Nintendo Power was published in-house by Nintendo of America during the late 80s and 90s, and covered some of the most popular releases for the NES, SNES, and Gameboy.  They frequently published detailed hint guides to the most anticipated releases of  the day, including the Ultima series.  What was especially wonderful about these publications were they often included bright full-page colour graphics and custom illustrations.

Here for your viewing pleasure is the complete guide to Ultima: Exodus, which was included in Vol. 3 of Nintendo Power back in late 1988.

Note: This link takes advantage of the newly redesigned Ultima Gallery.

I have a project in the works which I intend to go live with, at least in part, very soon. However, I need a handful of volunteers to test it out for me.

So here’s the skinny: if you are a registered user here at Aiera, and if you feel like helping me out, drop a comment. The first ten people who meet both criteria will be my volunteers, and you’ll receive an email from me explaining what’s going on.

Actually, and perhaps more correctly, I should say that his question is about a particular reproduction of the Ultima 5 soundtrack, which he was unable to reproduce (if I read him right).

Well. I’ve been searching for more info on this for a while now. Last night just before my Apple IIe blew up I think I’ve worked it out. (Now I have a broken Apple IIe

The guy that posted the youtube video wit the music says on his website that he mixed it in after.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnsm53p.tistory.com%2Fcategory%2FULTIMA&act=url

I have an Apple IIe with a midi interface card and using a Roland Sound Canvas you can access one channel only. Ultima V lets you configure this. But you are limited to one channel so to reproduce the music he has on his youtube is impossible. If anyone else can confirm this let me know.

This sort of question is beyond me, though it is an interesting query about some very classic pieces of computer audio hardware. If anyone can supply an answer, please do!

I missed reporting on this previously, but I noticed a week or two ago that Gamespot had reported that the 27th of March was going to be the day that Disney announced Warren Spector’s next ‘epic’ project. Speculation suggests that this will be a sequel to his rather successful Mickey Mouse title from 2010, Epic Mickey, and that would be a welcome enough thing (to be sure).

Not that anyone here would complain if he revealed a remastered version of Ultima Underworld for the Wii*. But it seems unlikely that Disney would be the label for that.

* Shut up! It could work…

Our friends at the Wing Commander CIC are reporting that the long-awaited Wing Commander fan mod, Wing Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn (or simply Wing Commander Saga) has officially been released!

For those of you who were unaware of this mod, it’s actually a very ambitious undertaking. The mod is set in the same time frame as Wing Commander 3, but instead puts the player in the role of a rookie pilot on a different ship, the TCS Hermes. Saga is built with an updated version of the Descent 2: Freespace engine, and features many new — and rather beautifully detailed — ship models, a few of which can be seen in these screenshots:

Fighters...

...aliens?...

...and carriers. Oh my!

I gather that Saga’s development cycle ran close to the ten-year mark, which is…damned impressive, and speaks to the determination of the project team and their love for the Wing Commander universe. At present, only the Windows version is available — the Linux and Apple versions are coming soon — and the Saga website is temporarily running in “low key” mode after being crippled by the initial onslaught of traffic. The Wing Commander CIC has a list of download mirrors, so if you’d like to pick up the 3.4 GB mod, hit them up.

It’s a surprisingly heartfelt post, which I will excerpt at some length (though not in its entirety):

As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics — but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.

I believe passionately that games are an art form, and that the power of our medium flows from our audience, who are deeply involved in how the story unfolds, and who have the uncontested right to provide constructive criticism. At the same time, I also believe in and support the artistic choices made by the development team. The team and I have been thinking hard about how to best address the comments on ME3′s endings from players, while still maintaining the artistic integrity of the game.

Mass Effect 3 concludes a trilogy with so much player control and ownership of the story that it was hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it. The journey you undertake in Mass Effect provokes an intense range of highly personal emotions in the player; even so, the passionate reaction of some of our most loyal players to the current endings in Mass Effect 3 is something that has genuinely surprised us. This is an issue we care about deeply, and we will respond to it in a fair and timely way. We’re already working hard to do that.

To that end, since the game launched, the team has been poring over everything they can find about reactions to the game — industry press, forums, Facebook, and Twitter, just to name a few. The Mass Effect team, like other teams across the BioWare Label within EA, consists of passionate people who work hard for the love of creating experiences that excite and delight our fans. I’m honored to work with them because they have the courage and strength to respond to constructive feedback.

Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.

