Lazarus Mod Guide

Filed under Site News

There is nothing new in the way of project development to report today, but that’s not to say there isn’t something interesting to discuss.

As the reader may know, Ultima V: Lazarus — the Dungeon Siege-based remake of Ultima 5 — was released some time ago. Like any other modern game, it had spawned a fan community of its own, many of whom immediately set about the task of releasing “mods” (mods of a mod?) for it to correct bugs, modify weapon performance, address performance issues, and enhance the graphics. Many of these mods are available for download through Lazarus’ entry at Aiera.

However, there is a caution that I will need now to issue for these various mods: they are not all compatible with each other, and indeed some of them may have serious bugs of their own. As with anything fan-made, the Lazarus mods are “use at your own risk” in nature.

But to help the discerning Lazarus fan select which mods s/he would like to make use of, Sylore has assembled a helpful Mod Guide for Lazarus, which provides information on whether certain mods have known bugs, and whether they conflict with other mods. Downloads of each mod are also provided.

I’ll be using this page to update Aiera’s collection of Lazarus mods, and I will be adding a link to the Lazarus entry at Aiera in short order to assist any would-be users of these mods in selecting a combination of add-ons that will not break the game for them.

WtFD

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Adventure Creation Kit, Project Britannia logic, Lost Sosaria screenshots

Filed under Site News

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

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‘The Dark Key’, and a new Infinity Eternal team member

Filed under Site News

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)

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xu4 - Ultima 4 Recreated

Filed under U4 Remakes, Ultima 4

Produced by: Andrew Taylor
Website: xu4- Ultima IV
Releases:
* Version 1.0b3 (Windows) (1.11 MB)
* Version 1.0b3 (OSX) (3.04 MB)
* Source 1.0b3 (408.67 KB)
* Version 1.0b3 (Linux) (2.38 MB)
* Version 0.9 (Zaurus) (1.85 MB)
* Version 0.5 (BeOS) (87.79 KB)
* Dreamcast Version (5.04 MB)
* Nokia 770/M800 (1.85 MB)

Snapshots - May be unstable
* Windows (1.35 MB)
* Mac OS X (4.36 MB)

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 (524.89 KB) of the game. As well, there is a graphics update (617.26 KB) available. The original game is now included with non-PC versions of xu4, but is required for Windows.

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Ashes progress update

Filed under Site News

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)

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