There’s been a fair bit of talk and buzz about Exult lately, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that Exult development has really picked up lately.  Some of the different platforms have really gotten some well-needed attention lately which has also been something of a shot in the arm to both the engine development and the community as a whole.

Let me segue from the article of discussion for just a moment.  As WTF Dragon has posted previously, he has a few more editors (one of which being myself) whom are going to be posting articles here to keep the content coming, and a few more ears to the ground for movement, as it were.  For those of you not familiar with my name, I’m Peter M Dodge, also known by Wizardry Dragon.  I am the Lead Designer of the Feudal Lands and have worked with Exult for years and years now.  I hope to post news on both Exult and TFL, and some general Ultima news as well.  I have been playing with the idea of a feature serial of some sort but I’ll toss that at WTF Dragon first and see if it sticks before making any promises here.

With that out the way let’s regress to the topic on hand: Exult.

One of the platforms that has gotten this attention is the MacOS distribution, which has finally gotten properly packaged.  This meant a lot of compilation work and a lot of bug fixes as well as accomodations for the nuances of the Mac platform, a lot of which has finally gotten stamped out and done finally.  It had mostly been put off – but now it has been taken care of!

The windows distribution in the meantime got a lot of updating.  Many bugs related to OpenGL were fixed, and that niggling Windows Vista/7 file paths bug got fixed so that you don’t need to be an administrator to play!  A much needed change to be certain.

So, dear reader, you are most certainly wondering what this means in the perspective of Exult’s future development.  On that topic I can speculate with an informed opinion, though until it does indeed occur it is just that, speculation.  Ah, in any event – there is one major encompassing idea that seems to have taken to the Exult team, or Marzo at least: taking the knowledge that has been gained through the many, many years Exult has been undergoing development, and take the insights they have gained in its development to better rebuild the engine.  The graphics engine has been of particular interest, as Marzo has noted that many of his OpenGL fixes have opened his eyes to the fact that really the whole thing just needs rewritten to actually fix some of the issues, and talk has been floated of using the Pentagram graphics engine.

We shall see, I suppose, but good things lie in wait for Exult, methinks!

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.

Produced by: Malignant Manor
Website: SI BG Merge @ the Exult Forums
Releases:
* SI BG Merge v6.8.7 (1.8 MiB, 64 hits)
* SI BG Merge Patch (449.2 KiB, 56 hits)

This interesting mod for Exult imports the shapes from The Black Gate into Serpent Isle, adding hundreds of new shapes, with a few being repeated for use with The Black Gate‘s usecode.

It is still in development, and still buggy (some in-game functionality may be lost by use of the patch), but for users of Exult Studio this may well be an exciting development indeed, as it vastly expands the versatility of available shapes when modifying or creating maps.

The bleeding-edge version of Exult — the Ultima 7 engine for more operating systems and platforms than one cares to list — has been updated as of October 9th. Exult Tools and Exult Studio have similarly been updated, and all can be downloaded from the project website.

Or from the project entry here at Aiera.

There’s still no new news posted on the project’s main website, but Exult — the engine that enables Ultima 7 (both parts: The Black Gate and Serpent Isle) to run on virtually every OS imaginable — has been updated. Exult 1.4, the “unstable, beta” build of the engine, was updated earlier this month, as were Exult Studio and Exult Tools.

Major changes in this release include correction of a few problems associated with creating a new game from within Exult Studio, a code change to prevent dead NPCs from taking additional damage, a tweak to the proximity-based wake-up feature of NPCs, and a few other code corrections.

I have added downloads for all three updated programs, plus an updated copy of the Exult source code, to the project entry.

I see that Dino’s Ultima Page has posted some news concerning a couple of new file releases from different projects. Notably, Ranman’s Ultima V for TI Calculators has released a beta version of that port for the TI-92 and V200 calculators. This download has already been added to the project entry here at Aiera.

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!

I was contacted a while back (an inexcusably long while back, as it happens — my apologies!) by Zen, who passed along a bit of an addon module for Dungeon Keeper based on the first level of the Abyss in Ultima Underworld.

As Zen doesn’t have a website to host the project at for himself, he has made it available to the world via Aiera, and I have (finally!!) created a project entry for it. Check thou it out, O Reader, if you’ve still got those Dungeon Keeper discs tucked away in a drawer or closet!