As I remarked to Sergorn Dragon via email, it would seem evident now that BioWare is going to do something about the ending of the game (Dr. Muzyka says as much, above), though what exactly is…not specified. The worst case scenario, I think, is a full-on rewrite of the ending sequence, pushed out via a multi-gigabyte download…mirroring what’s being done even now with the most recent Mass Effect novel. A slightly better case would, I guess, be the rumoured “The Truth” add-on, which some fans believe has been planned all along.

Note: Spoilers follow!

Then there’s the indoctrination theory, as it has come to be known, which asserts (if I have it right) that the ending of Mass Effect 3 does not depict actual events in the life of Commander Shepard, but instead depicts a hallucination or dream he suffers through after being blasted by Harbinger during the Battle of London. The theory maintains that Shepard, having been exposed to Reaper technology many times during the course of the series, has now finally begun to succumb to the siren call of his mortal enemy; the endgame sequence depicts his struggle to retain ownership of his own will, and control over his own mind.

It’s a reasonable enough theory, with one (that I can see) major fly in its…lotion: the Prothean VI on Thessia didn’t detect that Shepard was indoctrinated. That’s not to say it couldn’t have happened (maybe it happened on Horizon?), but it goes to show that the theory isn’t fully airtight.

Apart from this issue, however, the theory has some merit, and I like in particular how it ties back to the “from the rubble” shot (which graces the final moments of certain version’s of the game’s ending cutscene). Perhaps more importantly, the theory leaves the ball in BioWare’s court as to how to best capitalize on the interpretations of the imagery of the finale; it actually allows BioWare to preserve the original ending, and even treat it as a valid outcome in some circumstances (any that don’t lead to a “from the rubble” sequence, in fact). I, for one, hope that the Mass Effect team already — always, really — had plans to capitalize on these things, that some sort of follow-up to the game’s otherwise very disconcerting ending was always planned.

Because if that isn’t the case, that means that BioWare is bowing to fan pressure and making a potentially hasty correction to the ending of the game. This has good and bad implications.

On one hand, things like “Reclaim Mass Effect” and the Kickstarter events of recent months show that studios are willing to directly engage fans — and even involve then in the development process in more direct ways…especially if said fans are willing to be constructive rather than trollish. There’s something to that, and more than a few people have already speculated that this might herald a new era in gaming and game development, one that sees much closer and more direct engagement between fans and studios. That’s pretty to think about.

On the other hand, well…fans are fans, and the psychology of fans as a group is, if I may say, very fickle. By which I mean there is often a rather stark contrast between what fans SAY they want and what fans SHOW (by their actions) that they want. There is a certain sense of entitlement to be found in fans, and an always-present mentality of never being satisfied that secretly isn’t meant to be acted upon. And when it IS acted upon, the backlash is often even worse.

If BioWare is pandering now…yeah, that’s (potentially) not good. For them, or (probably) for us. On the other hand, if they’ve had something up their sleeves all along, that could be one of the ballsiest moves in gaming history on their part.

We will, as the good doctor says, know more in April.

Following up his first article at the Huffington Post, Richard Garriott has posted a second article asking, in its title: why human space travel? And while he illustrates the article with a leading picture of the Apophis asteroid, the bulk of his argument concerns something other than the need for humanity to migrate to the stars in order to ensure its long-term survival against even extinction-level events. No, good Lord British instead argues that human space travel needs to both remain on the table and in fact advance because, as he puts it, no “robotic agent [is] able to have anything close to the perception and judgment of a human explorer.”

…Robots are far lighter, cheaper and expendable. So whenever possible, robots can and should be used! Humans need complex and heavy life support systems, so many might ask, why even consider the prospect of sending humans to space as robotics and computers continue to rapidly advance?

The answer is important. We are still very far from a robotic agent being able to have anything close to the perception and judgment of a human explorer. And that is a very critical distinction. To demonstrate this I can cite historical facts as well as personal experience.

A great example of this important difference came when Jack Schmitt became the first geologist to walk on the moon. Knowledge of the moon’s geology including how and when it formed gives us important data about when and how the Earth finally cooled down and developed its rocky crust. This in turn gives us deeper understanding of tectonic plate movement which is the cause of earthquakes around the globe. Clearly predicting and protecting against earthquakes is essential science for those who live in Japan, California or other earthquake prone areas!

Before Jack Schmitt walked on the moon, the probes and test pilots who preceded him, had done their best to find valuable samples, but only Jack’s deep geological understanding and direct human perception allowed him to quickly find rocks on the moon that turned out to be from the primordial crust formed when the moon first solidified from a molten state. This find allowed lunar formation science and thus Earth formation science to advance greatly.

