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Produced by: Thepal
Website: Ethereal Software
Releases:
* Serpent Isle Announcement Demo (95.4 MiB, 305 hits)

The announcement of this module also serves, in a way, as the cancellation notice for Thepal’s previous Ultima remake attempt, Infinity Eternal. Serpent Isle is, as the name would imply, a more-or-less straight-up remake of Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, and uses the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion engine. Thepal has chosen to remake Serpent Isle and bring its magic into a 3D world in an attempt to bring the many memorable moments and elements of the original game to life in a way Ultima fans have never seen before.

Thepal has elected to create Serpent Isle as “an almost 1:1 remake of the original game. The original dialogue, quests, locations, furniture…pretty much everything [will be] identical.” He notes that this will work well for two reasons in particular:

• Elder Scrolls Oblivion’s engine is strangely almost identical to the Serpent Isle one… apart from being in 3D. It contains everything I need, including an advanced scheduling system, to make Serpent Isle come to life.
• Serpent Isle was a piece of art that really does not need to be changed.

A direct remake also means — or hopefully means — that he can create the mod faster than a more innovative retelling would require. He notes that “[d]ialogue for a town takes a week instead of…well… closer to a year for previous remakes. Of course, dialogue still seems to be the most time consuming part of the mod, but has been made easier due to a scripted Ultima-like dialogue system that has been incorporated into the original Oblivion dialogue system.”

His expected release date is still the obligatory “when it’s done”, although he rang in the end of 2010 with a release of a 100 MB demo, available here for download, and expects to have much more to show within 2011. And if the project’s rudimentary blog is any indication, he’s making excellent progress. Be sure to also keep an eye on Thepal’s YouTube channel, which features test and gameplay footage from the project.

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Produced by: SiENcE
Website: Crank Gaming
Releases:
* Exult for Dingux (Beta 2) (12.0 MiB, 107 hits)
* Dingux Virtual Mouse (161.5 KiB, 102 hits)

The Dingoo is a portable media player device, and Dingux is a custom Linux kernel for it that comes bundled with SDL and other media-friendly libraries. Exult has been ported to the system by SiENceE, whom some of you may also know as one of the developers of Iris2.

At present, the port is still in beta, but SiENcE reports that it works with both The Black Gate and Serpent Isle. He cautions, however, that to work properly, it requires the Dingux Virtual Mouse utility to be installed; a download has been provided here.

Exult

Produced by: Team Exult
Website: Exult @ Sourceforge
Current Releases:
* Exult 1.4.9 RC1 (Windows) (2.2 MiB, 667 hits)
* Exult 1.4.9 RC1 (OS X) (5.8 MiB, 421 hits)
* Exult 1.4.9 RC1 (Haiku) (15.6 MiB, 57 hits)
* Exult 1.4.9 RC1 Source (5.2 MiB, 359 hits)
* Sharp Zaurus (1.4 MiB, 341 hits)
* PocketPC (ARM) (246 bytes, 375 hits)
* PSP (2.0 MiB, 442 hits)
* Fedora - Game (1.0 MiB, 397 hits)

Unstable Development Snapshots:
* Exult 1.5 (Windows) (2.1 MiB, 56 hits)
* Exult 1.5 (OS X) (6.1 MiB, 46 hits)
* Exult 1.5 Source (4.5 MiB, 47 hits)
* Exult (Android) (321.9 KiB, 58 hits)

Additional Files
* Audio Installer (Windows) (42.5 MiB, 261 hits)
* Audio Installer (Mac) (47.5 MiB, 204 hits)
* Audio Files (Manual Install) (46.2 MiB, 211 hits)
* Black Gate Sound Files (4.6 MiB, 422 hits)
* Black Gate Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (6.2 MiB, 361 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (1 of 2) (12.0 MiB, 410 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (2 of 2) (10.9 MiB, 381 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (5.9 MiB, 419 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (7.7 MiB, 384 hits)
* Shapes Plugin for Photoshop (87.7 KiB, 355 hits)
* GIMP Plugin (50.4 KiB, 339 hits)
* GIMP Plugin 2.0 (47.0 KiB, 344 hits)
* SDL 1.2 Libraries

