I’ve signed on as the Technical Officer of a committee that is planning to host a gaming convention in my home city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. More details to follow, including recruitment/volunteer opportunities.

I was contacted a while back (an inexcusably long while back, as it happens — my apologies!) by Zen, who passed along a bit of an addon module for Dungeon Keeper based on the first level of the Abyss in Ultima Underworld.

As Zen doesn’t have a website to host the project at for himself, he has made it available to the world via Aiera, and I have (finally!!) created a project entry for it. Check thou it out, O Reader, if you’ve still got those Dungeon Keeper discs tucked away in a drawer or closet!

Also, I have added a download for the Ultima 6 Project‘s Milestone 5 release to that project’s entry, so if you haven’t grabbed it from somewhere else already, you can now get it here as well.

Also, other news, courtesy of Dino’s Ultima Page:

Ultima V: Lazarus

Cheerful Dragon has released version 1.29 of his various mods and bugfixes for this remake of Ultima 5. These can be downloaded either at the previous forum link, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo has released updates to his mods for Exult, for both The Black Gate (Keyring) and Serpent Isle (Fixes). The latest revisions of both can be downloaded through their respective project entries here at Aiera:

• Black Gate Keyring
• Serpent Isle Fixes

Ultima: Iris

Apparently, the project’s developers took home first prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game development meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. Congrats!

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ranman has released version 1.01 of his port of Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. The up-to-date download can be found via the project entry here.

Exult

This Ultima 7 remake has been updated recently — or, rather, the unstable 1.4 version has been updated, as has Exult Studio and its accompanying tools. The Exult team‘s plugins for GiMP have also been updated this month, and the whole mess of things can be downloaded via the project entry here.

EUO

This Ultima-inspired game has seen the release of version 0.16 of its rudimentary 3D client, which can be downloaded via the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima Restoration

This comprehensive multi-project has released screenshots of the Kilrathi space station from their remake of Ultima 1. With this completed, they now have all the cities, dungeons, and space stations fully mapped in the game — which, if I do say so myself, is damn good progress!

They’ve also added links to a good couple-dozen Neverwinter Nights modules that I’m going to have to sort through in short order, so…well, it’s nice to know in advance what I’ll be up to for at least part of next week.

Also, the Wing Commander CIC team are attempting to back up what remains of the Origin Systems data library. They are looking for people with experience with this sort of thing, so if you’re one of those people who lives and breathes in backup tapes, you might want to check their project out.

This is a multiplayer Dungeon Keeper level based on the first level of Ultima Underworld. While Dungeon Keeper doesn’t do sloped surfaces the layout is otherwise very close.

Since much of the level is impenitrable rock much of the challenge in designing this level (and, presumably, subsequent levels also based on Underworld) came from managing the space for rooms well.

The map replaces level 61 (multiplayer map 7) in the game, and is for 3 players (but it can be played by one player against the computer). The developer doesn’t have a website at which to host it, so this offering is more or less exclusive to Aiera at present.

To play the level:

1. extract the file into the Dungeon Keeper ‘level’ directory
2. Start Dungeon Keeper with the 1-player option
3. choose multiplayer, then 1 player, and finally level 61

This interesting collection of Serpent Isle modifications enables you to, among other things, actually cure Cantra of her post-resurrection insanity.

The developer notes that these mods are only workable using the Exult engine, and will not function with only a base install of Serpent Isle.

Additionally, he cautions that the mods might not function properly without The Silver Seed expansion installed, although he has attempted to design them so that this shouldn’t matter.

Produced by: Team Lazarus
Website: Lazarus
Releases:
* Lazarus 1.2 (Windows) (521.0 MiB, 365 hits)
* Lazarus 1.2 (Mac) (528.3 MiB, 169 hits)
* Lazarus 1.2 French Patch (Windows) (8.2 MiB, 132 hits)
* Lazarus German Patch v1.0 (12.6 MiB, 130 hits)
* Blink Activation Patch (4.3 KiB, 198 hits)
* Difficulty Override (16.1 KiB, 187 hits)
* Font Patch (11.5 KiB, 184 hits)
* Portrait Patch (615.4 KiB, 231 hits)
* Lazarus Editing Environment (Windows) (3.3 MiB, 180 hits)
* Chronicle of Lord British's Expedition (1.0 MiB, 163 hits)
* Lazarus Game Manual (10.3 MiB, 195 hits)
* Map of Britannia (638.6 KiB, 207 hits)
* Lazarus Soundtrack (142.2 MiB, 151 hits)

Patches and Upgrades:
* Enhanced Graphics (11.5 MiB, 463 hits) – (pictured) from 3DWorx
* Looking Up Camera Mod (40.8 KiB, 270 hits)
* Grail Quest's Mods (622.9 KiB, 215 hits) – see this text file (12.7 KiB, 325 hits) for details