To be fair, he does devote his closing paragraphs to mentioning Stephen Hawking’s contention that humanity must take to the stars to ensure its survival against asteroids, gamma ray bursts, and suchlike. The merits of such endeavours are up for debate, of course (either that, or playing Mass Effect 3 as an essentially Paragon character has me wondering, yet again, what’s so great about humanity that it should require so much sacrifice on the part of so few good people to save, and is it even worth the effort?), though the logic itself is sound. There is nowhere else for humanity to hide, at present, from the many and terrifying hazards of the Universe, and it would be trivially easy for an errant chunk of space rock — or a too-large, too-close star exploding — to reduce mankind to a historical footnote. Such is the inherent vulnerability of any planet-bound species, and the only remedy for it is to become a species not bound inextricably to just one planet.

But in his main argument, I think he has a very strong point to make. Robots are analytical tools; data in is processed algorithmically, and certain outputs are generated therefrom. Robots can’t necessarily correlate seemingly disparate points of data to reach a different conclusion than what their algorithms are designed to compute; an adding machine can compute 15 as the result of the addition of two integers, but it has no ability to detect or comment on the aesthetic similarities of 6 and 9. Humans, on the other hand, come by this sort of thinking naturally, and it is this ability to think abstractly that has driven much of human innovation and discovery. Robots may one day be able to simulate, mimic, or even possess these same faculties…but I think Lord British is quite right when he notes that the day when this becomes a possibility is still a long way off. A human colony on another celestial body, however, may yet be something we here live to see.

Last week, Raph Koster posted a lengthy article on his website in response to a request (via Twitter) for his “juciest game design posts”. Most of the article’s length is comprised of links to previous posts of his on a variety of topics, including his theory of fun, game grammar, game development proper, narrative design, games as art, game design in general, economies, communities…you name it. If he talked about it, it probably has a link somewhere in the post.

Frankly, I love how forthcoming Raph tends to be with his knowledge and his experience; his is (or seems to be) a strong drive to educate and inform. And his offerings are valuable for a number of reasons. For those here who are involved in design or remake projects, there will be some genuine knowledge and wisdom to be gleaned from his posts, while for those here who are concerned and interested gaming fans will be able to gain some insight into what game design actually entails, the better to understand why a particular developer chose to do a particular thing with a game.

I’d say “read them all”, but obviously that will take a reserve of time that many here won’t have. So if nothing else, look over the list of articles and take a look at a few of them, the ones that (by title, at least) jump out at you.

Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 reviews!
And just one more…

The reviews continue to pour in for BioWare’s latest, and almost all of them heap praise and percentage points upon it. Reviewers seem divided as to whether the endings presented in the game are a high point or a sour note in both the game itself and the series as a whole, but praise much of the rest of the game almost universally.

GameBanshee’s very lengthy — and very detailed — review is probably the best of the bunch, so here’s the opening thereto:

Mass Effect 3 is a game that is desperate to conclude itself spectacularly. From its opening attempts at tugging on heartstrings to its closing moments reveling in galactic spectacle, it brings the Mass Effect universe’s characters, creatures and locations into scenarios which are committed to bringing them to their limits. Familiar companions and old enemies are tested in fire and pushed to their limits, and the tale is dramatic to the point of self-indulgence.

BioWare were clearly working on all cylinders to provide fans of the series with a game that sees the concepts and universe fully realized in a way the first two Mass Effect games could never hope to match, all while fine-tuning the tried-and-true cover-based shooting action. However, the narrative side of the game simply cannot manage to live up to the expectations of both a series finale, much less the previous two titles. The end result is a game that is nearly ceremonial in its pomp and excess, and which plays faster and smoother than any previous BioWare title, but one that is also clumsy and strained, both on design and technical fronts.

Go and read the rest. It’s the second link, above.

PC Gamer got a close-up look at the changed Legacy System in The Old Republic.

Jarring shift of topic, I know.

The Legacy system has been hailed as a major feature of The Old Republic since before the game’s launch, it was the highlight of the TOR Guild summit last week, and now we’ve finally gotten to play with it ourselves. Here’s a quick run-down of what we learned about how it works and the amazing things it lets you do.

…

As you probably know by now, the premise of the Legacy system is that as you complete major milestones on your characters in The Old Republic, you’ll unlock new skills, emotes, or stat boosts that are made available to all of your characters on that same server. You’ll also be able to purchase most of these perks with in-game money if you’re not up for rolling multiple characters.

After reading the article, I’m…less sold on the idea. I like the concept of having multiple characters on a server (“alts”, in the popular parlance) all being related as if they were family, and all contributing incremental amounts of XP toward a common pool that can unlock perks and whatnot. I’m…less thrilled about said perks being new emotes, or hugely expensive (in in-game credits, mind you) character race unlocks.

