Exult 1.0 has been released to the masses. Per the text on the Exult site:

After more than four years since the first release by Jeff in September 1998, Exult has finally reached a level of maturity and playbility which we believe warrants its release as an 1.0 version. What does the Exult Team mean by 1.0 ? We mean that you can play both "Ultima VII: The Black Gate" and "Ultima VII part 2: Serpent Isle" together with their respective add-ons "Forge of Virtue" and "Silver Seed" from beginning to end, with no plot holes.

Download it here!

There are two new remakes available for Underworld II. The first is called Labyrinth of Worlds, an SDL-based platform independent rewrite of the game. The second is known as Revival, and is a DirectX-based Win32 rewrite. Check them out!

The downloads for either project are not yet available on this site, but I'll have them posted in the next few days.

Finally, the last of the U4 projects I'll cover today, there's been another update to XU4, the Exult-inspired classic remake of U4. The latest version is now 0.08:

... new features include poison, death and meditation. Progress is being made with spells, too; Awaken, Cure, Dispel, Heal, and Resurrect all work.

That's it for all the updates today. I've got tons more to process. If you sent me an email, I did get it and I will get to you very soon.

The Virtue of Humility has made considerable progress. You can now play the game from start to finish for one:

The grande finale has been added once Avatar finishes the RItes of Passage. The ending is finally complete, so the game can be won! ... Balloons! -well at least 1 balloon! Travel by Balloon is completed and implemented in game.

They've also created a world editor you can use to change map features or build your own. It's now available for download. The 3D.zip download has been removed as the 3D features are encorporated into the package now.

In my absence there has been a major update to each of the three Ultima IV projects currently in the works. First comes an update to the project formerly known as Lyrac, now known as Avatarship

Version BETA 3.3 of the module has now been updated to work properly with NWN 1.23. Custom content and many new game features have been included as well. Note - I realize that this is a big download, so be warned that this is still not a final version: battles are kept to a minimum to facilitate testing.

And it is a very big download indeed, 22 MB's worth not including the music pack. He's also updated the pics on the website, so have a look!

Finally, thanks to Doug the Eagle Dragon, I now have a download available for the Dragon Engine. It's really a pretty good looking engine. Too bad Litmus was not able to continue his work.

(Maybe someone so inclined could contact Litmus for the source code and take his place? Hint.)

Hello all. In my extended absence, many of you have sent emails letting me know that there are several new projects in the works. I apologize for the month-long (plus?) delay and I intend to get all those new projects posted here very soon.

Please let it be known that the unannounced Month of Hell is now over. If you see any daemons or other hellspawn roaming about, please kindly tell them to go back to their fiery pits via the nearest active volcano and to stop haunting me!

And if my sanity appears to be slipping, it is... :)

Two more Ultima IV remakes joined the list today: Lyrac and Virtue of Humility. Lyrac is a 3D NeverWinter Nights based module where Virtue of Humility is complete rewrite using a derivitive of the classic U4 interface. Both have made progress and look to be promising projects.

Odorous Rex has built an Ultima module for Morrowind without the plot. (No, it's not Ultima 9)

BritanniaMOD is a total conversion (TC) for Morrowind. It is designed for fans of the Ultima series of games and those who would like to make their own Ultima games or remakes using the Morrowind engine. You may use the mod for your own games, all I ask is you give me credit by leaving my initials engraved in the bottom of Britanny Bay.

For lack of a better classification, I have filed it in the Game Engines section. Check it out!

... ok, so the U9 ref was a cheap shot...

Three more projects made their way to the project graveyard today: Ultima X, Twister's UW2 Remake, and Twister's UW3 remake. The U10 website has been missing for a while and there have been no mention of the latter two on Twister's site for even longer.

The Adventures of Backthorn now has a trailer avialble for download! But beware, the Guardian's ego has inflated it to 50 MB. :) Seriously, check it out!

Another regular round of updates. The first is that edible underworld treat: ButterFinger.

The next source and binary package for Underworld Adventures (codename: "butterfinger") released today features a complete character creation, a finished Linux build system, an installer and configuration program for Windows users, some bug fixes and many changes under-the-hood. Beginning with this release, Linux RPMs are available, too.