Also, I have added a download for the Ultima 6 Project‘s Milestone 5 release to that project’s entry, so if you haven’t grabbed it from somewhere else already, you can now get it here as well.

Also, other news, courtesy of Dino’s Ultima Page:

Ultima V: Lazarus

Cheerful Dragon has released version 1.29 of his various mods and bugfixes for this remake of Ultima 5. These can be downloaded either at the previous forum link, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo has released updates to his mods for Exult, for both The Black Gate (Keyring) and Serpent Isle (Fixes). The latest revisions of both can be downloaded through their respective project entries here at Aiera:

• Black Gate Keyring
• Serpent Isle Fixes

Ultima: Iris

Apparently, the project’s developers took home first prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game development meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. Congrats!

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ranman has released version 1.01 of his port of Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. The up-to-date download can be found via the project entry here.

Exult

This Ultima 7 remake has been updated recently — or, rather, the unstable 1.4 version has been updated, as has Exult Studio and its accompanying tools. The Exult team‘s plugins for GiMP have also been updated this month, and the whole mess of things can be downloaded via the project entry here.

EUO

This Ultima-inspired game has seen the release of version 0.16 of its rudimentary 3D client, which can be downloaded via the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima Restoration

This comprehensive multi-project has released screenshots of the Kilrathi space station from their remake of Ultima 1. With this completed, they now have all the cities, dungeons, and space stations fully mapped in the game — which, if I do say so myself, is damn good progress!

They’ve also added links to a good couple-dozen Neverwinter Nights modules that I’m going to have to sort through in short order, so…well, it’s nice to know in advance what I’ll be up to for at least part of next week.

Also, the Wing Commander CIC team are attempting to back up what remains of the Origin Systems data library. They are looking for people with experience with this sort of thing, so if you’re one of those people who lives and breathes in backup tapes, you might want to check their project out.

Well, it’s been a little while since I posted an update pertaining to Ultima projects, and I see that Petrell and Dino over at Dino’s Ultima Page have uncovered several juicy morsels of news. To wit:

EUO

This Ultima-like project reached its fifth year just recently, and to celebrate the occasion they threw a number of bonuses and extra stuff into the game — experience bonuses, prizes & giveaways, DM-hosted events, special in-game drinks (eggnog, for example), and even a few new bosses.

Also, a “Newbie Island” tutorial map has been added to the game to help new players ease in.

Ultima 6 Project

A new press release from this promising-looking remake of Ultima 6 has been released at RPGWatch. It has some details about new cities and places in the pending fifth milestone release (Nicodemus’ keep, for example), and also informs us that the team is always in need of world builders, 3D modelers, artists, and musicians.

So, O Reader, if you fall into any of those categories, you might want to swing by the Ultima 6 Project website and drop someone a line.

Additionally, project developer Nicodemus has posted another update to his worldbuilding Dev Diary with some cool new screenshots of his work (Jhelom and Skara Brae).

Ultima: Iris

A new build — build 2010 — of this 3D client for Ultima Online has been released. It can be downloaded from the project’s homepage, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

xu4

A new snapshot of the Mac version of this Ultima 4 remake is available for download either through the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera. A new Windows snapshot is also available.

Ultima V for TI Calculators

Ranman has posted additional news about his project that has ported Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. He lets us know, firstly, about some special item capabilities that he as implemented. Secondly, he talks about killing NPCs, lock picking, and guard behaviour — rather a “law and order” sort of post.

The project is still in beta testing.

I also took a bit of a wander around the Ultima community myself, and noticed a few other odds and ends that the Reader might be interested in.

Savage Empire for Exult

Scythifuge is always looking for people to help out with his ambitious goal of porting the Savage Empire storyline into Exult.

Exult

Speaking of Exult, I notice that the Windows snapshot of Exult 1.4 has been updated recently (April 14th), as have the snapshots for Exult Tools and Exult Studio. These can be downloaded from the project website, and I have added them to the project entry here at Aiera.

Project Britannia

I noticed that the britannia_art.dsres and britannia_logic.dsres resource files for this Ultima world framework were updated at the beginning of April. Changes since the previous revision include the addition of a new lockpick texture, a ferry, and two new light textures, as well as changes to melee attack logic, the lockpick’s shape, and a bunch of other things.

