Not unlike 2012, the year now concluded was also a very interesting year for Ultima fans, in no small part due to the somewhat unexpected emergence of Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar. After spending much of the preceding year touting his Ultimate RPG as the perfect fusion of social (read: Facebook) gaming and RPG standards, Garriott took to Kickstarter in March of 2013 with…a desktop-targeted hybrid single-player/multiplayer fantasy RPG concept.

But more on that later. This article concerns those fan-driven projects which for years served as the only source of Ultima-related news are still the reason this site exists, and are likely no small part of the reason that Ultima has remained sufficiently “on the radar” to merit a spiritual successor.

Thus, let’s look at what the various fan projects did in 2013, shall we?

Oh, and by the way…I think OldGamesItalia still needs some help with their Ultima Underworld translation.

Santcimonia

Kevin Fishburne began the year by attempting to publicize his PvE-based, Ultima-inspired MMORPG for Linux at IndieGameMag. Later that same month, he began recruiting alpha testers for an early trial of the game.

Kevin continued delivering status reports as the year rolled on, and in April we got some details about the game’s crafting system by way of a UI mockup. By early May, the in-game crafting GUI had been implemented, at least in an initial state; Kevin also worked on sound effects and an in-game cloth map during this time.

Late May saw the addition of an excavation (read: terrain deformation) feature, new GUI elements, solar lighting, new sound effects, and more. An improved in-game cloth map was also revealed toward the very end of the month.

July saw Kevin adding persistent world objects to the game, and soon thereafter had made a breakthrough in applying textures to block-type objects…a pre-requisite for allowing players to build structures. In the same vein, he had implemented an architectural GUI, to enable the creation of structures, by the end of the month. Development on the architectural system continued into August, adding roofing and terrain grading by about the middle of the month. As August wound down, Kevin also put out another call for testers.

September saw the implementation of positional lighting, item usage and object destruction. Doors came next, and October saw the addition of flammability as an object property. Inflamed objects continued to consume his attention as November came to an end, and he also began using Blender to create in-game objects at some point during the month.

December saw Kevin working on torches, among other things. And we can rest assured that work will continue apace on this project in 2014; Kevin is nothing if not tenacious in his pursuit of its development.

The Dark Unknown

Goldenflame Dragon rang in 2013 with some updated music for his tile-based, Ultima-inspired browser game. In February, he added the ability to flip through the pages of spellbooks to the game, and March saw him experimenting with time dilation and spell durations. By May, spellcasting was working, but work on the project slowed by June (although Goldenflame did post a short update stating that he was still plugging away at things in the middle of said month).

In early July, usable inventory had been added to the game, and numerous bugfixes were made in August. A Facebook page for the game was also launched at that time.

Come September, Goldenflame had found the time to squash several more bugs, and by the middle of the month he had also added wandering monsters to the game.

He then set about adding line of sight blocking to the engine, and by the end of October he had also implemented points of interest and navigation nodes for monsters and NPCs. Bandit and monster AI was added to the game in November. There hasn’t been much news from the project since then, but Goldenflame Dragon will no doubt have much more to show us in 2014.

Pix’s Ultima Patcher

Pix updated his handy-dandy patching utility in January. Actually, he updated it twice that month, the second update fixing a bug related to Beautiful Britannia.

Updates in April and October addressed changes made by GOG to how the Ultima games are installed to Windows systems.

Since October, Pix has not made any additional updates to the Patcher.

Pentagram

A number of bugfixes were made to Pentagram, the Ultima 8 cross-platform engine, in January. Since the, the project has been essentially dormant.

Exult & Exult Rotate

The Exult team didn’t exactly release news to this effect in January, but the project’s SourceForge changelogs showed significant updates being made early on in 2013, teasing the possibility of a version 1.6 release.

A new Exult Rotate build was released in early February, and the main Exult codebase saw some significant bugfixes published in April.

In August, Lanica Dragon demonstrated an iOS build of Exult, and in November Dominus urged everyone to stop using Exult 1.2 in favour of the snapshot builds that the project team were still producing on a regular basis.

The Savage Empire Remake

Scythifuge rang in 2013 with some new mountain graphics for use in his Exult-based remake of Savage Empire. He followed this up soon thereafter with new Myrmidex and Sakkhra art, and come February had added Kotl armour and fish (raw and cooked) artwork, as well as artwork for Chac Mools, Jaguar Knights, and the Barrab. By the end of February, Scythifuge was even toying with the idea of straying from the normal Ultima 7 sprite sizes.

The project then fell dormant for several months; Scythifuge posted a brief update in mid-June to let us all know that it was still being worked on. Since then, there has been little word from him, although this is no doubt due in large part to several events and tasked that cropped up in Scythifuge’s offline life.

