The bleeding-edge version of Exult — the Ultima 7 engine for more operating systems and platforms than one cares to list — has been updated as of October 9th. Exult Tools and Exult Studio have similarly been updated, and all can be downloaded from the project website.

Or from the project entry at Aiera, my Ultima-themed website.

A big part of my interest in gaming is of a very “retro” nature — I’m a huge fan of the old Ultima series of RPG games. So much of a fan, in fact, that I run a rather extensive Ultima blog, which deals primarily with the various patches and remakes that other Ultima fans the world over have produced.

Yes, remakes.

The biggest remake, to date, is probably the implementation of Ultima 5 in the Dungeon Siege engine. Ultima V: Lazarus was published earlier this year, and the lead developer was hired by Ensemble Studios shortly thereafter (if memory serves).

This is serious business, in other words, and many other remakes are in the works, at various stages of completion. And it has fallen to me to be “the guy” who tracks the news for these various projects, aggregating them into one convenient report for the benefit of Ultima fans the world over.

So don’t be surprised if, going forward, I pepper this blog with Ultima news. Yeah, the series isn’t being made anymore (except for Ultima Online, which only partly counts), but the fan-base is still going strong, and their innovation is often worth spotlighting.