DOUG the Eagle Dragon’s Ultima 6-inspired RPG creation software is once again available for download.

I was always a big fan of Syndicate when I was a kid; I spent countless hours in front of my friend Tiago’s Mac LCIII laying into mercenaries (and sometimes civilians…who am I kidding?) with the Gauss Gun.

So you can imagine that this news caught my eye:

A modern update of isometric cyborg sim Syndicate is presumed to be the surviving half of a planned two-game collaboration between EA and Starbreeze Studios. As noted by Superannuation, EA filed three new “Syndicate” trademark registrations in August concerning “video game software,” “electronic computer games” and, in one case, “collectable toy figures.”

Rumors of a new Syndicate sprang up over a year ago, and a document from the U.S. Copyright Office recently linked the Syndicate name to both EA and Chronicles of Riddick developer Starbreeze Studios. While the publisher has never made an official announcement, original Syndicate designer Sean Cooper stated in June 2009 that several “misguided” attempts to revisit the sci-fi franchise had been made since it debuted in the early 90s.

Syndicate isn’t particularly related to Ultima in any meaningful sense, though it did boast an isometric game engine that would be instantly familiar to any fan of Ultima 7 or Ultima 8. The linear, mission-based storyline was far from an Ultima-like RPG experience (indeed, I don’t think you could classify Syndicate as an RPG, at least not one in the same category as Ultima), although the squad controls were somewhat tighter than even those offered by Ultima 6.

Zephyr posted a short note at the Ultima 6 Project website to let us know that a pre-release version of their version 1.01 patch is available for early testers to request and try out. You can pick it up from the Project Britannia wiki here, or immediately below.

Ultima 6 Project v1.01 Pre-Release Patch (587.2 KiB, 17 hits)

I haven’t added this to the actual Ultima 6 Project entry just yet, because it’s not the official release of the patch. Even so, grab it if you like.

Forum user Saxon1974 alerted me to the existence of the two MP3s linked from this forum thread, which feature an interview that Ultima creator Richard Garriott gave during the production of my personal favourite entry in the series, Ultima 6.

It’s not really the sort of thing that would merit a standalone entry here at Aiera, but I’ve uploaded the mp3s to the site and present them here for your listening pleasure, good reader.

Part 1:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Part 2:

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The full release-version download of the Ultima 6 Project is over 1 GB in size, which is fairly substantial. Heck, I can remember a time (not too long ago, either) when such a massive release would have bordered on the unthinkable. These days? Not so much…my digital download of Mass Effect 2 topped out at 12.5 GB, for example.

That said, not everyone enjoys the benefits of a) stable and/or b) high-speed Internet connectivity. As such, the Ultima 6 Project team have released a 10-part segmented ZIP version of their finished product for download, which you can now find at the project entry.

The good folks at Team Archon have posted a notice concerning a plot-stopping bug in version 1.0 of the Ultima 6 Project:

Team Archon is currently working on a patch (1.0.1) to address some problems with the 1.0 release, one of which will prevent you from winning the game. This patch will be compatible with your saved games from 1.0, and therefore all players should download and apply it immediately once it is released. We need your help to make sure that all players get this patch, as they will eventually get blocked and be unable to proceed without it. The patch is nearing completion and should be available before too long.

If you are already blocked, we may be able to distribute an early, “experimental” build of the patch to those who would like to try it (at their own risk). Make sure you save your game before applying the patch. If you have questions about this, we recommend that you post them in our forum. We will be making an announcement here and on Project Britannia when the patch is publicly available.

Aiera will be hosting the patch when it releases; if you need/want it before then, follow the link above to the Project Britannia forum and let then know.

The site has been getting a ton of traffic from RPGWatch over the weekend, so let me just shout out a big “HELLO AND WELCOME!” to everyone who’s coming from there that has never been to the site before. If the Ultima series occupies a special place in your heart, be sure to check back here from time to time…the community is still very much alive, and there are always bits of news to report.

If you’re looking for the Ultima 6 Project, you can find it here.

If you’re looking for Ultima 6 Online, you can find it here.

And may I just add that since the release of the Ultima 6 project, Aiera has served up nearly 1.5 binary terabytes of downloads. That’s within the span of a few days. Fortunately, my host has not yet served me with notice that I’m over my allotted monthly bandwidth…and to be fair, the billing/tracking cycle will reset in another three days.

But if you feel like dropping a few dollars into the tip jar to help pay for the hosting, you’ll certainly have my gratitude.

Cear Dragon just alerted me to the existence of an official forum which has been created to address support issues, provide a place to discuss project progress, and plan raids.

Spread the word!

That’s right…it’s been nearly a decade in the making, and it comes out today!

On this, the 20th anniversary year of the release of Origin Systems Ultima 6, it is with much pleasure that we announce the 1.0 release of Team Archon‘s Ultima 6 Project, for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). Players will find a huge and exciting world waiting to be discovered:

• Travel throughout the lands of Britannia, exploring dark forests with bandits lying in wait, deserts and swamps teeming with monsters, and peaceful towns and villages filled with shops, old friends, and interesting people just waiting to give the player numerous and exciting quests to solve.
• Explore deep and dangerous caves and caverns full of treasure and hidden surprises. Bring your breadcrumbs to mark your trail, or be prepared to be thoroughly and completely lost, with your remains left to be found by future explorers.
• Sail the savage seas to explore remote islands, but be vigilant for there are sea monsters lying in wait for the careless traveler.
• Discover a hidden new world, far from Britannia.
• Encounter strange and exotic races, including the mysterious Gargoyles.
• Fight fearsome monsters, find pirate loot, solve a murder, and discover the truth behind the numerous attacks on Britannia’s towns.
• Learn the commerce of the land for fun and profit.
• Learn magical spells, search for magic reagents, and join guilds to gain special benefits.
• Those players with proclivities to the dark side can follow an “evil path”.
• And, last, but not least, ferret out the hidden Easter eggs.