I continue to fail to see the relationship between UWAdv's build names and anything Ultima. Maybe I'm looking too hard. :)

In addition to Underworld Adventures, we have an update to TSSHP 0.2.10d, XU4 0.07, and Pentagram 8-9.

The following message now appears on the Eriadain news page:

We've been having lots of mail of late. This is no surprise, considering that Neverwinter Nights has been out for a while now, and that Eriadain is staying silent. People are wondering if we are dead. We're not. However, it definitely is true that this website is a bit in an abandoned state. The reason is that, well, to hide you nothing, we've got other Eriadain-related things to do, as you can imagine. So, to answer your concerns, yes Eriadain has entered development.

Eriadain is also looking for experienced coders, so if you have some time to dedicate and are interested in remaking U9, apply today! Limited time offer!

Also note that I split Eriadain into two separate projects: you can now find info on the 3D NwN remake on the 3d remakes page under the Eriadain heading; and the original RPG Maker demos are on the classic remakes page as they were before, but under the name Alter U9.

This is a bit of one month old news, but I haven't reported it here yet. U9 Redemption has redesigned their website and switched engines. While they were previously going to use the Dungeon Siege engine, they have now moved to Morrowind.

Anyone who likes cheesecake will like this edition of UW Adventures.

Additions were: * introduction cutscene * acknowledgements * ingame: inventory handling * fullscreen mode option * collision detection (almost) fully functional

XU4, in addition to redesigning their website, has released version 0.06 with some considerable progress.

New with this version: walls can no longer be seen through and the moongates work.

And a new version of TSSHP (0.2.10c) has also been uploaded. Jim reports:

This improves the OpenGL renderer, more-or-less completing 3D model support (notably flat-shaded faces are present, so the camera "red-eye" is watching you), and adding sprite objects. I've also had another look at sprite positioning and scaling: sizes "look about right" (this is the only justification I have for the scale values used, I have no idea where they actually come from). Critters now have their feet firmly on the ground, and don't jump about as you view them from different angles as the bitmap size changes.

And finally, the 6/23 build of Pentagram has been uploaded. Enjoy.

Received the following from the U8 Exile project:

Our site for the Ultima VIII - Exile site has changed to http://u8exile.cjb.net

Link updated.

As some of you are aware, The Complete U7 web site has been down for at least three months. I've been giving this issue quite a bit of thought and I've come to a decision. I don't want to remove anyone from this listing, nor do I want to leave any project out. This is not an elitist's forum. That said, I think a line has to be drawn between when a project is "in progress" or "dead".

If you cannot dedicate any time to the project right now because you're busy with RL -- that's perfectly fine. God knows it happens to me quite frequently. I have no problem with that. But I need something -- a finished product, a demo, the source code, or at the very least a web page -- something to show that the project has evolved past the in-concept or "hey this sounds like a good idea" phase. Something to prove that either the project is in progress, has created a product of sorts (finished or unfinished), or at least a notification that it is temporarily on hold. If there is no web site, no product, and no status, I cannot list you in this database.

If The Complete U7 can produce a site again, I will certainly re-add them here. I, for one, hope that they will.

There are very few Ultima's that do not have a 3D remake associated with it. And now there is one less. Corvwyn (Dark Metal Dragon) is leading a new project to construct a 3D version of Ultima VIII. Dubbed Exile, they also hope to iron out some of Pagan's plot inconsistancies. For further information or discussion, you can find their website here and their forums here.

For those Dragons who have been around long enough to remember the debut of the original Ultima Dragon Press site (and, well, even if you weren't aware of it), Shadow of Light Dragon has some good news for you. The huge collection of Ultima fan fiction has been rebuilt and is available under the "Fan Resources" link bar to the left. As Shadow of Light put it...

Dragon Press went through a major update and has a new site: http://www.dragonpress.ultima-dragons.org.

Thanks for all your hard work!

Underworld Adventures has released version 0.3 of their test builds. You can find it here.

This new release called "poppypastry" is a big step forward. uwadv now has the intro splash screens, the game's menu (although, only "Journey Onward" works), collision detection and the Underworld is darker now. Some bugs are still in, happy bug chasing!

Is it just me or does this game suddenly have a lot more story in place than Tech Demo 2? If you haven't had the opportunity to start playing this yet, PLEASE DO!!! You will not regret it.

I forgot to mention that the 2.5.1 patch was uploaded yesterday, but you can now get it here.

