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Ultima: Aiera

an Ultima Project archive site

Too true — graphics vs. story

Last updated: April 30th, 2008

Filed under Site News

I like the guys at Cracked.com. While I’m not a fan of some of the gross-out, overtly sexual humour, I do generally appreciate the insight they often display in their articles. Yes, they’re intended to be funny…but often, the underlying truth is quite compelling.

Case in point:

The Seven Commandments All Video Games Should Obey- #1 - Better graphics do not equal innovation and/or creativity.

…guys like Epic games president are out there making stupid-ass statements about how they would never lower themselves to develop for the [] because that would be “going backward.”

This is epidemic in an industry that defines “innovation” purely by graphical horsepower and nothing else. Guys like him are utterly baffled that anyone could ever want a Wii, just because it, you know, offers a completely new playing experience.

Somehow these guys have gotten it in their heads that nothing counts for innovation except ping and s. “However can any human enjoy these outdated graphics without literally vomiting with disgust?”

Well, if these people would bother having a conversation with someone outside their own offices, they’d realize that the entire concept of “outdated” graphics is meaningless to 80 percent of gamers.

Want proof? games look like this:

(blocky screenshot from Mario Kart)

They’ve sold more than 60 million of them. Tell you what, Mike. The next time you see some casual gamer tapping away at their Nintendo DS, show them a screenshot of …Don’t be shocked if they point out your game seems made up of three colors (brown, gray, and muzzle flash). Sure, hard-core gamers know the difference, they know the game is a marvel of technology. The rest of us just want to have fun, or be told a good story.

It gets hard, some days, not to punch people right in the mind who complain that the games are “outdated” and that they have “terrible graphics.”

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Oh, how the mighty have fallen

Last updated: April 18th, 2008

Filed under Site News

Serves me right for not posting anything about remakes for almost a month:

mighty-fallen.jpg

Whoops…

 
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EUO turns five; Iris releases a new build; numerous project snapshot updates

Last updated: April 18th, 2008

Filed under Site News

Well, it’s been a little while since I posted an update pertaining to projects, and I see that Petrell and Dino over at Dino’s Ultima Page have uncovered several juicy morsels of news. To wit:

EUO

This Ultima-like project reached its fifth year just recently, and to celebrate the occasion they threw a number of bonuses and extra stuff into the game — experience bonuses, prizes & giveaways, DM-hosted events, special in-game drinks (eggnog, for example), and even a few new bosses.

Also, a “Newbie Island” tutorial map has been added to the game to help new players ease in.

Ultima 6 Project

A new press release from this promising-looking remake of Ultima 6 has been released at RPGWatch. It has some details about new cities and places in the pending fifth milestone release (Nicodemus’ keep, for example), and also informs us that the team is always in need of world builders, 3D modelers, artists, and musicians.

So, O Reader, if you fall into any of those categories, you might want to swing by the website and drop someone a line.

Additionally, project developer Nicodemus has posted another update to his worldbuilding Dev Diary with some cool new screenshots of his work ( and ).

Ultima: Iris

A new build — build 2010 — of this 3D client for has been released. It can be downloaded from the project’s homepage, or via the project entry here at .

xu4

A new snapshot of the version of this Ultima 4 remake is available for download either through the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera. A new snapshot is also available.

Ultima V for TI Calculators

Ranman has posted additional news about his project that has ported to the calculator. He lets us know, firstly, about some special item capabilities that he as implemented. Secondly, he talks about killing NPCs, lock picking, and guard behaviour — rather a “law and order” sort of post.

The project is still in beta testing.

* * *

I also took a bit of a wander around the Ultima community myself, and noticed a few other odds and ends that the Reader might be interested in.

Savage Empire for Exult

Scythifuge is always looking for people to help out with his ambitious goal of porting the storyline into .

Exult

Speaking of Exult, I notice that the Windows snapshot of Exult 1.4 has been updated recently (April 14th), as have the snapshots for and . These can be downloaded from the project website, and I have added them to the project entry here at Aiera.

Project Britannia

I noticed that the britannia_art.dsres and britannia_logic.dsres resource files for this Ultima world framework were updated at the beginning of April. Changes since the previous revision include the addition of a new lockpick texture, a ferry, and two new light textures, as well as changes to melee attack logic, the lockpick’s shape, and a bunch of other things.

The updated files can be downloaded from the site, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

* * *

Also, I’ve made a few minor changes to the site here. For starters, I have added a module to the site sidebar to track the ten most downloaded files in the last 30 days. Initially, I wasn’t going to clear the statistics for the download manager with any sort of frequency, but after a bunch of -related downloads surged ahead (in some cases, to over 3,000 downloads!), it seemed reasonable to give some of the other files a chance to make the top spot.

So it’s there, and I won’t be putting a “top five” list onto news posts anymore.

And of course, there’s the gallery and Ultima art repository. I do encourage any interested users to register a user account there and begin uploading any Ultima-related art they can find so that it can be preserved for posterity. This includes scans of art from the manuals, which won’t be around forever.

Oh, and I’ve added another countdown to the sidebar. Only 190 days (roughly — could change in either direction) until Grace and I welcome our little one into the world!

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Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Last updated: April 17th, 2008

Filed under U5 Remakes, Ultima 5

u5-ti-calc

Produced by: David Randall
Website: Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

An ambitious project to port to the 68K programmable calculators, this remake has been in progress for about a year and is progressing at a respectable pace.

The author has released some of its technical details, which include:

  • 512 tiles, 11×11 pixels and 4 colors. The original tiles were 16×16 pixels and 16 colors.
  • 2 world maps (each with a size of 256×256 tiles)
  • 32 multi level towns (each level size 32×32 tiles)
  • 8 multi level dungeons
  • about 150 NPC (non-playable characters) each NPC has a unique daily schedule and conversation script.
 
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Ultima: Iris

Last updated: April 17th, 2008

Filed under Online Remakes, UO Remakes, Ultima Online

Small1.jpg

Produced by: Team Iris
Website: Ultima - Iris
Releases:
Iris
* Iris 0.8.7 (Windows) (9.63 MB)
* Iris 0.8.6 (Linux 64-bit) (13.47 MB)
* Developer Framework 0.4 (10.9 MB)
* Documentation (3.24 KB)

Iris2 (Iris-Ogre)
* Iris2 Build 2010 Setup (Windows) (115.55 MB)
* Iris 2 Build 2010 (Windows Source) (132.85 MB)
* Iris 2 Source (Linux) (127.63 MB)
* Emergency Updater (432.02 KB)

Also required (for Windows):
* Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1
* DirectX End-User Runtimes

is a game client for , which gives the game a more modern feel in keeping with the evolution of 3D MMORPGs while still retaining the “feel” of UO (such as it is). Iris is only compatible with a number of different “freeshard” server types. See the project website (actually a wiki) for full details.

Iris requires a legal copy of Online, preferably one of the later-edition versions of the game, but it serves to note that trial versions of UO can be used for play on freeshards without suffering limitations. Trial versions of the game can be obtained from the UO: Mondain’s Legacy website.

 
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