So as you may have heard by now, the ending(s) to Mass Effect 3 have generated a lot of controversy.
No, really. Fans even started a “protest donation drive” for Child’s Play, called “Retake Mass Effect“, that raised over $30,000 in a day.
Oh, that ending. That ending.
The fact that files for the Day 1 From Ashes DLC were found on vanilla game discs certainly didn’t help matters, either.
Neither did this “missing items” issue in the game’s multiplayer side.
Not surprisingly, BioWare has been urging common sense and pushing the defence against all this.

First, a note on the From Ashes discovery:

Since then Mass Effect 3 has been released worldwide, giving PC gamers the chance to dive into Mass Effect 3′s files. Some players found evidence of voice files, animations and character models for the From Ashes companion character on the Mass Effect 3 disk, leading many to believe that, contrary to Bioware’s statement, the DLC had been developed alongside the main game.

Gamble took to Twitter to explain the files. “Because the plot of ME3 is so richly interwoven with the character interactions and moments, you simply cannot use a DLC module to ‘insert’ a new character,” he said. “As we’ve mentioned before, that character has to be planned and the framework has to be established ahead of time for us to build off of with the DLC module.”

He also mentions that elements like the character selection screen can’t be overwritten with DLC, so spaces had to be left for the DLC character from the start. “certain elements of the Javik appearance and some of the VO needed to be included on the disc. That is a fact,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean the content was created, and then removed. It is a necessity of adding a rich character presence in our game.”

Although, if some of the leaked plot documents from late last year tell the truth, Javik was at one point supposed to appear as part of the main game, albeit in a rather different role. That’s not proof that BioWare is pulling the wool over our eyes, however. It’s simply proof that the character is one they’d had in mind for a while, and were casting about trying to figure out what to do with.

As to the ending:

…[Mass Effect producer/director Casey] Hudson said he likes its mystery and interpretation possibilities, and having a reactive ending is better than one that falls flat and fades out. “I didn’t want the game to be forgettable, and even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people — debating what the endings mean and what’s going to happen next, and what situation are the characters left in — that to me is part of what’s exciting about this story.”

“Any publicity is good publicity”, then.

I’ve still not finished the game, though I am aware of its ending(s)…or rather, its one ending and the various minor differentiations that emerge as a result of a handful of factors, not all of which are within your direct control as the player. If you want to know what I mean, IGN has the details. It should be obvious that a spoiler warning applies to that link.

The problem, as I see it, is that this much-discussed ending is much-discussed in no small part because it does kind of fall flat, and upends much of what had previously defined Mass Effect as a series.

A Mass Effect first-person shooter was being considered for a time.

I remember joking with Sergorn Dragon about Call of Mass Effect about a year ago. It’s frightening to think how close to the mark that joke actually was.

Fortunately, BioWare canned the FPS idea and instead rolled that branch of development back into Mass Effect 3‘s multiplayer element. Which I guess is better.

And to end on an amusing note…

PC Gamer tried to install Mass Effect 2 recently:

On Friday night, I suddenly, desperately wanted to play Mass Effect 2. I’d procrastinated all the way up to the release of Mass Effect 3, and finally snapped out of whatever was holding me back. No problem: digital distribution makes the PC the best-suited platform to satiate sudden cravings. ME2 is on Steam, but since ME3 is exclusively on Origin, I figured I’d buy it there so the two games could snuggle up together in my library. That arbitrary decision was a huge mistake.

In Steam, when a game finishes downloading, it’s ready to play (unless any prerequisites need installing, but that’s generally painless). I assumed Origin would work the same, and the service’s FAQ claims it does: “Installations are easy, as Origin technology enables instant play after a successful download.” But when Mass Effect 2 was finally on my hard drive, the download button turned into an install button. No big deal…until I clicked on it.

Not only did I have the Hungarian version of the installer, but it was encountering an error which I couldn’t read. That’s pretty damn absurd, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I really wanted to play Mass Effect 2, and hey, I’m a resourceful PC gamer! I can fix a simple localization mix-up! So I poked around in the installer’s directory and discovered the installation configuration ini. A simple change to the file name loaded the installer in English. Easy. Now what was that error?

What was that error? Click through to find out. It’s…amusing, to say the least.

You know how you can tell I’m a parent? I typed “needs your help” and immediately thought about this. God save me!