Nuvie

The cross-platform Ultima 6 engine was deemed the Fan Project of the Year for 2012, its developers receiving a note and some prizes from Mythic Entertainment as a result. The project team remained quiet for much of the year, although they continued working on the project itself; Malignant Manor gave us an update on the major developments in the engine in mid-September. And the team have been busily working on it since then; if one pays attention to the project’s changelog, one will note that e.g. Martian Dreams support seems to be coming along handily.

Forgotten World & Beautiful Britannia

Iceblade began publishing a series of Ultima 9 commentaries early on in 2013. He also published a new poll question concerning changes to Ultima 9’s magic system. Firstknight, meanwhile, gave us a look at his changes to the Cove region of Britannia. Iceblade published a second commentary, this one looking at Stonegate and magic in Ultima 9, and followed this up with news of bugfixes and new screenshots from the project.

In March, Iceblade posted a bit of news about the editor that his team had been working on.

After both projects fell into not atypical silence around the middle of the year, I reached out to Firstknight for an update on the status of Beautiful Britannia. The project, it seemed, had paused while Firstknight transitioned careers, but he did take the time to lay out a plan of action for the next set of updates he intended to make to Ultima 9. Many of these involved Moonglow and Dagger Isle, and we were treated to a few images of those changes just prior to the end of the year.

Back to Roots

Fearyourself began the year by adapting the combat system from Ultima 4 for use in his Ultima-inspired game engine. He also overhauled the look of the project’s website. Since that time, however, we’ve heard precious little from him.

AvatarAcid’s Minecraft Creations

AvatarAcid treated us to a fanon re-imagining of Stonegate, complete with very large Bell, Book, and Candle statues, in January. A bit later in the year, he also created a rendition of the Shrine of Spirituality, circa Ultima 7.

In September, he released his take on a New Britannian Lunar Rift, in response to the first Unity Scene Jam hosted by Portalarium. The following month, he released his take on the second Unity Scene Jam, creating an overland area with numerous entrances to an Ultima-inspired Underworld below. He later released this sccene for download.

The Ultima 6 Project

After a lengthy wait, the Ultima 6 Project team released the final version 1.1 build of the mod in early February. Updated images of the world map followed, along with updated map documents.

In December, we were given a status update on the German translation of the project, and treated to Tribun Dragon’s English-language re-working of the iconic Compendium from Ultima 6.

The Ultima 6 Remake

The Ultima 6 Remake team, not to be confused with the above, released new gump graphics for Shamino, Iolo, and Dupre in early February.

March saw the release of a couple new musical tracks that were written for the remake, and there was even talk of a demo. In May, a paperdoll gump for Gorn was unveiled, and in June the team let us know that they were continuing to work toward a demo. There has been no news from them since the summertime, however.

EUO

EUO has a very constant pace of updates, to the point that keeping up with its progress is not something I can do on a weekly basis. I do try and hit the “high points”, however, such as the major rebalance that the developer did in late February. The game’s website got a facelift in April.

In November, the developer announced his next project, a game called Crypt Wizard. He’s still, as far as I know, looking for artists to help develop assets for the game.

Ultima IX: Redemption

The Titans of Ether posted some news in March, showcasing a piece of music created by the team’s composer. We next heard from the project in April, which both re-affirmed that the project was still ongoing and discussed the issues the team were having with their chosen engine. We were then treated to screenshots of the city of Britain, and informed that party support had been dropped from the mod.

Chlorthos Dragon released some samples of the mod’s soundtrack in mid-April.

Sadly, in early November, the team announced that work on the project was being halted until certain significant technical hurdles and issues could be overcome.

UDICraft

What began as a massive re-creation of Britannia in Minecraft continued to evolve as the year went on into a private Minecraft server for the Ultima Dragons. Which I have been shamefully lax in posting details about; I will have to rectify this before the end of January.

Ultima Return

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of Serpent Isle in March of the year, Sergorn Dragon posted some new NPC portraits to the project website, and also wrote down a few thoughts about the game that inspired his project. The character creation theme was released in April, and a new NPC portrait was released in July.

U3.5: Pax Britannia

Andrew Owen’s ZX Spectrum-based, Ultima-inspired RPG was quiet for the first quarter of 2013, but in April the manual for the game was made available for download. He followed this up a few days later with screenshots of the game’s introductory sequence, and revealed a new title screen for the game later in the month.

