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Fan-Developed Ultima VI Remake Released 161

An anonymous reader writes "20 years after the original game launched, a fan-developed Ultima 6 remake has finally been released! The Ultima 6 Project was formed in 2001 by Sliding Dragon to develop a remake of Origin's Ultima VI: The False Prophet with newer graphics and a more immersive engine. Soon assembled under the banner Archon, the team members, who hail from all over the globe, have set about recreating the world of Britannia, adding an enhanced storyline to bolster intraseries continuity and building on the Ultima legacy in a way that will please fans new and old."
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Fan-Developed Ultima VI Remake Released

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  • This is great! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Redbluefire ( 1165471 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:46AM (#32848962)
    The virtues are really where Ultima shines. If you've never played it, essentially, you get bonuses for being virtuous, and not through silly binary GOOD/EVIL choices like most games today.
    • by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @07:33AM (#32849408) Journal

      Well, let's not forget that Ultima 6 was launched at a time when gaming was something for nerds, and often idealistic nerds. Even years before that, when we started getting online FPS, it was a world where you were _expected_ to be polite and say "good game", and where it would be a mark of the antisocial asshole to even frag someone who's AFK or chatting. Yeah, you could stop in the middle of a deathmatch and start chatting about your kids' grades (seen that verbatim happen), and it would be frowned upon if someone fragged you.

      Then came Counter-Strike and the whole gang of insecure and/or psychopathic kiddies (and men at midlife crisis) who had to prove their penis size at every step, had to blame everything on someone else (getting shot at was only because the other was a cheater, not his staying still in the open, see?), and had to inform you of your sexual orientation and mother's weight and sexual prowess at least once per round. And that's just skimming it.

      In the meantime it seems to me like they multiplied like rabbits. Yeah, good luck floating the idea of acting virtuously to someone who thinks he _must_ prove his penis size and that he has balls by ganking some AFK newbie and teabagging the corpse. 'Cause if god forbid he missed that at least one day, people might start questioning if he even has an Y chromosome at all. Actually obeying all 8 virtues? You'd probably need a panel of experts to prove to him first that the penis police won't show up to his door with a rusty hedge scissors, revoke his right to pee standing, and sentence him to wear a dress for the rest of his life.

      Honestly, at times it looks like half the gamers nowadays don't even understand that it's even theoretically possible to play a game other than as a bigger asshole than on goatse, or that someone could even theoretically have a reason to play nice that doesn't boil down to being in denial.

      Case study: witness the descent of the Eve idiots upon STO at launch, and the thousands of posts boiling down to "if I can't cause a random newbie to lose his ship and all he owns -- or, hey, as a compromise just his weapons, engines and bridge officers -- then the game sucks and it can't possibly be fun for anyone." Not even for said newbie, see. Why all those newbies must shed bitter tears at the utter disappointment of still having a ship by the time they hit level 5. Ganking them is just some selfless act to make the game fun for them, see? ;)

      So, yeah, good luck with selling the idea of a game which gives bonuses for _not_ being an asshole to _those_.

      • Gah, I mean we got FPS years _after_ U6, of course.

        • >>>Gah, I mean we got FPS years _after_ U6, of course.

          We had FPSes in 1990. I don't remember any of them being online, but we did have the single player versions.
          \

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Moraelin ( 679338 )

            Well, you're right about that, but single player versions don't quite illustrate the rise of the online assholes that I was talking about. Even Doom which came 3 years after Ultima 6, only was realistically playable on a LAN, and even then better not be on the work LAN, the way it broadcast packets. And really, on a LAN the whole thing is a lot less conducive to breeding assholes. What you need, is, well, best illustrated by Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com]. You can't really skip the middle in

            • by ifrag ( 984323 )

