Produced by: Firstknight
Releases:
* Freedom Mod (3.1 MiB, 262 hits)
* 2009 Beautiful Britannia Demo (6.7 MiB, 482 hits)

Beautiful Britannia started as a ‘Freedom Mod‘ for Ascension, assembled by Michael Menapace in response to the rather absurdly linear feel to the plot of this last Ultima title. The mod didn’t do much to alter the order of events in the game, or to change at all the inconsistencies encountered in Ultima 9‘s plot. What it does do, however, is alter some aspects of the structure of Britannia, eliminating obstacles that previously prevented you from roaming the land of Britannia freely.

Eventually, the project grew into what became known as Forgotten World, and a team joined FIrstkniGHT. FIrstkniGHT himself left the team for a while, though the project moved on; it gained a website and grew more ambitious, evolving into an attempt to decode the Ascension game files with an eye toward building a world and game editor, in order to provide players with a better experience.

Firstknight (slight spelling change) then rejoined the team, and the project split into two separate projects as a result: Beautiful Britannia (a more “lush” version of the original Ultima 9) and its “Unlimited” spinoff (a more lush Ultima 9 with a few additions and revisions), and Forgotten World proper (the in-engine remake, which will feature many corrections and updates). Firstknight subsequently departed the team again, this time apparently for good; in the process, Beautiful Britannia became this standalone project.

Bumped again for my own purposes: there’s a few things left undone here.

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

Produced by: Chris Hopkins
Website: Ultima IV Part 2 – an Ultima parody
Releases:
* Ultima IV Part 2 (13.2 MiB, 122 hits)

A “continuation” to Ultima 4, this is Chris Hopkins’ take on an Ultima spoof. As there is some plot to the game, it proposes to answer several key questions that arose in the interim period of Britannian history between Ultima 4 and Ultima 5, such as why the various dungeons were sealed, why Lake Generosity dried up, how Blackthorn was able to take over, why the Shadowlords were drawn to Britannia, and exactly how the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom was raised out of the Stygian Abyss.

Along the way, it pokes fun at a number of Ultima conventions and bits of Ultima history, such as the true fates of Mondain, Minax, and Exodus, the sudden cessation of space travel, the origin of the Guardian, the connection between Lord British‘s Castle and Hythloth, and a bunch of other stuff.

Be thou forewarned: to play this game requires version 3.2 of Hopkins’ Adventure Creation Kit. DOSBox may also be of use.

I’ve been horribly lax in posting this, but the Forgotten World project — an ambitious, in-engine remake/modification of Ultima 9 — has seen several major updates in recent months.

Their first bit of news is that the project’s founder, Michael “Firstknight” Menapace, has returned to the team; his return has, in turn, stimulated a kind of “return to the roots” for the project, which has now split into two projects: Beautiful Britannia and Forgotten World. Notable distinctions between the projects include:

What is Beautiful Britannia?

FORGOTTEN WORLD in its original form – that means only enriching the landscape with animals and vegetation and adding the Old Cove Map as “Great Wilderness” to the game.

More simply in comparsion to FORGOTTEN WORLD, but with the possiblity to make a faster release.

…

The creation of FORGOTTEN WORLD is based on the self-developed, FANTASTIC world editor (mainly developed by Hawkwind, with support of all the other team members). The editor (when it’s done) will support fully 3D worldbuilding for terrain and all available objects, also story changes and the adding of more NPCs.

BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA will be created using Firstknights self-developed ingame-creation methodics, combined with hex editor coding and the usage of an self-written tool for automated code changes. This all allows limited changes to the landscape and adding of some of the unused maps.

Personally, I’m still looking forward to Forgotten World more than Beautiful Britannia, although the thought of exploring an even more lush Britannia (for all its faults, Ultima 9 did feature a beautiful world) does have a certain appeal.

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.

