Some may remember Kevin Fishburne from the Ultima V TES III mod that was announced a few years ago, which saw a lot of progress but ultimately ceased development due to the sheer number of 3D assets that needed to be created for it.

Mr. Fishburne is back with a new project called Sanctimonia, which borrows elements from Ultima IV, V, Online and arcade titles such as Gauntlet. It’s a 2D game with faux 3D effects and is not a mod; it’s a standalone MMO-type game that he’s coding himself. Other than landscape textures and building tiles, all the objects (trees, furniture, people, animals, etc.) will be photographed from real models from 16 directions to create the faux 3D effect when the screen is rotated.

Currently, he’s attempting to raise funds for the project; if you feel like tossing him some support, please click below:

This is an ambitious project to create a realistic heightmap of Britannia using such tools as Photoshop, Terragen, and L3DT.

This in turn would be useful for some Ultima project developers, since I know for a fact that tools exist for some game engines (Neverwinter Nights 2 especially) that allow for the automatic creation of terrain based on imported heightmaps.

But that’s not the reason Mark has undertaken this project for himself. As he creates this work, he also wants to consider: “size and scaling of the continent, political and demographic issues, economy and trade routes, [and] geology and land formation.” In that regard, it’s as much an anthropological study as it is a really cool piece of artwork. You can see just how cool by clicking on the project’s image there on the left; that’s a sample/preview image he sent me a couple months back. It can be viewed in somewhat better detail at Aiera’s Flickr page.

Andrew’s intriguing project involves taking various 28mm metal figurines and repainting them (with physical modifications if necessary) in order to reimagine Ultima as a tabletop wargame.

Thus far, he’s added a number of monsterforms to his collection — ettins, orcs, goblins, and headlesses to name but a few — and has fashioned a model of the female Avatar and a few of the companions as well (Dupre is pictured here). He has even begun work on a to-scale tavern model, inspired by The Modest Damsel (New Magincia’s tavern in Ultima 7.)

Mystik is a calendar of photographs of European models posed with props and backdrops that represent the virtues and principles of the Ultima universe, as well as the associated character classes.

Ricciardi put a fair bit of thought into understanding and conveying these aspects of Ultima’s backstory, and is offering the calendar in support of Village for All (V4A), which appears (I cannot read Italian) to be a charity devoted to helping those with disabilities travel.

This effort even has the support of Richard Garrriott, which is pretty darn cool.

A pen-and-paper RPG inspired by the first three Ultima titles, Siege Perilous is not (according to its author) a faithful representation of the canonical timeline — it is instead a “hybrid” game that can represent any point within the Ultima timeline, or serve as the foundation for a completely new, “off the cuff” Ultima adventure.

It was developed from an adaptation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box, in addition to several other sources.

The game is complete to the point that it can be playtested; Chgowiz has additions to make to the list of magic items (including potions and spells), character creation rules, and game setting information. Reviews of the game are welcome.

Borrowing a fair bit from other RPGs, EUO is intended to be a real-time, single/multi-player, persistent-world RPG…one that looks and plays much like Ultima 4 or Ultima 5.

The project site proudly proclaims that those looking for mouse support and Diablo 3-style graphics should seek their fix elsewhere.

EUO uses an Ultima Online-like skill system, without player classes. Combat is based on D&D dice rolling like in Neverwinter Nights (with additional Ultima Online influences, apparently). Although the original EUO did feature a U4-like tileset, the current iteration is completely original (although most monsters and traps will be familiar to Ultima 5 fans). Spells can be cast using either the Ultima 5 runes, or through a simpler list for the less-than-Ultima-proficient.

Also, the game now incorporates the LUA scripting language, meaning that the player can influence the dungeons to a greater degree through certain key actions. Leveling is done at shrines, with stats being upgraded along the same lines as happened in Ultima 6.

The game features over 100 NPCs and over 50 quests, with more being added all the time. And now, a 3D client is even available!

Produced by: Saduj
Website: Ultima Restoration
Releases:

Utilities
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This is actually a comprehensive collection of utilities and in-progress remakes of Ultima titles, all done in the Neverwinter Nights engine. The list of utilities is pretty comprehensive, including functional moongates (with Orb of the Moons!), NPC scheduling, animated potions, a conversation system to replace the default NWN system, and a very good reproduction of the venomous dagger of Ultima 7 fame.

But even more promising is the list of remakes that are being put together by this team and others. Currently in progress are remakes of Ultima 1, Ultima 7 (which provides the screenshot here), Ultima 8, Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams. Most of these seem still to be in the early stages of development, but the Ultima 7 remake — which deals, it seems, only with the events of The Black Gate at present — looks to have progressed somewhat further.