Ultima I: A Legend Is Reborn has produced a second version of their techdemo for the alternate O/S lovers among us. Now those who crave the release of this game can do so without unnecessary Wine layers. Magnificent work guys! I hope the other projects follow your example!

Since one of the primary features of Exult is that you can replay Ultima VII in it, I've moved it from the Game Engines category to Classic Remakes. Game Engines now appears under the "Related Works" subheading to the left.

I've also made three other updates: Twister's Underworld Remake has TechDemo 1.0 available; XU4 version 0.5 has been published which now features the MIDI music; and the Exult MacOS X port has been uploaded to the site.

A new release of Underworld Adventures has been made available. The tools, available as a separate package in the 0.1 release, have now been encorporated into this build. I've also uploaded the source code.

Made a new release, "grainroll". Tools now contain the uw1 conversation script decompiler and an animation viewer for the uw1 cutscenes (tools can be found in the binary release). For the main program, the abyss now has objects, and textures are rendered correctly. uwadv should work on Linux and MacOS X, too.

Cold Iron, an inspired work, was put on hold for about one year due to some personal commitments of the primary author. It's sad to hear, but unfortunately real life is an unwanted relative that has a nasty habit of stopping by unexpectedly.

A certain project has come up to me, a project that is going to take the next whole year. During this time I will not be able to coordinate this project and so the development of Cold Iron is freezed until spring/summer 2003, when we will gather our lines again to finalize this project.

It took me about a week to report, but it's finally here! Ultima 1 Techdemo 2.5 has been released. Get it here then grab a bag of popcorn and prepare to watch the blue bar creep across your screen 'cause it's a whopper of a download - 33 MB. Wow. That's almost the size of my first hard drive.

And to those who emailed: thanks for your interest!

You may have noticed that the menu to your left has changed somewhat. As the number of fan development projects keep growing, the length of these web pages do so in greater proportion. To make things a bit easier to read and navigate, I've created two more project categories: the Upgrade Package and the Underworld Remakes. I've also grouped like categories under the same heading.

Please expect to see a similar expansion of the Tools category in the near future, as well as more tools.

The new trailer for U5 Lazarus was released in both small and large video formats. I've uploaded the AVI DivX version, as that is the best compressed.

Underworld Adventures has a new set of tools available for their project. According to their news page, "There's a level map display program, a uw1 conversation script debugger and a little tool to convert the xmi midi files to ordinary midis."

Philippe Goetz started his Java port quest with Ultima IV, but the link was lost a long time ago. Although the old link no longer works (unlike his U1 Java port), the sourceforge page with the code still exists. I have added the U4 Java project to the ports page.

Finally, I've also uploaded the TSSHP 0.2.9c, the UW PocketPC slideshow demo, and the U3 GameBoy Color source code, all of which have now been released by their respective authors.

Release Candidate 2 of Exult has just been released! I've updated the Win32 build and source code downloads; the other builds will be updated as they become available on the Exult site. Also note the addition of Exult Studio (snapshot 6-6-2002) and the MT32 Sound FX packs for both U7BG and U7SI.

Finally, there have been newer snapshots of Pentagram than what I've had here for quite some time. I updated the release to build 5-19-2002.

Thanks to Kendrick on the newsgroup for letting us know that ZIOSoft has finally released Ultima Underworld for the PocketPC. There is a demo available (which I will eventually post here...) and the full version can be purchased from thier site.

Various updates this morning. I've uploaded XU4 version 0.04, which adds support for the U4 introduction. Underworld Adventures has an 0.01 release available (codename Ricecraeker). And someone also sent me a link for the Underworld Morrowind Mod, which has been added here.

Sorry if I've been slow to respond to people who've emailed me. Finals are over now so I'll be trying to catch up with everything in the coming weeks.

A new fan-fiction Dungeon Siege Mod is under development, The Adventures of Blackthorn. The story covers the period of his exile from Britannia to how he joined the Guardian. The author has put quite a bit of effort into the prequel fiction, with more updates to come. Check it out here.

Received this note from Matt of the U6P team advising me that Ultima VI: Prophecy is now called The Ultima VI Project. (Or were they always called that and did I not catch it?) Anyway, it has been so renamed...

Thanks for the update Matt!

