Lost Sosaria Development Diaries

Filed under Site News

I’ve started a series of development diaries at Lost Sosaria, following in the tradition of some of the other remakes out there.

The first one doesn’t have much to say, admittedly, but for what it’s worth:

In the previous iteration of Lost Sosaria, I had appointed a size of 32 by 32 world units to a square on the graph paper, and then subdivided these into four 16 by 16 areas in turn. The kicker, so to speak, is that developing a 16 by 16 area doesn’t take much less time than developing a 24 by 24 area, which means that I actually trim my invested development time — per area — by a factor of approximately three. So I’m moving faster overall — three times faster, roughly — and overall the scale of the world I’m using is about 56.25% of the previous iteration. Also, it’s easier to be succinct and fit everything important into one area when you’re building to the larger specification.

…

I’m becoming slightly paranoid, and so have adopted a defensive policy to combat the chance that I might irreversibly corrupt the module after an excessive session of editing. As I add each new area to the module without generating a memory fault, I save the module and then copy it to the Mac. This gives me the opportunity to have a current snapshot for testing at all times (since I do all my playtesting and in-game screen captures on the Mac anyhow), and also takes care of my desire to keep a current backup of the module on a seperate drive from the main version.

Also, there are 15 new screenshots up at the Lost Sosaria website, including a series that show the day-to-night transition in the game.

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Blogging Ultima

Filed under Site News

The following isn’t really a project-related update per sé, but it is a rather interesting project (of sorts) that someone has undertaken. It’s Ultima-related, and it’s worth mentioning.

Ophidian Dragon has set out on a quest to play through each Ultima game in sequence, and is blogging his way through each one, offering progress reports, opinions, and other notes on the Ultima title currently occupying his time.

My character is extremely powerful, now, due to the combination of Lord British’s crown (to stop magic), magic axes (to kill monsters rapidly) and invisibility rings (to keep monsters from hitting me). As a result, I decided to tackle the Underworld–although I did exit through Deceit, I will describe my whirlpool experience first. In short, I sailed my ship into the whirlpool, and made a detailed map of the underground realm. There I also encountered Captain John, who looks like a wizard for some reason, and discovered something I had not realized–John first set foot into the Underworld and the Shadowlords were created by him when he killed his three companions! Wow. Random plot detail filled in! To my dismay, there was nothing else in that area–except an exit to dungeon Despise, whose Word of Passage I don’t know. I went back to Britain and asked around, but to no avail. I recall one wizard guy whotold me the mantra; probably he knows the Word.

Click on over and keep up to date with him. For the most part, his reports are pretty by-the-numbers analysis of the games he’s playing, but it’s interesting to see such detailed progress notes — when he’s done, his site might well become a rather definitive walkthrough for the whole Ultima series.

(Frothy mug of ale: Voyager Dragon)

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DOSBox

Filed under General Utilities

Produced by: Peter Veenstra, Sjoerd, Tommy Frossman, Ulf Wohlers
Website: DOSBox
Releases:
* DOSBox 0.7.0 (Windows)
* DOSBox 0.7.0 (Source)
* DOSBox 0.7.0 (Mac OS X)
* DOSBox 0.7.0 (OS/2)
* DOSBox 0.6.3 (Fedora)
* DOSBox 0.7.0 (BeOS)

A handy utility that creates a DOS-like environment within Windows, allowing older DOS applications that don’t work well with Windows to be played under the Windows environment. Also works on a number of other operating systems.

DOSBox can be a bit processor intensive, especially when playing higher-end games like Ultima 8, but most modern systems should be able to handle it.

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Site Updates

Filed under Site News

A bunch of old, dead projects were added to the Cemetary today, more for posterity than anything. I’ve introduced a new article graphic to use for Cemetary entries for which I don’t have another screenshot available — you can see it here on the right. It is my intent that, to the maximum extent possible, this graphic will only be used in the placeholder capacity.

This is the part, then, where the reader looks at the newly-”buried” projects and says “hey, I have a screenshot of that one!”

I’ve also added a handful of utilities to the site, including:

• RDOSUMB
• Screen Thief
• Ultima 7 Save Game Fixer
• Ultima 7-friendly Mouse Drivers
• DOSBox

As well, I have added a specific sub-category for Ultima fonts.

There are a few more updates I’ll be making in the days to come, so stay tuned!

For those who are wondering, the marriage prep seminar that my fiancé and I went to over the weekend went very well overall. Essentially, it confirmed much of what we already suspected: that we’re a pretty good match.

WtFD

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Ultima 7-friendly Mouse Drivers

Filed under SI Utilities, Serpent Isle, U7 Utilities, Ultima 7

Releases:
* [drain file 71 url Generic Mouse Driver - 7 K of memory] ([drain file 71 size])
* [drain file 102 url Microsoft Mouse Driver - 11 K of memory] ([drain file 102 size])

A pair of mouse drivers that consume a fairly small amount of memory. Useful if you are attempting to run the original version of Ultima 7 or Serpent Isle on an older system.

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Ultima 7 Save Game Fixer

Filed under U7 Utilities, Ultima 7

Releases:
* [drain file 114 url U7 Save Game Fixer] ([drain file 114 size])

A simple utility that attempts to correct corrupted savegames. One presumes that this applies primarily to the original version of the game rather than to Exult.