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Ultima: Aiera

an Ultima Project archive site

A shift in EA’s business philosophy?

Last updated: August 19th, 2008

Filed under Site News

I will believe it when I see it, but there is a hopeful note sounded in ‘ latest publishing decision. I’m not much for the horror genre of games, but the decision by to publish a horror title from / is interesting, to say the least. That’s more than a little outside of EA’s usual paradigm.

The latest signings bode well for the company’s new “studio-focused philosophy,” which EA Partners general manager describes as “giving the world’s best independent developers access to EA’s global publishing resources, letting them focus on what they do best — making great games.“

Perhaps there’s hope for ’s Dragon Age yet!

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Ultima Songbook; U6 Project dev tools released; Iris and Exult updated

Last updated: August 13th, 2008

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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 .

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 , , and about which I had previously been unaware, and these have all been added to Aiera.

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 website, or from the 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 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 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 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 and PocketPC snapshots were updated earlier this month, as was the snapshot for . 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. 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 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!

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Anyone seen ‘Ashes’?

Last updated: August 7th, 2008

Filed under Site News

I got this email via the contact form this morning:

I was wondering if you would happen to know what happened to the game ‘Ashes’ and their website?

Thank you,
Dagur Dragon

That’s a very good question. The project’s website appears very different from the last time I looked at it; indeed, it seems as though the main domain has “garbage collected” the subdomain that was hosted at.

I don’t know what has happened here, so if anyone else has heard what has become of this Ultima-inspired project, please let me know!

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Gaming convention in the works

Last updated: July 28th, 2008

Filed under Site News

I’ve signed on as the Technical Officer of a committee that is planning to host a gaming convention in my home city of , , . More details to follow, including recruitment/volunteer opportunities.

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Ultima Underworld for Dungeon Keeper; U6P Milestone 5 available here

Last updated: July 25th, 2008

Filed under Site News

I was contacted a while back (an inexcusably long while back, as it happens — my apologies!) by Zen, who passed along a bit of an addon module for based on the first level of the Abyss in .

As Zen doesn’t have a website to host the project at for himself, he has made it available to the world via , and I have (finally!!) created a project entry for it. Check thou it out, O Reader, if you’ve still got those Dungeon Keeper discs tucked away in a drawer or closet!

Also, I have added a download for the ’s Milestone 5 release to that project’s entry, so if you haven’t grabbed it from somewhere else already, you can now get it here as well.

Also, other news, courtesy of Dino’s Ultima Page:

Ultima V: Lazarus

Cheerful Dragon has released version 1.29 of his various mods and bugfixes for this remake of . These can be downloaded either at the previous forum link, or via the project entry here at Aiera.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo has released updates to his mods for , for both (Keyring) and (Fixes). The latest revisions of both can be downloaded through their respective project entries here at Aiera:

Ultima: Iris

Apparently, the project’s developers took home first prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game development meeting in , . Congrats!

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ranman has released version 1.01 of his port of Ultima 5 to the calculator. The up-to-date download can be found via the project entry here.

Exult

This remake has been updated recently — or, rather, the unstable 1.4 version has been updated, as has and its accompanying tools. The Exult team’s plugins for GiMP have also been updated this month, and the whole mess of things can be downloaded via the project entry here.

EUO

This Ultima-inspired game has seen the release of version 0.16 of its rudimentary 3D client, which can be downloaded via the project entry here at Aiera.

Ultima Restoration

This comprehensive multi-project has released screenshots of the Kilrathi space station from their remake of . With this completed, they now have all the cities, dungeons, and space stations fully mapped in the game — which, if I do say so myself, is damn good progress!

They’ve also added links to a good couple-dozen modules that I’m going to have to sort through in short order, so…well, it’s nice to know in advance what I’ll be up to for at least part of next week.

* * *

Also, the Wing Commander CIC team are attempting to back up what remains of the Origin Systems data library. They are looking for people with experience with this sort of thing, so if you’re one of those people who lives and breathes in backup tapes, you might want to check their project out.

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