I see that Dino’s Ultima Page has posted some news concerning a couple of new file releases from different projects. Notably, Ranman’s Ultima V for TI Calculators has released a beta version of that port for the TI-92 and V200 calculators. This download has already been added to the project entry here at Aiera.

Also, the full version of a patch translating Ultima 7 to Spanish has been released. Following up on this lead led me to translation patches for Serpent Isle, Ultima 9, and Ultima Underworld about which I had previously been unaware, and these have all been added to Aiera.

• Ultima 7 Spanish translation
• Serpent Isle Spanish translation
• Ultima Underworld Spanish translation
• Ultima 9 Spanish translation

Additionally, the Ultima 6 Project Development Tools Package has been released, which enables the user to edit and compile conversations, edit game objects, edit game logic, and provides a host of other functions as well. It can be downloaded from the Project Britannia website, or from the Ultima 6 Project entry here at Aiera.

Other Ultima-related news I found whilst wandering through the Internet today includes:

Aklabeth

The web home of this remake of Akalabeth seems to be offline. I hope it’s just a temporary thing.

Ultima Underworld for Pocket PC

Conversely, this port of Ultima Underworld to the PocketPC seems to be back online again. Nice to see. That means that I get to move this project out of the cemetery!

Exult

This port of The Black Gate and Serpent Isle to…well…pretty much every operating system one could dare to think of…doesn’t look as though it’s been updated, by its website. But I noticed that the Windows and PocketPC snapshots were updated earlier this month, as was the snapshot for Exult Studio. All of these can be downloaded through the project entry here. The chief modification seems to concern a bug with multiracial Avatars.

Ultima: Iris

This 3D frontend for Ultima Online has been updated recently, to build version 2365. Linux and Windows source, and the Windows installer, can all be downloaded via the project entry here, or at the project website.

Finally, I was contacted by Yannick “Alcibiade” Kirschhoffer regarding a new piece of Ultima-related material he has produced. I’ll let him explain it in his own words:

I’ve been huge fan of the second Ultima trilogy. In 2003, I began work on writing guitar arrangements of most of this era’s music. I did the Ultima 6 score almost entirely, and some of U4 and U5 too. Then I compiled these in a songbook that I illustrated with artwork and quotes from the games.

It is available for download in PDF format at www.alcibiade.org

This is a handy little creation, beautifully arranged and attractively compiled into one volume. I’ve added a project entry for it under the category of “General Utility”, and it can be downloaded from there as well.

Well done, Yannick!

Produced by: Dorian Hawkmoon
Website: Ultima Ascension Traducción
Releases:
* Ultima Ascension Traducción (7.73 MB)

This is a full translation of Ultima 9 into Spanish.

Ergonpandilus Dragon has made us a short video that neatly summarizes, using the tapestry from Ultima 9, the plot of the Ultima series and the path of the Avatar.

Very good work, Ergon! Thank you kindly.

Well, it’s been a little while since I posted an update pertaining to Ultima projects, and I see that Petrell and Dino over at Dino’s Ultima Page have uncovered several juicy morsels of news. To wit:

EUO

This Ultima-like project reached its fifth year just recently, and to celebrate the occasion they threw a number of bonuses and extra stuff into the game — experience bonuses, prizes & giveaways, DM-hosted events, special in-game drinks (eggnog, for example), and even a few new bosses.

Also, a “Newbie Island” tutorial map has been added to the game to help new players ease in.

Ultima 6 Project

A new press release from this promising-looking remake of Ultima 6 has been released at RPGWatch. It has some details about new cities and places in the pending fifth milestone release (Nicodemus’ keep, for example), and also informs us that the team is always in need of world builders, 3D modelers, artists, and musicians.

So, O Reader, if you fall into any of those categories, you might want to swing by the Ultima 6 Project website and drop someone a line.

Additionally, project developer Nicodemus has posted another update to his worldbuilding Dev Diary with some cool new screenshots of his work (Jhelom and Skara Brae).

Ultima: Iris

A new build — build 2010 — of this 3D client for Ultima Online has been released. It can be downloaded from the project’s homepage, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

xu4

A new snapshot of the Mac version of this Ultima 4 remake is available for download either through the project website or via the project entry here at Aiera. A new Windows snapshot is also available.

Ultima V for TI Calculators

Ranman has posted additional news about his project that has ported Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator. He lets us know, firstly, about some special item capabilities that he as implemented. Secondly, he talks about killing NPCs, lock picking, and guard behaviour — rather a “law and order” sort of post.

The project is still in beta testing.

