As some good Readers may be aware, I run several websites, not the least of which is Ultima: Aiera, my project archive site. It’s basically an aggregator for news related to the various projects out there on the great big that have something to do with Ultima. And whether that’s a patch for an existing Ultima title or a remake of an Ultima game using a new (and fancier) game engine, Aiera exists to keep track of everything I can find “out there”.

I’ve been working on updating Aiera all day, so there won’t be anything else done today in the way of blogging. But that’s okay — an article I read in Wired magazine this morning suggested that mixing up one’s content every now and again was a sure-fire technique to spruce up the blog. So I expect thousands of readers now.

Yeah, right!

However, one thing I do want it to get my various blogs a bit better-integrated with each other, and because is kind of the master domain for each of these that means that anything that gets posted to those “other” sites from now on will be mirrored back to here.

So…news from Aiera today.

I was contacted a while back (an inexcusably long while back, as it happens — my apologies!) by a fellow named Zen, who passed along a bit of an addon module for based on the first level of the Abyss in .

As Zen doesn’t have a website to host the project at for himself, he has made it available to the world via , and I have (finally!!) created a project entry for it. Check thou it out, O Reader, if you’ve still got those Dungeon Keeper discs tucked away in a drawer or closet!

Also, I have added a download for the ’s Milestone 5 release to that project’s entry, so if you haven’t grabbed it from somewhere else already, you can now get it there as well.

Other news, courtesy of Dino’s Ultima Page:

Ultima V: Lazarus

Cheerful Dragon has released version 1.29 of his various mods and bugfixes for this remake of . These can be downloaded either at the previous forum link, or via the project entry at Aiera.

Seven Towers Exult Mods

Marzo has released updates to his mods for , for both (Keyring) and (Fixes). The latest revisions of both can be downloaded through their respective project entries at Aiera:

Ultima: Iris

Apparently, the project’s developers took home first prize at the Dusmania 10 hobby game development meeting in , . Congrats!

Ultima 5 for TI Calculators

Ranman has released version 1.01 of his port of Ultima 5 to the calculator. The up-to-date download can be found via the project entry.

Exult

This remake has been updated recently — or, rather, the unstable 1.4 version has been updated, as has and its accompanying tools. The Exult team’s plugins for GiMP have also been updated this month, and the whole mess of things can be downloaded via the project entry.

EUO

This Ultima-inspired game has seen the release of version 0.16 of its rudimentary 3D client, which can be downloaded via the project entry at Aiera.

Ultima Restoration

This comprehensive multi-project has released screenshots of the Kilrathi space station from their remake of . With this completed, they now have all the cities, dungeons, and space stations fully mapped in the game — which, if I do say so myself, is damn good progress!

They’ve also added links to a good couple-dozen modules that I’m going to have to sort through in short order, so…well, it’s nice to know in advance what I’ll be up to for at least part of next week.

Also, the Wing Commander CIC team are attempting to back up what remains of the Origin Systems data library. They are looking for people with experience with this sort of thing, so if you’re one of those people who lives and breathes in backup tapes, you might want to check their project out.

Pic of the Day #496

January 28, 2008

For the duration of our stay in , Grace and I had a running joke going about this sign, which we termed “the running man.” We saw it in a lot of places we were at, including the airports in and — as near as we can tell, it’s meant to point to the nearest emergency exit (that is, it shows you where to run for your life).

greece-02Nov07-482_2.jpg

We started to joke, at one point, that we were being stalked by the running man. Seriously, he turns up everywhere.

This is one of the last pictures I took on our honeymoon, and will be the last of the Greek series in the Pics of the Day that began back at the end of November, 2007, with #437. It was taken at the airport in Athens while we were killing time between our early-morning arrival there (which, despite being a bit physically taxing, I would recommend to anyone — it’s worth it for how quick one can get through the security lines) and our flight’s departure.

It was actually a tricky shot to get right — the light behind the sign is actually quite bright, and I had to boost the camera’s shutter speed quite a bit before the exposure on the sign was somewhere in the vicinity of “proper”. The background is still fairly dark, and this after I boosted the shadow exposure level in . But that’s okay — it still looks neat.

Greece was an amazing experience, and and I are anxious to go back there to tour some more. Sure, parts of it are loud and dirty, and there’s cigarette smoke everywhere you go, but there is an immense amount of history there as well, and some truly beautiful sights to see. And don’t get us started on the food!

Where was this taken?