Francois Poisson has been hard at work adding more content to his RPG Maker MZ-based remake of Ultima 3. A couple of weeks ago, his focus was on the town of Montor East:

This week I was working on the town of MONTOR EAST (Or East Montor, depending on where you look). In the original game, this town was just a standard armor/weapon shop + Pub. It did however have 4 guard towers, someone that teaches you how to <INSERT> (which would prove real useful at the end-game).

Now I had plans for this one, I did not change the layout much, but I merged both the Armor and Weapon shops into a single large forge, put in a nice smith NPC who only sells weapons (go to West Montor if you need armor he said. Unless we need special armors… Now what’s that? Special armors ?). I also added a bit of Serpent Isle tradition into those guard towers, I mean they simply carried the elements they wanted to keep over there afterall no ? Another NPC is a frustrated historian, another has a nice conversation about the <insert> command.

Took a bit more work than the other towns, but I needed to script a few nice things for that smith afterall ( Not to mention finding a dwarf portrait which felt okay with RPG Maker MZ). Also a very tiny Startrek TNG reference/easter egg with the innkeeper.

He also squashed a bug or two as he was building the town, and added some additional weapons to the remake. More recently, his focus has been on the town of Devil Guard:

This week I was working on the town of DEVIL GUARD. A nice little land-locked town with a large lake surrounded by mountains… Not unlike the town of Cove in Ultima 4 thru 7.

Not really a lot to say about this one, except it was fun recreating the archipelago on which the town was settled on, and added choice dialogues to important NPCs. Most of the town have an obsession with “Marks”, so I tried spicing it up a little bit. Also added an extra island (right side of the map) for quests originating from the Ambrosian shrines (ppl work there, so makes sense they’d want news from the main continent).

However, he’s also begun to encounter some limitations with RPG Maker MZ, which have necessitated a few changes from the Ultima 3 baseline:

I did not manage to find proper sprite art for riders, and since this project uses “pop-up battles” a-la-Final Fantasy, I decided not to invest the time into programming riding horses. Which means the stable is almost merely for show, and that you guys are stuck walking or sailing. Movement would not have been any faster anyways, it would only have reduced the amount of Random Encounters on the main map.

On the plus side, he did figure out a way to make the piano at the Devil Guard tavern playable.

For your enjoyment, Francois has also released a couple of images of these two towns, as he has implemented them.