Tools:
* Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.
* Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Tech Demo:
* Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Another Dungeon Siege-based remake, this high-profile (and high-tech) project aims to re-create Ultima 6, adding many of the same features to the game that Lazarus added into Ultima 5: enhanced music, expanded storyline, new characters and additional side quests.

The project has been in the works for a number of years, but their development pace has seemed to surge ahead in the last year or so; they’ve achieved several milestone releases since first being posted to Aiera, each one adding vast amounts of additional functionality to the game.

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)

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!

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!

This is mostly for my benefit, O Reader, as my memory is not what it once was (not that it was ever amounted to much to begin with) and a list of bases to cover will be highly beneficial at this stage of Aiera’s re-development. A lot of the projects have advanced in their development arcs since the last update to the site, and I need to update the site files to reflect that.

So, at a glance, here’s what needs to get done:

• Finish restoring old file categories and content – DONE!
• Update the files for Akalabeth Mobile – DONE!
• Update files for Lazarus to v1.2. See if it’s possible to upload the mod in one chunk instead of 7 RAR segments – DONE!
• Get local copies of Milestone 1 and Milestone 2 of Archon online – DONE!
• Nodling Dragon’s website seems to have a number of useful downloads and utilities; get these onto Aiera if they are not already – DONE!
• ZIO Interactive’s UW1 for PocketPC seems to have a downloadable demo now; get this – FALSE ALARM!
• Make sure the latest version of Exult is available for download – DONE!
• Check to make sure that I have the latest downloadable files for UW2 Revival on the site – DONE!
• Get the Eriadain files back online – DONE!
• Make sure I have the latest files for LOW – DONE!
• Make sure I have the latest files for SI French – DONE!
• Get the latest downloads for Pentagram, especially now that they have a Mac OS X Universal binary – DONE!
• Get the latest Project Britannia files – DONE!
• Make sure I have the latest version of EUO – DONE!
• Arx Fatalis seems to have a fair bit of downloadable media; see about getting hold of this – DONE!
• Get the latest version of U6O – DONE!
• Make sure I have the latest version of U4 Multiplayer – DONE!

That ought to keep my busy until the end of the week.

As I said, this is mostly for my benefit. However, O Reader, you are certainly welcome to look over the above list and take notice of anything in it which strikes you as being “news”; perhaps you, like myself, haven’t got the latest version of something yet. You can still make use of the old version of the site to find links to projects if they haven’t yet been ported to this new version of the site…go and do a little exploring!

Update: I thought of more to do:

• Investigate the various Ultima Online mods and remakes (Legacy, Iris, etc.) – DONE!
• Check out the UO for NWN module
• Investigate the Lands of Ultima hak paks on the NWVault – NOT WORTH THE EFFORT!
• Investigate the UO Britannia map module on the NWVault

These are somewhat longer-term goals, and the immediate goals of getting Aiera back up to the level of its previous iteration remains the priority. But I think it would be neat to expand the site a bit, and these seem good avenues to approach to do that with.

Upper-date:

• Download Dark Core “offline” versions. – DONE!
• Update IRE files (Sourceforge seems to be having issues at the moment) to version 0.93 – DONE!
• Get Nazghul 0.5.5 and Haxima’s latest files – DONE!
• BGKeyring for Exult – DONE!
• Enhanced Graphics Mod for Lazarus – DONE!
• Looking Up camera Mod for Lazarus – DONE!
• Grail Quest’s Mods for Lazarus – DONE!
• Bugfix & Mod collection for Lazarus – DONE!
• Get newest Dransik installers
• Check all links!
• Check for updates to the utilities!
• Identify dead projects – DONE!
• Add Lost Sosaria again

As noted, I’ve set this up for Beautiful Britannia, and will shortly be setting it up for Forgotten World. I’ll also be setting it up for the Ultima 6 Project for any of their future milestone/beta releases.

If any other project devs would like a username and password, do let me know! Drop a comment or hit up the contact form.

I’m very sorry to say this, but I have to leave “Team Forgotten World” again, and this time it will be definitly.

Several important “Real Life” Events forces me to do this, I have to accept the fact, that my “real life situation” simply not allows to work on such a fantastic project as “Forgotten World” will be.

But I will slowly continue working on “Beautiful Britannia“, which is only a simple upgrade to UIX, without story changes and other major improvements, as “Forgotten World” will provide.

And when the time comes, where I will get to an playable product, I will simply provide “Beautiful Britannia” for Download on “Ultima: Aiera“, but this will not happen within the next 5 years.

And because of the very limited time I will have for creating “Beautiful Britannia”, there will be no new screens or other information on it for a long, long time.

I only can hope that you can understand my situation.

Please continue to support “Team Forgotten World” in their effort to create the “true” UIX.

All I can say is: well, doesn’t that just suck. But even so, I hope the good reader will join me in wishing Firstknight all the best in whatever continued work he is able to put in on the project, and all good fortunes in his “real life” endeavours.

It’s also important to remember: this announcement only applies to Beautiful Britannia, and not to Forgotten World (the other half of the project). I will presently be splitting the two into separate entries here, to reflect this change.

That’s right! The Abysmal Engine is an attempt to create an Ultima Underworld 1/2 and System Shock engine for modern operating systems. (It will still require the original Ultima Underworld or System Shock data files to run.)

Abysmal is a successor to previous such attempts at creating an engine for the Underworld games, and builds on the work done by The System Shock Hack Project, Underworld Adventures and Underworld 2 Revival projects.

It is still at a very early developmental stage (the author warns that none of the games are actually playable), but seems to be making decent progress. And most excitingly, iPhone 3GS version even appears to be in the works!

And yes, I’ve created a project entry for Abysmal here at Aiera.

Because you are a fan of us, right, good reader?

After some discussions with Dino o’er the duration of the recent outage, I’ve decided to set up a kind of backup of the site, a secondary Aiera that I can quickly “fail over” to in the event that this primary version of it goes down.

I’m thinking of setting up a blog at Tumblr (though I have to check out their categorization capabilities), which will automatically see mirrored to it any and all posts that get entered at Aiera. That’s easy enough to set up; I do it already on other sites. Image handling is already in the process of being outsourced to Flickr…so all that’s left is the files.

One possibility is just using my Windows Live Skydrive account, which gives me 25 GB of free storage accessible via my Windows Live login; don’t worry, though…I can create public-accessible folders. The limitation of SkyDrive is that no file can be larger than about 25 MB, which certainly presents a problem where hosting…oh, I don’t know…Lazarus is concerned.

So does anyone know of any other services out there that allow for the hosting of large files for free? Preferably with a minimum of annoying ads?