It seems I just landed back in Canada, and already I’m off again. This is it, the big weekend — as of about 1:30 PM on October 20th, I’ll be a married man. We’ll be honeymooning in Greece, flying into Athens on the 24th of the month.

Which means that I’ll be back at some point in early November (would that I could get more time off of work, but the Jamboree used up all my good graces in that regard).

In the meantime, be sure to visit Dino’s Ultima Page for all your Ultima news needs.

People who wish to post news from Ultima projects are encouraged to do so in the comments to this post. I’ll be sure to amalgamate any news into a formal posting upon my return.

Huge news, folks.

Ethelwulf alerted me to the existence of a remake of Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, and I have to say that it looks very promising. Development seems to be progressing quickly, and what few screenshots there are look promising. The developer appears to be aiming for a straight-up, no “extra content” remake.

I’ve added an entry at Aiera for the project, although it has not yet released any files.

There haven’t been many attempts at remakes of Serpent Isle (indeed, there really aren’t any actual “remakes” so much as there are language ports or Exult-related upgrades of the game), so this is particularly exciting news as a result. Serpent Isle is a fan favourite, certainly one of the best of the Ultima series, and I for one think it would be fascinating to see it brought to new life with a nice 3D engine.

And hey…NWN2 is coming to the Mac soon, so a remake like this couldn’t be more timely.

Petrell alerted me to the existence of an Ultima 4 Gold, by the same developer (MagerValp) who produced Ultima 3 Gold. I have added an entry for this project at Aiera, and it can be downloaded from there. As with its Ultima 3 counterpart, it is an optimized version of the game for the Commodore 64.

It would seem that I need to begin assembling lists of game-mods related to Ultima and posting/hosting these on Aiera as well. Frilly Wumpus alerted me to the existence of yet another Neverwinter Nights content package, this time for NWN 2: Ultima-like Moongates, a transportation package for the game that attempts to replicate the behaviour of the moongates in Ultima Online (yes, yes, I know).

This is not the only bit of Ultima-related content available for NWN and/or NWN2, and I’m sure there’s related development out there for a few other modable RPGs. So perhaps I should begin compiling a list.

Leave any thoughts or opinions in the comments.

Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima IV Gold
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Gold (1.0 MiB, 250 hits)

This project is an improved version of Ultima 4 for the Commodore 64. Notably, it features optimized code and no disk swapping (1541 users will have to flip the disk once only), and the save system has been revamped (saving is now possible in dungeons). Trainers have been improved, and even little fixes have found their way in — the music, for example, no longer interrupts when you are walking around in Britannia.

Over at Lost Sosaria, there is news of a new team member — Reclaimer Dragon — joining the project to assist with map development and plotting. I’m pretty jubilant about this fact, and would like to remind any interested Ultima fans out there that we can always use more help.

Also, while Googling around for something completely unrelated, I stumbled over an old Ultima “expanded universe” project: The Official Ultima7: Part 3 – Lands of the Dark Unknown. It would appear that the developers were attempting to use the Ultima 7 engine, and the early Ultima 7 editing tools, to tell the tale of what happened to the Avatar between being snatched by the Guardian at the end of Serpent Isle and being dropped into the world of Pagan.

I’ve added this project to the cemetery, as they would appear to have folded some time back in 2001, and did not leave any project files behind.

Produced by: Chris V. and Adam V.
Website: The Official Ultima7: Part 3

Another project that just didn’t quite make it (projected release date: 2002), this “third part” to the Ultima 7 lexicon involved an event that transpired between the moment that the Avatar was snatched by the Guardian (at the end of Serpent Isle) and the moment that the Guardian dropped the Avatar onto the world of Pagan (at the beginning of Ultima 8).

From the project website: the Avatar underwent a rebirth of his soul between Serpent Isle and Pagan. During the Avatar’s interdimensional travel, which most likely occurred through some form of a moongate, his soul, or lifethread, was rewoven into another dimension. While his body was clearly in the hand of the Guardian, during that brief instant of time between worlds, his soul was reborn and lived a life in another world…

…What has happened is that someone or something has woven an arcane spell, a spell from a world long forgotten, a world the Virtues never reached. Someone has summoned a ‘spiritual net’ that has extracted the soul of the Avatar from his body and rewoven it into a new body, in a new world. The reborn Avatar has no memory of his previous life or that he even is the Avatar. The soul of the Avatar will be burned down to its core and reforged in new lands, in the forgotten and mysterious Lands of the Dark Unknown.

Here’s some news to cheer you up after the previous post about EA. Someone by the (nick)name of Hexxxer contacted me to let me know of a project he’s involved in to produce high resolution scans of game box covers and disc labels. He is working, presently, on the Ultima Collection, Ultima IX, the Underworld Collection, and the Worlds of Ultima titles.

Currently, only the Ultima Collection box has been scanned in, but the reproduction is very high quality (all covers are 300 dpi scans).

While my friend Myles assures me, via his contacts within BioWare, that this is a good thing, I for one look upon the pending purchase of BioWare/Pandemic by Electronic Arts as a death-knell for a promising studio.

I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, of course…but EA‘s track record of turning effective companies into wrecks and producers of poorly-executed, buggy, narratively weak games has been pretty consistent since the days of Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Electronic Arts Inc., the video game developer known for titles such as “Madden NFL” and “The Sims,” said Thursday it will acquire two software studios from Elevation Partners in a deal worth up to US$860 million.

The studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, have a total of 10 games under development. Elevation owns their parent, VG Holding Corp.

Together, the studios employ about 800 people in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, as well as in Canada and Australia.

I guess we’ll see if Dragon Age gets rushed out the door now, or (worse) cancelled.

You can read the official press release from BioWare here.

Update: Further thought…

One of the great things about running this site is how the community members often jump in and try to help out by providing bits of news, or by spotlighting new discoveries they’ve made of new projects or ports of existing ones. It’s a valuable contribution they make, and I’m indebted to everyone who drops me an email (whether in person or via the contact form) to let me know what’s happening out there.

That’s been especially true lately; this entire update is populated with news that has landed in one of my inboxes or another. And there’s been a fair bit of news, to be sure!

Forgotten World

Hawkwind dropped me a copy of the second news update for Forgotten World, the remake of tag]Ultima 9[/tag] using the original engine of that game. He writes:

this Hawkwind again, from Team Forgotten World. We have just put up a new entry in our screenshot gallery, which is a render shot this time. It shows a scene that has been assembled using original Ultima 9 textures and models only.

And it has to be seen to be believed — it’s just a simple shot of a mill, with a dragon flying in the background, but it looks spectacular (nothing at all like it would have in Ascension).

Thanks for the update, Hawkwind, and good work!

hack4u

Tim Carlsen wrote me to let me know of the existence of this project, which is a program to “edit the save games of Ultima: Quest of the Avatar for the NES.” Any or all of the three games saved in the SRAM file (I trust that NES users who will be interested in this program know what that means) can be edited.

I have created an entry for hack4u on Aiera, and version 1.2 of the program can be downloaded there for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (or you can get the source code).

Ultima III Gold

Tim Carlsen also informed me of the existence of this project, which is an improved version of Ultima 3 for the Commodore 64.

I have created an entry for U3 Gold on Aiera, and the latest version of it can be downloaded from there.

Infinity Eternal

Thepal dropped me a note as well to let us all know that his remake of Ultima 9 using the Oblivion engine has not perished. Apparently, he’s having some trouble with the domain name, an error in the renewal process that he is in the process of correcting with the registry company.

And in fact, the site is back online.

Ultima Engine Ports for Nokia Internet tablets

I got the most amusing email from Arnim Sauerbier concerning several ports he has made of different [tag]Ultima[t/tag] engines. Specifically, he has ported the following Ultima titles:

• Akalabeth – a port of Paul Robson’s SDL version of the game
• Ultima 4 – a port of xu4
• Ultima 5 – a port of Nazghul/Haxima
• Ultima 6 – a port of Nuvie
• Ultima 7 – a port of Exult
• Ultima 8 – a port of Pentagram

It serves to note that these ports are ongoing works, and it further serves to note that some of the projects that have been ported (Pentagram, for an easy example) are themselves incomplete. However, O Reader, if you use a Nokia 770/N800 internet tablet, and would like to be able to play some classic Ultima titles whilst on the go, this is likely a project for you!

I’ve added a project entry at Aiera for all of the above, and each of the original projects will also feature a download link.

By request, I’ve made the hyperlink colour a bit darker, a minor update to the site face that I hope everyone can appreciate. Minor bits of Aiera are still under development, and will be tweaked and corected periodically as I can find time to do it all in.

And also, the wedding is in all of nine days (October 20th), so forgive me if the next update is a bit late in arriving. Grace and I will be honeymooning in Greece until November 2nd.

Update: Courtesy of Dino, there is news of a couple more updates.

Black Gate Keyring

A minor update has been made to Marzo’s mod for Exult, fixing the death bolt spell’s performance and a bug with resurrection obtained from Lord British.

As usual, you can download the latest version of Keyring from its entry here at Aiera.

Nazghul

Gordon has posted news that he is planning to release version 0.6.0 of his Ultima-like engine very soon.

Also, Dino has found another Ultima blogger, Rotting Dragon, who is currently playing his way through Ultima 6 as he voyages through the Ultima series in view of the world.

Produced by: Paul Robson
Website: Paul’s SDL Games
Releases:
* Aklabeth (229.6 KiB, 225 hits)
* Aklabeth for Nokia Smartphones (33.6 KiB, 247 hits)

No, that name’s not a typo. Not an accidental one, at any rate. Okay, that name actually is a typo (see the comments, below). Who am I to argue with the developer?

At any rate, this is an SDL-based rewrite of Richard Garriot’s original classic.

Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima III Gold
Releases:
* Ultima III Gold (170.8 KiB, 245 hits)

This project is an improved version of Ultima 3 for the Commodore 64. Notably, it features optimized code and fits on a single disk side, and the save system has been revamped. Trainers have been improved, and even little fixes have found their way in — it is possible, for example, to buy more than one dagger at a time.

Produced by: emuWorks
Website: hack4u
Releases:
* hack4u - Windows (541.8 KiB, 147 hits)
* hack4u - Mac (2.5 MiB, 132 hits)
* hack4u - Linux (1.0 MiB, 131 hits)
* hack4u - Source (289.1 KiB, 112 hits)

hack4u is a program to “edit the save games of Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar for the NES.” Any or all of the three games saved in the SRAM file (I trust that NES users who will be interested in this program know what that means) can be edited.