The updated files can be downloaded from the Project Britannia site, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Also, I’ve made a few minor changes to the site here. For starters, I have added a module to the site sidebar to track the ten most downloaded files in the last 30 days. Initially, I wasn’t going to clear the statistics for the download manager with any sort of frequency, but after a bunch of Ultima 9-related downloads surged ahead (in some cases, to over 3,000 downloads!), it seemed reasonable to give some of the other files a chance to make the top spot.

So it’s there, and I won’t be putting a “top five” list onto news posts anymore.

And of course, there’s the gallery and Ultima art repository. I do encourage any interested users to register a user account there and begin uploading any Ultima-related art they can find so that it can be preserved for posterity. This includes scans of art from the manuals, which won’t be around forever.

Oh, and I’ve added another countdown to the sidebar. Only 190 days (roughly — could change in either direction) until Grace and I welcome our little one into the world!

Produced by: Wizardry Dragon, Marzo Sette Torres Jr., Crysta the Elf,
Website: Ultima 7: The Feudal Lands
Releases:
* Oct. 29 2006 Snapshot (2.7 MiB, 76 hits)

This is a mod for Exult (with the release of Exult Studio, expect these to become more and more common) that seeks to merge The Black Gate and Serpent Isle into one seamless narrative. Additionally, it will feature a third continent — the Lands of the Feudal Lords — and a series of quests that the Avatar and his/her party must complete there.

This is an ambitious remake (and also a spin-off, within the technical definition of the term), to be sure! In addition to the expanded narrative, the developers plan to re-introduce the Virtues to the lands of Ultima (i.e. the Avatar will once again be able to interact with the Shrines). As well, they plan to overhaul the spellcasting system and to enable party members to wield spellbooks.

Produced by: Olivier Marcoux
Website: U7-Wizard
Releases:
* Ultima 7 Wizard v1.9 (213.5 KiB, 54 hits)
* Ultima 7 Wizard Documentation (40.5 KiB, 66 hits)

Before there was Exult Studio, there was the Ultima 7 Wizard. This program allows for the editing of maps, scenery, and objects of Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle. As well, it allows you to browse the characters and portraits, and listen to the sounds and music in the game (including dialogues).

The Wizard download also includes the program’s source code.

There have been a few updates made in the Ultima remake community over the Easter weekend, including a few snapshot releases and some news announcements.

Ultima IX: Infinity Eternal

Thepal dropped a bit of news just to keep his project’s site fresh, and assures us that things are moving along. He has been working on dialogue for the demo — which will apparently feature 90 to 100 NPCs(!!) — and has been continuing with world-building. More music is also being created by other team members.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

The Avatar Pack was updated over the weekend with a minor revision that split the optional resources of the pack into The Black Gate- and Serpent Isle-specific versions; installation instructions have been updated accordingly. I have updated the copy of this mod that is hosted at Aiera.

Exult

New snapshots of Exult 1.4 and Exult Studio were released in the last few days. I have uploaded these to the site, and they can be downloaded from the Exult entry.

Project Britannia

The Project Britannia development team have released new snapshot versions of some of the game’s core files — britannia_logic.dsres and the Lazarus compatibility mod, to be specific. I have updated the Project Britannia and Lazarus downloads accordingly.

Ultima: Iris

Iris’ snapshot version has been updated to build 933, and I will add this to Iris’ entry on the site by this evening (remember: GMT -7 timezone).

Additionally, there is an AVI-format trailer available from the Iris site demonstrating the new engine in action. It can also be viewed on YouTube.

Worlds of Ultima: Lost Sosaria

One of the tilesets that is used on the project has been updated, and will be tested in short order.

WtFD

Produced by: Michael Pohoreski
Releases:
* Shapes Viewer (27.9 KiB, 40 hits)
* Chunk Viewer (20.3 KiB, 41 hits)

The attribution here is not entirely accurate; Mr. Pohoreski only write the Shapes Viewer. The author of the Chunk Viewer is currently unknown. Be that as it may, these are handy tools to have on hand if you plan to do any sort of editing in the Ultima 7 engine or in Exult Studio.

The Shapes Viewer allows you to view every bitmap used in The Black Gate and Serpent Isle. At the moment, we haven’t tested if this program also allows you to in any way modify the bitmaps. Meanwhile, the Chunk Viewer allows you to view the various graphic “chunks” used to create the Ultima 7 world. This program is quite complex, and is recommended only for those who have an in-depth knowledge of programming.