* Bugfixes and Modifications (599.5 KiB, 309 hits) – see the Lazarus forums for details
* Project Britannia Compatibility Mod (22.4 KiB, 222 hits)
* Comfortability Mod 1 (3.6 KiB, 199 hits) – start with a bedroll
* Comfortability Mod 2 (3.6 KiB, 157 hits) – start with a bedroll and the sextant (may break a later quest)
* Comfortability Mod 3 (7.5 KiB, 222 hits) – reduced daily food consumption rate
* Comfortability Mod 4 (3.2 KiB, 194 hits) – adds hotkey support for the pocketwatch (if the party has it)
* Regeneration Ring Health Loss Bugfix (3.2 KiB, 222 hits)

Spell-related Mods:
* Spell Scroll Icon Mod (51.9 KiB, 260 hits) – (pictured) replaces the default icons for spell scrolls with graphics that make it easier to identify which spell is on which scroll. Only works on new scrolls added to inventory, not scrolls already held
* Spell Scroll Icon Mod with Chuckles Scroll Changer (61.7 KiB, 166 hits) – adds to the above mod the ability to talk to Chuckles the Jester and have him “exchange” all your current spell scrolls for new ones, thus updating their icons

Weapon Mods:
* Magic Weapon Fix (25.7 KiB, 232 hits) – fixes an issue with weapon enhancement damage not being applied.
* Magic Axe Redux v1.1 (12.6 KiB, 184 hits) – uses spell damage to cause the magic axe’s bonus damage
* Magic Axe Redux v2 (14.5 KiB, 201 hits) – addresses balance issues with the previous version of the mod
* Cheerful's weaponfixes (20.2 KiB, 180 hits) – fixes some scripting and bug issues with weapon-based spells
* Flint Item Changer (9.9 KiB, 128 hits) – talk to Flint to “upgrade” your magic weapons to bug-fixed, modded versions

Cheerful Dragon’s Weapon Addons:
* Undead-slaying Silver sword and Stronger glass sword (10.6 KiB, 182 hits)
* Ranged Throwing Aze (4.7 KiB, 162 hits)

One of the most high-profile remakes during its development, Ultima V: Lazarus is a Dungeon Siege-based remake of Ultima 5 led by Tiberius Moongazer. It was completed and released in the early part of 2006.

Lazarus features an enhanced and expanded musical score, additional plot elements, many new and exciting characters and side quests, and fully rendered cut scenes.

The project is available for download in its entirety here, and in addition there are available for download several mods, patches, and bug-fixes; Lazarus has spawned a modding community of its own.

Produced by: David Randall
Website: Ultima 5 for TI Calculators
Releases:
* Ultima 5 for TI-89 and TI-89 Titanium (852.0 KiB, 100 hits)
* Ultima 5 for TI-92 Beta 0.99 (898.4 KiB, 88 hits)

An ambitious project to port Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments 68K programmable calculators, this remake took a little over a year to reach completion, but as of June 2008 it is done and in open release.

This remake has many features, some new to Ultima 5 (e.g. not a part of the original title), 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.
• 400 hours of game play(!!)

This is actually a collection of small upgrades to Ultima 7 (and the Forge of Virtue — this is required!). Chiefly, it adds a keyring to the game to assist the Avatar in managing the massive number of keys one tends to accumulate as one progresses through the game.

It also features a number of modifications to the game’s event scripting and a fair bit of custom usecode, plus some other “not so subtle” changes according to the developer, so it almost qualifies more as a remake than a patch…but not quite.

This patch requires Exult.

I just got this notice in my email inbox, and it’s a hute announcement indeed: Milestone 5 of the Ultima 6 Project has been released!

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of Team Archon’s next milestone of the Ultima 6 Project, Milestone 5 for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). Some things to look forward to in this release:

• New areas to explore (Trinsic, Jhelom, Moonglow, New Magincia, Serpent’s Hold, Skara Brae, Sutek’s Castle, Trinsic)
• Enhancements to existing areas
• New plot details and quests and other subtle refinements
• Numerous enhancements to the core gameplay such as:
  • The Journal system now records may quest details automatically, but still allows the player to make their own notes
  • A new “Event Console”, which can be toggled on and off, and which will help you keep track of what’s happening during play
  • Many more tunings and tweaks to the core Project Britannia systems ( for the nitty gritty details, check the change log )

You can find the download links on the Official Website:

www.u6project.com

I will be sure to add a download for this to Aiera just as soon as I am able. In the meantime, O Reader…check thou it out!

Ultima Restoration developer Saduj contacted me to let me know that another utility has been added to his team’s collection of Neverwinter Nights modifications — an Ultima-style conversation system to replace the default system in NWN.

By default, the conversation system in NWN is a bit too primitive to support the sort of conversations one has come to expect from an Ultima game — achieving Ultima-style conversations using it requires a lot of node repetition.

At any rate, I’ve added the new conversation system files to the project entry here at Aiera, so please do check them out if you’ve been using any of the other utilities that this team has released…and I have it on good authority that a few people are doing just that.