Produced by: Darkheart Dragon, Avatus Kingsman (formerly), and many others
Website: Ultima Legacy
Releases:
* Custom Data Files (516.2 KiB, 24 hits)

Ultima Legacy was a modified version of Ultima Online which could be played for free, set in a post-Ultima 8 Britannia. Its premise includes the assumption that Ultima 9: Ascension did not happen, and out of that it has spawned a complex and involved storyline that included the Atarkan invasion of Britannia. Legacy doesn’t exactly form the backstory for the Titans of Ether project entitled Ultima IX: Redemption, although there is a relation there as both projects were founded, in part, by Avatus Kingsman (although where he has gone to, none now know).

Joining Legacy was a bit of an involved process — the modified data files that were necessary for game play are provided here for download, but there was more to it than just that. For starters, you needed to own a copy of Ultima Online: The Second Age, and it was actually recommended that you have Ultima Online: Renaissance instead. Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn’s Revenge may also have worked.

The rest of the joining process was explained at the Legacy website. However, as of 2008, Legacy was being revised to tell a Serpent Isle-based tale, and was also switching from the Sphere freeshard system to RunUO. The project website is now little more than a placeholder page.

It has been another busy week for Ultima-related news, O Reader, and on the site as well. Full implementation of the download manager is progressing apace, and I think I’m going to add a new feature to the news postings — the top five most downloaded files. But we’ll get to that in a bit. In the meantime…here’s what’s news. And a couple of shout-outs go to Petrell at Dino’s Ultima Page for spotting some things that I missed in assembling the list below.

Project Britannia

I see that the folks over at Project Britannia have switched servers due to speed problems with their old hosting company. The site has been configured at the new host, so there shouldn’t be any interruptions in accessing it.

EUO

I see that EUO 3D has been updated to version 0.14, fixing a bug with window minimization. Updated versions of the download are available through the project entry here at Aiera.

Realms of Ultima

Development proceeds apace on this promising Ultima-themed prefab for Neverwinter Nights 2, although news posting to the project website has been a little bit light of late owing to the fact that team leader MokahTGS is presently moving to California to take on a new job.

Savage Empire for Exult

Scythifuge has started a new discussion thread at the Exult forums to keep us all up to date on the latest developments he is making in his adaptation of Savage Empire using Exult and the Ultima 7 engine. At present, he seems to be working very heavily on graphics and tiles for in-game use. He has even posted a few screenshots for us to feast our eyes on.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo Junior has put his Seven Towers website back online at a new host, and has released updates of all three of his Exult mods — Black Gate Keyring, SI Fixes, and the Avatar Pak. All of the latest versions can be downloaded from the respective project entries here at Aiera.

Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

Wizardry Dragon has put his project’s website back online at a new host.

Ultima for the Civilization Series

Frilly Wumpus alerted me to these. General Maximus has produced an Ultima-derived scenario (in two forms) for Civilization III. Both are set in Britannia after the events of Ultima 9. The forms of the scenario are as follows (one appearing to be a more difficult version of the scenario than the other):

Ultima X Conquest:

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by deviant warlords. Play as British under civilization group Bards. Forces and castles still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar; the rebelion states begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his heroic companions, reclaim your entire kingdom!

Ultima X: Medieval Deity Challenge

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British(LB) lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by independent warlords who were once friends of Lord British(LB) himself. Play as LB under civilisation group Bards. Forces or cities still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar, the rebelions states has begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his companion Iolo, reclaim your entire kingdom!

The second form of the scenario seems to be more combat-oriented, and provides fewer allies/companions for the player. Either way, this seems like a neat idea, and I have created a project entry complete with downloads here at Aiera for it.

General Maximus also has an Ultima-inspired scenario for Civilization IV in the works, although as yet he has not released any downloads for it.

Ultima V for TI Calculators

Ranman informs us that his project — porting Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator — is nearing completion. He pegs the current project status at 98%, and his latest revisions to it include:

• “Acknowledgments” menu option is now working
• “Introduction” menu option is now working
• “Create New Character” menu option is partially working

He’s getting close, O Reader! Very close!

Ultima IX: Redemption

Sage has added a couple of new entries to his development diary. As usual, the would-be reader must be registered at the Titans of Ether forums.