I received the following note from a visitor, Shannon Green, concerning the status of the U7 Remake:

Ultima VII the Complete Remake is still underway. I spoke with a graphic designer and he said the reason why the site is not being updated since Aug 2001 is because the Webmaster quit. There will be a new site underway. They have finished about everything. Just a few more days then it will be ready for download.

Thanks for the update! I look forward to seeing their new site.

In other news, the UW10 project link has been inactive for about a month now, so I have removed the link from the project until another is provided.

Sir Cabirus Dragon was kind enough to offer this clarification on his UW2WNT patch...

uw2winnt doesn't mean uw2 winnt (hehe ;-) -----> but uw 2 winnt (ultima underworld to winnt).

Hello again. I received the following note from the Ultima Revival team:

The project has been renamed to 'Cold Iron', as the former name was only a temporarily name to be used until we come up with a better one. Also, the web page has moved to http://liquid2k.net/coldiron, which seems to be a faster and more reliable server. The old pages still exist, because we cannot remove them, nor make a redirection link due a database crash at the former server provider side.

I've updated their project information accordingly.

Three updates today. There's a new version of TSSHP which fixes a bunch of crashes in W2K and supports animates sprites in Underworld. Another snapshot of Pentagram (4/26) was uploaded. And finally, XU4 has support for the VGA tilesets. Keep up the great work folks!

As the title implies, I've been an ass lately. (as if that bad pun alone didn't do the trick) Several of you have emailed me updates and new projects in the past two weeks, but I haven't added anything here, despite my occasional promies to the contrary. I will try to catch up with everything this weekend.

All in all, I have four new projects and five updates to existing projects. Please stay tuned...

New Ultima remakes, patches, and tools all appear to be increasing in number as of late. All such projects share a common vision and is the reason this site exists: to further the existance of the Ultima series by improving the quality of the games in some manner.

However, there exists yet another kind of Ultima-related development project. These games are not directly related to the games of the Ultima Series, nor do they contain any elements of the Ultima brand name (eg Britannia, Lord British, etc). Instead of sharing content from the Ultima Series, these projects possess qualities from Ultima's character and/or style of play. They have been built with Ultima in mind.

Thus, I present the Inspired Works section.

Ultima VI uses PC speaker sound for sound effects whether or not you have a sound card. However, on systems faster than a 286, the timing is way off such that you can barely hear the audio. Finire Dragon has fixed this problem with a new patch that has finally come out of beta testing. Try it out and let Finire know how it works!

The second project added today is called Underworld Adventures, an attempt to rewrite the UW engine using the existing data files:

I try to write a ultima underworld remake that uses the original game files. The very temporary page is available at http://www.vividos.de/uwadv/ and it soon will move to SourceForge.

Michael Fink, the author, has since moved his page to SourceForge and you can catch the link in here!

I have added a new Ultima project to the database. It is called XU4; and it is an effort to get U4 to run on multiple platforms:

XU4 is a remake of the classic computer game Ultima 4, and currently runs on Linux. Much like Exult, it requires a copy of Ultima 4 for the data files.

Pretty neat, Andrew! Check it out!

Last week, Gamespy posted a series of articles covering the rise, fall, and rebirth of the Role-Playing genre of computer games. The articles talk about the evolution from table-top, the disappearance of quality RPG's in the mid-90's, the "gold mine" that is MMORPG, and the future of RPG's in general. It's a fair read, with plenty of Ultima references, including a mention of the 3D Remake projects:

There's also a trend to remake certain games. Most of the Ultima series is being remade. From the The Dawn of Virtue, a 3D remake of Ultima IV, to remakes of Ultima I, V, IX and more.

This is history in the making, folks. Fan-based non-profit projects could become a trend of the future.

You might have noticed the "Ultima Remakes" section missing from the left bar and two other Remake options in it's place. Essentially, the Remakes section was getting a bit crowded, so I split it into two categories. The first category consists of Classic Remakes, which try to stay true to the original interface, feel, and story of the game, making only minor or no changes to game content. The second consists of 3D Remakes, which as the name implies, are the new 3D-based full rewrites of the Ultima games.

Stay tuned... plenty of more updates are scheduled to arrive this week.

Hello from Dallas, folks! I'm chilling out on a week-long business trip.

