I missed this update, which is already almost two weeks old, to the Redemption website. Direhaggis posted an advertisment, announcing the project’s need for writers:

Do you like Ultima dungeons? Does the thought of creating NPC’s and plots based around or involving an anti-virtue sound interesting? Do you want to check out all of the behind-the-scenes action?

We’re looking for a new writer or two to help sparsely (or maybe not so sparsely) populate several remaining dungeons in U9R. You have 100% free artistic license over your area and will obviously get credit for your work.

So if you find that you are interested in climbing aboard one of the most exciting projects currently under development in the Ultima community, Direhaggis has provided his email address and the submission guidelines at the Redemption website. Go and check thou it out!

Hawkwind, one of the developers over at Forgotten World, contacted me to let me know that despite the lack of news from the development team of this promising, in-engine remake of Ultima 9, things have been moving.

What is more, they’ve given their site a bit of a facelift, having ported it over to the Joomla content management system! On that basis alone: way to go, fellas! Joomla is a pretty sweet CMS, and one of my two “go-to” pieces of site software whenever I have a site to build.

But an even bigger hurrah should be sounded over the news that accompanies the new site design:

We have - again - done a lot of work without results that are presentable.

Due to some strange issues with some of the files, it is now certain that there is still an unknown part in what we thought unraveled. We, therefore, had to rewrite some of the file loading routines. Meanwhile, we wrote a model viewer. So far, we have yet to find any really special models. We will keep you appraised!

Our next aim concerning the editor is getting object selection and property display working.

I can’t imagine how complicated it must be to unwrap a game engine and try to make sense of it, and I am constantly impressed by the demonstrated progress this team has made. I’m confident they can overcome this little hiccup.

The Realms of Ultima project — the Neverwinter Nights 2-based version of Project Britannia, a project which aims to create a pre-fabricated Ultima world for others to use as a basis for their own projects — has been updated twice since last I checked in with it.

For starters, project lead MokahTGS has posted an article in which he discusses a few of his inspirations, as well as some of the new features of an upcoming NWN2 expansion pack that he is looking forward to making use of.

But additionally, he and fellow developer Jaesun have been working on a contribution to Bouncy Rock Entertainment’s “Community Halloween Project.” Their contribution will evidently be the Grumpy Strumpet tavern, which will in due time become the tavern in .

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.