Most Downloaded Files

1. Ultima 9 Official Patch 1.18 (0 bytes)
2. Ultima 9 Unofficial Patch 1.19 (0 bytes)
3. Ultima 9 Combined Patch (0 bytes)
4. Ultima V: Lazarus v1.2 (Windows) (0 bytes)
5. Alter U9 (RPG-Maker 2000 version) (0 bytes)

Let’s see if any of the above changes in the coming weeks!

Produced by: General Maximus
Website: Ultima for Civ IV
Releases:
* Ultima X Conquest (Civ III) (59.4 KiB, 15 hits)
* Ultima X: Medieval Deity Challenge (Civ III) (104.6 KiB, 14 hits)
* Ultima X: Battle for Britannia (Civ 4) (1.3 MiB, 17 hits)

General Maximus has produced an Ultima-derived scenario (in two forms) for Civilization III, as well as an updated version of the Conquest scenario for Civilization 4 Warlords. All are set in Britannia after the events of Ultima 9. The forms of the scenario are as follows (one appearing to be a more difficult version of the scenario than the other two):

Ultima X: Conquest

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by deviant warlords. Play as British under civilization group Bards. Forces and castles still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar; the rebelion states begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his heroic companions, reclaim your entire kingdom!

Ultima X: Medieval Deity Challenge

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British (LB) lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by independent warlords who were once friends of Lord British (LB) himself. Play as LB under civilisation group Bards. Forces or cities still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar, the rebelions states has begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his companion Iolo, reclaim your entire kingdom!

Ultima X: Battle for Britannia

Battlecrys are once again heard in the ancient kingdom of Britannia. Lord British has lost hold of his kingdom with the breakaway of seven city-states. Lord British who preaches the Way of the Avatar and its Eight Virtues is now under siege in the city Britain that is being attacked from all sides. The renegade states are under the influences of a rising movement known as The Fellowship and Britannia is not big enough for both. The mutinuos city states are some lead by warlords who were once companion of the Avatar who have turned against him. Once again, the Avatar, champion of Britannia is called upon to fight off the hostile forces against Lord British.

The second form of the scenario seems to be more combat-oriented, and provides fewer allies/companions for the player.

Produced by: MokahTGS
Website: Realms of Ultima Blog
Releases:
* Realms of Ultima Demo (13.7 MiB, 8 hits)
* Realms of Ultima 2DAs v1.11 (69.4 KiB, 9 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Icons v1.11 (44.7 KiB, 8 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Moongates Prefab (1.6 MiB, 9 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Moongates Demo (1.6 MiB, 9 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Extras & Fixes (20.2 MiB, 9 hits)
* Realms of Ultima New Magincia Prefab (24.5 MiB, 11 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Land & Sea Hak Pak (1.7 MiB, 8 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Land & Sea ERF (152.3 KiB, 9 hits)
* Realms of Ultima Land & Sea Demo (18.8 MiB, 10 hits)

This project also requires the Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Content Compilation and the Armor in Progress Compilation. Additional information about the Land & Sea system can be found here.

Intending to do for Neverwinter Nights 2 what Project Britannia did for Dungeon Siege, this project aimed to create a complete “prefab” of Britannia — with a fully-implemented world map, all the historical Ultima quest objects, and pre-implemented scripts — for NWN2 builders to use as the base for Ultima-themed modules.

Unfortunately, development on the project stalled about a year ago, and no further updates have been made to its website since then.

It hasn’t been a tremendously busy couple of weeks, but several projects have posted significant updates.

Ultima IX: Redemption

There is a lot of news from this promising, Morrowind-based remake of Ultima 9 this week. Firstly, “de facto” project spokesperson Direhaggis writes in to inform us all of the following:

Our team has stayed consistently productive for the last year, especially making gains in exterior cell worldbuilding (which is nearly done) and 3D models. I myself write the main quest and it’s 80% complete, with a word count of approximately 180,000 (where U7:BG had ~175,000). Overall, production is 75% done. With our current team roster, the game itself will definitely be completed–it’s just a question of time.

On that note, we are right now looking for more worldbuilders for interior cells, as well as dialogue writers. There’s also a position for a 2D artist to help create more cutscenes for the game.

Our director, Corv, is going to update the status page fairly soon. He has recently become a new father, though, so I am acting in his stead to spread the news far and wide.

