This is just a Photoshop job, not a real screenshot. Sadly.

I was told the most interesting thing today.

As the good reader is probably aware, a port of Akalabeth was recently released on the iPhone (or, more correctly, iOS) platform, Apple‘s mobile device operating system. The good reader is also probably aware that I’ve had some contact with Mythic Entertainment. Mythic, as most hopefully know, basically holds the rights to the Ultima name at present, and produced the most recent expansion to Ultima Online.

Well, it turns out that Mythic would be very interested in any effort made to port Ultima 4 to the iOS platform, so much so that they would work to get any functional, well-implemented port published on the Apple App Store under the EA Mobile label.

So…if anyone out there has some experience with development on the iPhone platform, and if such a person would be interested in creating a port of the original game, which offered context-dependent controls not unlike how the Akalabeth port does: here’s your big chance. Not only to remake an Ultima title (and a darn fine one, at that), but to get it officially approved and published.

As Aragorn, son of Arathorn, asked: What say you?

Apropos of what I said before, I’ve decided to bump up the testing weekend a bit, and have made a couple of changes to the plan since yesterday afternoon.

For starters, the ‘Milano’ theme is out. I’ve gone with the ‘Perogato’ theme (from the same designer) instead, with a few custom modifications (including a sexy new logo, if I do say so myself). I’ve dropped the ‘:’ from the site name as well…it’s a minor thing.

Additionally, since I actually like this theme, there’s a decent chance that it will stay in place. I have to make a few modifications to it still (e.g. adding tag support and forum discussion links), but those are minor cosmetic changes. This theme has most of what else I was hoping to end up with: a more modern feel, a featured content pane so I can highlight stories that I think are important, more and better use of jQuery and inline images, and dropdown menus for quicker access to the things that keep many of you coming back to the site: Ultima remakes, patches, and utilities.

May I draw attention to the double menu bar at the top of the site? The red bar, the good reader will note, lists what are considered, by this site at least, to be the main canonical entries in the Ultima series, from Akalabeth through to Ultima 9, including both Underworld titles. Obviously, not every remake, patch, and utility is listed, and so the complete list of categories still appears on the sidebar, but this way there will at least serve to get a goodly number of site visitors to the content they want a) more quickly, and b) without even the need to scroll down the main page.

The main page of the site will also boast more articles under this template.

Anyhow, please leave feedback in the comments form of this article, or in the related forum thread. I want to hear what everyone thinks about this redesign. And as I mentioned, this design is one I like more, but is not yet at the point where it will be an unchangeable thing; if a goodly number of people who leave comments say “I hate it!”, I’ll put the ‘Aspire’ theme back first thing on Tuesday morning, without the slightest hesitation.

This is evidently a licensed effort, as the app retails for $1.99 USD. As such, I won’t be hosting the download directly; you will find a link to the Apple App Store in the project entry instead.

This is an “exact” re-creation of Akalabeth for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, which even goes so far (as can be seen in the screenshot) as to re-create the Apple II interface (or, at least, the parts of it necessary to play the game). Graphics and sound are the same as were in the original game.

This port boasts a few “helper” features, however, some of which were apparently designed with input from Richard Garriott himself. These include an autosave option (which also continues the game from where you left it, if you have to quit the app for any reason), an option to start near castle, an in-game minimap, and the ability to carry way more food.

It’s available for $1.99 USD on the Apple App Store.

Quoth Sergorn:

I will be following a similar pattern for each game: a first post presenting the game, my relationship with it, and when it applies the version chosen for this playthrough. Afterward I’ll post blog posts and possibly some screenshots of my adventuring for how long it will take (which could take a while, or not so much considering I can end up devoting a crazy amount of time to such things when I put myself to it) with some final impressions once the game is finished.

He might even delve into some of the various ported versions of the Ultima titles, though at this time he has no fixed plans in that regard.

So…do be sure to check back with him from time to time!

Spoony from spoonyexperiment.com is doing a series of reviews of the Ultima games, starting at Akalabeth and apparently he intends to go all the way up to Ultima 9 and Ultima Online. Thought you might be interested to know.

This leads me to think that I need to update and expand my list of links! Do give Spoony’s work a look-see, good reader. It sounds like an ambitious undertaking.

Update: You can find his Akalabeth review here, and his Ultima 1 review here.

I mention this here because a reader sent me a request over the weekend that is kind of an analog to the above. For some of us, Ultima is a game which predates us; perhaps we were born after the first one was released, or perhaps we did not come to be gamers until the series had achieved a level of maturity. This is certainly the case for me: the first three games I ever played, in order, were a Winnie the Pooh puzzle solver/RPG, Sierra‘s Mixed-Up Mother Goose, and Ultima 6…all within the span of about 18 months. If I was 7 years old by the time U6 and I first met, I’d be surprised.

But it got me hooked, and I’ve played most of the other Ultima titles since that time. (U6 remains my favourite, though.)

The last Ultima game released a decade ago. Think about that for a moment. Even Ultima 9 represents a bygone era of gaming…or, perhaps, several eras; game-related technologies move ahead with truly alarming speed.

