0.4.0.1 (Dress and Hue-Color the Granny Models, SMD Import/Export)
-IrisEdit 0.95 (Texture Editor added, Define High-Res Groundtextures for Iris, 3DS Import bug fixed)
-ParticleEdit 0.93 (UO - Spelleffect ID added )
-IrisMapEditor 0.31 (support for M.Legacy added)
-Maprenderer 0.21 (Tool to select Renderarea added)
The news of the day is definitely that today is the fourth anniversary of Dino's Ultima Page. Happy birthday to my first and biggest site! Unfortunately things are not looking too good since I found a very demanding summer job; I'll try to keep the site up to date but I don't think I'll be able to work on things like the Savage Empire Guide as I had planned.
In other news, Withstand the Fury Dragon posted at Aiera about current and future changes that the Time Immortal websites are and will be undergoing.
Voyager Dragon has again been sighted! This elusive creature has once again been spotted at Ultima : The Reconstruction where he added two new news posts about various mods that have been created for Exult. Is he planning a comeback or is this some secret plot to get our hopes up? Stay tuned as we bring you more news as the events unfold.
This is Toni "Petrell" Hurskainen, DUNN (Dino's Ultima News Network) News, reporting to you live from the scene of the incident.
In other Ultima news :
Resle from Ashes has posted an update informing that while Shadowmoses is off on his honeymoon, work on ashes continues albeit slowly due to real life constraints. He also lists things he has been working on, going into bit more detail on their modular portrait engine that he have been working on with their 2d artist, Vic Urievsky.
Forgotten World project founder and team lead "Firstknight" can no longer dedicate time to the project due to real life constraints. Fortunately rest of the team have decided to continue his work and have already met some success in figuring out and decoding some of the Ascension files. Project also has a new domain : www.forgottenworld.de
Ultima Iris client has been updated to version 0.8.7. Here's the list of changes :
Bugs fixed:
* Ship support for all UO ships
* Walking bug fixed (hack)
* a.s.o.
New Features:
* Speechsupport for RunUO (speech.mul)
* Diff-Mul Support
Nazghul DevBlog has been revived after half year dormancy.
Ultima Aiera's forum, the Sword and Shield has been down for some time now. Also The Titans of Ether transition to new host hasn't gone as smoothly as has been hoped and the site is again down for maintenance after being up only few days. Hopefully the problems are only temporary and we'll see the site fully operational again soon.
At my Ultima news topic, David Randall reported that combat is beginning to take shape in his Ultima 5 remake for TI Calculators. The remake also sports a new look, which you can see in three animated screenshots he posted in the Ultima news topic. You can read what people commented about this, at a topic at the U5TICalc TIFreakware forum.
The Titans of Ether posted the following news a couple of days ago:
Finally we have a new, trustworthy provider!
The days where our site was down once a day and our database was deleted every few month are over! Now you can use the board without fear again ;)
Thanks Hawkwind for this great deal!
We didn't have access to the admin page of the old provider for 2 weeks that's why the board is now how it was two weeks ago which means a few people will have to register again and a few posts are gone. Sorry for that inconvenience, but as I wrote before, the days of fear are over. So go and use the forum! Post away ;)
Considering their whole site seems to have gotten deleted, I wonder how "trustworthy" this new provider actually is. Kind of reminds me of the Guardian: "...for I shall be your companion, your provider, and your master!"
Over the past few weeks, the Pentagram team has been working to improve Mac support. Universal binaries that should work on OS X 10.3 and above are now available on their downloads page.
IKickPuppies has interviewed Ultima 6 Project producer Jesse Strachman a.k.a. Zephyr. In the interview, among other things, Zephyr reveals details about the upcoming Milestone 2 release (release aimed to end of July according to Zephyr here). You can download the audio interview here.
Xiskio has released beta of his long awaited Enhanced Graphics Mod for Ultima 5 : Lazarus. The mod replaces many textures with enchanted ones and adds number of items such as tables, chairs and stone ankhs. For more details and download visit Xiskio's site or mod's topic in Lazarus Forums.
Nazghul version 0.5.4 released. New version includes blended terrain and numerous tweaks and bug fixes.
Ultima 4 Multiplayer announces that there are two new 'shards' (servers) you can play on. The original one at u4.dyndns.org is still offline for the moment but you can play on the other two. The new shards are at soznet.game-server.cc and u4.tanabi.org. Note that although characters have been copied onto the new shards, changes to your character on one server may not be reflected on the others.
Paeron posted in Aiera's Sword and Shield forums, back in February, news of progress with decoding Ultima 9 file formats. Paeron announced having released a large guide to all the file formats in Ultima 9.
