Ultima V Lazarus Mod Gets Enhanced Demo Release

Ian "Tiberius" Frazier writes "Team Lazarus, a volunteer-run 'mod' organization, has released a second playable demo of the unofficial Ultima V: Lazarus mod to the public. Ultima V: Lazarus is a complete recreation of ORIGIN Systems' classic 1987 role-playing game Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, utilizing the modding capabilities of Gas-Powered Games' Dungeon Siege. In addition to all the features found in its previous release, this Lazarus demo includes a host of new quests, locations, and an all-new frontend." We previously covered this mod back in February.

Comments

Nice work

[Song for the Deaf]

I am so glad that they stuck with it. Out of all the Ultima remakes this is the one I have been most exctied about. Few realize how daunting remaking a game as epic as an Ultima can be, and even fewer have the intestines to pull it off (IIRC no one really has, I might be wrong, though Exult doesn't count...)

Many a promising remake has been called off and others languish.

I guess the bottom line is...remake or not, these days making a good computer game is tough business indeed.

"lazarus"?

[scrytch]

The infinity-engine-ish remake of U4 has an awesome title: The Dawn of Virtue. Heck, that's better than the original (Quest of the Avatar). I thought Ultima 5's original title sounded like a bad heavy metal band (Warriors of Destiny), but this one makes even less sense. Lazarus? Was there even such a character in U5, or is he making some kind of obscure reference to resurrection?

U5 was ... okay. I found the underworld to be mostly a big winding corridor full of monsters, and not that engrossing. I found it pretty anticlimactic after the blackthorn plot (which unfortunately never gets that deep if you play the virtual plot) and the slaying of the shadowlords. Then again U4 had The Akalabeth Dungeon That Never Ended (those 3d dungeons were put in because U1's dungeons were just an embedded game of Akalabeth) so I suppose it was nice to wind my way through 2D for the endgame...

Re:"lazarus"?

[scrytch]

er, s/virtual plot/virtuous path/ ... i should learn to profread :p

Re:"lazarus"?

[Nasarius]

Lazarus? Was there even such a character in U5, or is he making some kind of obscure reference to resurrection?

Um, I would imagine that it's a reference to resurrection, seeing as this is a remake. How is that obscure?

Re:"lazarus"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a little odd because you could call ANY remake "Blah Blah:" Lazarus. I guess since it hasn't been done before it's not so bad, but it certainly is a bit weak.

As for the mod, I hope they do well. I know some people are staking a lot on this mod and it's progressing awfully slowly. It's already quite late in Dungeon Seige's lifecycle and many users will have misplaced their installation CDs by the time there's something to talk about here.

Re:"lazarus"?

[Nasarius]

Right you are. Not to mention the fact that Dungeon Siege sucked...

Re:"lazarus"?

[Genom]

Too true, but the engine itself showed a lot of promise. I think it'll just take the right folks and a lot of dedication to make something outstanding with it. Very much like NWN, actually.

Now that I'm thinking about it, there seems to be a trend in PC games to release what basically ammounts to an engine, a set of devtools, and a prebuilt "tech demo" game to show what can be done (some of which are quite good, others of which are quite poor). Seems like it started catching fire with the FPS games, then RTS (although they mostly just ammount to new maps in most cases), and now it's moving into the CRPG genres. (If only Bioware would release the BG engine and devtools...what fun could be had!)

Re:"lazarus"?

[linuxrunner]

You're a moron....

All I have to say

Re:"lazarus"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you want the BG dev tools. They aren't made for public consumption. Remember the maps in BG are all one huge bitmap, not a tileset. I also imagine they didn't create a friendly editor for making branching dialog. No, the BG editor is probably more like using ResEdit for MacOS (if you've ever modded Escape Velocity) than using a real map editor. Like the difference between programming in x86 assmebly and Visual Basic.

Re:"lazarus"?

[BladesP9]

Actually - MythDevelopers community work on Myth III version 1.1 was codenamed Lazarus. It's a pretty common thing... kinda like Phoenix or other cryptic references to rebirth.

Re:"lazarus"?

[bozendoka]

Did you ever try the Lands of Hyperboria mod? It's a full conversion, absolutely amazing. One guy did it, with a little help on the maps. He's working on another one that looks even better, Mageworld.

Ultima 4 for Linux

[baywulf]

Those who want a remake of Ultima 4 for Linux/OSX/Windows can get it at http://xu4.sourceforge.net/

Ultima V and Dungeone Siege required

[JasdonLe]

Note sure how common this knowledge is, but...

Lazarus will be available for users who own a copy of the original game, Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny* (PC Version only) and a copy of Gas-Powered Games' Dungeon Siege**.

Game looks GREAT, so far, though!

Peroxides Ultima 1 remake

[Wuukie]

Peroxide's Ultima 1 - A Legend is Reborn was called off because they wanted to go commercial and wanted to avoid obvious legal problems.

Re:Peroxides Ultima 1 remake

[corporate trinket]

Right, there is a thread that talks a bit about the problems on their forums. http://www.peroxide.dk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=280

Re:Peroxides Ultima 1 remake

[Wuukie]

Thanks for the link.

Now that's interesting. I thought I had read that they we're threatened and that was why they abandoned the project. Couldn't find any proof myself, so I decided not to mention it.

Ultima the reconstruction

[evil-osm]

Here is a good site that has most of the remakes that are currently being worked on. It hasn't been updated in a year, however the remakes that it links to are still active.

Please learn how to make links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to make links.

<a href="http://xu4.sourceforge.net/">remake</a&g t ;

(with the "&g t;" put there by Slashdot converted to ">") yields: remake

Please learn how to make links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to make links.

<a href="http://www.peroxide.dk/forum/viewtopic.php?t =280">problem thread</a>

(without the space put there by Slashdot) yields: problem thread

Re:Please learn how to stfu

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you so lazy you can't copy and paste? That is a feature of your OS, isn't it?

Also Check Out...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great mod and Ian is a very interesting person. If you are interested in this mod, you might like this interview I did with him after the first release.

http://www.gamersradio.com/modules.php?op=modload& name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=33& page=1

He even talks about showing his mod to the man himself, Richard 'Lord British' Garriott. It was a fun interview to do, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed doing it.