Cambragol has posted a number of articles to the…well, let’s get the big news out of the way first, shall we? When last we checked in on his project — an expansion for “the original DOS Ultima IV to add additional content, via quests, locations and features” — it was called Advent of the Trinity. Since then, however, the project has been renamed — or re-renamed, as the case may be — to Threat of the Trinity:

Long in the works, and more in line with the content and plot, the game has been renamed to ‘Threat of the Trinity’

This has actually happened more than a year ago. And in fact, was the original title I was going to go with. For various reasons, however, I ended up settling on Advent of the Trinity. However, once development reached a certain point, the logic of original title, the connection to the new quests and ‘plot’ lines, became more apparent. So I changed the name back to the original ‘Threat of the Trinity’.

The new title graphics can be seen above.

But, as I was saying, Cambragol has posted a number of updates to Threat of the Trinity’s Github page over the last few months (we last checked in on the project in February, here). Notably, back at the end of May, he kicked off a closed beta of the project (I assume, based on his wording, that his test subjects were his kids), and feedback from that led to a few changes:

The Beta testers have also insisted on some slightly new directions for some of the final quest parameters. I had shelved the idea previously, but have now brought it back and am moving forward with it. It being a new region…the Underdeep!

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I also tasked these Beta testers with producing some of the many ‘Random Encounters’ the game still needed. Currently 15 are done, though it is unlikely any play through would use more than 5. For now they are mostly simple traveller type encounters. There are a good chunk of more specialized ones as well, more along the lines of some of the random encounters found in Fallout 1 and 2. More than 15 maps done so far. A good chunk.

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Added a feature. Shouldn’t have, but it cost very little code, and opens up some serious possibilities for maps, exploration etc.

Starts with directional search. Search can now find hidden doors, ladders, keys, gold, weapons, armor…pretty much anything. This opens up lots of quest possibilities, which didn’t exist before, and really revamps how exploration can work.

These changes, in turn, led to some adjustments to the game’s default quests…which represents a break with the original vision of the project:

I started out with a plan to not touch any vanilla or ‘default’ aspects of the game/quests etc. However, I feel that the current size of the ‘mod’ necessitates some adjustment of default/vanilla settings.

Many of the towns and castles are now up to 5 levels high and low. With that vertical enhancement in place, its seems to behoove us to place some of the the important vanilla/default items somewhere along that vertical enhancement. It integrates the mod into the vanilla, and the vanilla into the mod, making them a more cohesive whole

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I am also thinking of cutting Random Encounters. It is going to be a lot of work, for a very tiny pay off. The average player might only ever experience a couple of them. They are going to be non-critical. And how many people, really, are going to play this? 5? 3? 1!?!?. If I drop them, I can see the completion of the mod/game on the horizon. In sight.

Throughout late July and into August, Cambragol worked on polishing up the project — adding dungeons, adjusting text as needed, revising dialogues, and testing possible graphical improvements. In mid-September, he announced that all code and content for Threat of the Trinity was finished…though he soon discovered another significant bug that he needed to squash, and then implemented a new graphical mode for the entire project:

In honor of the 35th anniverary of the release of Ultima IV for the Apple II, Trinity has been converted to an Apple II graphics mode!

Now, it is not entirely in ‘honor’ of the 35th anniversary. It is just something I have been leaning towards since starting this project.

The Dos graphics/mode has never grown on me, despite clocking in more hours playing/testing/building it than I did with the Apple II game. The Apple II original has always held a special place in my game experiences. It also looks cleaner, and simpler, something that appeals to me. And it is the original. The ‘real’ Ultima IV!

So, Trinity will now be adopting a complete Apple II mode.

This will not be toggleable, nor is it easily reversible. It is fully committed to this conversion.

This conversion is not just graphics. Oh no sirree. It also includes changes to the interface, fonts and aspects of the gameplay.

At present, there is no indication of when we might see a release of Threat of the Trinity, though I imagine that it coming soon enough.

(Hat tip: Fenyx4, who has been watching this project in earnest, and who is quick to note any updates concerning it on the UDIC Discord server.)