But I digress. Over on the Ultima Dragons Facebook page, Stephen Emond has posted another request for assistance tracking down particular versions of various Ultima Online release and expansion packs:

Over the years UO was released in MANY different countries. While the majority of them received some form of localization, others were direct imports. There are a number of European countries that EA specifically marketed various UO releases to, but information on them is lacking. The following were most likely direct imports from the UK, USA, or Asia-Pacific; but when you consider the localized Ultima releases from Greece, Czech Republic, Slovenia, etc anything is possible. What I’m looking for is confirmation on whether these releases were localized or not (and if not which region the import came from):

Third Dawn:
Norway

Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge:
Norway, Sweden, Denmark & South Africa

Age of Shadows:
South Africa

Samurai Empire:
France, Denmark, Poland & Australia

8th Age & 9th Anniversary
England

If you’re able to offer any insight, Dragons and Dragonettes, drop a comment here or (preferably) hit up his original post on Facebook and speak your piece! Every little piece of information you can supply makes Stephen that much more able to turn in a definitive, comprehensive Collector’s Guide for Ultima Online as a follow-up to the wildly successful Ultima: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide.

I’ll actually be travelling tomorrow, headed for Price, Utah, but I should be in town and set up in the hotel with enough time remaining in the day to post a few articles. As such, this article won’t be a typical travel-related post, but the somewhat overdue round-up of CD Projekt-related news.

The Witcher 2

Another trailer for The Witcher 2′s Enhanced Edition.

Gaming Nexus interviews Adam Badowski.

Mr. Badowski is the head of the CD Projekt Red studio, and he was hit up to talk about the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 and the challenges the studio faces adapting the game for the platform.

What was the hardest part of adapting the PC game to the Xbox 360? Were there any compromises you had to make with the Xbox 360 version?

The PC and the Xbox are different platforms that provide different performance levels. And we wanted to give console gamers the same experience that PC players had. This required a lot of effort from the start. The REDengine is a great tool, a tool that was created with multiple platforms in mind. The game is massive, and adapting it to the Xbox hardware was difficult, but in the end we prevailed! I think we pushed the Xbox 360 to its limits and are giving console players one of the best looking games to be released on their platform.

Mr. Badowski goes on to confirm that the game was not…censored at all for its console release.

GameTrailers also caught up with Adam Badowski, as luck would have it.

More talk about the Xbox 360 version:

DK:…Obviously, bringing The Witcher to console for the very first time is a pretty big deal for you guys. What excites you the most about this opportunity? Is it exposing a whole new audience to The Witcher brand in its current form or the future possibilities of how the franchise might evolve with an expanded audience?

AB: We are really excited that a larger group of people will meet our hero. Geralt of Rivia is really exceptional. Abandoned by his parents as a child he undergoes intensive training and magical experiments, which make him a mutant. Geralt is considered non-human by people and human by others.

His changed body gives him skills that no normal man can have. He can cast magical signs and drink toxic potions. He is a master of the sword. But this is only the tip of an iceberg.Because the real great thing is his character. He is not a glorious knight or plain scum. As all of his world, when it comes to morality, he is in the grey region between good and evil. The types of choice we give to console players will also be new to many of them. Many times players will have to decide to take the lesser evil. There is no karma point system. In many console RPGs the choice looks like this: “gain items/money/skills and lose karma” or “lose items/money/skills and gain karma”. In the Witcher we bring real consequences. Every action has a unique result – just like in real life.

Which reminds me that I need to get back into playing through the Witcher games. After a long season of BioWare titles, I find that I’m getting just a teeny bit…burned out on their particular approach to moral choice and consequence in games. I find I’m gravitating toward Reckoning even more as I play Mass Effect 3, precisely because moral decisions in Reckoning don’t seem to have long-reaching, far-flung consequences. Though the opposite circumstance might also be a welcome one.

Wanna see how a CGI cinematic gets made?

Here’s a “behind the scenes” look at that awesome CGI trailer for the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2:

CD Projekt will never use DRM again!

That’s the word directly from Marcin Iwinski, the company’s CEO.

“We release the game. It’s cracked in two hours, it was no time for Witcher 2. What really surprised me is that the pirates didn’t use the GOG version, which was not protected. They took the SecuROM retail version, cracked it and said ‘we cracked it’ — meanwhile there’s a non-secure version with a simultaneous release. You’d think the GOG version would be the one floating around.”

“DRM does not protect your game,” Iwinski told Joystiq after the presentation. “If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users.”

I’m sure a whole bunch of you will be quite thrilled to hear this.

More The Witcher 2 interviews!

