There were quite a few updates that I noticed in my last not-quite-daily stroll through the remake community.
Ultima IX: Redemption
There’s not exactly a new update at the Redemption website, but Direhaggis did post a small addendum to his previous update there:
Update on the update: the status bars have not been changed in some time. Some of you have pointed this out. As Corv mentioned, we don’t really take stock with such things because the process of deciding a percentile is so subjective. Based on my guestimate, story implementation, for instance, should be about 40% and total world dialogue at 60%; roughly 100,000 words or so. There’s obviously been progress in the other areas as well, but those aren’t my developmental niches and I can’t speak to them. My very last final ever in grad school is fast approaching. After that, progress will begin anew on the main quest. We now return you to the regularly scheduled update.
Just in case you were wondering, O Reader!
Pentagram
Pentagram has released new snapshots for both Windows and Mac OS X, and I have uploaded these to the Pentagram entry here on the site. Changes with this latest snapshot include some changes to the pathfinder code to provide for fancier visual animation, and a few other tweaks to the program’s back end.
Ultima 4 Multiplayer
I’ve been in conversation with Johnny Wood, the developer of Ultima 4 Multiplayer, for a while now, and he had expressed the desire to switch web hosts owing to a few different issues. Because the primary domain here has an immense amount of space and transfer, I set him up a subdomain, a Drupal installation, and he got to work putting the site together.
There’s still some setup left to do, but his site is functional and his first announcement is pretty big. In a sense, Ultima 4 Multiplayer has stopped development, but only in the sense that the developer has broadened the scope of the project to a more open framework that “will allow users to create and publish classic Ultima-style online games.”
The first release from the site will be the online version of Ultima 4, but one gets the feeling that others may be forthcoming as well in the none-too-distant future. It will be interesting, at any rate, to see how this project evolves from here. I’ve updated the project entry at the site to reflect this change.
Seven Towers Exult Mods
Marzo Sette Torres Jr. updated two of his Exult mods just before the end of April, Black Gate Keyring and the Avatar Pack.
To the Avatar Pack mod, a new sprite for the “bucket-headed” Avatar was added, and the paperdoll for said same Avatar was changed to look a little less “silly” (in MST’s own words). An issue that caused a conflict in Serpent Isle was also corrected. These changes were reflected over into the Keyring mod (except, obviously, the Serpent Isle-related one).
I have updated Aiera’s copies of both mods.
Project Britannia
At the Project Britannia Wiki, three of the development files were updated at the start of May. The britannia_art.dsres file has been updated (changes unknown), as has the britannia_logic.dsres file; changes here include a correction of a long-standing encumbrance issue, some changes to some scripting elements within the API, the addition of a wisp-specific faction within the engine, and some aesthetic corrections as well. Oh, and you can talk to NPCs through locked doors now.
Additionally, the Lazarus compatibility module has been updated, correction an issue with character portraits after a “banter” event takes place, as well as some updates to the conversation engine. The Lazarus entry here on the site has a link to the updated download.
The Dark Key
Razimus (Dr. Pepper Dragon) has added a forum to his UO to U7 conversion project’s website. It appears, just from a glance at topics in the forum, that he is working on map development — he has posted a few samples of his Serpent Isle map in one discussion thread.
Lost Sosaria
I ran into a weird little error while I was going back over a mountainous area of the game Something in the update to the Seasonal Forest tileset overwrote or conflicted with a couple of graphic elements in the JXP Mountains tileset that I was also using, resulting in the mountain area north of Black Dragon Castle suffering from several graphics glitches and misfires.
In my search for an alternative, though, I chanced upon another tileset called Rocky Mountains 10.1, an alpha-version tileset that is quite new to the NWN community. It looks awesome, and there are several new screenshots at the Lost Sosaria website demonstrating the new look of the mountains.
Overall, this is a minor setback; only four areas need to be redone.
Additionally, the project has been added to the Neverwinter Vault, although at present it is “pending approval” there.
WtFD