              Not sure why you would even point to DooM 3 (2004) when compared to Quake 3 (1999). Quake 3 was designed entirely as a multi player game, had no campaign to speak of, just moderately good bots to throw in. DooM 3 has an extensive single player experience and very minimal multi player (like a whole 4 maps worth?). I wasn't big into Unreal Tournament, but that was Q3's biggest competitor and also arrived in '99. Quake 3 had exclusively multi player levels, most designed for more than 4 players. In fact,

              • by ifrag ( 984323 )
                Oops, from speed reading your post I didn't realize you were probably referring to the original Doom there... I grouped the 3 in the sentence with Doom by mistake.
              • by alc6379 ( 832389 )
                I think he was comparing Doom, saying it was released 3 years after Ultima VI.
            • Note however that I would doubt that it just turns a normal people into a fuckwad, like in the comic strip.

              I suspect that the difference is that multiplayer gaming over the internet has been democratized. When I started, it was very much an enthusiast thing. The people who went to Quake LAN parties or played on the internet were future (sometimes current) CS majors, engineers, and other IT people, or at least were going to get a degree somewhere. They were the sorts of people you'd expect to see playing ch

          • Which FPS were those? Wolf3D and Ultima Underworld came out in '92. DOOM was late '93, about 18 months later, and was the first multiplayer beast. (PC depended on IPX/SPX, but NeXTDOOM, e.g., was TCP/IP from the beginning.)
            • Well, not textured FPS, but I seem to remember a couple of non-textured ones before Wolfenstein 3D, so strictly speaking he is right. Of course, they weren't playable either on a LAN or online anyway.

            • I think Catacombs 3D (and its stunning EGA graphics) predated Wolf3D by a year or so. Prior to that, Hovertank 3D was probably the closest thing...
            • Odd, I played doom via a built-in DOS modem dialer. There was no real networking stack.

              • You could do IPX/SPX networked DOOM on at least some DOS versions. I didn't have access to one of those networks, but as I understand it the program was not well behaved - everything was multicast, it basically would shut down that network segment.

                Doom for the NeXT was a TCP/IP capable client. We uploaded the registered .WAD from one of our PCs to the NeXT machines in the lab and played four-player deathmatch.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by v1 ( 525388 )

            We had FPSes in 1990. I don't remember any of them being online

            Marathon [wikipedia.org] rocked at the time, hands down the best FPS of its day. It featured LAN gaming for up to 8 (or was it 16?) players. There were hacks around that would knit together distant LANs vpn-style for internet play, but the game wasn't designed for that level of lag so it didn't play well over the internet.

            (it also had a story line that, in the context of a fps, rivaled that of Ultima. It's a shame that feat is rarely equalled even nowadays)

      • At least from what I remember since it's been a long time. When I first started usenet (wow, back in 1990) I never saw flame wars like there are today. (Admittedly on the right boards today it's still ok) And of course IRC was cool at first but broke down as well.
        • by Baikala ( 564096 )
          IRC was cool when it was community based. For me it was like a real-time facebook, a facebook with weakly new random friends. I still maintain contact with people I meet in some geographically-based channels that eventually bacame meatspace friends. When it went sour? I think right after the chat networks like aim,msm,etc became mainstream, it denied IRC comumnities with new users so the communities eventually died.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MikeBabcock ( 65886 )

        I still find it entertaining that contrary to public opinion, as gaming has opened up to a wider audience it has become less mature and more low-brow than ever.

        The gamers of a generation ago got their share of slanderous nicknames but they seemed to be more respectful, intelligent and mature in general than those found today.

      • It's a cultural problem. The fault goes to parents for raising their kids to be self-centered idiots with no respect for anyone or anything.

        • by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @10:33AM (#32851110) Journal

          TBH, I'm not convinced that it's a generation thing. Just about every charge against generation Y, I've heard levied against generation X before. We were supposed to be the "me" generation, the self-centered idiots, the louts who grew up with entitlement delusions instead of knowing we must work hard, the ones who don't know how good we have it, the ones who never got taught proper respect, etc. Now essentially I hear that _we_ were the good guys (e.g., here in gaming) while the new generation are the real villains. Bah, humbug. I'll be damned if I let some young whippersnapper steal my spotlight like that. Get off my virtual lawn, damn kids, I still have as much self-centeredness left in me as I did in my teens ;)

          Now seriously, I've long maintained that, basically, each game gets the gamers it "deserves", or rather those it caters to. As more and more games bend over backwards to cater to assholes, well, they get more assholes.