GameBanshee has aggregated a couple of things, including an interview with CD Projekt RED level artist Mark Ziemak, along with links to a couple of other pieces of previewy-type content. Here’s Mr. Ziemak’s comments on the expected reception awaiting The Witcher 2 on the Xbox 360:

First of all, we are aware that there are some casual players on console, but on the other hand I think people are educated enough and ready for quite a… maybe not a ‘hardcore’ experience, but more of a ‘true’ RPG. It’s not like The Witcher is going to be hard to start playing for anyone. You don’t need to be a master at games to get into it.

Sure, the game may not be very easy, but you have the Easy setting that will allow you to enjoy the storyline and make choices and consequences. So we’re not really afraid. I think people will enjoy it. There are games like Demon’s Souls which are really challenging, and still have their audience. So I think we will satisfy a lot of players.

But really, let’s face it: Microsoft’s current-gen gaming console hasn’t seen an RPG as sophisticated and as complex as The Witcher 2, and the game is definitely something very different then what the console’s audience is used to.

“I don’t want The Witcher to be sold by crappy stores.”

Marcin Iwinski again:

“I don’t want Witcher to be sold by crappy stores which don’t care about the consumers.” That’s what the impressively titled Marcin Iwinski — co-founder, Member of the Board and Business Development at CD Projekt Group — had to say at GDC last week.

…

“Look what [Steam] have done with Steamworks,” he continued. “They’ve offered a lot of stuff and are forever linking the developers with the platform. All of their offering is free so… is there any better strategy? No. Give a lot of value.”

So will we not see the next Witcher game at GameStop? I suppose there’s hope!

Zeph noticed that I had an out-of-date version of his Ultima 6-themed texture pack for Minecraft on the relevant project entry, and so graciously sent me an updated copy by email.

Which I have now uploaded. So go…grab! Enjoy! Play!

Knights of the Old Republic 2

Chris Avellone’s conference plans.

Obsidian game designer and project director Chris Avellone will be at PAX East and WonderCon this year.

J.E. Sawyer: Choice Architecture and Narrative Design.

Josh Sawyer has posted a PDF copy of his GDC presentation: Do (Say) The Right Thing: Choice Architecture, Player Expression and Narrative Design in Fallout: New Vegas. It makes for some fascinating reading, and gives some insight into how Sawyer — and Obsidian in general — implement and reward (if that’s the right word) choice in their game narratives.

All is not roses at Obsidian, however…

This is some sad news:

Obsidian Entertainment has just cancelled “a future next gen project” (most likely Project North Carolina), resulting in the layoff of approximately 20-30 employees from both that team and the South Park: The Game team. Adding credence to the tip is a tweet by Obsidian Entertainment animator Andre Nguyen wishing those laid off a speedy recovery at another position elsewhere in the industry:

Fellow Obsidianites who were laid off today…I was lucky, but I’ve been on the other end of that. Your talents will take you far! #keepgoin

This is worse news:

Project North Carolina that was cancelled, and that the devastating news comes after “the owners weren’t paid for 6-7 months” and “401k matching was halted” for employees. Hopefully Obsidian lets us throw our money at a Kickstarter project soon, or I’m going to really start to worry.

And in even worse news (though I can’t find the source for where I read this), it was apparently the case that this Project North Carolina was considered…quite important to the financial viability of the company, so much so that Feargus Urquhart evidently choked up when making the announcement of its cancellation.

Bad news bears, my Dragons and Dragonettes.

This might have had something to do with the above…

…Fallout: New Vegas currently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would’ve earned the company royalties on its product. “[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn’t,” Obsidian creative director and co-owner Chris Avellone told one Twitter user.

I notice that Avellone has since deleted the tweet that revealed this information (or, at least, I can’t find it anymore), but the cat’s out of the bag regardless, and the Internet has made its opinions on the matter known. As far as things that suck go, this ranks up there, to be sure.

The First Age of Update: As it would happen, the source for that whole Feargus Urquhart choking up bit was…the Joystiq article linked immediately above.

Over on the Ultima Dragons Facebook page, Andrew Owen has posted a survey, to retrieve answers to the following question:

Which NPCs from the entire Ultima series would you like to see in U3.5:PB? I’d just like to get an idea of who the favorites are. I reserve the right to pick whichever NPCs best serve the story. All of the companions from U4 will be included. Suggestions can include NPCs who are only referred to in in-game materials, e.g. Philpop the Weary. The only requirement is that they should be alive at the time during which the game is set.

If you’re on Facebook, head on over and answer the survey; multiple answers are allowed! Help shape the face and character of Pax Britannia!

