Rob Craig — who runs the Realm of Ultima, a short but informative site that gives details (and some trivia) about the games that comprise the Ultima series — has begun brewing up a batch of lager (it’s still cold in Spain; the finer ales will have to wait for the warmer weather, apparently), and has settled on a fine name and label for it:

Blue. Serpent. Lager. I mean…is that not worthy of Dupre, or what?

Note to my project director: Can we include and/or homage this in Ultima Return? Can we? Can we? Pleeeeeease?

Courtesy of Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum, and to the hard work of both him and the team at the Wing Commander CIC, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present 10 animated sequences of Ultima 8 game assets and videos.

These were originally taken from a CD of Origin website files, and many are probably the work of ‘Dicko’ Mather, an Origin artist, who painted (among other things) The Silver Seed‘s box cover. (Mather now owns his own studio, doing MTV ‘bumpers’ — the frenetic little animations that flash past just prior to a commercial break.)

And speaking of Ultima 8…don’t forget to check out Sergorn Dragon’s Ultima Adventures; he’s just started playing through Pagan.

This is, I submit, what downloadable content (DLC) should be all about:

Being an Ultima fan, I’ve always measured add-on content — DLC included — against the metric established by the two expansions to the Ultima 7 games: Forge of Virtue and The Silver Seed. And really, the standard set by either expansion really is the one that I think most would agree that modern DLC should adhere to: you get new locales, new missions, new items, new characters, and a substantial amount of additional gameplay time relative to the length of the original game’s narrative.

Giving Thane Krios sunglasses? That’s not really worthwhile, as DLC goes. And to be equally fair, none of the DLC that has been pushed out for Mass Effect 2 thus far has really hit the mark for me. Neither of the two new characters, nor the Project Firewalkerexpansion pack, seemed to measure up, and I’ve yet to play Overlord. (Bring Down the Sky, for the original Mass Effect, came closest.)

But Lair of the Shadow Broker looks like it might just meet the standards, which would be a good thing and a fine bar for BioWare to set as far as DLC is concerned. I’ve no problem, at the level of principle, with the idea of downloadable add-on content for games; the Internet is today’s means of transmitting content that would, in a previous generation, have shipped out on 3.5″ diskettes. It’s really just a question of the quality of the content getting pushed. Thus far, it hasn’t seemed to measure up…but that might be about to change.

I’ve restored (and also updated – yay!) the download for L@Zar0′s now-complete Spanish translation of Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed.

One a day, one a day…like my wife’s pre-natal vitamins, right? (Except for the fact that I really don’t blog, at all, on weekends. I probably should have made that clear up front that the “goal” of restoring things would only be worked on during weekdays.)

L@Zar0, the fella who alerted me to the existence of the aforementioned Spanish translations of Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed, also posed a question that I didn’t have an answer to. It concerns whether or not a particular utility exists for Ultima 8, and I don’t think Aiera currently lists anything that satisfies the request. (It’s also possible I’m mistaken and just missed noticing the utility in the relevant category.)

Anyhow, since the community has in the past proven so fruitful in coming up with answers, I’m going to put this one out there

Do you know some tool to decompile/compile usecode for ULTIMA VIII:PAGAN? I know that there is a tool to extract every function (but it does not decompile). I know that there is a tool to dissassemble every function, but I don’t know any tool to assemble again the function (i’m programmer, but no so good ).

I’ve contacted with some of the Pentagram developers but they can not help me (nor answered).

I want (or need) a tool like this to make a translation for Pagan (in Spanish) from the 2.12 English version. 2.12 version was never released in Spanish and there was no patch ever. Also, the Spanish version has a bug in which Devon does not give to the Avatar the key of his chest to get the Tear of Seas… so the game is unfinishable by normal methods. It is possible use a tool named u8menu to activate the “Destroy” cheat, and destroy the chest which contain the Tear, but nothing more.

If you can help me I appreciate your efforts.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I’ve restored the download link for the Ultima Underworld 2 Character Editor. It’s a simple little utility, command line-based if memory serves, for modifying character statistics in…well…Ultima Underworld 2.

Also, I’ve just been informed that the final version of the Spanish translation of Serpent Isle (including The Silver Seed, by the way) has been released. I’ll be adding that to the site — or updating Aiera‘s current downloads, rather — over the next few days.

One download per day; I’m committed to this.

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Produced by: L@Zar0
Website: Traducción Ultima
Releases:
* Traducción de Serpent Isle (5.2 MiB, 328 hits)

This is a full translation of Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed into Spanish. It may require Exult in order to work.

[flickr size="thumbnail" float="left"]4479852362[/flickr]
Produced by: Marzo Sette Torres Jr.
Website: Seven Towers
Releases:
* Serpent Isle Fixes (255.7 KiB, 491 hits)

This interesting collection of Serpent Isle modifications enables you to, among other things, actually cure Cantra of her post-resurrection insanity.

The developer notes that these mods are only workable using the Exult engine, and will not function with only a base install of Serpent Isle.

Additionally, he cautions that the mods might not function properly without The Silver Seed expansion installed, although he has attempted to design them so that this shouldn’t matter.

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Produced by: Jaesun
Website: NWN2 Ultima VII Part 2

I do believe this was the first remake to make use of the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, and what a great Ultima to pick for it. Serpent Isle, the reliable fan favourite, was being re-made by Jaesun with what appears to be a minimalist style. The developer was be aiming for a straight-up, no “extra content” remake of the classic Ultima title.

Development has paused, possibly indefinitely — as of the last update, Jaesun seemed to have completed most of the towns, and a fair bit of the dialogue as well. He had also completed the Silver Seed expansion. Whether he completes any additional work is yet to be seen.

No files have been released for this project, apart from a few screenshots.