          It was known at least as far back as, oh, I dunno, Phantasy Star Online, that you can make a game where the l33t killer type just can't do much harm and just leaves for greener pastures. The original COH also mostly lost those because there simply was nothing you could do to another player. Even harassment with tells didn't work well (ignore ftw.) Or even sitting in the town square and shouting crap against them or folowing and stealing their kills, well, in a heavily instanced game neither worked too well.

          Unfortunately a lot of games basically try to cater to everyone, including the asshole segment, and occasionally disproportionately to the asshole segment. E.g., because it's the loudest group of players and for a while it can seem like everyone wants, in fact even _demands_ unrestricted PvP and disproportionate penalties for the victim. (See STO again: about two dozen Eve rejects could cause the majority of threads, completely out-posting the hundreds of thousands who formed the rest of the community.) E.g., because some developer is himself the kind who doesn't understand why would anyone play for any other reason than proving penis size, and that throwing references to "care bears" and "hello kitty" players makes him sound more properly manly. E.g., because the publisher comes and says "OMG, we need to copy more from WoW/CS/whatever. Like let's start with features X, Y and Z. And in fact let's turn the knobs to 11 on them, so we can brag we're better than WoW/CS/whatever." Sony is probably the lowest hanging fruit there, as it screwed up so often and hard by trying to copy and outdo features it didn't even understand from WoW, that it's not even funny.

          And often in the process it ends up catering more to the assholes.

          Basically my take is that really nothing happened between generations in the population at large. We still have a bunch of nice kids and a bunch of bad kids, and a lot in between. It's just that more and more games tried to tap into the asshole segment for extra players, and predictably more of the existing assholes became players. Not even all from the newest generation. Some of the most obnoxious players I've met were middle-aged middle-class gentlemen (well, gentlemen when they weren't anonymous online, anyway.)

        • I agree it is a cultural thing. But it isn't that the culture generally changed which filled the internet with asshats. It is that back in the day the only culture online was one of intelligent and reserved nerds. Letting everyone in caused two issues.

          One, nerds don't tend to be assholes as often as non-nerds. Perhaps our being exposed to assholes repeatedly from a young age taught us to be good. Or it might be that nerds are more likely to think things through and not be assholes. (There are a wide varie
      • by tolan-b ( 230077 )

        I was with you up until EVE. I love the fact that death actually has consequences in EVE.

        • by Danse ( 1026 )

          I was with you up until EVE. I love the fact that death actually has consequences in EVE.

          I don't know a lot about the current state of EVE, as I haven't played it since sometime around the second year it was out. So this is more of a general statement than one informed by the specifics of the situation in that game. I think that consequences for dying are good, but making it easy for high level players to grief the newbs is not. If you're getting blasted to pieces by some ungodly powerful ship five minutes after creating your first character in-game, are you really going to want to try to le

          • by tolan-b ( 230077 )

            I haven't played for something like 2 years now, but at that attacking someone in time high-sec space meant you were destroyed within seconds.

            There was a way around it though. A gang in small cheap ships could kill you. They would lose their small cheap ships, though they wouldn't care, then accomplices could scoop your drop without fear of attack from NPCs. I don't think it was terribly common though.

      • I understand what you say, but EVE is a great game. What might be unacceptably rude in other games is what gives it it's excitement. Playing a game which is fundamentally unfair, and which has meaningful risks, is something that's become alien in the post coin-operated arcade days.

        Anyone who acts like that in a game that ISN'T designed to be like that is just being a griefing idiot though. Everything in it's place and all that; most games can't work with it, EVE couldn't work without it.

