Away for a bit

Filed under Site News

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.

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Serpent Isle Remake using NWN2

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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.

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Ultima 4 Gold, Neverwinter mods

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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.

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Ultima 4 Gold

Filed under U4 Remakes, Ultima 4

Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima IV Gold
Releases:
* Ultima IV Gold (1.03 MB)

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.

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Lost Sosaria team; another dead project

Filed under Site News

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.

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