I would dearly appreciate your sharing this news with your readership. Thank you for your time, thought, and especially your dedication to keeping Ultima alive and well.

And to Direhaggis, I can only say: no problem at all, good Ultima fan and true!

It is indeed the case that the Redemption team are looking for worldbuilders to help with interiors, as well as dialogue writers and (possibly) even a 2D artist. If, O Reader, you feel you could fit into one or any of those categories, pop on over to the Ultima IX: Redemption website and drop Direhaggis a private message in the forums there.

PT-BR Translation for Ultima Underworld

I was informed via the contact form that a Portuguese translation of Ultima Underworld is available for download as well:

We have a small group with a project, its about 90%, but we have a lot of work like font editing and replay the game to check any flaw.
There is alreadly a patch avaliable.

I have created a project entry for this translation here at Aiera, and have uploaded the current version of the patch (v0.2) for download. If, O Reader, you would be interested in helping this small team with font editing and playtesting, you can contact then through their website/forum.

Exult 3D

From his comments at the end of this discussion at the Exult forums, it appears that Sam Matthews has stopped work on his 3D re-interpretation of the Ultima 7 engine. If so, that’s a pity.

For the moment, the project entry here at Aiera won’t be changed, as the project had come a fairly long way and could conceivably be used to play through Ultima 7. It won’t look terribly pretty in places, but that’s an aesthetic concern as opposed to a technical one.

EUO

Speaking of 3D, it appears that a beta-stage 3D engine has become available for EUO, the Ultima-like online RPG. The look and playability are still rudimentary, but this is certainly an interesting development for this fun little project.

Downloads and installation instructions are available at the EUO forums, and the downloads are mirrored through the project entry here at Aiera.

Realms of Ultima

This promising, Neverwinter Nights 2-based set of “prefabs” has just released its latest content — New Magincia. It’s not a completed release just yet, and will soon see the addition of caves, house interiors, and the Gargoyles that live there, but it’s enough to wander around in…and it’s spectacular.

(My wife bought me NWN2 a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve had a bit of a look at the town…it’s top-notch work)

The prefab can be downloaded either from its entry at the Neverwinter Vault, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Produced by: Hawkwind, Iceblade and Splat
Website: Forgotten World
Forum: Forgotten World @ Titans of Ether

Forgotten World started as a ‘Freedom Mod‘ for Ascension, assembled by Michael Menapace in response to the rather absurdly linear feel to the plot of this last Ultima title. The mod didn’t do much to alter the order of events in the game, or to change at all the inconsistencies encountered in Ultima 9‘s plot. What it does do, however, is alter some aspects of the structure of Britannia, eliminating obstacles that previously prevented you from roaming the land of Britannia freely.

Eventually, the project grew and a team joined FIrstkniGHT. FIrstkniGHT himself left the team for a while, though the project moved on; it gained a website and grew more ambitious, evolving into an attempt to decode the Ascension game files with an eye toward building a world and game editor, in order to provide players with a better experience.

Firstknight (slight spelling change) has since rejoined the team, and the project has been split into two separate projects: Beautiful Britannia (a more “lush” version of the original Ultima 9) and its “Unlimited” spinoff (a more lush Ultima 9 with a few additions and revisions), and Forgotten World proper (the in-engine remake, which will feature many corrections and updates). Firstknight subsequently departed the team again, this time apparently for good; in the process, Beautiful Britannia became a standalone project.

The project focus has also shifted in terms of the content the team is aiming to produce; Firstknight’s principal aim is to produce a series of well-crafted Ascension mods, rather than become lost chasing something which may not be deliverable in the first place.

The ultimate goal of Forgotten World hasn’t changed, however: they are still intent on turning Ultima 9 — using its original, promising engine (albeit with a little help from the OGRE 3D engine as well) — into a canonical, consistent-with-its-predecessors Ultima game.

Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima IV Gold
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Gold (1.0 MiB, 250 hits)

This project is an improved version of Ultima 4 for the Commodore 64. Notably, it features optimized code and no disk swapping (1541 users will have to flip the disk once only), and the save system has been revamped (saving is now possible in dungeons). Trainers have been improved, and even little fixes have found their way in — the music, for example, no longer interrupts when you are walking around in Britannia.