    • I completed the first 3 back in the day. Great games, but those didn't seem to keep track of virtue. Gutting towns in Ultima 3 was a good way to get gold, and when you left came back everyone was resurrected.

      Even lord British could be taken out, if only by boat cannon.... But again, only till you left the city and when you returned he was back.

      "ug me tough"...

  • Uhoh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In before we get another C&D happening again.

    Yes, it may be different this time, but nobody cares about that these days.

    Let's just hope that doesn't happen.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 )

      This is the same team that did an Ultima V remake and didn't get a C&D. They reached out to EA, and former Origin employees. This has been a very visible project.

      They also released a blank slate version of their project called Project Britania, which allows you to easily make your own Ultima game.

  • Ultima 4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by ytm ( 892332 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:49AM (#32848974) Homepage
    It's worth to metion that Ultima 4 has a remake too: http://xu4.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html [sourceforge.net]
    • I think almost all the Ultima's have had a remake or are currently having one made. I'm at work so I can't pull up the list I used to have, but a simple google will bring up a ton of remake projects. One of my favorites, and completed I think 2 years ago, is http://www.u5lazarus.com/ [u5lazarus.com] utilizing the original Dungeon Siege engine. It's pretty impressive if you are into the series. V is my favorite of them all.
      • Re:Ultima 4 (Score:5, Informative)

        This is an extension of the Ultima V Lazarus code. It is many of the same team members.

        • Awesome, thanks for the heads up. DS engine I assume? I'll check it out this evening. U6 was the first Ultima I played on a PC. It made me and my buddy save our money to upgrade to an EGA (maybe VGA) card and a Sound Blaster. We were total computer newbs and couldn't figure out why the game we installed (nasty shades of purple) looked nothing like the back of the box. And it was amazing what the sound card did for the game compared to the PC speaker. Ahh, I know what I will be doing this weekend! Th
  • by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:49AM (#32848976) Homepage

    I notice there wasn't anything on the site saying/acknowledging the copyrights/trademarks of the original Ultima...

    Queue up the DMCA takedown notice, and the inevitable "oh, the evil DMCA takedown notice" slashdot article...

  • I enjoyed Pagan. It's the game that got me into fantasy RPGs.
    • by Zediker ( 885207 )
      I dont know. Since u8:pagan was widely critisized and considered uncomplete and a failure compared to U6 and U7. I think it would be one of the more difficult remakes as the team would have to fill in alot of plotholes, content, etc.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bozzio ( 183974 )

        It's funny, as a kid I remember thinking all of those "legends" that kept coming up but that you never encountered were a pretty cool addition to the game. After all, not many games I played at that age took the time to create atmosphere and a background story for the game universe.

        Later, when I learned these were parts of the game that weren't accessible due to bugs (or simply not having been developed) it sort of took away the mystique ;)

        I remember they eventually issued a patch (I still remember downloa

        • by Zediker ( 885207 )
          In all honesty, I would love to get involved in a project like this. It would be interesting figuring out how to pull apart the old software and remake the game.
        • by Zediker ( 885207 )
          Heh, already looks like someone is working on this: http://pentagram.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
          Though it appears to be more of an engine port to run the game under modern OSes
      • I never knew that. I'm definitely downloading this remake now!

        Thanks for the info.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Enderandrew ( 866215 )

        All of the Ultima games have massive plotholes and inconsistencies. Heck, in the early Ultima games, you could be a friggin' Hobbit.

        Ultima VIII wasn't as much of a massive sandbox as Ultima VII. It was far shorter, more linear, and there was no party. As a stand alone game, Utlima VIII is pretty good actually. As a follow-up to perhaps my favorite PC game of all time, it falls short.

        • Want a fun sandbox experience with U8? Google u8cheat.exe. There were so many cheating and debugging options in that game you could set up just about anything, sandbox-style. I used to have more fun playing around with the cheats than I did with the actual game.

