Slashdot Mirror
Fan-Developed Ultima VI Remake Released
An anonymous reader writes "20 years after the original game launched, a fan-developed Ultima 6 remake has finally been released! The Ultima 6 Project was formed in 2001 by Sliding Dragon to develop a remake of Origin's Ultima VI: The False Prophet with newer graphics and a more immersive engine. Soon assembled under the banner Archon, the team members, who hail from all over the globe, have set about recreating the world of Britannia, adding an enhanced storyline to bolster intraseries continuity and building on the Ultima legacy in a way that will please fans new and old."
The virtues are really where Ultima shines. If you've never played it, essentially, you get bonuses for being virtuous, and not through silly binary GOOD/EVIL choices like most games today.
In before we get another C&D happening again.
Yes, it may be different this time, but nobody cares about that these days.
Let's just hope that doesn't happen.
It's worth to metion that Ultima 4 has a remake too: http://xu4.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
I notice there wasn't anything on the site saying/acknowledging the copyrights/trademarks of the original Ultima...
Queue up the DMCA takedown notice, and the inevitable "oh, the evil DMCA takedown notice" slashdot article...
Test your net with Netalyzr
I enjoyed Pagan. It's the game that got me into fantasy RPGs.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Looks like the site is down.... Wanna bet that Electronic Arts shut it down?
It's implemented as a huge Dungeon Siege mod. An installation of Dungeon Siege is prerequisite
I think these are the same people who did the Ultima 5 remake, "Project Lazarus".
Wonder if they'll take on U7 next... but I think it will be hard to improve on the original. It doesn't have 3D graphics, but the world in U7 is beautiful and alive even in plain old 2D.
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I have very fond memories of Ultima 6. It was the first RPG game I played that had a real depth. Many feature were groundbreaking for its time, such as the daily and nightly schedules for the NPCs, the non-linear storyline and enormous freedom you had in exploring the world. The plot was very well written, dealing with a powerful culture clash between two races, humans and gargoyles. The gargoyles started out as a seemingly stereotyped enemy, but actually turned out to be a very evolved and intelligent race fighting for their survival, and that you had to befriend in order to reach the common goal: peace. A stunning work of art created by Richard Garriott, Warren Spector and Dr. Cat.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
I would really love for something like this (or Baldurs Gate) on the iPad - I have been waiting for a decent RPG to come out for the iPhone platform since it was released.
/.ed - "Visitors, we are sorry, however, this site is experiencing difficulties at this time. Please return later."
Alternative chaches welcome, Coral Cache just showed the site down notice, too.
I hope they retained Ultima 6's conversation system, which was completely "free-form" and did not limit you to a fixed set of lines. Would anybody happen to know about that? I haven't seen any other RPG since U6 that has a "free-form" conversation system; even U7, disappointingly, used preset conversation options.
You would think /. would learn to use cacheing services on small sites likely to be slashdotted by them. Or better yet, they should implement one themselves.
Alright, now that thats done, whos up for creating the Ultima Online 2 that never came out?
Well, let's not forget that Ultima 6 was launched at a time when gaming was something for nerds, and often idealistic nerds. Even years before that, when we started getting online FPS, it was a world where you were _expected_ to be polite and say "good game", and where it would be a mark of the antisocial asshole to even frag someone who's AFK or chatting. Yeah, you could stop in the middle of a deathmatch and start chatting about your kids' grades (seen that verbatim happen), and it would be frowned upon if someone fragged you.
Then came Counter-Strike and the whole gang of insecure and/or psychopathic kiddies (and men at midlife crisis) who had to prove their penis size at every step, had to blame everything on someone else (getting shot at was only because the other was a cheater, not his staying still in the open, see?), and had to inform you of your sexual orientation and mother's weight and sexual prowess at least once per round. And that's just skimming it.
In the meantime it seems to me like they multiplied like rabbits. Yeah, good luck floating the idea of acting virtuously to someone who thinks he _must_ prove his penis size and that he has balls by ganking some AFK newbie and teabagging the corpse. 'Cause if god forbid he missed that at least one day, people might start questioning if he even has an Y chromosome at all. Actually obeying all 8 virtues? You'd probably need a panel of experts to prove to him first that the penis police won't show up to his door with a rusty hedge scissors, revoke his right to pee standing, and sentence him to wear a dress for the rest of his life.
Honestly, at times it looks like half the gamers nowadays don't even understand that it's even theoretically possible to play a game other than as a bigger asshole than on goatse, or that someone could even theoretically have a reason to play nice that doesn't boil down to being in denial.
