Although rendered somewhat obsolete by Pentagram, Gaseous Dragon’s Windows patch for Ultima 8 (which, yes, is now once again available for download) still has a niche to fill while Pentagram remains unfinished.

Consider this a two-for-one: Pentagram‘s downloads have been restored, as have the Pentagram downloads for this set of ports of various Ultima projects to Nokia internet tablets.

More to come!

I’m actually cheating a bit, because I was out late and am now pressed for time. And technically this is Friday’s update, and it’s now Saturday. At any rate, the big Ultima 8 remake, Pentagram, isn’t quite restored to download status; the U8 Mapper utility is.

Pentagram will be available tomorrow.

…that with the restoration of the download yesterday, all the Serpent Isle downloads are once again up and available.

Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that. So, there it is.

Now, you’d think I’d be getting on to Pentagram today, but someone just dropped me a note. Check back in a bit for a new update.

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!

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

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.

Produced by: Pentagram Team
Website: Pentagram
Releases:
* Pentagram (Windows) (1.6 MiB, 77 hits)
* Pentagram (OS X) (3.4 MiB, 42 hits)
* Mac LibPNG Libraries (253.1 KiB, 31 hits)
* Pentagram Source (5.6 MiB, 29 hits)

Pentagram Map Viewer
* Pentagram Viewer (Windows) (2.0 MiB, 40 hits)
* Pentagram Viewer Source (401.6 KiB, 27 hits)

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.

I apologize for the gap in news updating; both my job and my home life have been rather busy these last few weeks, and I’ve had precious little time to stroll through “the Ultimasphere” to see what has transpired in terms of project developments and file updates.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the news!

PT-BR Underworld Translation

This translation of Ultima Underworld to Portuguese is now 100% complete, with all text strings in the game fully translated.

They are seeking testers to look for errors in grammar and spelling. So if you, O Reader, are conversant in both Portuguese and English, and wouldn’t mind playing through Ultima Underworld again, be sure to visit the project website and drop them a line.

The patch can be downloaded from that same website, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Exult

I noticed that the unstable Exult 1.4 build for Windows had been updated on May 3rd. The notable correction in this release deals with a crash that could be caused by a trap’s projectile effect.

As usual, the snapshot can be downloaded from the Exult website or from the project entry here at Aiera.

Pentagram

There hasn’t been any news from the Pentagram team since December of last year, but they are obviously still working on the project itself; the Windows snapshot that is available for download was updated on April 23rd, and can be downloaded either from the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera.

EUO

As of May 5th, the 3D client for EUO has been updated, and can be downloaded either the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Notable changes in this release are the addition of “popups” (I assume this is in reference to either in-game dialogues or message windows?), a help screen, the ability to re-map keys, and a few other odds and ends.

Project Britannia

The britannia_art.dsres and britannia_logic.dsres files have been updated. Changes this go-round include the addition of GUI elements for several throwable weapons, shoes(!!), and a bunch of new textures and meshes. Also, a Yew tree for Ben to chop has been added (methinks this is derived from the Ultima 6 Project?).

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

Though not specifically an update to the actual remake project, the folks at the Ultima 6 Project would like to draw our attention to a charity group that they would like to encourage would-be donors to the project to support instead:

As many of you know, the U6 Project has been going strong for several years now, and it’s cost us a fair amount of cash to keep it going. Every once in a while we’ll get someone asking us if they can donate some money to the project. Well, since it’s an all-volunteer project and not a commercial venture, we can’t accept money. However – we’ve recently realized that there’s no reason in the world we can’t suggest a charity to which you could donate instead. While gaming is certainly a worthy cause, we think that it would be even better to give the gift of life and donate to the Susan G Komen foundation for breast cancer research.

http://www.komen.org/

Please note: The U6 Project is not affiliated with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization in any way, shape or form. We’d just like to recommend that you give your money to them instead of offering it to us. Thank you.

So maybe, just maybe, O Reader, go forth and make a bit of a donation in the names of the folks of Team Archon. I’m sure they’d appreciate it!

One last note: someone by the name of Chris (with an email address at grimmstudios.com) contacted me in regard to Ultima 3. Chris, if you’re reading this, I just sent my reply to you again; the last few attempts have resulted in the message bouncing back to me. I apologize for the delay, and would encourage you — if this latest attempt doesn’t get through — to contact me again and provide an alternative email address.

To anyone reading this site who might be working — or who has, in the past, worked — on Pentagram, the Ultima 8 environment — I have a question on behalf of a reader.

Do you think it will be possible to port Pentagram to the Nintendo DS? There is a 4Mb ram limit. It would be nice to use this engine with the touch screen of the DS.

There is a library for Nintendo DS programming call libnds heres a link…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libnds

Theres another one which uses libnds called PaLib it makes somethings easier. We would need to scale or crop the resolution down to 256 x 192 if we are using just one screen. Theres a top and bottom one but I think it would be cool to use the bottom screen since thats the touchpad.

Libnds comes with DevKitPro which includes an ARM assembler and a C/C++ compiler basically everything you need to program for the NDS.

So…can anyone on the Pentagram team throw an answer my way? Would it be possible to port Pentagram to the Nintendo DS?

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!

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