In what is surely the biggest news of the week (and possibly the month) Ultima 6 Project has released Milestone 3 of their Dungeon Siege-based remake of the classic (and my personal favourite) Ultima title.

Notable improvements in this latest release include:

• New areas to explore, including the Spider Cave, Buccaneer’s Den, Yew, and Continental Britannia)
• Upgrades to existing areas
• Gargoyles in the intro sequence
• Branching conversations
• Class-based equipment limitations
• Party banter
• Context menus on useable items
• Enhanced creature spawning

As with the previous Milestones, the above changes should not be considered “final” releases of systems, and the team encourages the player to send any feedback to them for consideration.

And yes, they are already working on Milestone 4.

I have uploaded the new installer to Aiera, and it can be downloaded through the project entry here at the site.

Submitted by: Thepal

Our team has been discussing many issues in relation to Infinity Eternal. Issues from magic systems to where mead will be bought are being discussed. One other thing came up… a demo.

We have decided that we will showcase our new Britannia by creating the Valorian Isles. We will be making it as complete as possible, as close to what it will be in the final game as we can. So it will include quests, several dozen NPCs, companions, music, and the world interactivity you would expect from an Ultima. We plan on releasing it within the next few months, though we will all be trying to get it done as soon as possible (without diminishing the quality).

So stay tuned. And keep your eye on the Media section.

Ultima IX: Infinity Eternal

Thepal has completely overhauled the appearance of his project’s website, giving it a much lighter feel (although as yet it has not been populated with much in the way of media content). He also gives some details about the project and its conversion to the Oblivion engine:

I decided that the website needed an upgrade, so I threw this one together.

As for the progress, it goes along at a steady pace. The Wiki is taking slightly longer than I anticipated, probably because I’ve just started a new job and therefore am working a lot. Life doesn’t seem to want to let this project progress quickly.

The good news is that two people have contacted me about joining the team. Jeremy LaMantia is a talented composer who has already written eight different themes that I’ve heard.

MartinLoki is a world-builder who is hard at work creating the heightmap for Britannia.

If you’re wondering about the size of this game, picture Britannia in Ultima 7. Then double it. Then double it again. Then multiply it by around 100. Ok… that might be a slight exaggeration. But it is huge. Those of you that have played Oblivion, we’re aiming for around four times the size of Cyrodiil. For some real world figures, we’re talking 8 miles by 8 miles (13km x 13km). Which is 64 square miles (165 square kilometres). And that’s not including the other worlds you can visit as well. This will be Britannia like it has never been seen before.

Here’s a renewed wish of good luck to this project team — that sounds awesome. The technical details of creating a massive world like that can be daunting, and I hope that the UIX:IE team can stay the course.

Also, when you have a moment, swing by the project forum.

* * *

The Ultima 6 Project

Zephyr posted a bit of news to the Project Britannia website yesterday concerning the Ultima 6 Project:

Just a quick update to let everyone know we’re still alive. Sorry that we have not kept the news up to date. The U6 Project has primarily been working on their content, and they are finishing up what they’re calling M3 Part 1 as we speak. No timeframe has been announced, but most of the content is in place and is being tested.

Frilly Wumpus has been busy working with WyrdWeb on revamping the Project Britannia conversation system to use what’s known as Usecode. This is a more complex and extremely flexible way of editing NPC conversations. This will allow a whole host of new quest concepts to be implemented, plus a bunch of new, fun features.

The U6 Project still looking for people conversant with the Siege Editor to help us finish up their content. That is their main blocking item. All the technology is in place; they just need people to help finish building the world. They also still need portrait artists.Stay tuned! We
are very much still alive and kicking.

It’s good to see that this project is still being worked on. Like Lazarus before it, it’s a promising-looking remake indeed. Ultima 6 has always been my personal favourite Ultima, and the opportunity to play it in a gorgeous 3D world is exciting, to say the least.

Relatedly, Frilly Wumpus makes note here of the fact that Gileathane Dragon, who worked on writing and QA for Lazarus, has joined the Ultima 6 Project team.