I also took a bit of a wander around the Ultima community myself, and noticed a few other odds and ends that the Reader might be interested in.

Savage Empire for Exult

Scythifuge is always looking for people to help out with his ambitious goal of porting the Savage Empire storyline into Exult.

Exult

Speaking of Exult, I notice that the Windows snapshot of Exult 1.4 has been updated recently (April 14th), as have the snapshots for Exult Tools and Exult Studio. These can be downloaded from the project website, and I have added them to the project entry here at Aiera.

Project Britannia

I noticed that the britannia_art.dsres and britannia_logic.dsres resource files for this Ultima world framework were updated at the beginning of April. Changes since the previous revision include the addition of a new lockpick texture, a ferry, and two new light textures, as well as changes to melee attack logic, the lockpick’s shape, and a bunch of other things.

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

Also, I’ve made a few minor changes to the site here. For starters, I have added a module to the site sidebar to track the ten most downloaded files in the last 30 days. Initially, I wasn’t going to clear the statistics for the download manager with any sort of frequency, but after a bunch of Ultima 9-related downloads surged ahead (in some cases, to over 3,000 downloads!), it seemed reasonable to give some of the other files a chance to make the top spot.

So it’s there, and I won’t be putting a “top five” list onto news posts anymore.

And of course, there’s the gallery and Ultima art repository. I do encourage any interested users to register a user account there and begin uploading any Ultima-related art they can find so that it can be preserved for posterity. This includes scans of art from the manuals, which won’t be around forever.

Oh, and I’ve added another countdown to the sidebar. Only 190 days (roughly — could change in either direction) until Grace and I welcome our little one into the world!

Despite the lack of new news, I’ve been busy.

A discussion unfolded last month about Ultima-related art, with one commentator, Hexxer, noting:

I have had a very hard time trying to find decent resolution Ultima art. It would be nice if someone perhaps made a post requesting this stuff…

Ergonpandilus Dragon dug up a handful of very nice examples thereof, drawing on content from Ultima 9, Ultima V: Lazarus, and other projects as well. One hopes that his findings were but a sampling of content that is available “out there” however. Whether this is the case or not, I cannot say for certain. Regardless, Hexxer had one more observation which is worth repeating here:

I am sure there must be some community members willing to scan some classic stuff at high res, if its not done at some point this stuff is going to fade away!

I think that he’s right. The Ultima games had some great art associated with them — game boxes, manual illustrations, in-game and cut-scene graphics, and promotional material — and have also inspired the creation of a lot of really high-quality art as well in the years since their release. And I think it would be a good idea to have an archive of high-resolution copies of that art, in order to preserve it.

To that end, I’ve made a few changes here at Aiera.

As the Reader should know, images are integrated into many project entries here on the site; these images are stored and called up from a gallery, powered by the Coppermine gallery system, which until now I have kept “out of sight” of the casual visitor. This was due primarily to the fact that I couldn’t find a template for Coppermine which matched the template I am using for the visual layout of Aiera.

That has since changed, in that I have ported Aiera’s template to Coppermine, more or less (a first for me, and quite the learning experience if I do say so myself!). And so the user is now both able and invited to visit the Aiera gallery. What is more, I have opened user registration on the gallery, so that those who wish to submit content for consideration may do so.

Using the gallery is simple, if the Reader but follows the steps below:

1. Register as a user in the gallery
2. Wait for me to confirm the registration
3. Log in to the gallery
4. On the sidebar, click on Create/Order my albums
5. Create an album — this is necessary in order to save uploaded pictures
6. On the sidebar, click on Upload file
7. Upload as many as ten files from a hard drive, or five files from online sources
8. Save the files to the album previously created
9. Wait for me to review and approve the images — those images that meet the criteria outlined below will be ported over to the Ultima Art section of the gallery
10. If I don’t approve the images within three days, let me know and I’ll get my act together
11. Enjoy!

Guidelines for image submissions are as follows:

• Images must be Ultima-related (obviously)
• Images must be of fairly high resolution. Printable resolutions are preferable.
• Images smaller than 800×600 pixels will be rejected unless it can be demonstrated that they are the only extant representation of that particular piece of artwork
• Images must not already be in the gallery

Due to the fact that most of the images we are talking about here likely fall under a copyright of some kind, their being archived here will be assumed to be covered under fair use provisions in copyright law; they will be stored for posterity only, and not out of any intent to use them for profit generation or money-making ventures.

Update: Registration should work now. There was a problem with the Captcha security image plugin, and this has now been corrected. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.