There has been some progress with a few of the Engines and Tools out there. Exult now has a BeOS version for 0.98rc1... I posted that here. The code for Pentagram has been updated as of 4/7... that is posted here. TSSHP has version 0.2.9 out now and is also offering a 4/4 snapshot of their code. Again, that can be found here. And finally, Twister has a new test demo for their UW1 engine. You can find that here.

Hope you can keep up... there are plenty more that have just been sent my way. You should see them here soon.

The Exult Team has released an announcement today that it and Electronic Arts have teamed up to produce an EA-supported release of Exult. As a result, Exult will no longer be open sourced. In addition, it appears that The Complete U7 is not quite dead yet, as these two projects will now merge into one effort. The final version of The Complete U7 (formerly Exult) will be released to the public exactly one year from today, April 1st 2003.

Don't believe me? You can read it for yourself...

Oh, and a friendly reminder: you might want to keep your Chain Focus handy today. The Mystic Voice has warned of a strangely mischievous wind heading in our direction... (Stratos also happens to be our weather forcaster.)

The Exult Team, in addition to providing us with a new engine for Ultima VII, has started to decipher the inner workings of Ultima VIII as well. The result of their efforts can be found in a new map and object viewer that they've released called Pentagram. You can find it right here.

Looks like we're getting closer to a stable cross-platform Ultima VII... Exult 0.98 Release Candidate 1 has been published! Check it out!

Finire Dragon (aka Linards Ticmanis) has constructed a patch that corrects the PC speaker timing in Ultima VI. He has currently drafted a slew of beta testers for a variety of different O/S platforms. Once his testing is complete and a release is available, you can be sure I'll post it here. Below is an excerpt of the message he posted on the rgcus newsgroup. Go there for the full thread.

I've thrown together a quick patch for Ultima 6 that makes the PC speaker sound effects work correctly on today's fast machines... The only disadvantage (that I know of) is that the patch will not work on anything below a 386 system. All I really did was to resize a counter, that is used to count how many times a certain loop can run between two 18Hz timer ticks, from 2 to 4 bytes with the aid of the 32 bit registers of the 386 and above. Most of the work was in finding out a general method to generate patching space inside an .EXE file. As for source code, unfortunately there is none, as I did everything whith a disassembler (the superb IDA freeware by Ilfak Guilfanov, many thanks!!), some QBASIC code for opening up space in the .EXE, and a hex editor.

Twister Software has again redesigned their website. Both the UW2 remake and UW3 project are missing from their sites, however there is a note on their main page which goes as follows:

We are currently concentrating on remaking Ultima Underworld I

... which explains the lack of info on their other projects.

It looks like Twister Software redesigned their site and added lots more info about their project. They even offer music downloads as well.

I've added separate entries for the UW2 remake and UW3 fan fiction projects.

Some time ago, Moscow Dragon successfully decoded Ultima Underworld to get it working on Windows NT and 2000. He posted his finds to the rgcus newsgroup with instructions on how to hexedit the binary yourself. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to use a hex editor (shame on them), so Sir Cabirus Dragon constructed a patch utility that will work for anyone. Well, almost anyone. (We think.)

If it doesn't work for you, let Moscow or Sir Cabirus know about it.

Anyway, I've posted the download here.

While I wasn't looking, MinerJr snuck in two more updates to his 2K1 remake again. Fortunately, I didn't have any problems with the dungeons this time around. I have added it to the remakes page.

The U6 Project has some new material - they've designed a set of well-crafted trading cards for viewing online. The latest card, that of Lord British, is now available from their website.

It also looks like, unbeknownst to me, U6: Prophecy has two web site URLs www.laymeduck.com/u6/ and www.u6project.com. I've updated the project page to point to the latter.

I received the following note from Sliding Dragon of the U6: Prophecy project regarding the "eleven years".

The eleven years doesn't refer to the in-game passage of time, just the fact that it's been 11 years since Ultima VI came out. That's why it's been so long since you've been to *this* Britannia... :P

Don't worry, though - there's plenty of other things we're coming up with that will drive you nuts! :D

Well, I hadn't considered that one. That pretty much explains it. Thanks Sliding!

V Day has arrived, and with it came a redesign of the U5:Lazarus website. The Lazarus team has added a ton of new information about their project and it is even rumored that there is an easter egg hidden somewhere on their site...