* * *

Ultima: Iris

Iris is the 3D client for Ultima Online (works with most freeshards and with the Origin servers as well). The team has stopped working on their first version of the game — Aiera should have Iris 0.8.7, the final release, up at
some point later this week — and have devoted all their efforts to a second version built around the Ogre 3D engine. No releases of “Iris-Ogre” have yet been made, but if you’re an Ultima Online player, this might just be the
project to watch!

* * *

Seven Towers Exult Mods

There’s a new mod for Exult over at Seven
Towers which I will have to add to Aiera. The “Avatar Pack” makes a number of modifications to the Avatar portraits for both The Black Gate and Serpent Isle, as well as making any relevant changes to paperdolls and/or gumps. Marzo Jr. has also updated his Black Gate Keyring mod with some of this data.

(Hat tip: Petrell at Dino’s Ultima Page)

WtFD

Produced by: A New Breed of Dragon
Website: The Dark Core
Releases:
* Dark Core v1.02 for Netscape (6.3 MiB, 13 hits)
* Dark Core v1.0 for Internet Explorer (6.3 MiB, 7 hits)
* Internet Explorer 4.0 (13.3 MiB, 5 hits)
* Netscape Navigator 4.08 (9.7 MiB, 8 hits)
* Dark Core v1.0 for Internet Explorer 8 (6.3 MiB, 14 hits)

Mere seconds after the Avatar arrives back in Britannia, freshly escaped from Pagan, he finds himself standing before a huge statue of the Guardian. Suddenly, he is granted a vision of the Dark Core of Exodus, and finds that he is being drawn into the core. Complicating matters, it seems that the Guardian is also being drawn in…

…or is he using this vision to deceive the Avatar?

An interactive game in the style of Myst, this web-based remake is a truly amazing Ultima spin-off!

Note: You must have a version of Netscape less than 4.3 in order to play this game! It will also work with Internet Explorer 4.0 or 5.0. It is known that the game will NOT work with more recent versions of Netscape, and I have no idea how well it will behave in later versions of Explorer. I have provided downloads of Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4.08 (both for Windows only) above in order to help people get this thing running on their home system.

One further note: Given the tight integration of Internet Explorer with Windows, it might be best to try installing Netscape first. Most extant Windows installations likely sport at least version 5 of Internet Explorer, and rolling said program back to an earlier version is a trying task.

And a warning: Both Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4.08 are at least 13 years old, and were built for an era of computing and Internet browsing that was not nearly so perilous as is the case today. Both browsers contain numerous vulnerabilities which modern malware can and will exploit almost as a matter of course. If you install one of these browsers on your system, make sure you never run it while your connection to the Internet is live. Better still: create a Windows 98 (or whichever version is your preference) VirtualBox with networking specifically disabled, and install and run The Dark Core therein.

Or: you could just try out Infinitron Dragon’s Internet Explorer 8-compatible update for the game. Whether or not said update will work with other browsers (e.g. Firefox, Chrome) is uncertain at present, nor is it known whether said update will work on non-Windows platforms.

See Also: A New Breed of Dragon’s System Optimization Guide.

Produced by: Devi and Glanestel Dragon
Website: Ultima IV Reborn, Ultima IV Reborn 1.1.0, and Ultima IV Reborn 1.2.1
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Reborn (5.0 MiB, 168 hits)
* Ultima IV Reborn 1.1.0 (1.7 MiB, 90 hits)
* Ultima IV Reborn 1.2.0 (1.8 MiB, 29 hits)
* Ultima IV Reborn 1.2.1 (1.8 MiB, 48 hits)

This remake of Ultima 4 appeared on the Neverwinter Vault back in July 2003, although it only came to my attention some years later.

While not completely faithful to the original, this remake does do a good job of re-telling the story, and it seems that what few omissions/changes are present are a result of the choice of engine. For example, the moongates do not appear/disappear according to the moon phases of Britannia. While this can be implemented in Neverwinter Nights, it does require a good deal of tedious and time-consuming event-scripting.

More recently, this remake has seen a few bug fixes and updates made to it courtesy of Glanestel Dragon, mostly based on feedback from people who’ve played the mod.