I was contacted over the weekend by Joshua Lawrence, who informed me that he has been maintaining a website dedicated to the Adventure Creation Kit, a 1995 application by Chris Hopkins that can be used to create a very Ultima-like top-down, tile-based RPG.

I have added an entry to Aiera for the ACK, and it can be downloaded from either there or Josh’s site.

There have also been a couple of lower-key updates from the remake community that I noticed over the weekend.

Project Britannia

The britannia_logic.dsres resource file for Project Britannia was updated on April 19th, and the various updates to it are primarily related to the conversation engine and UI. I have updated Aiera’s copy of the file, and it can be downloaded from the Project Britannia entry as well as from the PB Wiki.

Lost Sosaria

There are 23 new screenshots at Lost Sosaria’s website, as well as some information about the role that the now-built City of Gauntlet will play in Sosaria.

WtFD

Tags: Adventure Creation Kit, Dungeon Siege, Lost Sosaria, Neverwinter Nights, Project Britannia, Sosaria, Ultima

There have been a couple of bits of news from the remake community today.

UO to U7

Razimus’ project has been renamed to The Dark Key. No new media releases since the aforementioned artwork, however.

Infinity Eternal

Thepal brings us news that a new writer, Theron, has joined the project team to take some of the workload — at least as concerns writing dialogue — off of him.

(Frothy mug of ale: Dino)

Tags: , Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls, Ultima 7, Ultima 9, Ultima IX: Infinity Eternal, Ultima Online

Produced by: Andrew Taylor
Website: xu4- Ultima IV
Releases:
* xu4 - Windows v1.0b3 (1.1 MiB, 18 hits)
* xu4 - Mac OS X v1.0b3 (3.1 MiB, 12 hits)
* xu4 - Linux v1.0b3 (2.4 MiB, 14 hits)
* xu4 - Source v1.0b3 (410.3 KiB, 9 hits)
* xu4 - Zaurus v0.9 (1.9 MiB, 7 hits)
* xu4 - BeOS v0.5 (88.3 KiB, 7 hits)
* xu4 - Dreamcast (5.1 MiB, 8 hits)

Snapshots – May be unstable
* xu4 - Windows Snapshot (1.4 MiB, 9 hits)
* xu4 - Mac OS X Snapshot (3.3 MiB, 10 hits)

Andrew Taylor’s SDL-based re-creation of Ultima 4 is intended to be a cross-platform version of the game much as Exult is for Ultima 7.

And, since Ultima 4 is freeware, he (like many others) has also made available for download the original version (0 bytes) of the game. As well, there is a graphics update (0 bytes) available. The original game is now included with non-PC versions of xu4, but is required for Windows.

Tags: BeOS, Exult, freeware, Linux, Mac, SDL, Ultima 4, Ultima 7, Windows, xu4

Resle, one of the developers working on Ashes — an RPG inspired by Ultima with a home-made 3D engine powering it — gave a bit of an update on the project’s status in the project forum. Ashes is developing slowly at present:

What’s happening? Well yes, hiatus is a good word to describe what’s going on – but the developement heartbeats are just very slow – not absent. Ashes is in a controlled coma, so to say. There’s a long moment of unbalance between the time at MY disposal and Olly’s disposal. He’s quite free while my personal life/job is a bit of a mess now as I am in the process of moving back to my home city (long story).

…

The next build is going to feature:

• Finished, polished combat
• Finished, polished dialogues
• Reworked GUI (more pratical, but arguably less nice to see – I.E.: no “live” paperdoll npc)
• Particle system
• beta magic
• beta fully scheduled NPCs
• beta menu

And thanks to Olly, lots of new graphics.

It’s good to hear that this promising project is still active. I look forward to the next release!

(Frothy mug of ale: Dino)

Tags: Ashes, Ultima

A brief wander around the Ultima community yielded some fruit; there have been a few updates made to some of the projects out there. As well, I’ve updated a couple things about Aiera.

Concerning the site here, I’ve updated the links on the side to include a link to Dino’s Ultima Page’s Google Group, which is intended to be a sort of centralized discussion area for the Ultima community. I’m still toying with whether I want to go the route of starting a forum on Aiera again (and thus having to cope with the spam and moderation responsibilities again), so for the time being I encourage any visitors looking to chat to visit the Group page. Feel free to use it as Aiera’s discussion area for the time being, as I check it daily.

The UO to U7 Project

Razimus’ project to implement the complete Ultima 7 saga in the Ultima Online engine has released some preliminary artwork including a boat graphic, a moongate graphic, and the various currencies used in Serpent Isle.

Project Britannia

Project Britannia has released an updated version of one of the resource files needed for the project. This update makes a few minor changes to the Journal UI, fixes an issue with a small quantity of gold, and makes a few API changes as well. I’ve uploaded this to Project Britannia’s entry at Aiera.

Exult

Exult has released a thrice-updated snapshot of Exult 1.4 since last I checked. Among the fixes that have been done are a correction to palettes in Serpent Isle mods with custom mainship.flx files, added support for adding or changing MIDI music files, and the addition of a couple of scalers. I’ve uploaded this to the Exult entry at Aiera.

Ultima Iris

Iris has released Build 981 of Iris2 (Iris-Ogre), their next-generation 3D Ultima Online client. The Iris entry at Aiera has been updated accordingly.

The Complete Ultima 7

This was an old remake that was attempting to do what a couple of other remakes have taken on as their goal: present the entirety of Ultima 7 — The Black Gate and Serpent Isle — as one unified game (using the Dungeon Siege engine). It stopped development around 2000, and so has been added to the Cemetery*.

WtFD

* note the now-corrected spelling. Yes, I am occasionally afflicted with stupidity. If, O Reader, you had permalinked to the Cemetary on your own site, please update your links accordingly, as the old URL won’t work anymore.

Tags: Aiera, Dino's Ultima Page, Dungeon Siege, Exult, Project Britannia, Serpent Isle, The Black Gate, Ultima, Ultima 7, Ultima Online, Ultima: Iris

Produced by: Azmodean

This project came and went pretty quickly, unfortunately. It was conceived in the days prior to the release of Dungeon Siege, and its goal was to remake the complete Ultima 7 story — both Black Gate and Serpent Isle — into one unified narrative using that game engine. However, by the time Dungeon Siege actually did release, the project had essentially disappeared — all that remains is this banner graphic.

There are a couple of things to report. Firstly, Lost Sosaria has posted another eleven screenshots, showcasing more of the string of areas called the “Great Road”, the north-to-south roadway that connects the cities of Gauntlet and Ponder.

As well, I’ve taken the unusual step of getting addicted to Facebook, and have taken the even more unusual step of setting up an Ultima Remakes group there, since I failed to find one when I looked. So if there are any past or present (or, I guess, future) Ultima remakers or remake team members who are also on Facebook, thou hast a new group to join!

WtFD

Tags: Facebook, Lost Sosaria, Neverwinter Nights, Ultima