Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
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.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: GM Draugr
Website: Soznet
This intriguing project was making use of an Ultima Online FreeShard to re-tell the story, in an online-game format, of Ultima 3.
As proven by Ultima Legacy, the Ultima Online world can be modified easily enough, and so this development team had begun to change the world map of whichever UO version they were using (one assumes it would be one of the more current incarnations) to be Britannia, circa Ultima 3, and had begun implementing the plot of that classic game into their world.
Unfortunately, the project seems to have stopped development, as there has been no “news” from the team since 2005, and they have not released any game files or demos. The project maps were completed, however, and can be purchased for a nominal fee.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: Razimus (Dr. Pepper Dragon, nee Perivolcanae Ze Dragon)
Website: UO to U7
A brand-new project (begun March 2, 2007!) that just didn’t last, the goal of which was to rebuild the Ultima 7 world (and Serpent Isle as well) using the Ultima Online engine. One can only assume that the end result of this project would have been an online-playable version of this classic Ultima two-part.
Alas, that is not for us to know.
Produced by: Shattered Moon
Website: Classic Ultima Online
Releases:
* U4 Multiplayer Client (2.6 MiB, 155 hits)
This promising reworking of the Ultima 4 engine does what U6 Online did for Ultima 6 – launches the classic single-player RPG into the realm of online gaming! It has become part of a larger project called Classic Ultima Online, which sounds as though its aim is to port several different Ultima titles into an online framework.
The project is currently in an alpha stage, and there is a client available. You can download the client from Aiera, or through Dennis DeMarco’s website.
To play: launch the client, specify u4m.demarco.com as the game server, and then create a player.
This project was formerly known as “Ultima 4 Multiplayer“.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: Azmodean
This project came and went pretty quickly, unfortunately. It was conceived in the days prior to the release of Dungeon Siege, and its goal was to remake the complete Ultima 7 story — both Black Gate and Serpent Isle — into one unified narrative using that game engine. However, by the time Dungeon Siege actually did release, the project had essentially disappeared — all that remains is this banner graphic.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: Whiplash
Website: Project entry at Mod DB
I found this project on Mod DB just recently, although it began its time there back in February 2006.
It seems to have stalled only a month after it began, which is a shame because it was a promising-sounding idea indeed. Okay, the developer can perhaps be faulted for choosing an unoriginal name, but that aside the idea was interesting: re-making Ultima from within the Source engine of Half Life 2 fame.
Unfortunately, the only thing the project seems to have been able to release was the logo visible here.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: Zonker
This was a project being worked on by the same person who made the Ultima 4 remake, Avatarship, for Neverwinter Nights. Unfortunately, shortly after the project was announced, the developer’s website was taken down, and has yet to reappear.
Posted by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Produced by: Mike Morrato
This was a Neverwinter Nights-based remake of Ultima 7 that appeared a few years ago, and for a time looked highly promising. Unlike some other NWN-based remakes, which use either a minimal amount of custom content or just the base tilesets that ship with NWN, the developer here was making heavy use of custom hak paks to give Britannia a much more involved, immersive feel.
What is perhaps less known about NWN to many people is that when the two expansion packs were released, and then the custom-content compilation called the Community Expansion Pack (‘CEP’ for short) after those, this caused conflicts with a number of older hak paks — especially ones that included a lot of custom-made placeable scenery objects — as identically referenced resources were overwritten. The exact technical details of why this is should be apparent to anyone with passing experience with database entries.
At any rate, this project was beset by a number of such conflicts, and while these were not the only reason for the project’s eventually being scrapped, they certainly did contribute.
