ultimacodex

[ultimacodex]

"Classic Ultima Online," a multiplayer reworking of "Ultima 4," is once again being worked on by its original developer.

[ultimacodex]

Anthony Salter has implemented a conversation system in "Ultima 7: Revisited" that reads directly from the original game's usecode.

[ultimacodex]

Ideal Dragon and the "Ultima 8: Exult" team are still hard at work building out their remake of "Ultima 8".

[ultimacodex]

Goldenflame Dragon may still be looking for beta testers for "Chronicles of Ellusus 1: The Dark Unknown", his long-in-development homage to the early "Ultima" games.

[ultimacodex]

Kirk Winterrowd, formerly a developer and composer at Origin Systems, has passed away.

[ultimacodex]

GOG have added all the "Ultima" games to their new Preservation Program, and have also made a few updates to how they support some of the games.

[ultimacodex]

One of the composers who created music for the cancelled "Ultima IX: Redemption" project has released his work on SoundCloud.

[ultimacodex]

Wander through the blocky realms of "Minecraft" dressed in virtuous livery!

[ultimacodex]

Markus Moenig has refactored the Eldiron Engine, expanding it from a pure 2D retro RPG engine into one that supports isometric and first-person 3D views.

[ultimacodex]

Luke the Woolly Dragon has compiled a list of all the mods and guides he could find online for "Ultima V: Lazarus".

[ultimacodex]

Ideal Dragon has added the Serpent Armor from the end of "Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle" to this "Exult"-based remake of "Ultima 8".

[ultimacodex]

Check Out Zhelkas' Enhanced Sprites for "Ultima 5"

Improved sprite graphics for gazers, jesters, orcs, reapers, and a few other things in the MS-DOS version of “Ultima 5”.

Having begun by adding the Red Tabbard to the Avatar sprite in the MS-DOS version of Ultima 5, Zhelkas has moved on to improving a number of other sprites in the game, including reapers, gazers, jesters, orcs, Lord Blackthorn, the Avatar (who now has an ankh!) and a couple of others. As well, character classes now have their respective red, yellow and blue colors worked into their sprites. As…

[ultimacodex]

"Ultima 8: Exult": Jumping Yes, Party...Maybe

Ideal Dragon has added jumping to his "Exult"-based remake of "Ultima 8", and is exploring adding a party of companions as well.

Ideal Dragon readily admits, in one of his most recent messages on the Ultima 8: Exult channel on the Ultima Dragons Discord server, that work on the project has slowed down somewhat over the last week or so…but for good reason: Another quiet week from my end as I’ve been deep in research speaking to some developers of the original Ultima 8. Agentorangeguy is updating some code which will make…

[ultimacodex]

Grant W. Chapman's Collection of "Exult" Sprites Continues to Expand

Grant W. Champan continues to expand his collection of custom graphics for "Exult", the cross-platform reworking of the "Ultima 7" game engine.

Grant W. Chapman, you may recall, set up a Github repository for his collection of custom, Ultima 7-inspired sprites and graphics. One of the persistent issues that would-be fan project developers often encounter is the creation of artwork that can match their vision, which is the problem the good Mr. Chapman aims to solve; his collection of artwork is an ever-growing library of custom object and…

[ultimacodex]

A Look at the Usecode for "Ultima 8: The Lost Vale"

An analysis of the plot of "Ultima 8: The Lost Vale", based on newly-found usecode for the cancelled expansion.

A while back, Dominus Dragon — now the caretaker of what remains of The Origin Museum — dropped an interesting ZIP archive onto the #ultima-8-exult channel on the Ultima Dragons Discord server…a snapshot of usecode for Ultima 8: The Lost Vale (the storied, never-released expansion for Ultima 8). It should be stressed that this is not the complete The Lost Vale, nor is it working source code; this…

[ultimacodex]

Does Anyone Know How Dithering Works in "Ultima Underworld"?

How does the colour dithering logic in the "Ultima Underworld"/"Ultima Underworld 2" engine actually work? Does anyone know?

Ultima fan (and fan project developer) arbraini has been exploring the game engine powering Ultima Underworld and its sequel, and has hit a stumbling block when attempting to figure out what sort of logic the engine applies when applying dithering to colours in textures: i like dither… i can’t figure out Ultima Underworld’s dither logic. its simple 2×2 dither but its not applied across the…

[ultimacodex]

Check Out TeaRex73's "xu4"-Based German Translation of "Ultima 4"

A German translation of the xu4 engine – and with it, “Ultima 4”.

GitHub user TeaRex73 posted a surprising news update on the Ultima Dragons Facebook group today: The German translation of Ultima IV – which is based on xu4 with many many changes, tries to look and sound like the original Apple II version, runs on Windows 7 or higher, and includes the full documentation – that I worked on on-and-off during the last 12 years is now on Github in time for the…