Ultima 6 Project Milestone 5 released!; Origin Systems' archive restoration project!

23rd July 2008 by Petrell

The idiom "When it rains, it pours" seems to apply to Ultima News as well!

Ultima 6 Project Milestone 5 has been released! Most of the surface world is complete and accessible. List of changes :

• New areas to explore (Trinsic, Jhelom, Moonglow, New Magincia, Serpent's Hold, Skara Brae, Sutek's Castle, Trinsic)
• Enhancements to existing areas
• New plot details and quests and other subtle refinements
• Numerous enhancements to the core gameplay such as:
  • The Journal system now records may quest details automatically, but still allows the player to make their own notes
  • A new “Event Console”, which can be toggled on and off, and which will help you keep track of what’s happening during play
  • Many more tunings and tweaks to the core Project Britannia systems ( for the nitty gritty details, check the change log)

RPGWatch has published an article about the Milestone 5.

There is new U6P concept art available in Alex Gonzales' Image Album. First is a concept of Ultima 6 The False Prophet Book and second is concept art for Avatar sacrificial scene in U6P intro.

Iris2 has won the 1st Prize (best project) at the Dusmania 10 hobby game dev meeting at Frankfurt/Germany. Check out their winning trailer at YouTube

Ophidian Dragon has updated his Ultima blog with and entry about Ultima 3.

I can't believe I've missed news about this project:

Members of Wing Commander Combat Information Center and team of other volunteers are currently at Mythic, Virginia assisting in a project to Archive what's left of Origin Systems' data library! They are also recording their discoveries and are making the recordings available at YouTube. Later they plan to upload higher quality videos to WCCIC archive.

Previous news updates about the project at WCCIC:

• The Fine Line Between Trash and Treasure
• We Need You!
• We Still Need You!
• Making the Game - Part 17
• Mythic Archive is Go!
• Mythic Project: Technosaurs are Go!
• Technosaurs: Locked and Loaded

Ultima V for Ti Calculators 1.01 released and other Ultima news

21st July 2008 by Petrell

Lots of Ultima updates available today:

Ranman has released 1.01 version of his Ultima V for Ti Calculators. It contains following changes:

• modified enemy bludgeon attack algorithm
• removed "Quit" game from the selectable menu options
• fixed bug when a player already on foot attempts to "Exit" mode of transportation
• made the 3 hidden spells selectable at all times
• updated readme file

Hexxxer has created three DVD Covers for Ultima games. First is a Worlds of Ultima Collection cover for Worlds of Ultima games Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. Second is a Ultima Collection cover for first eight Ultimas. And third is a cover for Ultima IX: Ascension.

The Ultima 6 Project has opened a forum for discussion about their upcoming Mileston 5 release. They also uploaded new versions of britannia_art.dsres, britannia_logic.dsres and Lazarus/PB Compatibility Layer at Project Britannia Wiki.

Ultima Restoration Project has released new screenshots of Kilrathi Space Station in their remake of Ultima I - The First Age of Darkness for NWN. They've also reached new milestone and have all cities and space stations mapped and basis for dungeons created.

Marzo Sette Torres Junior made rather large changes to Exult and Exult Studio in the beginning of June. The update is mainly aimed for modders using Exult Studio. Check the changelog for full list of changes. Latest snapshots are available at project Download page.

Marzo also updated Black Gate Keyring and Avatar Pack mods at Seven Towers to be compatible with the latest snapshots of Exult.

EUO3D 0.16 was released. The new version added compressed map support and mini map.

Various updates

2nd July 2008 by Dino

Apparently Hacki's Ultima Page has recently moved to Bootstrike.

After receiving an email from Shawn Varga, I updated the Ultima 8 Bugs and Mistakes page to fix a few mistakes.

According to the Project Britannia website, the Ultima 6 Project is having hosting problems and may be down for a while until it moves to a better location.

Ophidian Dragon has continued his Ultima blog with a post about Ultima 2.

Aiera has seen a few updates since the last post here. Below is some news we missed:

• A new remake effort has surfaced in the form of the Ultima Restoration Project. The people behind it have actually been at work for quite a while, but only recently decided to go public and release some material. This project is a set of NWN tools as well as a set of remakes of its own.
• Aiera now has a forum once again.
• Ergonpandilus Dragon made a video that explains the Ultima 9 Tapestry of Ages: "The path of the Avatar (Stones)".
• In a more recent update about the Ultima Restoration Project, it seems that this project is also sporting a new conversation system that is much more fitting to the Ultima games than the default system in NWN.