News of Lazarus needing beta testers for the French version (which we already knew about) has finally reached their homepage.
Ultima: The Reconstruction, inactive for almost a year, posted an update about Pentagram and uploaded the latest snapshots.
News thanks to Petrell: new screenshots have been added to the Forgotten World project. They feature parts of the new Western Yew and Northern Cliffs.
News thanks to Hoki-Aamrel the Cherry-Red Dragon: GameSetWatch recently posted a couple of Ultima-related newsbits. The first is about GameTap re-releasing Ultima 1-6, which is scheduled to take place on 29th June. The second is about Ultima Online using the PunkBuster anti-cheat technology.
More news thanks to Petrell: the Ultima 6 Project updated their job openings page. Looks like they need a couple of portrait artists, three worldbuilders, and a 3D Modeller.
The Ultima 4 Multiplayer server is currently inactive because the server is moving to a new location.
The new Ultima 4 Multiplayer client and server version 6.6.19 introduces major changes to the inner workings of NPC dialogues, allows maps as big as 65536x65536, and increases account security.
As an interesting extra spotted by Petrell at a topic at the Ashes forum, it looks like Ashes editing tools will be included with the game when it's released, and data files will be easily editable.
Looks like DOUG the Eagle Dragon's IT-HE Software has a new (well, it's almost 2 months old, but it's the latest addition to the site) section - a Lazarus anti-walkthrough.
Also, according to a topic in the Exult forum, it seems that someone is toying with the idea of remaking The Savage Empire using Exult Studio.
The following is old news; the last that I have left to catch up with.
Old news regarding Lazarus:
Old news regarding Project Britannia:
So, with that I've finally caught up with all old news, and Dino's Ultima Page is once again up to date (at least the news section). Next I'll be working on updating Aiera for those who prefer to read news there, and I'll be updating the information sections of Dino's Ultima Page. Eventually I'll also continue the Savage Empire guide.
Looks like the French version of Lazarus is open for beta testing. Although the official website says nothing about it, this news was spotted at 2 sources:
News from Ultima 4 Multiplayer - the server went down on Thursday (15th June) and will be down until this evening.
And now, it's about time I caught up with old news from Nazghul:
Don't thank me for today's news. Thank those who found the news over the internet.
An anonymous user posted in my forum the address of a site with more information about The Lost Vale. A lot of the information and images there are already available in my Guide to Ultima 8, but there is also new information provided by Sheri Graner Ray, who was working on The Lost Vale. I've added the new information to my Lost Vale page.
Petrell spotted more news from Ashes - the news is basically a thank-you for the comments and suggestions to everyone discussing Ashes, as well as a call for any 2D artists who may want to join the team.
On another note, I had my last exam today. I can now give more time to Dino's Ultima Page.
Petrell has created a new Ultima news topic since the previous one was getting too long.
I've corrected a bunch of broken links in the Credits and About site pages.
The Titans of Ether had some trouble with their forum. The forum is now back online, but all posts since November 2005 were lost. Users are asked to register again, and people who entered the competition are asked to re-submit their entries. The first winner is Onikage.
The Ultima 4 Multiplayer server site seems to be back online, so I assume the server itself is back online.
News from Ashes: Two Worlds Collide since the last mention here (30th October 2005):
As Petrell noticed, the Ultima Classics Revisited site was hacked and was redirecting visitors to the hacker's site until a few days ago. It has now been restored.
The latest development updates from Lost Sosaria are the two that were posted in January 2006:
News from Ultima Iris since the last mention here (7th January 2006):
News from Ultima 4 Multiplayer: the server will go down today at 3:30pm CST, and will be down for several days. There is no mention of when it will be up and running again.
Although their news says nothing about it, the Lazarus website has been redesigned. It's wider and only has the left menu for navigation now. Some content looks like it's been changed too.
News from Pentagram (over a month old) include fixes with NPC interaction, combat behaviour of monsters, and the fact that the Japanese version of Ultima 8 is now on the same level as that for the other languages. The Pentagram homepage now also has a short section about the status of development.
News from the Ultima 6 Project since the launch of their new website:
At this point I've caught up with most Ultima news. What's left to catch up with is mostly Nazghul, Iris, Ashes and Project Britannia.
The Dragon Press now hosts two new fanfictions by Great Siberian Dragon - "Great Siberian Cousins" and "Avatar's Pagan Journal". The Dragon Press also mentions that Damien Barban's Ultima 7 comic is complete, and has a new link to the Serpent Isle comic that is now in progress.