Zeph — whom most of you should recognize from his Ultima-themed texture pack for Minecraft — sent me an email this morning to announce a new project that he has been working on. Yes, it’s still a Minecraft-targeted undertaking, but it’s something a little bit bigger (and a little bit more awesome) than a new set of textures:

So, with updates to Minecraft’s texture files becoming more infrequent, I’ve decided to break ground on a new, but related project. I had made reference to this project a while ago, but started in on it for real only recently. What you’re looking at in that attached image is a program called WorldPainter which is used to essentially paint landscapes for Minecraft. Elevation hightmaps, surface blocks, bioms and the like. And I don’t think I have to tell you what the map I’m making is.

Here, by the way, is said attached image (of said map):

Yup. That looks like Britannia.

Zeph continues:

This is going to be a long long LONG process. As it stands, I’d generously say I’m maybe 1/3 finished on the map, but probably less than that, and that’s just the sculpting. From the Skara Bre achipelego, to the marshlands between Trinsic and Brittan, from Dagger Isle, all the way down to the Isle of the Avatar, I hope to do this justice. I’ll probably put out the map once the landmass is finished, but then will begin the hard part, going into creative mode and doing detail work and adding the cities (the dungeons make me shudder). Not sure I’ll make it that far, but I want to at LEAST get the landmass done. To give a sense of scale, the map is 5888 meters across, making the whole of Britannia 34668544 square meters. So far the mountains are around 120 meters above sea level. The Serpent Spine will probably be a little higher than that though. This cities will be only slightly bigger than their representations in 4 and 5 I think, and I doubt you’ll even be able to see the Serpent Spine mountains from Brittany Bay because of the distance. It’s still a ways away from any of that, and I debated long and hard…ok, not that hard…about whether to reveal my efforts yet. Finally I figured I could use a little feedback to keep me going, and maybe think of things I hadn’t yet.

As you can all see, the tool looks fairly powerful, at least for generating overland details (manual dungeon creation would be a pain). Zeph hasn’t released the map as a download just yet, as he notes above, but hopefully he can find some encouragement to get it done and released.

By the way: if you’re curious about WorldPainter, check it out here.

Skyrim

Build your own Skyrim!

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a new feature, entitled “Build Your Own Skyrim“. It’s a multi-part feature, evidently, that is intended to serve as a guide to how you too, with your PC version of the game, can take advantage of its burgeoning modding community to tweak and adjust the game so that it looks and works even better for you:

Thanks to Steam Workshop, the act of modding Skyrim is phenomenally easy: all you need to do is select a mod in the system’s list and it’ll be integrated into the game. There’s also a few from the venerable Skyrim Nexus as well. While we wait for both Bethesda or these guys to pack the mud back in place, there are a few tweaks you can make to the base game, gleaned from the Workshop’s finest fiddlers. They won’t be as fancy as adding monocles and top hats to mudcrabs — I’ll be getting to those in a later article — but they will strengthen Skyrim’s core and fix a few glaring errors and inconsistencies.

The first entry in the series deals with improving the game’s UI, world map, and…horses?

Bethesda are looking for iOS developers!

A job listing at Bethesda Game Studios (via Game Informer) calls for iOS programmers to join the studio and build unannounced games.

The requisition calls for candidates who have shipped multiple iOS titles and have experience on Open GL ES and other 3D technologies.

A Bethesda representative declined to comment on the company’s iOS plans.

Well, isn’t that interesting? What do you all figure this could foretell? Mobile ports of the earlier Elder Scrolls games, perhaps? Or something entirely new and different?

Skyrim patch 1.5 has been announced.

And it even gets a teaser trailer:

As was foretold previously, some new kill-cams are making their debut in this update:

NEW FEATURES

• New cinematic kill cameras for projectile weapons and spells
• New kill moves and animations for melee weapons
• Shadows on grass available (PC)
• Smithing skill increases now factor in the created item’s value
• Improved visual transition when going underwater
• Improved distance LOD transition for snowy landscapes

Infinitron Dragon alerted me to this (watchful fellow that he is): over on the recently re-launched Baldur’s Gate website, a countdown timer has been added, ticking away the hours, minutes, and seconds until…something.

At present, there’s just a little over sixteen hours remaining on the timer, suggesting that we’ll see some sort of news, ideally about what the website actually means, tomorrow. That, or we’ll be handed the first piece of some sort of viral marketing puzzle. But I’m hoping for the former.

The First Age of Update: If you had “Enhanced Edition”, you win the pool. There’s little else to say at this point, and the site is currently melting under the weight of the Internet. But I’m thinking that means an HD update, not unlike Beamdog’s treatment of MDK2.

