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!

Produced by: Arnim Sauerbier
Website: Arnim Sauerbier
Releases:
* Akalabeth (33.59 KB)

* Ultima 4 - xu4 (1.85 MB)

* Ultima 7 - Exult - Program (1.01 MB)
* Ultima 7 - Exult - Data (14.01 MB)
* Ultima 7 - Music (low-quality mono) (12.5 MB)
* Ultima 7 - Music (higher-quality stereo) (28.71 MB)

* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - Program (766.23 KB)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - libSDL (16.17 KB)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - INI file (998 bytes)

These are actually just ports of other Ultima projects (linked below), but as I’ve never seen so many in one place at one time (and from one person!), they are classified not only as ports but as their own separate entry on Aiera.

The following projects have been ported to the Nokia 770/N800 internet tablets:

• Akalabeth - a port of Paul Robson’s SDL version of the game
• Ultima 4 - a port of xu4
• Ultima 5 - a port of Nazghul/Haxima
• Ultima 6 - a port of Nuvie
• Ultima 7 - a port of Exult
• Ultima 8 - a port of Pentagram

It serves to note that these ports are ongoing works, and it further serves to note that some of the projects that have been ported (Pentagram, for an easy example) are themselves incomplete. However, O Reader, if you use a Nokia 770/N800 internet tablet, and would like to be able to play some classic Ultima titles whilst on the go, this is likely a project for you!

There have been a few minor updates made around the remake community in the past week or so.

Ultima III for Mac

I must have not noticed this before, but LairWare have a forum up for their port of Ultima 3.

Ultima 6 Project

Zephyr let slip in the project forum that the team are currently play-testing Milestone 3.

Exult

The latest build of Exult 1.4 was released last week, and features some minor bug corrections in monster usecode, and reading text. It also now allows setting a z-coordinate in teleport eggs. The Exult entry here at the site has this new build available for download.

Pentagram

A new Windows build of Pentagram was released two days ago. The Pentagram entry at Aiera has this available for download.

Project Britannia

Two of Project Britannia’s core files have been updated. “Hit feedback” textures have been added to britannia_art.dsres all the way down to -100 HP, and a number of updates and corrections have been made to the mob generator, maps, banter system, sextant, and combat system in britannia_logic.dsres. Both files can be downloaded from the Project Britannia entry here at the site.

Ultima Tileset viewer and Assembly Code

Tim Carlsen alerted me to online versions of Michael Maggio’s collection of assembly-language extracts for Ultima 2, Ultima 3, and Ultima 5. Mike has also put together a Linux-only tileset viewer for Ultima (presumably for the earlier games that used tiled graphics) which he has called Diligence.

Update: xu4

The Windows snapshot for xu4 was updated recently, and Gruck brought this to my attention in the comments for this posting. I have expanded and updated the versions of this remake available for download through Aiera, as I had previously not included Zaurus, BeOS, or Dreamcast ports of the game for download.

Also, I’m adjusting my update policy for project entries at the site here. Now when I update a file for a project entry, that project entry’s “post date” is going to get set to the current date, thus percolating active projects to the top of their respective categories. I think this will be a bit more convenient for most of Aiera’s visitors.

WtFD

Produced by: Andrew Taylor
Website: xu4- Ultima IV
Releases:
* Version 1.0b3 (Windows) (1.11 MB)
* Version 1.0b3 (OSX) (3.04 MB)
* Source 1.0b3 (408.67 KB)
* Version 1.0b3 (Linux) (2.38 MB)
* Version 0.9 (Zaurus) (1.85 MB)
* Version 0.5 (BeOS) (87.79 KB)
* Dreamcast Version (5.04 MB)
* Nokia 770/M800 (1.85 MB)

Snapshots - May be unstable
* Windows (1.35 MB)
* Mac OS X (4.36 MB)

Andrew Taylor’s SDL-based re-creation of Ultima 4 is intended to be a cross-platform version of the game much as Exult is for Ultima 7.

And, since Ultima 4 is freeware, he (like many others) has also made available for download the original version (524.89 KB) of the game. As well, there is a graphics update (617.26 KB) available. The original game is now included with non-PC versions of xu4, but is required for Windows.

Produced by: Sheng Gradilla
Website: Neat U5 at Sourceforge

An xu4-inspired remake, this engine is intended to offer a cross-platform rewrite of the Ultima 5 engine, with music, sound, and a host of other “neat” improvements.

Sheng Long Gradilla intents to use a client-server architecture to implement an easy method of creating progressively more enhanced game clients without having to modify the classic client at all. Though the game will not be multiplayer initially, the developer assures us that should another programmer later want to add that functionality, they will not find it difficult to do so.