I sometimes forget to check the Exult forums for a few weeks at a time, which I really shouldn’t do. Forget, that is…shouldn’t forget. Like as not, those forums are the hub of much of the activity in the Ultima community; much more is discussed there than just Exult.

Case(s) in point:

• Eric Fry posted a note in a discussion there concerning Nuvie, his apparently dormant attempt to create a multi-platform engine for Ultima 6. Apparently, he’s doing some behind the scenes work with the game logic at the moment; hopefully this turns into something more tangible in the none-too-distant future.
• Then there’s this little announcement, concerning what appears to be a total conversion for Serpent Isle…into Serpent Isle, circa the end of the Ophidian era. That’s right: someone wants to make a mod to tell the story of the War of Imbalance. And to be fair, it looks kinda promising, at its outset. Here’s hoping it’s able to keep its momentum!
• Finally, someone is attempting to add Beh Lem as a recruitable companion in Ultima 7, and appears to be making a lot of progress. My only gripe is that he’s given Beh Lem wings; I may be a touch out of date on my Ultima lore, but I’m pretty sure this should not be.

See what I mean? Hub of activity!

I suppose I should create a project entry for the middle one.

Produced by: Arnim Sauerbier
Website: Arnim Sauerbier
Releases:
* Aklabeth for Nokia Smartphones (33.6 KiB, 247 hits)

* xu4 for Nokia Smartphones (1.9 MiB, 238 hits)

* Ultima 7 - Exult - Program (1.0 MiB, 68 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Exult - Data (14.0 MiB, 58 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Music (mono) (12.5 MiB, 55 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Music (stereo) (28.7 MiB, 66 hits)

* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - Program (766.2 KiB, 35 hits)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - libSDL (16.2 KiB, 34 hits)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - Configuration (998 bytes, 27 hits)

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!

Produced by: Eric Fry
Website: Nuvie at Sourceforge
Releases:
* Windows Snapshot (1.1 MiB, 147 hits)
* Mac OS X Panther Snapshot (751.7 KiB, 97 hits)
* Mac OS X Tiger Snapshot (1.7 MiB, 123 hits)

Eric Fry’s novel remake of the Ultima 6 engine is also going to be compatible with Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. Though currently being developed under Mac OS X, there are downloadable binaries for both Windows and OS X 10.3+ (the developer feels these snapshots might also work under earlier versions of OS X, however this is untested. It is the opinion of Aiera that they will not, simply because of some key API changes that exist between OS X 10.2 and 10.3).

The program source code is also available. Linux users will have to compile Nuvie from source.

Produced by: Vividos
Website: Underworld Adventures
Releases:
* Release 0.9 Mojito (Win) (794.0 KiB, 93 hits)
* Release 0.9 Mojito (Linux) (571.9 KiB, 71 hits)
* Release 0.9 Mojito (Debian) (733.4 KiB, 66 hits)
* Release 0.9 Mojito (Source) (1.5 MiB, 70 hits)
* Release 0.9 Mojito (Linux Src.) (1.5 MiB, 60 hits)
* Release 0.9 Mojito Music (6.9 MiB, 78 hits)

Much like Exult and Nuvie, this project aimed to re-create an engine for an Ultima game that ran on modern operating systems without the use of patches. In this case, the game was Ultima Underworld. and the results looked promising. This engine, like Exult and Nuvie, used the original game data files.

Sadly, as of February 2007, Vividos has stopped development on Underworld Adventures.

I contemplated for a while the idea of moving this remake to the Orphanage, but decided against it for the moment; with Mojito, the remake had come fairly far along, enough so that I’m content to leave it in UW Remakes section for the time being.

I’ve updated the project files for Nuvie to include the latest Windows build and the newest Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) build. The 10.3 build has been kept for compatibility reasons, should any arise.