Feel like rescuing a princess again? Or maybe taking a space shuttle mission to a distant world? Has it been too long since you journeyed into the Abyss?

Ultimoid appears to be a browser-based parody of the Ultima games, constructed with the GameBuilder service. As such, it’s not a particularly lengthy adventure, and its control set is pretty simple.

Its appearance draws heavily on the tiled graphics of Ultima 1 through Ultima 5. Timeline-wise, it claims to be set in a post-Ultima 9 Britannia.

I should have the Online Remakes category restored completely come Monday. Which will be awesome.

Some may remember Kevin Fishburne from the Ultima V TES III mod that was announced a few years ago, which saw a lot of progress but ultimately ceased development due to the sheer number of 3D assets that needed to be created for it.

Mr. Fishburne is back with a new project called Sanctimonia, which borrows elements from Ultima IV, V, Online and arcade titles such as Gauntlet. It’s a 2D game with faux 3D effects and is not a mod; it’s a standalone MMO-type game that he’s coding himself. Other than landscape textures and building tiles, all the objects (trees, furniture, people, animals, etc.) will be photographed from real models from 16 directions to create the faux 3D effect when the screen is rotated.

Well, last night he contacted me with a request for assistance. He has undertaken a new project, called Sanctimonia, which he describes thusly:

For the last six months or so I’ve been working on a new project called Sanctimonia, which borrows elements from Ultima IV, V, Online and arcade titles such as Gauntlet. This one’s 2D with faux 3D effects and is not a mod, as I’m coding it myself. This should allow for a much more reasonable workload as far as asset production is concerned. Other than landscape textures and building tiles, all the objects (trees, furniture, people, animals, etc.) will be photographed from real models from 16 directions to create the faux 3D effect when the screen is rotated.

[snip]

Sanctimonia will be using a largely unpopulated Britannia circa Ultima IV/V, allowing players to build it up as they please. A modest server and Internet connection (256 KBps upstream) should support around 1000 players simultaneously per server.

Currently, he’s attempting to raise funds to offset the cost of developing the project, but is still far, far short of his goal.

You can read more about the project at that link, and if it interests you, I would encourage you to toss Mr. Fishburne a donation. I’ll be adding a project entry to Aiera within the day.

Milestones:
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Tools:
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Tech Demo:
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Another Dungeon Siege-based remake, this high-profile (and high-tech) project aims to re-create Ultima 6, adding many of the same features to the game that Lazarus added into Ultima 5: enhanced music, expanded storyline, new characters and additional side quests.

The project has been in the works for a number of years, but their development pace has seemed to surge ahead in the last year or so; they’ve achieved several milestone releases since first being posted to Aiera, each one adding vast amounts of additional functionality to the game.

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

Ladies and Luke, I give you: Let’s Play Ultima V Lazarus: Warriors of Destiny!

This undertaking is only a few days old, and only about 20 episodes in. I’m not sure how far he’s gotten in the game proper, so if someone could enlighten me, that’d be great!