I have also uploaded the Sockwave version of Trailer 1 for U5L. (It was the smallest - about 1.7 MB versus some 15 MB for the AVI version!)

MinerJr has made several updates to his Akalabeth 2K1 Remake, advancing it into beta mode. I had a few problems with keyboard responsiveness and the dungeon monsters myself, but it is otherwise a very creative individual effort. Let's hope the bugs get ironed out before the final release. You can download it here. Be sure to send your bug reports to MinerJr so he can continue to improve the game.

Seems I took some heat over on the Horizons boards for failing to acknowledge this Ultima development "remake". ;)

Not much new with the remakes this past week unfortunately. However, Dawn of Virtue is progressing, as the new pics posted to the web site suggest.

I also received this note from Dagon regarding his complete upgrade patch for U7:

I built a package with U7Win9x among with an installation program, and GM patches. there is also the GS soundcanvas (SCC1) soundfont for sblive on the website (awesome with the GM patched U7/SI !)

You can find it right here. His website is also available in French, for those who prefer it over English. ;)

Well, after some good ol' fashioned RTFM, I finally figured out how to get the U6 Prophecy trailer working. It's a pretty nice render and you can check it out right here.

Though I won't leave it at that without making a comment or two...

Remakes are generally supposed to be an "enhancement" of the original. Add a series of new functions, a new interface, possibly a new gaming paradigm or two if you're feeling lucky, and new technology. But when it comes to the plot, I'm a traditionalist. I generally prefer remakes that conform to the original story and enhance it only where it was lacking or could have been told better. I doubt many will disagree that the original first trilogy was quite literally lacking in various aspects with several inter-game inconsistancies, (that Earth bit in U2, anyone?) so there is plenty of room for artistic license for those who retell the earlier episodes. Players who are long-time Ultima fans will be more forgiving of new elements in these games. This does give the remakes of the first trilogy an added advantage over remakes of the latter games in the series, and possibly an "unfair" advantage, if you view these parallel remake efforts as a competition.

With that in mind, one aspect of U6 was that it was not supposed to take place too long after U5. (unlike U7, which takes place 200 Britannian years after U6) This is convayed in the intro, where it states that it was "five seasons" since we were last in Britannia. The land is just recovering from the collapse of the Underworld, and the Gargoyles are seeking revenge as their home vanishes into the ether. So when I saw "eleven years" in the U6P trailer, I was naturally a little concerned. Five seasons is about 1.25 years, or 12.5 Britannian years. Well, yeah, okay, 12.5 and 11 are relatively close, so maybe they mean it has been eleven "Britannian years". Hopefully that will be clarified before the final release.

Of course, we can't know that yet without putting this movie into some larger context, and that context currently consists of the original. So, in short, I guess this is a message to the U6P developers: let's see the results of all your hard labor to keep us all from second guessing it! ;)

I finally had the opportunity to play Tech Demo 2 this afternoon. Wow! The folks at Peroxide are doing a really excellent job. It ran a little slow in spots on my 450MHz with a Voodoo3, but that is below the recommended spec. The readme also says that the Voodoo3 is expected to underperform anyway, so it looks like I should upgrade my system if I want the final release to be playable.

I've added Tech Demo 2 to the Remakes page for all to download. Peroxide is supposed to have a Tech Demo 2.1 available sometime soon with a number of bugfixes and a few more features.

Made a few updates to the site this week:

Changed the description for U4: The Dawn of Virtue, moved U2 and U3 for Windows from the Ports to the Remakes section, added the other O/S downloads for Exult, and the Ultima X project has been added to the fan fiction section.

There will be more updates to come next week, so stay tuned, and please keep the comments rolling!

In the aftermath of its destruction wrought by the Evil Red Muppet, the world of Sosaria had entered a fourth age... The Age of Reconstruction...

Hail all, and welcome ye to the Ultima: The Reconstruction (UtR) website! Within these pages, you will find links, information, and downloads on the many fan-based Ultima development projects including remakes, patches, upgrades, and utilities.

If you are a fan of the Ultima series of games, then I hope these works will either improve your entertainment experience, or inspire you to join our community and rebuild Sosaria anew! Or both.

Please, if you have any suggestions, comments, or complaints, send them to me. Flames will be ignored unless one suitably comfy chair or fluffy pillow is also included.