        • by Glock27 ( 446276 )

          All of the Ultima games have massive plotholes and inconsistencies. Heck, in the early Ultima games, you could be a friggin' Hobbit.

          I believe this was a direct result of the "hobbit/halfling" race in D&D.

          It was nice having hobbits, rather than "gnomes". Those belong on a lawn someplace. ;-)

          Frozo...right.

  • Looks like the site is down.... Wanna bet that Electronic Arts shut it down?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by GeorgeS ( 11440 )

      Nope...just slashdotted. It's responding again now.
      They should probably release a torrent version to cut down on the server loads.

      • by shish ( 588640 )

        Nope...just slashdotted. It's responding again now.

        And now down again :( (Responding, but with a "site is experiencing difficulties at this time" notice)

  • Dungeon Siege (Score:5, Informative)

    by tangent3 ( 449222 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:57AM (#32848998)

    It's implemented as a huge Dungeon Siege mod. An installation of Dungeon Siege is prerequisite

    • Really? /me goes to check before cancelling download...

      • Re:Dungeon Siege (Score:5, Informative)

        by naz404 ( 1282810 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @06:15AM (#32849062) Homepage
        Yup. It's a Dungeon Siege 1 mod, just like the Ultima V - Lazarus remake project. [u5lazarus.com]

        Crap. Don't have my Dungeon Siege disks anymore :-/

        On a related note, Ultima VII (which you can play on modern PCs w/ shinies using the Exult engine [sourceforge.net]) is still the best Ultima of all time - its NPC AI was revolutionary for having rotating schedules and jobs, which Oblivion & Fallout 3 copied.
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You say that as if Oblivion and Fallout 3 are different games.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Zarhan ( 415465 )

          Rotating schedules and jobs were actually introduced in Ultima V (and enhanced in VI and VII).

          • by Khyber ( 864651 )

            I was about to say. I hated having to wait for sunrise to buy myself a damned frigate, or waiting for 1Am/PM for guard rotation so I could get me a magic carpet and sandalwood box.

        • AVATAR!!!!!
          • I had so many memories of this game when that movie with the blue people came out. I went looking for my 3.5" floppy box.

        • Ultima V had NPC with rotating schedules (I think it was the first Ultima that implemented day/night cycles). At certain hours NPC would leave their post and go to eat or sleep or wander around.

          • I've learned to loathe day and night schedules. They were cool at the time when the night facilitated some events, but most of the time, you were forced to find some place to sleep and wait for the day so you could actually do stuff. Some might say that is realistic, but honestly, I don't play video games for realism.
            • by nomadic ( 141991 )
              Ehh, I liked it. Especially when you were trapped deep in Blackthorn's castle, for example, and had to hide until the guards went to sleep.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Carewolf ( 581105 )

          In a related note, Ultima VII (which you can play on modern PCs w/ shinies using the Exult engine) is still the best Ultima of all time - its NPC AI was revolutionary for having rotating schedules and jobs, which Oblivion & Fallout 3 copied.

          Oblivion and Fallout III are nowhere near even Ultima V's system, many of the NPCs never really move much and the plot in Fallout III is completely scripted. They have sacrificed this old-time realism and openess for being more accesible. Morrowind was actually criti

        • by Azghoul ( 25786 )

          Eh, bull shit. Ultima III was better. What other game could you play with an Other Fuzzy Fighter in your party?

        • by sa1lnr ( 669048 )

          Can't double check (site down) but I'm almost sure you need Legends of Aranna too.

    • Awe that's so unfortunate, I really wanted to check this out :/

  • I think these are the same people who did the Ultima 5 remake, "Project Lazarus".

    Wonder if they'll take on U7 next... but I think it will be hard to improve on the original. It doesn't have 3D graphics, but the world in U7 is beautiful and alive even in plain old 2D.