Exult Editors
* Exult Studio (Windows) (3.6 MiB, 381 hits)
* Exult Tools (Windows) (1.4 MiB, 376 hits)
* Fedora - Tools (274.0 KiB, 337 hits)
* Fedora - Studio (254.6 KiB, 339 hits)

An amazing project, Exult is a cross-platform reworking of the Ultima 7/Serpent Isle engine that allows the game to be run on modern operating systems with expanded memory environments. This is not the same as a Voodoo memory-manager wrapper program, and it works on many systems apart from Windows.

Exult 1.49 is the latest “stable” release — Team Exult is making massive engine changes, and subsequent releases are expected to have instabilities as a result. It has Windows, Mac OS X, Sharp Zaurus, and Fedora builds available. Also avaliable is the source code, so that people running other systems can compile and build Exult.

It also requires the original game data files from The Black Gate or Serpent Isle; you have to own a copy of either game in order to play it with Exult.

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Produced by: Wizardry Dragon, Marzo Sette Torres Jr., Crysta the Elf
Website: Ultima 7: The Feudal Lands
Releases:
* v0.1 Alpha Release (Windows) (4.0 MiB, 249 hits)
* v0.1 Alpha Release (SFX) (5.7 MiB, 165 hits)
* v0.1 Alpha Release (RAR) (3.8 MiB, 169 hits)
* v0.1 Alpha Release (TAR.GZ) (6.2 MiB, 168 hits)

Old Releases:
* Oct. 29 2006 Snapshot (2.7 MiB, 397 hits)

This is a mod for Exult (with the release of Exult Studio, expect these to become more and more common) that seeks to merge The Black Gate and Serpent Isle into one seamless narrative. Additionally, it will feature a third continent — the Lands of the Feudal Lords — and a series of quests that the Avatar and his/her party must complete there.

This is an ambitious remake (and also a spin-off, within the technical definition of the term), to be sure! In addition to the expanded narrative, the developers plan to re-introduce the Virtues to the lands of Ultima (i.e. the Avatar will once again be able to interact with the Shrines). As well, they plan to overhaul the spellcasting system and to enable party members to wield spellbooks.

The alpha release of The Feudal Lands is now available, and can be obtained by downloading one of the four files listed above. There is a Windows installer file, which provides a standard wizard-based installation method for the mod (as long as you have Exult installed, it should work just fine).

Also available is a compressed archive of the entire TFL file repository available as either an SFX, RAR, or GZIPped TAR file. Grab the one appropriate to your OS and unzip into the ‘mods’ folder in the install directory for The Black Gate.

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Produced by: Sam Matthews
Releases:
* Exult 3D (19.2 KiB, 881 hits)
* Exult 3D Models (3.9 MiB, 619 hits)

A project that surged onto the Exult forums over a year ago and which subsequently stopped development in a half-complete state. Currently, Exult 1.4 is required to run it.

That said, the numerous screenshots that the developer made available were amazing, to say the least, and offered a “never-before-seen” perspective on the world of Ultima 7.

As this program uses the original data for Ultima 7 (being, essentially, Exult with a different graphics engine) you will need the original game files to run it. And yes, like Exult, it will run both The Black Gate and Serpent Isle.

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Produced by: Klown Killer and Artaxerxes
Website: Serpent Isle in French
Downloads:
* Serpent Isle in French 1.031 (Windows) (15.5 KiB, 160 hits)
* Serpent Isle in French 1.031 (Linux) (15.2 KiB, 141 hits)

An offshoot of the Exult project, SI French is an effort to translate one of the greatest of the Ultima games from English to French. For Windows, the program has been released as a standalone executeable, while for Linux it has been released as a game patch.

The project did complete and released a couple of versions of its modifications, so while it appears to have died, it won’t be put in the Orphanage for the time being. Its website is still up, but seems to be suffering SQL errors.

This project requires Exult.