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.

Ultima V for Ti Calculators released!

7th June 2008 by Petrell

Ranman's Ultima V for Ti Calculators has finally been released after 4 long years in development! For screenshots and downloads visit project forums.

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

Original by Lord British (Richard Garriott), Origin Systems, 1988
Remake by Ranman (David Randall) May 2008

Prepare thyself for thy destiny:

After a century of relative peace, the Avatar of Virtue is summoned back to the medieval kingdom of Britannia to deal with a new threat: the usurper Lord Blackthorn, a formerly honorable nobleman who has been corrupted by strange new creatures called the Shadowlords. After the recent disappearance of the true king, Lord British, the realm has fallen under martial law. Blackthorn now rules the land by brutally enforcing the eight Virtues upon the people of Britannia - corrupting their meaning in the process. The Avatar must gather together his former companions, now made outlaws by Blackthorn's regime, and venture forth to defeat the vile Shadowlords and recover the true king from the shadowy depths of the Underworld. (Synopsis written by Ian Scott Frazier, Ultima V: Lazarus)

Ultima V - Highlights:

• 400 hours of game play
• classic turn based RPG
• 26 menu driven commands
• user commands up to 6 party members
• 175 NPC (non-playable characters)
• NPCs have detailed conversations scripts
• NPCs have a unique daily schedules.
• 512 tiles (11x11 pixel, 4 level grayscale)
• 2 world maps (each with a size of 256x256 tiles)
• 32 multi level towns (each level size 32x32 tiles)
• 8 dungeons each with 8 levels
• 31 types of weapons
• 7 types of armor
• 5 types of shields
• 5 types of helmets
• 5 magic amulets
• 3 magic rings
• 8 magic potions
• 8 magic scrolls
• 8 reagents (reagents are used to mix magic spells)
• 48 magic spells
• food, keys, torches, & gems
• 24 additional items
• Day and night algorithm
• Light point source algorithm
• Clear line of site algorithm

Ultima V - requirements:

• TI-89 or TI-89 Titanium calculator
• RAM 160Kb required for game play
• FLASH 270Kb required for game storage

Ranman plans to release the enhanced TI-92+/V200 version before the end of the month.

Ultima V for TI-92+/V200 calculators preview:

Ophidian Dragon reviews Ultima 1

7th May 2008 by Dino

Ophidian Dragon has resumed posting in his blog after three weeks of inactivity. The latest post is essentially a review of Ultima 1.