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  • by zr-rifle ( 677585 ) <{moc.rdez} {ta} {rdez}> on Friday July 09, 2010 @06:24AM (#32849098) Homepage
    I have very fond memories of Ultima 6. It was the first RPG game I played that had a real depth. Many feature were groundbreaking for its time, such as the daily and nightly schedules for the NPCs, the non-linear storyline and enormous freedom you had in exploring the world. The plot was very well written, dealing with a powerful culture clash between two races, humans and gargoyles. The gargoyles started out as a seemingly stereotyped enemy, but actually turned out to be a very evolved and intelligent race fighting for their survival, and that you had to befriend in order to reach the common goal: peace. A stunning work of art created by Richard Garriott, Warren Spector and Dr. Cat.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by yanyan ( 302849 )

      I have many many fond memories playing U6 when i was about 10 years old. The game universe was so vast that i played it non-stop for almost 3 years. I always found new things to do in the game, new people to talk to and new things to talk to them about, new spells, new dungeons, everything. It was truly an engaging and enjoyable game with a depth that i find unmatched in more recent games.

  • I would really love for something like this (or Baldurs Gate) on the iPad - I have been waiting for a decent RPG to come out for the iPhone platform since it was released.
    • by Jorth ( 1074589 )
      I assume from your comment you do not enjoy JRPG's then? As Square Enix have made available a number of classics in Final Fantasy 1 & 2 and even an iPhone exclusive which the name of escapes me now. Whilst this is definitely not teaming with RPG's I too hope that they start to come out more and more.
      • The Final Fantasy games have never interested me unfortunately.
      • CHAOS RINGS. (In all caps, unfortunately, at least in the app store listing. It's ChaosRings on the app icon itself on the home screen.)

        The control schemes suck in FF1 and FF2, or I'd actually play them. You can't slide your finger between the d-pad buttons; you have to actually lift your finger between changing directions or it won't work. I can't recall whether Chaos Rings behaves the same way.

        I bought all three apps mostly for moral support... if we don't buy any RPGs, nobody will make more.

  • Find it here. [googleusercontent.com]

    Alternative chaches welcome, Coral Cache just showed the site down notice, too.

  • I hope they retained Ultima 6's conversation system, which was completely "free-form" and did not limit you to a fixed set of lines. Would anybody happen to know about that? I haven't seen any other RPG since U6 that has a "free-form" conversation system; even U7, disappointingly, used preset conversation options.

    • Which was always great for shortcutting things...

      name
      job
      health
      mantra
      rune

      Sure saved a lot of running around in Ultima IV

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Culture20 ( 968837 )

        Which was always great for shortcutting things...

        name
        job
        health
        mantra
        rune

        Not to mention

        spam
        spam
        spam
        humbug

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by aapold ( 753705 )
        Actually it entirely keyed on the first four letters. When asking about virtues, you could ask about: humidity compression sacrilege etc...
    • I bet that was dropped because of the i18n problems: First, developing a parser that could handle several languages could be a huge job and the translations themselves would be lot more work -- this might not be evident if you only speak latin languages but this really isn't a trivial task. Second, while you can often sell the english version of a game to people who are not 100% fluent in english, the requirement to "form sentences" raises the bar considerably.

    • by acid06 ( 917409 )
      There was a French online RPG called The 4th Coming (T4C) which had free-form conversations with NPCs. It never gained a lot of popularity though, but there still are some online servers for it (google at your will).
  • You would think /. would learn to use cacheing services on small sites likely to be slashdotted by them. Or better yet, they should implement one themselves.
  • Alright, now that thats done, whos up for creating the Ultima Online 2 [youtube.com] that never came out?
    • It was technically called Ultima X and it was scrapped. They used the 3d resources they had created in the latest revamp of Ultima Online. If someone sunk a massive amount of money into the project, it could possibly turn out ok. But more likely than not they'd try and make a WoW clone like everyone else and fail miserably.
      • There were actually two different Ultima Online 2 projects. The first was called Ultima Online 2 and was cancelled after nearly 3 years of development. Then they repeated the whole process with Utlima X.