Dear all,

I saw the following story from PCMAG.com that classified 10 Classic Computer RPGs from the 1980s. It seems logical that Ultima be there and, in an interesting twist, the authors decided to tip their hats to Ultima III instead of Ultima IV or Ultima V.

While the entire Ultima series is legendary in computer RPG circles, it’s worth paying particular attention to the third entry in the series, Exodus.

I have actually played most of the games, though a long time ago. As the authors suggest, I also have not heard of certain.

Have a great read,
Jc

Risen 2

Risen 2 will have true 3D support!

Yes, yes, it’s a 3D action-RPG, made with a 3D engine. That’s not what this news concerns.

No…this news concerns the fact that Risen 2 will fully support Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology! So if you happen to have that on your gaming rig, you’ll be able to enjoy some piratey RPG goodness in a somewhat more immersive way.

Risen, on Steam, no longer has Tages copy protection.

Piranha Bytes (or, at least, I assume it was them) quietly stripped the Tages copy protection out of the game. The activation limit for the game has also been removed.

Ain’t that nice of ‘em?

The release dates for Risen 2 have been announced.
And guess what…the console version has been delayed!

Risen 2: Dark Waters will be available on April 27, 2012 for Windows PC, on May 22, 2012 in the USA and Canada and on May 25, 2012 in European countries for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3.

Risen 2: Dark Waters will be available via digital distribution for PC, and for both PC and consoles as a retail version, as well as a Collector’s Edition in certain territories.

RPGWatch calls the delay, which is basically a month in duration, “small”. I’d argue that a whole month exceeds the definition of “small”, but that’s just me.

Building pirates for all platforms.

INCGamers sat down with Pete Brolly from Deep Silver to discuss Risen 2. A couple notable excerpts worth mention here include his comments on the nature of Risen 2′s open world:

IncGamers: How would you describe the way Risen 2 is set out? It’s not open-world in the same sense as Skyrim, but it’s certainly not linear either.

Pete Brolly: It’s definitely open-world. The difference is, though… in Risen 1 you start the game and you’re free to go anywhere, and we got a lot of complaints that there wasn’t enough explanation. We didn’t want people to get lost at the start of Risen 2 so it’s a bit linear early on as you play through missions that introduce you to the world.

Then, on the second island, it’s all opened up and a bit more is explained. And then on the next island you get your own ship and you’re free to travel anywhere you like. So, no matter what the mission, you can go anywhere at any time.

Risen 1 was a like a funnel, where it started out open world and got more linear. In Risen 2 that’s reversed.

And here’s a rather intriguing comment on how skills in the game work:

PB: If you choose the Voodoo option then you’ll lock yourself out of some Inquisition missions, as well as some skills that you could potentially learn. You will still be able to use your pistol and ‘dirty trick’ skills if you choose Voodoo, but you won’t increase your firearms abilities enough to use rifles, muskets or shotguns.

On the other hand, you will get the Voodoo skills and missions.

IG: What are some of those Voodoo skills?

PB: New dialogue options open up where you can actually manipulate NPCs, so you can pluck a hair from their head and make a Voodoo puppet based on that person. You can then use that to take on a quest.

For example, one mission might involve a ship that needs to be taken over but is guarded by enemies. You could fight them yourself or you could take over the commander and use him to dismiss the troops.

On one hand, they’re opting for the rather hard-core approach of locking you out of whole skill trees if you choose to side with one faction over the other. But not, or so it sounds, in a way that makes you feel like it’s a punishment.

Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott gave a presentation at SXSW on Saturday, talking about Man on a Mission and various space travel concepts related thereto. For those of you who’ve followed his talks on this topic in the past, there won’t be much in the way of “new and surprising” commentary from the “second-generation astronaut”. That said, these revelations came as news to me:

{Garriott is] passionate about finding ways to fund his own future journeys, for one thing. On the recent trip he had created a software that warned astronauts when they were approaching spots where they were supposed to take photos. Previously astronauts had to watch out the window and try to visually line up the photo they?d gone up with with the scene below.

He also did work protein crystallization for ExtremoZyme, Inc., a biotechnology company he co-founded with his father. The proteins they used have important cellular functions and are associated with common human diseases. The weightless environment of space helps form superior crystals which researchers on earth to study to learn more about the molecular structure of these proteins for protein engineering and drug design.

This statement, meanwhile, will resonate with Ultima fans:

“I have a passion for exploration,” he said, “I have a passion for understanding and I have a passion to create things for others to explore.”

Ain’t that the truth?