It has been another busy week for Ultima-related news, O Reader, and on the site as well. Full implementation of the download manager is progressing apace, and I think I’m going to add a new feature to the news postings — the top five most downloaded files. But we’ll get to that in a bit. In the meantime…here’s what’s news. And a couple of shout-outs go to Petrell at Dino’s Ultima Page for spotting some things that I missed in assembling the list below.

Project Britannia

I see that the folks over at Project Britannia have switched servers due to speed problems with their old hosting company. The site has been configured at the new host, so there shouldn’t be any interruptions in accessing it.

EUO

I see that EUO 3D has been updated to version 0.14, fixing a bug with window minimization. Updated versions of the download are available through the project entry here at Aiera.

Realms of Ultima

Development proceeds apace on this promising Ultima-themed prefab for Neverwinter Nights 2, although news posting to the project website has been a little bit light of late owing to the fact that team leader MokahTGS is presently moving to California to take on a new job.

Savage Empire for Exult

Scythifuge has started a new discussion thread at the Exult forums to keep us all up to date on the latest developments he is making in his adaptation of Savage Empire using Exult and the Ultima 7 engine. At present, he seems to be working very heavily on graphics and tiles for in-game use. He has even posted a few screenshots for us to feast our eyes on.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo Junior has put his Seven Towers website back online at a new host, and has released updates of all three of his Exult mods — Black Gate Keyring, SI Fixes, and the Avatar Pak. All of the latest versions can be downloaded from the respective project entries here at Aiera.

Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

Wizardry Dragon has put his project’s website back online at a new host.

Ultima for the Civilization Series

Frilly Wumpus alerted me to these. General Maximus has produced an Ultima-derived scenario (in two forms) for Civilization III. Both are set in Britannia after the events of Ultima 9. The forms of the scenario are as follows (one appearing to be a more difficult version of the scenario than the other):

Ultima X Conquest:

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by deviant warlords. Play as British under civilization group Bards. Forces and castles still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar; the rebelion states begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his heroic companions, reclaim your entire kingdom!

Ultima X: Medieval Deity Challenge

In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British(LB) lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by independent warlords who were once friends of Lord British(LB) himself. Play as LB under civilisation group Bards. Forces or cities still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar, the rebelions states has begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his companion Iolo, reclaim your entire kingdom!

The second form of the scenario seems to be more combat-oriented, and provides fewer allies/companions for the player. Either way, this seems like a neat idea, and I have created a project entry complete with downloads here at Aiera for it.

General Maximus also has an Ultima-inspired scenario for Civilization IV in the works, although as yet he has not released any downloads for it.

Ultima V for TI Calculators

Ranman informs us that his project — porting Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator — is nearing completion. He pegs the current project status at 98%, and his latest revisions to it include:

• “Acknowledgments” menu option is now working
• “Introduction” menu option is now working
• “Create New Character” menu option is partially working

He’s getting close, O Reader! Very close!

Ultima IX: Redemption

Sage has added a couple of new entries to his development diary. As usual, the would-be reader must be registered at the Titans of Ether forums.

Most Downloaded Files

1. Ultima 9 Official Patch 1.18 (6.17 MB)
2. Ultima 9 Unofficial Patch 1.19 (1.86 MB)
3. Ultima 9 Combined Patch (495.54 KB)
4. Ultima V: Lazarus v1.2 (Windows) (520.95 MB)
5. Alter U9 (RPG-Maker 2000 version) (5.93 MB)

Let’s see if any of the above changes in the coming weeks!

Okay, it’s been a while since the last update, and I trust that those Readers who are likewise recently married, or who were once recently married, can understand the heady intensity of the first few months post-wedding. Especially when there are “thank you” cards and Christmas cards to send out all at once!

Especially because some of my family members are getting a bit impatient over the arrival date of their “thank you”. We’ll leave the discussion about the lack of humility inherent in such a stance for another time, and possibly another place.

At any rate, it’s time for what will likely be Aiera’s last posting prior to Christmas, so enough is enough — let’s get to the news.

