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

Tags: Aiera, Akalabeth Mobile, Arx Fatalis, Britannia, Dark Core, Dransik, Eriadain, EUO, Exult, Haxima, IRE, Labyrinth of Worlds, Lost Sosaria, Mac, Nazghul, Pentagram, PocketPC, Project Britannia, Serpent Isle, SI French, Ultima 4 Multiplayer, Ultima 5, Ultima 6, Ultima 6 Online, Ultima 6 Project, Ultima 7, Ultima Online, Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld 2, Ultima V: Lazarus, UW2 Revival

From the U6P team:

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of Team Archon’s next milestone of the Ultima 6 Project, Milestone 8 (M8) for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). This is the beta release for the project, which will be followed shortly by the 1.0 release. Some things to look forward to in this release:

• The entire world is now complete, and ready for players to explore.
• All NPC’s are in place, and all the quests have been implemented.
• New weapons are available for the player to discover.
• Tangle Vines are now in game, and should pose a nasty surprise to unwary travelers.
• Enhancements have been made to the map and journal systems, and the Compendium is now available as part of the Journal.

This is not the final release of the game, but we feel that they are reasonably polished enough for public consumption (read: scrutiny). 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 Milestone 8 Release on the Project Britannia forums.

To download the M8 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 bugs. Contact any of the team members on the forums if you’d like to join the team.

About The U6 Project

The Ultima 6 Project was formed in 2001 by Sliding Dragon to develop a remake of Origin’s Ultima VI: The False Prophet with newer graphics and a more immersive engine. Soon assembled under the banner Archon, the team members, who hail from all over the globe, have set about recreating the world of Britannia, adding an enhanced storyline to bolster intraseries continuity and building on the Ultima legacy in a way that will please fans new and old.

I haven’t added the download to the project entry yet (that will happen tonight), but Team Archon were gracious enough to release the Milestone 8 download to me a bit early.

Sadly, something seems to have gone wrong with my upload of the project file. I’m working on getting a new download in place right now!

Apologies!

Update: Okay, I think the file DOWNLOADED successfully this time, which is good. But as I am currently in a hotel in Rock Springs, Wyoming, sharing an internet connection with God knows how many other people, the process of getting it UPLOADED has crossed from being a mere annoyance to a full-on pain in the ass. By which I mean: 5:35:22 remaining on the counter, with 1:55:29 elapsed already.

Painfully slow!

Anyhow, with nothing better to do on the site at the moment, I think I might take a stab at cleaning up the timeline. Which, I remind myself, still needs to have all the various remake projects included in it. Or at least the ones that make it to final release!

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

From Aletys:

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of Team Archon’s next milestone of the Ultima 6 Project, Milestone 7 (M7) for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). This is the alpha release for the project, which will be followed shortly by the beta and 1.0 releases. Some things to look forward to in this release:

• The entire world is now available for players to explore, and players will be able to complete the game, though some elements will be further enhanced in the beta and 1.0 releases.
• New NPCs have been added, including a certain Cyclops family and a two-headed llama.
• Additional enhancements have been made to existing areas.
• More quests have been implemented, including the entire main quest.
• The Journal system has been greatly enhanced, and players will be able to track their progress with it.

This is not a final release of these sections of the game, but we feel that they are reasonably polished enough for public consumption (read: scrutiny). 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 Milestone 7 Release on the Project Britannia forums.

To download the M7 release, go to the Ultima 6 Project web site, where you can also check out profiles of the Project team members.

You’re still here, good reader? Get thee to the project website!

Update: A download is now available via the project entry here.

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

Produced by: Team Exult
Website: Exult at Sourceforge
Releases:
* Windows Binary (2.0 MiB, 25 hits)
* Mac OS X 10.3 (1.4 MiB, 20 hits)
* Sharp Zaurus (1.4 MiB, 17 hits)
* PocketPC (ARM) (246 bytes, 15 hits)
* PSP (2.0 MiB, 21 hits)
* Fedora - Game (1.0 MiB, 21 hits)
* Fedora - Tools (274.0 KiB, 17 hits)
* Fedora - Studio (254.6 KiB, 18 hits)
* Source Code (RPM) (1.6 MiB, 16 hits)
* Source Code (.tar.gz) (1.6 MiB, 16 hits)
* [drain file 406 url Nokia 770/M800 - Program] ([drain file 406 size])

Additional Files
* Black Gate Sound Files (4.6 MiB, 23 hits)
* Black Gate Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (6.2 MiB, 16 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (1 of 2) (12.0 MiB, 27 hits)
* Black Gate OGG Music Files (2 of 2) (10.9 MiB, 25 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (5.9 MiB, 24 hits)
* Serpent Isle Sound Files (Roland MT-32) (7.7 MiB, 20 hits)
* [drain file 407 url Nokia 770/M800 - Data] ([drain file 407 size])
* [drain file 403 url Nokia 770/M800 - Music (mono, low quality)] ([drain file 403 size])
* [drain file 404 url Nokia 770/M800 - Music (stereo, higher quality)] ([drain file 404 size])