Click on through to continue reading the press release. If you just can’t wait and have to start downloading the project package, click here for the project entry at Aiera, or visit the project website for additional download links.

(more…)

Produced by: Team Archon
Website: The Ultima 6 Project
Releases:
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (1,015.3 MiB, 2,693 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (1/10) (105.0 MiB, 13 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (2/10) (105.0 MiB, 13 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (3/10) (105.0 MiB, 15 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (4/10) (105.0 MiB, 13 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (5/10) (105.0 MiB, 13 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (6/10) (105.0 MiB, 14 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (7/10) (105.0 MiB, 12 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (8/10) (105.0 MiB, 12 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (9/10) (105.0 MiB, 12 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project v1.0 (10/10) (69.2 MiB, 15 hits)

Milestones:
* Milestone 1 (147.9 MiB, 105 hits)
* Milestone 2 (225.6 MiB, 100 hits)
* Milestone 3 (270.9 MiB, 109 hits)
* Milestone 4 (356.8 MiB, 107 hits)
* Milestone 5 (442.5 MiB, 96 hits)
* Milestone 6 (140.0 MiB, 107 hits)
* Milestone 6 Patch (3.2 MiB, 94 hits)
* Milestone 7 (713.7 MiB, 113 hits)
* Milestone 8 (Beta Release) (808.9 MiB, 112 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project Beta 2 (834.0 MiB, 313 hits)
* Ultima 6 Project Beta 3 (994.9 MiB, 192 hits)

Tools:
* Font Builder (619.0 KiB, 114 hits)
* Interface Designer (1.2 MiB, 117 hits)

Tech Demo:
* Tech Demo (36.8 MiB, 108 hits)

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.

Apropos of the comments in this news post from yesterday, I’ve uploaded an updated client — which will actually work with the new server — to the Ultima 6 Online project entry.

See? This is why I love the Ultima community!

Over in the forum, there’s a thread detailing how to connect to the newly active server for Ultima 6 Online. This was set in motion a couple months ago after some inquiries were made, and now thanks to mose this great online version of my personal favourite Ultima title is once again playable.

You can get the client here, if you need it.

First, it was Ultima 7. Then, it was Lazarus.

Now, the “Let’s Play Ultima” craze, which has slowly been making its way across YouTube and across the series, has reached my personal favourite amongst the Ultima titles. That’s right, Dragons…a young lady who goes by the handle enirya is playing — and broadcasting — her way through Ultima 6.

And what’s more, she’s playing the FM Towns version.

She’s only three episodes in at this point in time, but expect that number to grow.

That’s right: hot on the heels of their Milestone 8 (Beta 1) release, the U6 Project team have released their second beta, which features:

It is with much pleasure that we announce the release of the Beta 2 Release of Team Archon’s Ultima 6 Project, for Dungeon Siege 1 (PC and Mac). Some things to look forward to in this release:

• Many bug fixes have been implemented since the Milestone 8 (Beta 1) release.
• Weapon and armor restrictions have now been applied, by class.
• The entire world is complete, and ready for players to explore.
• All NPC’s are in place, and all the quests have been implemented.
• Those players with proclivities to the dark side can now follow an “evil path”.
• Hydras are now in game, and should pose a nasty surprise to unwary travelers.
• Additional enhancements have been made to the map and journal systems, and the Compendium is now nearly complete.
• Minor performance improvements have been implemented
• It should be noted that anyone using a previous version will have to uninstall it prior to installing the Beta 2 Release, and start a new game.

While this is not the final release of the game, we feel that it is reasonably polished, enough for public consumption (read: scrutiny). We still expect that there will be some bugs, and are soliciting your help in finding them.

If you find problems with the release, want to exchange play hints with other players, want to give us kudos, or (heaven forbid) want to tell us what you really think, join us at our forums. We have set up a special forum for the Beta 2 Release on the Project Britannia forums (http://www.projectbritannia.com/index.php).

To download the Beta 2 Release, go to the Ultima 6 Project web site at: http://www.u6project.com/ where you can also check out profiles of the Project team members.

If you like what you see, and would like to contribute to this great game (and help us get it out faster), the team is looking for additional 2D artists to help with completing the portraits. And, of course, we’re always looking for play-testers to help us find and eliminate any remaining bugs. Contact any of the team members on the forums if you’d like to join the team.

You’re still here, good reader? Get thee to the Ultima 6 Project website and grab that download.

Or, you can grab it from the project entry here at Aiera.

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

As The Bladed Dragon pointed out in the comments for this article, I was mistaken in a comment I made about Beh Lem, the recruitable gargoyle character in Ultima 6. Specifically, I forgot that Beh Lem was an immature winged gargoyle, rather than a wingless. Indeed, the very fact that he could be recruited should have been evidence enough of this, since wingless gargoyles are said to be incapable of speaking (as Sergorn Dragon recently reminded me) in Ultima 6.

So, uh, yeah…my bad. There’s no harm at all in assuming that Beh Lem, in the 200 intervening years between Ultima 6 and Ultima 7, would have “grown up” and sprouted wings. As I should darn well have known.

Now the only question is: what became of his pet lizard?

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.

Apologies again for the delay! Please do check out the project entry for the download link.