Case study: witness the descent of the Eve idiots upon STO at launch, and the thousands of posts boiling down to "if I can't cause a random newbie to lose his ship and all he owns -- or, hey, as a compromise just his weapons, engines and bridge officers -- then the game sucks and it can't possibly be fun for anyone." Not even for said newbie, see. Why all those newbies must shed bitter tears at the utter disappointment of still having a ship by the time they hit level 5. Ganking them is just some selfless act to make the game fun for them, see? ;)
So, yeah, good luck with selling the idea of a game which gives bonuses for _not_ being an asshole to _those_.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
At least from what I remember since it's been a long time. When I first started usenet (wow, back in 1990) I never saw flame wars like there are today. (Admittedly on the right boards today it's still ok) And of course IRC was cool at first but broke down as well.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I just wanted to mention that the U6 remake should generally be safe from legal action from EA, not because of any inherent "rightness" about what they've done, but because of the generally benevolent attitude EA has taken in the past concerning the core Ultima game remakes.
When I was on the Ultima Online team the U5: Lazarus mod for Dungeon Siege came out, and I actually chose a copy of Dungeon Siege II (if I remember correctly) for the weekly developer prize just so I could download the mod and play it. Our producer at the time was asked by the corporate legal department about it, and since it didn't harm UO, and possibly helped boost marketing recognition for Ultima in general, EA decided not to do anything as long as the remake didn't turn a profit.
In general, EA barely remembers the Ultima IP exists - except to co-opt it for brand recognition (such as the new web-game RTS). UO remains an excellent source of revenue for the company, but even with its millions and millions a year is considered extremely minor compared to the core franchises.
As long as the U6 remake team doesn't turn a profit from this, I couldn't imagine EA taking action, especially since the current UO team would still have a minor bit of input at Mythic. For the curious, no, server emulation for UO is not looked kindly upon by the legal department, yet no significant action was taken in all the years I worked there.
Meanwhile, for U6: I pray that the conversation system and scheduling systems have been converted. People remember Ultima 7 as the most "advanced NPC AI" yet U6 had almost all those features before they were perfected in U7, *and* the conversation system was a model for keyword/response recognition for any interactive games to follow. Ultima Online's own NPC speech system was based on U6's, boasting 13,000 unique lines of text before they were scrapped in 1999-2000 during a localization of the game where the translations were projected to cost something like $250k.
As with the Lazarus project, I just want to give my hearty thanks and appreciation to the team who created this. We dreamed of doing updated Ultima remakes at EA, but never gained any traction. Thank you for doing what we couldn't!
TBH, I'm not convinced that it's a generation thing. Just about every charge against generation Y, I've heard levied against generation X before. We were supposed to be the "me" generation, the self-centered idiots, the louts who grew up with entitlement delusions instead of knowing we must work hard, the ones who don't know how good we have it, the ones who never got taught proper respect, etc. Now essentially I hear that _we_ were the good guys (e.g., here in gaming) while the new generation are the real villains. Bah, humbug. I'll be damned if I let some young whippersnapper steal my spotlight like that. Get off my virtual lawn, damn kids, I still have as much self-centeredness left in me as I did in my teens ;)
Now seriously, I've long maintained that, basically, each game gets the gamers it "deserves", or rather those it caters to. As more and more games bend over backwards to cater to assholes, well, they get more assholes.
It was known at least as far back as, oh, I dunno, Phantasy Star Online, that you can make a game where the l33t killer type just can't do much harm and just leaves for greener pastures. The original COH also mostly lost those because there simply was nothing you could do to another player. Even harassment with tells didn't work well (ignore ftw.) Or even sitting in the town square and shouting crap against them or folowing and stealing their kills, well, in a heavily instanced game neither worked too well.
Unfortunately a lot of games basically try to cater to everyone, including the asshole segment, and occasionally disproportionately to the asshole segment. E.g., because it's the loudest group of players and for a while it can seem like everyone wants, in fact even _demands_ unrestricted PvP and disproportionate penalties for the victim. (See STO again: about two dozen Eve rejects could cause the majority of threads, completely out-posting the hundreds of thousands who formed the rest of the community.) E.g., because some developer is himself the kind who doesn't understand why would anyone play for any other reason than proving penis size, and that throwing references to "care bears" and "hello kitty" players makes him sound more properly manly. E.g., because the publisher comes and says "OMG, we need to copy more from WoW/CS/whatever. Like let's start with features X, Y and Z. And in fact let's turn the knobs to 11 on them, so we can brag we're better than WoW/CS/whatever." Sony is probably the lowest hanging fruit there, as it screwed up so often and hard by trying to copy and outdo features it didn't even understand from WoW, that it's not even funny.