  • U6 and Legalities (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Draconi ( 38078 ) on Friday July 09, 2010 @09:51AM (#32850676) Homepage

    I just wanted to mention that the U6 remake should generally be safe from legal action from EA, not because of any inherent "rightness" about what they've done, but because of the generally benevolent attitude EA has taken in the past concerning the core Ultima game remakes.

    When I was on the Ultima Online team the U5: Lazarus mod for Dungeon Siege came out, and I actually chose a copy of Dungeon Siege II (if I remember correctly) for the weekly developer prize just so I could download the mod and play it. Our producer at the time was asked by the corporate legal department about it, and since it didn't harm UO, and possibly helped boost marketing recognition for Ultima in general, EA decided not to do anything as long as the remake didn't turn a profit.

    In general, EA barely remembers the Ultima IP exists - except to co-opt it for brand recognition (such as the new web-game RTS). UO remains an excellent source of revenue for the company, but even with its millions and millions a year is considered extremely minor compared to the core franchises.

    As long as the U6 remake team doesn't turn a profit from this, I couldn't imagine EA taking action, especially since the current UO team would still have a minor bit of input at Mythic. For the curious, no, server emulation for UO is not looked kindly upon by the legal department, yet no significant action was taken in all the years I worked there.

    Meanwhile, for U6: I pray that the conversation system and scheduling systems have been converted. People remember Ultima 7 as the most "advanced NPC AI" yet U6 had almost all those features before they were perfected in U7, *and* the conversation system was a model for keyword/response recognition for any interactive games to follow. Ultima Online's own NPC speech system was based on U6's, boasting 13,000 unique lines of text before they were scrapped in 1999-2000 during a localization of the game where the translations were projected to cost something like $250k.

    As with the Lazarus project, I just want to give my hearty thanks and appreciation to the team who created this. We dreamed of doing updated Ultima remakes at EA, but never gained any traction. Thank you for doing what we couldn't!

    • by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      It is sad in general to see all the Origin IP end up as abandonware except for what remains of UO which is barely on life support.

      Origin IP is so different from the modern games which are just about how to frag someone or grief them online. What is even more ironic is the plot about Origin games -- of course, we had the Kill Foozle plotlines in U1/U2/U3. U7-U10 were one big Kill Foozle serial with a "meh" ending. However, U4-6 were unique in the respect that they were not "OMG, evil boss... kill it!" typ

  • Ultima 6 was created with a fatal flaw in the game.
    Normally, you are supposed to be started out on a quest, first you need to take the Book of Prophecies to Mariah at the Lycaeum, then find the two silver tablets to decipher it. Then you go on some kind of long fetch quest to find all the hidden map pieces. Then the map finally tells you how to find to the cave which leads to the gargoyle world.

    Or you just use the Orb of the Moons and skip ALL of that stuff, traveling directly to the gargoyle world.

    Now if

    • I remember that I accidentally broke the whole treasure map plot by finding the treasure cave on accident by just sailing around the world map with my new ship I had just bought. I always wanted to go back an play the game through the correct way after I played U7 and part 2, two of my favorite game of all time, but I never got around to it.

  • I'll play it if... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JoelWink ( 1846354 )
    ...I can kill Lord British.
  • They aren't coming up, they apparently got slashdotted.
    Any mirrors out there?
  • Seriously, people, if you're going to announce something Slashdot-worthy, make sure your site is Slashdot-capable.

    Anyone know of a site that isn't down where I can download this project from?

  • Hey, can we get a remake that DOESN'T require DS to play? We've got plenty of game engines out there for free that are probably good enough to handle this sort of thing.

    Hell, I'm *STILL* playing the ORIGINAL Ultima V through DOSBox. I've got a cloth world map of Brittannia autographed by Richard Garriott himself, using the Lord British moniker.

    REMAKE IT WITH A DIFFERENT ENGINE, PLEASE!!!

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