Exult 1.4 (unstable)
* Exult 1.4 (Windows) (2.2 MiB, 27 hits)
* Exult 1.4 (PocketPC - ARM4) (1.3 MiB, 13 hits)
* Exult 1.4 (PocketPC - ARM5) (1.3 MiB, 16 hits)
* Exult Studio (Windows) (3.5 MiB, 21 hits)
* Exult Tools (Windows) (1.3 MiB, 19 hits)
* Exult 1.4 Source (4.3 MiB, 16 hits)
* Shapes Plugin for Photoshop (87.7 KiB, 17 hits)
* GIMP Plugin (50.4 KiB, 19 hits)
* GIMP Plugin 2.0 (47.0 KiB, 16 hits)
* SDL 1.2 Libraries

An amazing remake, Exult is a cross-platform reworking of the Ultima 7/Serpent Isle engine that allows the game to be run on modern operating systems with expanded memory environments. This is not the same as a Voodoo memory-manager wrapper program, and it works on many systems apart from Windows.

Exult 1.2 is the latest “stable” release – Team Exult is making massive engine changes, and subsequent releases are expected to have instabilities as a result. It has Windows, Mac OS X, Sharp Zaurus, and Fedora builds available. Also avaliable is the source code, so that people running other systems can compile and build Exult.

Tags: Exult, Fedora, Mac, OS X, Serpent Isle, Sharp Zaurus, The Black Gate, Ultima 7, Voodoo, Windows

Pentagram, the remake that does for Ultima 8 what Exult did for Ultima 7, has posted news of their development progress for the first time since last December. The team, it seems, has been busy indeed!

In the last few months, interest in Pentagram seems to have picked up again. A number of bugs were fixed since the last update, including camera fixes, key handling, containers (backpack, barrels, etc.), and a fix for a problem in the German versions of the U8. The default key binding for stasis moved from ‘S’ to ‘F10′. The build should now properly support versions of autoconf greater than 2.60.

Mac OS X builds also received a lot of attention. They build system switched from XCode to a makefile-based system that builds Pentagram and dependencies using their traditional configure script and make methods. This allows us a greater amount of control over the builds and should help prevent changes to Pentagram for unix systems that break OS X builds and vice versa.

Just prior to this news update, I noticed that the Pentagram team had released updated snapshots of both their Windows and Mac builds of the game, and both of these updates have been added to the project entry. I’ve also updated the local copy of the Pentagram source code.

Tags: Exult, Mac, OS X, Pentagram, Ultima 7, Ultima 8, unix, Windows, XCode

Produced by: Pentagram Team
Website: Pentagram
Releases:
* [drain file 28 url Windows Binary] ([drain file 28 size])
* [drain file 24 url OS X Universal Binary] ([drain file 24 size])
* [drain file 91 url Mac libPNG Libraries] ([drain file 91 size])
* [drain file 109 url Source Code] ([drain file 109 size])
* [drain file 410 url Nokia 770/M800 - Program] ([drain file 410 size])
* [drain file 408 url Nokia 770/M800 - libSDL] ([drain file 408 size])
* [drain file 409 url Nokia 770/M800 - INI file] ([drain file 409 size])

Pentagram Map Viewer
* [drain file 27 url Pentagram Map Viewer] ([drain file 27 size])
* [drain file 26 url Source Code] ([drain file 26 size])

What initially began as a map viewer for Ultima 8 has evolved into a full-on cross-platform engine remake in the spirit of Exult. Although no official demo has yet been released, there are up-to-date releases of source code available, as well as Windows and Mac OS X Universal binaries.

The best aspect of this is that Pentagram runs very smoothly and without an intense CPU load, unlike when Ultima 8 is run under DOSBox.

Tags: DOSBox, Exult, Mac, Pentagram, Ultima 8, Windows

I just got this notice in my email inbox, and it’s a hute announcement indeed: Milestone 5 of the Ultima 6 Project has been released!

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of Team Archon’s next milestone of the Ultima 6 Project, Milestone 5 for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). Some things to look forward to in this release:

• New areas to explore (Trinsic, Jhelom, Moonglow, New Magincia, Serpent’s Hold, Skara Brae, Sutek’s Castle, Trinsic)
• Enhancements to existing areas
• New plot details and quests and other subtle refinements
• Numerous enhancements to the core gameplay such as:
  • The Journal system now records may quest details automatically, but still allows the player to make their own notes
  • A new “Event Console”, which can be toggled on and off, and which will help you keep track of what’s happening during play
  • Many more tunings and tweaks to the core Project Britannia systems ( for the nitty gritty details, check the change log )

You can find the download links on the Official Website:

www.u6project.com

I will be sure to add a download for this to Aiera just as soon as I am able. In the meantime, O Reader…check thou it out!

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