The Titans of Ether have launched a new contest: answer 43 questions correctly and you can (be the only one to) get to see an exclusive in-game video.
Other news from the Titans of Ether is that Redemption featured in a PC Powerplay article.
Infinity Eternal updates I missed:
The Forgotten World project has a new home. The site has undergone some minor changes, and some new members were recruited.
David Randall, responsible for the remake of Ultima V for TI Calculators, wrote that "NPC shoppe talk is complete"; more information is available at the U5TICalc forum at TI-Freakware.
Ultima 4 Multiplayer has seen several updates since the last news I mentioned here (15th April). Since the site has been redesigned, you can read the news on the site's main page or at the server site. The new updates include:
Petrell noticed a post at Aiera's Sword and Shield forum, where Major_Error (leader of the slumbering Agape project) stated that "Agape is closed untill the release of the new NWN2 toolset," "hopefully around September or earlier".
The Lazarus homepage sports a beautiful crossbow, hand-made by David "Iolo" Watson himself, which was sent to Tiberius as a gift from fans. The crossbow comes complete with a serpent logo and is signed by Lord British himself.
An Ultima 5: Lazarus review has surfaced on UltimaDot. Lazarus scored a considerable 10/10 in the review.
Petrell spotted a topic at the Exult forum about using a dance pad to actually walk in Britannia in Exult. There is also a page with instructions on how to use it for Exult.
That's all, folks! (for today)
Michael "Firstknight" Menapace created a website for his "Forgotten World" Ultima 9 project. For now you can see some screenshots of places around Yew, and read about the project.
Also, note that the guestbook of Dino's Ultima Page is now working again. I had disabled it temporarily because of spam.
Although Dino's Ultima Page (or at least the front page) is a bit silent lately, the Ultima Community is not. Read the latest updates in the Ultima news topic; I will post them here when I have more time.
Note also that on 14th June I finish exams, so I'll be able to post news more regularly and add some content to the site.
Because I've been so busy (and still am), I haven't mentioned an update from the Titans of Ether since their 16th December update. Here's what we've missed:
I had noticed long ago that the English version of La Legende d' Ultima was not being updated; but it is only today that I noticed that its French counterpart is being updated. Anyone wishing to follow La Legende d' Ultima for Ultima news should stay current with the French version.
The following news was posted by Petrell in the Ultima news topic:
Also, it looks like Project Britannia has released Milestone 2.
Over the past few days, Ultima IV Multiplayer has seen several updates:
On 10th April, there was an update to the Exult website, describing what the team has been busy with lately. This includes improved support for game details such as NPC schedules and combat; as well as better support for mods. The Exult website also mentions two large mods.
In fact, over the past few months people have been busy making mods for Exult. I have compiled a list of these mods in a new page dedicated to Exult mods. Not all of them are new; some have been mentioned in the news here, in the past.
Also, according to a topic at the Exult forum, the Exult documentation and FAQ have been updated.
There is an interesting topic about gumps in the Exult forum. Apart from discussing where the word 'gump' came from, it points to the blog of Jason Ely, who worked on Ultima 8 among other games (the blog entry is about gumps).
I have also added a link to an old Exult interview at RPGDot to the Exult section in my Ultima Web Directory.
Aiera's last update (which dates back to three months ago) mentions, among other things, a link to a page by Sir Iceblade which lists all known Ultima forums.
Work has been progressing on Ultima V for TI Calculators. The most prominent additions are moongate travel and shoppe talk. Also, Omnimaga, which originally had all the info and screenshots for this remake, has died. David Randall created a new topic with several animated gif demos. The page about this remake on Dino's Ultima Page has been updated to reflect all these changes.
That's all I'll be mentioning for today. I've caught up with a lot of news but there's still a lot left, especially from Titans of Ether, a little from Aiera, and several updates in the Ultima news topic. Keep checking this topic when I'm unable to post news.
As usual, a lot of this news is thanks to Petrell (see the Ultima news topic).
To quote Johnny Wood, of Ultima 4 Multiplayer fame:
Ultima IV Multiplayer is back up and running an alpha test again. There is also an opportunity for people to put themselves into the game by providing dialog for characters that had identical dialogs.
See the Ultima 4 Multiplayer website for more information on how to play with the new test server. The website also has information on how to send, if you want to, dialogue for Ultima 4 Multiplayer to replace the redundant character dialogues (such as the several Joe's in Britain).
Ultima 6 Online was updated on 6th March. There are lots of new features, but some of the more interesting ones include automatic pickup of projectile weapons; monsters now drop blood, bodies and items; and 4 new custom houses have been added.
The following is all the Lazarus news I haven't mentioned since the January update:
