Thanks to the patient and amazing Exult team's tireless work putting up with all our endless feature requests, U8 Exult will feature a variety of things never seen in Ultima 7 before.
For example, Mythran's plateau will be an actual plateau high off the ground!
Spent hours porting art from U8 - about 4 hours on tables and broken tables, rope, new wooden walls, cups, new bricks, a wood block.
Also built these buildings for NPCs that have no name and no dialog in the original game. In U8 Exult they'll be fully fleshed out.
As always, this is WIP.
This is work-in-progress, y'all!
ULTIMA 8: EXULT screenshots.
I normally wouldn't include the map editing grid overlay in these, but this time I did so you can see how closely I've matched the dimensions and scale.
Little bit of the Necromancers Enclave near Tenebrae here.
Argentrock Isle's town structures are fully built (including the additional buildings), although interior decoration still has work to do. But that's a later phase of development.
Big milestone though, as this means all 3 vanilla towns are built!
Argentrock Isle construction continues!
Here's another example. Warning: swearing in placeholder dialog.
We implemented Oblivion-style radiant dialog in Ultima 7. NPCs can spot when they're near literally any other NPC, and go up to them and have an Oblivion style brief exchange, with greetings, a couple of lines of dialog, and a farewell. It's fully dynamic.
Very happy to get to raid you!
You did much better than I would have on Clefable too.
Ok, here's some pics of Argentrock Isle which is now under construction. Today, you get pics of Stellos' house, both the original version, and the Ultima 8: Exult version.
Sam and Max, Freelance Police, shoving a bunch of Nazis into an active volcano with their car. They are sitting on top of the car, Sam taking photos while Max eats popcorn. Max: "Sam, you think we'll ever run out of Nazis o bulldoze into volcanoes?" Sam: "Don't talk like that, Max! How else would we while away our lazy afternoons?"
Mornin', folks.
Argentrock Isle is under construction!
We are implementing the whole Lost Vale expansion into U8 Exult!
I think many of us did. It's great that Origin folk we've communicated with have been so helpful, and Sheri has been an absolute legend with Lost Vale. So we can finally build it out, which is truly amazing.
With The Lost Vale, we are working with Sheri to ensure that our implementation of it in U8 Exult is as authentic as we can make it.
This means we will avoid adding things and making new creative decisions any time we don't have to. With all its flaws, you'll play Lost Vale as it was, mostly.
Sorry for the long delay since the last update! I've been very busy! I attended Twitchcon in San Diego!
Updates will be more regular!
ULTIMA 8: EXULT UPDATE:
-Sheri Graner Ray, the main mind behind The Lost Vale gave us a map sketch!
-Tenebrae's named NPCs are now in!
-TheGrayWanderer, is hard at work developing our dialog code.
-We now have a private github repository. Once we have releases, it will all be fully open sourced.
Something new, originally planned but unseen in the original Ultima 8, is under construction in Tenebrae, north of the palace. What could it be?
Addendum: The file-sharing issue is the only real possible long term influence this could have. Possibly corps will torrent less, or they may just be more careful to cover their tracks in future. But file-sharing has been illegal since before Anthropic, OpenAI, etc existed, so none of this is new.
2/2 For long term impact, it depends. If you're someone who disapproves of copyrighted works being used to train generative AI, this settlement is a total nothingburger as it does nothing on that front, and couldn't.
It may bring in a little cash if they didn't buy their copy of your book though.
This settlement is really only about the file-sharing issue, i.e. Anthropic didn't pay for copies of published works. Note that it has no precedential value, and as far as training on legally-acquired works, the Court had basically said that was fair use.
1/2
The settlement is final, the terms won't be altered at this stage.
It isn't a precedent. This case was settled by the parties, and as such no judgment was handed down. Settlements have no precedential value, this won't affect any other company.
Ultima 8: Exult update:
The Tenebrae city walls are complete after an agonizingly long, painstaking process.
Now there are only 3 buildings left in Tenebrae to build out in the structural phase.
The environment, foliage etc looks plain since that all comes later.
Pics are of course WIP.
The always wonderful Highbury Hazard made me in his XCOM 2 stream!
This is badass as hell!
Ultima 8: Exult update.
I spent 8 hours straight building the southern half of the Tenebrae city wall.
Designing it to look exactly the same with the same proportions. It was brutal and painstakingly slow to make it look authentic.
Gallara has been a huge supporter and morale booster for Ultima 8: Exult! Please consider helping her out with this fundraiser!