Ultima V: Lazarus

Toltec Dragon dropped me a line to let me know that a German translation of this Dungeon Siege-based remake of Ultima 5 is expected to be released very soon. So all you German Ultima fans out there keep watch; this exceptional remake of one of the best Ultima titles is about to arrive in your native language.

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ultima 5 seems to be generating all the good buzz lately. Ranman let us know in a comments thread that development on his port of Ultima 5 to the Texas Instruments calculator platform is at 93.7% (probably closer to 94% now) completion.

And he’s managed to shrink the size of the game engine a bit as well, thanks to some compiler optimizations.

Lost Sosaria

My own Ultima project, Lost Sosaria now has a discussion forum. Come on by and drop us a line!

(and yes, O Reader, I’m looking at forum solutions for Aiera as well)

Exult 3D

Sam Matthews has been quiet on the status of his project for a while. However, Gunnar brings news in the Exult forums that this project to create a 3D engine out of the original Ultima 7 engine has progressed somewhat since the last time we saw it here on Aiera.

He includes links to a “slightly more official” patch than is currently available on Aiera. I have updated the project entry here with the new material. Please note that the new releases appear to require Exult 1.4 to run.

Pentagram

The Pentagram team bring news that work is progressing despite the lack of site updates. Specifically, they have implemented correct combat music, improved the Avatar’s attack speed, fixed some issues with rendering, falling and throwing, and improved the main menu to include support for direct loading of savegames.

Quite the busy few months it’s been!

They have also released new Windows and Mac snapshots, both of which can be downloaded through the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

I spoke with Marzo and Wizardry Dragon, and they both confirmed to me that while development is definitely low-key, work is continuing on The Feudal Lands, a sidequel to Ultima 7 set in the old Sosarian continent called the Lands of the Feudal Lords.

Project Britannia

The britannia_logic.dsres and britannia_art.dsres core files for this Ultima spinoff/remake engine system have been updated. Changes are as follows:

britannia_art.dsres - the Lazarus ‘Mario mesh’ has been added, as well as more graphics for the Journal system. A new Spartan helmet has also been added, as have some textures and icons for various equipment associated with Chuckles the Jester.

britannia_logic.dsres - party banters have been updated to allow for a lone Avatar, and an issue with non-breaking breakable objects has been corrected. Rain moods have been tuned, and some UI changes have also been made, among many other things.

Serpent Isle for NWN2

Although development on this promising-looking project seems to have slowed ever so slightly, developer Jaesun has nevertheless managed to finish the Moonshade Catacombs, and has uploaded some sample music (note: ALPHA version, very rough) for your enjoyment, O Reader.

Adventure Creation Kit

Chris Hopkins dropped me a note to let me know that his top-down 2D game creation tool has just been updated to version 2.3. This neat little utility is an MS-DOS program that can be run both under DOSBox or in Windows proper (although DOSBox is required for sound), and allows for the creation of RPG-type games in the graphical spirit of Ultima 4 or Uitlma 5.

The updated version can be downloaded through the project entry here at Aiera.

Forgotten World

Hawkwind dropped me a note to let me know that the Forgotten World team have released another screenshot of their re-working of the Ultima 9 engine. About a month ago, they switched to using the OGRE engine for graphics, and true to their claim that it would speed development along they are now able to present us with a screenshot of Britain from the air.

Click on over and have a look, O Reader — it is impressive, to say the least. So impressive, in fact, that I decided to use it as the project image for its entry here at Aiera.

Also, the reader may note that I have added Amazon content to the sidebar. This is intended to be a mostly passive way that any users who a) feel they would like to support the effort made here at Aiera, and b) do some of their shopping through Amazon.com, can ‘donate’ to Aiera. Any purchases made through the links here will garner a small revenue percentage for your humble administrator.

Finally, I have overhauled the tagging system on Aiera, so it should be a lot more stable. Instead of creating links directly to Technorati topics, though, they link to a list of all other similarly-tagged articles on the site here. This is mostly a convenience feature for users looking to quickly browse a particular topic.

A ‘tag cloud’ can be found most of the way down the sidebar, with text colour and size of each tag listed there determined by the number of times is has appeared.