In May, a contest of sorts was announced, which invited members of the Ultima Dragons to see themselves realized as NPCs in Pax Britannia. Soon thereafter, he released an image of the game’s map, which depicted Sosaria in a state of transition between its shape in Ultima 3 and Britannia’s familiar outline per Ultima 4. In a particularly keen move, he even ordered a limited run of cloth prints of the map, for which there were many takers. This was followed up, in very short order, by box art and a new tileset.

In fact, Mr. Owen made a significant amount of progress on the project throughout the month of May, and even managed to release a beta version of the game’s character generator. Of course, not all was roses; he identified several issues later in the month which required correction. He also released the game’s theme song as May drew to a close, and furnished the Ultima Dragons with additional news thereabout a day or so later.

More samples of the game’s soundtrack were released in mid-June, with still more following as the month rolled on.

Come August, Andrew had shifted his focus to working on the game’s plot, and updates about the project became markedly less frequent as the September rolled around. He did, however, release an old-school advert for the game, a nice touch by any means.

In November, following the release of an updated version of Garage Band, Andrew redid much of the game’s soundtrack and uploaded the new tracks to SoundCloud. Later that month, he announced that he had completed work on the game’s plot and was in the process of developing a scripting engine for it.

Chronicles of Sosaria

This project first surface in April, and its developer — Terrormaster, by handle — described its map as a combination of Sosaria circa Ultima 3 and the map of Shroud of the Avatar. Its plot has something to do with a young thief and a plot to restore the Gem of Immortality.

In May, Terrormaster set up a Google+ page for the project, and released another screenshot from it. Since then, there hasn’t been much in the way of news to report, however.

Hearth of Britannia

Rustic Dragon’s attempt to create a recipe book for, or inspired by, Ultima, formally kicked off in April. He also began hosting Dragonsmeets around this time, although at the time they were a separate phenomenon from the Hearth. (Dragonsmeets didn’t officially become part of Hearth of Britannia until…late Spring, if memory serves.)

Then, in July, a countdown appeared on the Hearth of Britannia website, promising us “twenty-four hours of awesome“. As the month ended, a familiar chalice appeared atop the image of a table in the site’s footer, and Rustic Dragon began soliciting ideas for activities that could transpire during the previously-mentioned 24-hour event. He continued to add items to the table image as July turned into August, including potion bottles. Scraps of clues started appearing as well, and Rustic even kicked off a guessing game in early August to further drive speculation.

Over on the project’s Facebook page, the logo began peeling away, indicating some manner of message hidden behind it. It continued peeling away day by day, whilst over on the Hearth website Sherry the Mouse made quite a considerable mess…all of which culminated in the announcement of the Telethon of the Avatar, Rustic Dragon’s 24-hour attempt to raise $1 million in additional funding for Shroud of the Avatar.

The Telethon was designed to function as a kind of mini-Kickstarter; there would be prizes, livestreams, and even a special guest appearance by Richard Garriott. A “digital locker” appeared on the site as well, which would serve as a repository for non-physical rewards for those who pledged during the Telethon. Speaking of prizes, Rustic even managed to secure a few pieces of loot from Tracy Hickman. And the final schedule for the Telethon read like a Shroud of the Avatar fan’s dream come true.

Portalarium even added a special pledge tier, specific to the Telethon, to the Shroud of the Avatar website!

The Telethon was held on August 24th and 25th, and ultimately raised $12,999 in additional pledges for Shroud of the Avatar. Participants were treated to a live Space Bards jam, and Portalarium announced that there would be some manner of in-game, Hearth-themed reward added to Shroud of the Avatar. Rustic Dragon might not have raised a million dollars, but a lot of fun was had by all and sundry even so.

Telethon prizes started to become available in early September. You’d think that would have been enough for one year for Rustic Dragon, but it was not so; he catered the first Lords of the Manor event in early October, and then invited Ultima and Shroud of the Avatar fans from far and wide to attend a re-creation of the meal at his home in Indianapolis. Tracy Hickman even agreed to attend the latter event as a special guest! By the end of October, physical Telethon rewards had been ordered, Rustic Dragon successfully proposed to his girlfriend…and was hired by Portalarium to work on website design and community relations.

Let that sink in: between April and October of the year, Rustic Dragon created the Hearth of Britannia concept and turned it into a paying gig at Richard Garriott’s game development company. Talk about living just about every Ultima fan’s dream!

The Gate of Sosaria

This project, which was already prone to lengthy periods of silence, released some new screenshots on its brand new website in mid-May.

Graymer

This novel little project first appeared in mid-May. It displays the levels from your Ultima Underworld installation as a screensaver.

Legend of the Avatar

This ambitious-sounding project first appeared in mid-June, intending to tell the story of Sosaria from the time of Zog onward. Sadly, there has been no additional news about its development since then.