And often in the process it ends up catering more to the assholes.
Basically my take is that really nothing happened between generations in the population at large. We still have a bunch of nice kids and a bunch of bad kids, and a lot in between. It's just that more and more games tried to tap into the asshole segment for extra players, and predictably more of the existing assholes became players. Not even all from the newest generation. Some of the most obnoxious players I've met were middle-aged middle-class gentlemen (well, gentlemen when they weren't anonymous online, anyway.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As a person who played all of the Ultima games (actually just starting with U3; I was too young for U1 and U2), I'm really stoked about this.
And, as a side note, I've always thought that Ultima 7: Part II - The Serpent Isle is one of the most underrated PC games of all time. It was, simply put, amazing. A long lost civilization that was built over the ruins of an even longer-lost civilization, with different religions and end of the world scenarios.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Ultima 6 was created with a fatal flaw in the game.
Normally, you are supposed to be started out on a quest, first you need to take the Book of Prophecies to Mariah at the Lycaeum, then find the two silver tablets to decipher it. Then you go on some kind of long fetch quest to find all the hidden map pieces. Then the map finally tells you how to find to the cave which leads to the gargoyle world.
Or you just use the Orb of the Moons and skip ALL of that stuff, traveling directly to the gargoyle world.
Now if the Orb of the Moons had been restricted to places you have already been, and there were other systems in place to help you navigate the huge world so you could get to all the places, the game would be much better, and less broken.
...I can kill Lord British.
They aren't coming up, they apparently got slashdotted.
Any mirrors out there?
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/dungeonsiege/mod/36621.html
The v1.1 in the title is a mistake. There is no 1.1 version.
That _is_ what I think.
Frankly, after hearing that gang spare no insult in telling me what an abject failure of a person I must be if I play like a "carebear" instead of like them, plus lacking the skill, plus lacking the courage, plus lacking balls, plus obviously self-hating/in-denial/whatever for not playing like them, etc, I don't feel much of a need for propriety in telling them right back what I think of them.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ is more updated than Ultima: The Reconstruction, which hasn't been updated in quite some time. Also you might be interested in my Ultima Online-inspired Sanctimonia, still under heavy development: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eightvirtues/sanctimonia It's for Linux only and isn't a mod.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I completed the first 3 back in the day. Great games, but those didn't seem to keep track of virtue. Gutting towns in Ultima 3 was a good way to get gold, and when you left came back everyone was resurrected.
Even lord British could be taken out, if only by boat cannon.... But again, only till you left the city and when you returned he was back.
"ug me tough"...
Seriously, people, if you're going to announce something Slashdot-worthy, make sure your site is Slashdot-capable.
Anyone know of a site that isn't down where I can download this project from?
A torrent was set to download :
http://www.gameupdates.org/details.php?id=4215
http://www.gameupdates.org/details.php?id=4215
Torrent link :
http://www.gameupdates.org/details.php?id=4215
Strategy Informer :
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/dungeonsiege/mod/36621.html
Ultima Aiera :
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ultima6/ultima-6-project-archon/
check this link: http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27226 3 mirrors, bottom 1st post
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http://u6project.com/
redirects to
http://www.u6project.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi
which displays:
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If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
Hey, can we get a remake that DOESN'T require DS to play? We've got plenty of game engines out there for free that are probably good enough to handle this sort of thing.
Hell, I'm *STILL* playing the ORIGINAL Ultima V through DOSBox. I've got a cloth world map of Brittannia autographed by Richard Garriott himself, using the Lord British moniker.
REMAKE IT WITH A DIFFERENT ENGINE, PLEASE!!!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ultima6/ultima-6-project-archon/
Nice! The page is down due to /. traffic. Ironically, check out the testimony LunarPages has on the front page XD
http://www.lunarpages.com/img/quote.png
Like I said: check this link:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27226 3 mirrors, bottom 1st post ...it includes a NON-Demonoid torrent!
Concerning the use of the DS engine: What engine would YOU have used 9 (!) years ago???
What engine was there at that time with the same level of customizability and ability to preserve
a certain kind of Ultima-feel to it?
Dude! What kind of engine would YOU have use 9 (!) years ago!!???
Providing the the same level of customizability and maintaining
the same level of Ultima-feel?
Set up a project of this scale, report back, when you're DONE!
Let's see when we will see you again, shall we?!
2 mirrors and one Non-Demonoid torrent file!
http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27226
Host has restored service. Finally.