That’s right: hot on the heels of their Milestone 8 (Beta 1) release, the U6 Project team have released their second beta, which features:

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of the Beta 2 Release of Team Archon’s Ultima 6 Project, for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). Some things to look forward to in this release:

• Many bug fixes have been implemented since the Milestone 8 (Beta 1) release.
• Weapon and armor restrictions have now been applied, by class.
• The entire world is complete, and ready for players to explore.
• All NPC’s are in place, and all the quests have been implemented.
• Those players with proclivities to the dark side can now follow an “evil path”.
• Hydras are now in game, and should pose a nasty surprise to unwary travelers.
• Additional enhancements have been made to the map and journal systems, and the Compendium is now nearly complete.
• Minor performance improvements have been implemented
• It should be noted that anyone using a previous version will have to uninstall it prior to installing the Beta 2 Release, and start a new game.

While this is not the final release of the game, we feel that it is reasonably polished, enough for public consumption (read: scrutiny). We still expect that there will be some bugs, and are soliciting your help in finding them.

If you find problems with the release, want to exchange play hints with other players, want to give us kudos, or (heaven forbid) want to tell us what you really think, join us at our forums. We have set up a special forum for the Beta 2 Release on the Project Britannia forums (http://www.projectbritannia.com/index.php).

To download the Beta 2 Release, go to the Ultima 6 Project web site at: http://www.u6project.com/ where you can also check out profiles of the Project team members.

If you like what you see, and would like to contribute to this great game (and help us get it out faster), the team is looking for additional 2D artists to help with completing the portraits. And, of course, we’re always looking for play-testers to help us find and eliminate any remaining bugs. Contact any of the team members on the forums if you’d like to join the team.

You’re still here, good reader? Get thee to the Ultima 6 Project website and grab that download.

Or, you can grab it from the project entry here at Aiera.

Tags: Dungeon Siege, Mac, PC, Project Britannia, Ultima 6, Ultima 6 Project

I’ll be limping through restoring the downloads for Ultima 7 this and next week, most likely. And I’ve begun where it is most critical to begin: with Exult.

I’ve also gone though and grabbed the latest downloads (for Exult 1.4, Exult Studio, etc.) from the the project website.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It really took too damn long to get these ones restored, given how important a project Exult has been, and continues to be. Apologies for the entirely unacceptable delay.

Tags: Exult, Exult Studio, Ultima 7

That’s right: the open source 3D client for Ultima Online freeshards posted an updated build.

Which I will get uploaded to Aiera shortly.

Update: Downloads now available via the project entry…which I also finally got around to renaming.

(hat tip)

Tags: 3D, Aiera, Iris, Iris2, Ultima Online, Ultima: Iris

When I was forced to switch hosting companies — moving away from Canaca over to MediaTemple — I thought I’d lost my most current version of Aiera’s file archives. Yes, I had backups, but as I have learned over the last few months, I allowed too much time to lapse between backups; there were some files that were, apparently, forever lost.

Today was almost one of those days.

It started with someone asking for me to restore the download for the Ultima 9 Freeform Savegame. Which I finally got around to, today. However, it turned out that the ZIP archive for the savegame was…how shall I say this?…corrupt.

And believe me, there is not another copy of this thing anywhere on the Internet that I (or, rather, Bing and Google) can find. Not good.

So on a whim, I scoured my Gmail archives, and found the IP address for my old hosting server. Hoping against hope, I opened up Filezilla and tried my old account credentials. And somehow (I know not how)…it worked!

Seriously…it was like Christmas, the sequel.

I’m not sure, but I think I might just have everything back. I still have to check, but I’ve got a good feeling about this.

Update: the one file I was missing and feared to be lost — the download for Ultima Underworld for Dungeon Keeper — was among the recovered files. YES!

Tags: Aiera, Bing, Canaca.com, Christmas, Filezilla, Gmail, Google, Internet, Mediatemple, Ultima 9, ZIP

(Some of you Dragons may already have heard of this, but I just tripped over it, so it’s news.)

It looks like Razimus — who when last I heard from him was contemplating reviving the Blackrock Engine — has got a new project going: an Ultima Online-based remake (or possibly a separate story entirely?) of Serpent Isle.

Check thou it out, good reader! At present, it seems to still be in its planning/templating stages. But hey…it’s nice to see that Razimus is still kicking around and working on things!

Tags: Blackrock Engine, Serpent Isle, Ultima Online

The Titans are still looking for interior worldbuilders, by the way.

Outside of that, the team has made some progress on Ultima IX: Redemption, though it sounds as though things were a bit slower last month than had been hoped for.

Direhaggis asserts that he wrote five additional endings during that time…which brings the total to…uh…quite a few (I’ve lost count). Five separate endings are themselves quite a lot!

Tags: Titans of Ether, Ultima IX: Redemption

As the link on the sidebar indicates, Aiera once again has a forum!

That’s right: I’ve brought back The Sword and Shield. It still uses phpBB, but now incorporates more robust anti-spam features. News and project entries that I post to the site automatically get cross posted to this forum, so that discussions can be carried on there in case the comment form either isn’t your thing or has become too cumbersome.

And best of all: you don’t need to register to post. That’s right: non-registered visitors can participate in discussions, in like manner to how the Exult forums operate. Of course, there is some mild CAPTCHA protection in place to prevent spam bots from doing their dirty work…but I know that many of you tend to view the whole “registering for a forum” thing as being an unnecessary pain in the ass, and I would generally agree.

Which is why I’m not forcing you to do it.

So feel free to carry on discussions! I’ve configured the forum for Ultima and general off-topic chatter, but if anybody has additional suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments below…or in the forum!

Tags: Aiera, CAPTCHA, Exult, phpBB