Here is hoping, then, that this collective set of efforts bears much fruit in the future! As the projects progress, I’ll probably break off each remake into its own standalone entry. For now, this one omnibus entry will suffice.

Produced by: Team Lazarus & Team Archon
Website: Project Britannia
Releases:
* Milestone 2 Release (0 bytes)

Updates (may be unstable):
* Britannia Art (0 bytes)
* Britannia Logic (0 bytes)
* Britannia Sound (0 bytes)
* Britannia Map (0 bytes)

Utilities
* Project Britannia Development Environment (0 bytes)
* Container Override example (0 bytes)
* Dungeon Siege Font Builder (0 bytes)
* Dungeon Siege Skrit API (0 bytes)
* Skrit/Template Cross-reference (0 bytes)
* Dungeon Siege Toolkit (0 bytes)
* Lazarus Lorebook Editor (0 bytes)
* Rapid Tank Creator (0 bytes)
* Siege Tools for Eclipse (Full) (0 bytes)
* Siege Tools for Eclipse 1.0.29 (Plugin) (0 bytes)
* Siege University Compilation (0 bytes)
* Tank Viewer (0 bytes)
* U6 Project UI Designer (0 bytes)
* Conversation Compiler (0 bytes)
* Conversation Editor Plugin for Siege Tools (0 bytes)
* Book Editor Plugin for Siege Tools (0 bytes)
* NPC/Schedule/Chest Generator (0 bytes)

Milestone 1 Release:
* Project Britannia (1 of 3) (0 bytes)
* Project Britannia (2 of 3) (0 bytes)
* Project Britannia (3 of 3) (0 bytes)

This ambitious project, a joint venture arising from the copperative developments of Ultima V: Lazarus and the Ultima 6 Project — both Dungeon Siege-based remakes of their respective Ultima titles — aims to create a platform for the easier creation of Ultima remakes (and, one would assume, spinoffs).

It’s “short list” of features is really too long to name here, but includes dynamic weather, ship navigation (a feature lost in many modern RPGs), complete day/night cycle, NPC scheduling, reagent-based spellcasting, moongates, dynamic factions, and a custom-build branching conversation system.

Or, to sum it all up in three words: it looks cool.

Now, the development team for Project Britannia is pretty active, and they are constantly putting out updates. The ones hosted here are current to the best of Aiera’s knowledge, but they may be a few days stale. To that end, the most current versions of the update files can always be found at the Project Britannia Change Log. Please note that these updates are likely unstable at present.

A project to recreate Savage Empire using Exult. This relatively new project (announced June 16, 2006) seems to be developing at a reasonable pace. Scythifuge has been experimenting with the Gimp and PaintShop Pro, and has begun to add custom graphics to this promising work. He has also begun to experiment with high-resolution tiles, and has posted some sample roof tiles to the forum thread linked above.

As yet, however, no demo or project snapshot has been released. ]]> http://www.ultimaaiera.com/savageempire/savage-empire-for-exult/feed/ 0 http://www.ultimaaiera.com/spin-offs/worlds-of-ultima-lost-sosaria/ http://www.ultimaaiera.com/spin-offs/worlds-of-ultima-lost-sosaria/#comments Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:19:47 +0000 Withstand the Fury Dragon http://aiera.timeimmortal.net/spin-offs/worlds-of-ultima-lost-sosaria/

Produced by: Withstand the Fury Dragon
Website: Worlds of Ultima: Lost Sosaria
Downloads:
* Lost Sosaria (module) (0 bytes)
* Castle Expanded v4 (hak pak) (0 bytes)
* CEP2 No Tilesets (hak pak) (0 bytes)
* No Cobble CRF (hak pak) (0 bytes)
* Rocky Mountains v11.1 (hak pak) (0 bytes)
* Seasonal Forest v9 (hak pak) (0 bytes)
* Ultima Music (hak pak, music) (0 bytes)
* ERF files (erf) (0 bytes)
* CEP2 TLK file (tlk) (0 bytes)

Worlds of Ultima: Lost Sosaria is a Neverwinter Nights module that tells the story of those companions of the Avatar who were missing without explanation after Ultima 7, as well as several other key characters from The Black Gate.

Pursuing Fellowship agents deep into the bowels of Britannia and the ruins of the Great Stygian Abyss, the companion Sentri leads his party of former friends and companions of the Avatar into an unknown part of the world: Lost Sosaria, one of the continents of Old Sosaria left missing after the death of the Wizard Mondain.

This project suspended development for a goodly while between 2005 and the present, and in fact Withstand the Fury Dragon has had to restart the module from scratch. However, he has revised his development plan, and feels confident that he can still deliver a good game with a large game world, this time using much more elegant tilesets.