If someone wanted to get into the Ultima series today, where would they begin? Is it still best to start at the beginning, with Akalabeth, and from there to play through all the games in game-chronological order? Or is this not the right approach? Should a person instead begin somewhere in the middle, then move to earlier titles, and then play through the Guardian saga? And should one play through the originals? Or the remakes?

That is what reader Lance wondered in his email:

Between 2000 and 2003 I played a lot of Ultima Online on various free shards; before that I hadn’t played any Ultima Games. Since then I’ve put a couple hours into the following: U1, U7 (in Exult), U8 (in the other Exult-like project) and U9 (completely patched up and using the developer-released patch).

In each I lost interest: U7, U8 & U9, I was obsessed with going into every
house and stealing useless junk like candles, cutlery and bananas…which meant the locals would eventually get angry at me.

I’m thinking about starting with U1 again and working my way up to U9, but I’m not sure if I should play the remakes instead of the originals in
DOSBox, or maybe start with U9 and work my way down to U1.. or even put Ultima’s best foot forward and start from there and work my way to the worst in the series (maybe U7, then U8, U9, then U6 etc)?

To be honest, I’m not sure what sort of answer to give him, apart from recommending beginning with U6; that is the best starting point, as far as I’m concerned. From there, the order I suspect might work best would be: U4, U5, U8, U9, U1, U2, U3, the Underworld games (optional), Akalabeth (optional), and then U7 (both parts, in order). This balances higher quality against lower, modern against classic; to my mind, it should work for the average gamer.

But what do you all think? Recommendations can be left in the comments (please give explanations for your suggestions, as well).

(Note: for some reason, the download link for the Nokia smartphone port of Aklabeth (which is stored as a GZIP file) doesn’t work properly in Firefox, but right-clicking and using “Save target as…” seems to work just fine.)

The second is to note that I’m adjusting the way I do categories on the sidebar; whereas before there was a big solid block of categories, I intend to use the advance category management plugin that the site already has installed to separate the category lists based on the series into which the listed titles fall — e.g. the Age of Darkness, Age of Enlightenment, Worlds of Ultima, etc.

Akalabeth, being something of an “odd man out” (and then not the only one) gets its own sidebar element. Expect this categorization to expand as changes progress.

Also, the full version of a patch translating Ultima 7 to Spanish has been released. Following up on this lead led me to translation patches for Serpent Isle, Ultima 9, and Ultima Underworld about which I had previously been unaware, and these have all been added to Aiera.

• Ultima 7 Spanish translation
• Serpent Isle Spanish translation
• Ultima Underworld Spanish translation
• Ultima 9 Spanish translation

Additionally, the Ultima 6 Project Development Tools Package has been released, which enables the user to edit and compile conversations, edit game objects, edit game logic, and provides a host of other functions as well. It can be downloaded from the Project Britannia website, or from the Ultima 6 Project entry here at Aiera.

Other Ultima-related news I found whilst wandering through the Internet today includes:

Aklabeth

The web home of this remake of Akalabeth seems to be offline. I hope it’s just a temporary thing.

Ultima Underworld for Pocket PC

Conversely, this port of Ultima Underworld to the PocketPC seems to be back online again. Nice to see. That means that I get to move this project out of the cemetery!

Exult

This port of The Black Gate and Serpent Isle to…well…pretty much every operating system one could dare to think of…doesn’t look as though it’s been updated, by its website. But I noticed that the Windows and PocketPC snapshots were updated earlier this month, as was the snapshot for Exult Studio. All of these can be downloaded through the project entry here. The chief modification seems to concern a bug with multiracial Avatars.

Ultima: Iris

This 3D frontend for Ultima Online has been updated recently, to build version 2365. Linux and Windows source, and the Windows installer, can all be downloaded via the project entry here, or at the project website.

Finally, I was contacted by Yannick “Alcibiade” Kirschhoffer regarding a new piece of Ultima-related material he has produced. I’ll let him explain it in his own words:

I’ve been huge fan of the second Ultima trilogy. In 2003, I began work on writing guitar arrangements of most of this era’s music. I did the Ultima 6 score almost entirely, and some of U4 and U5 too. Then I compiled these in a songbook that I illustrated with artwork and quotes from the games.

It is available for download in PDF format at www.alcibiade.org

This is a handy little creation, beautifully arranged and attractively compiled into one volume. I’ve added a project entry for it under the category of “General Utility”, and it can be downloaded from there as well.

Well done, Yannick!

* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.

These are actually just ports of other Ultima projects (linked below), but as I’ve never seen so many in one place at one time (and from one person!), they are classified not only as ports but as their own separate entry on Aiera.

The following projects have been ported to the Nokia 770/N800 internet tablets:

• Akalabeth – a port of Paul Robson’s SDL version of the game
• Ultima 4 – a port of xu4
• Ultima 5 – a port of Nazghul/Haxima
• Ultima 6 – a port of Nuvie
• Ultima 7 – a port of Exult
• Ultima 8 – a port of Pentagram

It serves to note that these ports are ongoing works, and it further serves to note that some of the projects that have been ported (Pentagram, for an easy example) are themselves incomplete. However, O Reader, if you use a Nokia 770/N800 internet tablet, and would like to be able to play some classic Ultima titles whilst on the go, this is likely a project for you!