Ultima 5 Character Transfer Fix

This small patch was released in mid-June to correct issues with character transfers in the GOG release of Ultima 5.

LRUMP & Morgaelin

slashgravatar’s Low Resolution Ultima Maps Project first appeared in mid-June, treating us to tiled renditions of the maps from later Ultima games using the tile art from Ultima 4. He began with the map for Ultima 8, and later added maps of Trinsic and Despise (circa Ultima 7), not to mention Mars as seen in Martian Dreams.

Time Machine Dragon released a LRUMP viewer in early July, and a month later he released a second, Java-free version. This soon morphed into an idea for a new engine, of sorts, although it would seem that Time Machine Dragon has not had time to work on LRUltima/LRUMPtima since mid-August.

At about the same time, slashgravatar spun off the LRUMP project into a “demake” of Ultima 8, to which he gave the title Morgaelin. An accomplished developer in his own right, slash was able to make quick progress on this new project, at least initially. Devon’s house was implemented, weapons were added to the game, and by early September useable items had also been implemented. Later that same month, attack damage had been added to the game’s combat system, with fight indicators and hit animations following in October.

Since October, slash hasn’t had as much time to work on Morgaelin as he’d like, but there’s little doubt we’ll hear more about the project in 2014.

The Black Gate Board Game

Lucufige Dragon’s board game adaptation of Ultima 7: The Black Gate exploded onto the scene in early July, and captured a ton of interest right off the bat. Because who wouldn’t want to play Ultima 7 as a board game, right? Lucifuge set up a website for the project, and proceeded to give us details about its gameplay, as well as more images of the game itself.

Although Lucifuge didn’t initially have plans to distribute the game when it was finished, this changed when he saw just how much attention the project was getting. Toward the middle of the month, we got a look at yet another gameplay session, and Lucifuge brought us news of a few adjustments made to the game’s rules and content. And of course, he kept the gameplay images coming as July drew to a close.

In August, Lucifuge began testing the game with three-player scenarios, and he also launched a Facebook page for the game. He also put out a call for artists. The game’s rules and content saw a number of changes toward the end of August, with additional revisions being made in early September. Later in September, Lucifuge gave us a more detailed look at the game’s map, and in October we were treated to some art samples from Philip Kwan, who had signed on with the project to create media for it.

In late October, mounts and new items were announced as additions to the game.

Then, in December, Lucifuge surprised everyone by announcing a digital version of the game, which he had begun building using the Unity engine. Work on both the physical and digital versions of the game progressed nicely as December passed; this will be one to watch in 2014!

Blocks of the Avatar

Holt Ironfell and a few other people created a private Minecraft server, and built the island of Novia inside of it.

The Ultima 1 Board Game

This project has actually been around for a while, but I only tripped over it in early July. The game was, according to its author, 99% complete as of that month, although I don’t think we’ve heard news of it since then.

xu4

This project has been dormant for a while, having reached a mature release state. That didn’t stop one enterprising fan from releasing recordings of the Ultima 4 soundtrack as rendered on a Roland SoundCanvas for use with it, however.

Ultima 3 – A New Exodus

This mod for the NES version of Ultima 3 surfaced at the end of July in a completed state. It rebalances characters and races, and makes a number of other adjustments to the game as well.

The Savage Empire SNES Translation

A joint project between slashgravatar, Dungy, and…Mrs. Dungy, I guess we can call her…this project (which first came to light in August) intends to translate the Japanese-language Super Nintendo version of Savage Empire into English.

Lawless Legends

This somewhat Ultima-inspired fantasy RPG (albeit with a Wild West setting) first appeared in August, although its developers did their level best to make it seem as though the project had been in the works for quite some time.

Ultima 6 Online

Although this project remained quiet for much of the year, the team did solicit donations in early October in an effort to help offset the game’s server costs. A new client was released in mid-November, and safe spots were re-implemented in the game at this time.

The Real Texas

This somewhat Ultima-inspired RPG was successfully Greenlit on Steam in late October.

Elderlands

This tile-based MMORPG by former Origin Systems developer Jason Ely entered an open alpha test at the end of December.

And that, good Dragons and Dragonettes, is about it for fan project activity for the calendar year 2013. We’ve seen some truly incredible things happen in the Ultima fan community this year, and also some very unfortunate things. ‘Twas ever thus, of course, but saying as much does little to ease the sting of e.g. Redemption’s cancellation. Still, there are some promising new projects that have come to light, as well as the Hearth of Britannia’s Cinderella story, to cheer us as we step into the new year. What impressive things will Ultima fans achieve before the year is out?