Titans of Ether— Ultima Fan Game

This is an Ultima fan-project that I've been following for some time now; it seeks, I believe, to create a more fitting conclusion to the Ultima series than did Ultima: Ascension.

Thus far, I'm rather impressed.

I'll confess that I'm a somewhat casual fan of Ultima: I've played Ultima 4, 7 (including Forge of Virtue and Serpent Isle), 8 and 9, and have read a fair bit of the lore behind Ultima. Nevertheless, from what I've seen the developers behind this new game show a quite impressive attention to the history and lore of Ultima, and have crafted a storyline that looks rather interesting.

I believe that it has been under development in Morrowind's engine, but is intended to move over to OpenMW, an open-source recreation of Morrowind's engine..

Has anyone else looked at this, and if so, what do you think?

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Is no-one else interested in this project? I'll confess that I'm a little surprised, given the interest in Shroud of the Avatar and the promising progress that Titans of Ether has already made.

(If such a bump — and I intend to do it only this once if no-one responds — is disliked, then please forgive me; I did a quick search and didn't find anything that seemed to indicate a policy on bumping. ^^; )

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Eh, people nowadays don't seem to be curious about titles they haven't heard of :P And Titans of Ether doesn't really scream "Ultima".

Fair enough — although it is directly related to Ultima 8, I think (in which I seem to recall that the Avatar became the "Titan of Ether").

I've sent a Holler to the mods asking for a change to the thread title to reflect that this is an Ultima fan game.

In all fairness, I may well have passed over it myself, now that I think about it. ^^;;

Thank you very much for taking the time to so respond! ^_^

[edit] In fact, they seem to have done so by the time that I posted this — to whichever mod was so quick, thank you too! ^_^

edited 3rd Apr '13 7:05:37 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

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Either way, don't rise your hope up too much, some threads just won't take off for some reason. I've created few one post threads before on some obscure indie games and such and there is more or less official Ultima stuff coming up so that might hog attention from this.

Oh, don't worry, I seem to recall that I've done similar myself. I was just a little surprised that a project like this — ambitious and, to my eye, somewhat promising — seemed to get no response at all.

Thank you again. ^_^

edited 3rd Apr '13 8:31:10 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

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No problem, you are welcome

A few updates have been posted!

To summarise, if I have it all correct:

• The game is still very much underway.
• They've decided against having a party: between technical issues with Morrowind and the problems of having a party in a first-person game, it seemed better to leave it out. That said, the Companions are apparently intended to be a part of the game, a
• New screenshots and music! The screenshots show their interpretation of Britain, which looks to be big and rather lovely, with some interesting statuary and rather cool fountains of what seems to be blue fire. The music is apparently a remix of the intro theme from Ultima VI, and is a lovely piece, I think.

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Hmm, to clarify, this isn't fan remake or anything but a fan game to replace the crappy ninth game?

Why pick Morrowind as their base engine? As opposed to Oblivion's? It's just as moddable (And honestly, a better gameplay engine).

Also, I will admit watching the horrendous grammar on their FAQ doesn't fill me with hope about the writing. (Yeah, I write like crap too, but I am not writing the advertisement for my project that is supposed to get people psyched about it).

edited 16th Apr '13 9:56:49 AM by CobraPrime

That is my understanding, yes: a new ending to the Guardian Saga, I believe.

I don't know their own reasoning (and a quick search turned up nothing), but I note that the project seems to have been going on since before Oblivion was released: I see developer diaries going back to at least 2004, I believe.

Given that, I imagine that they started using the Morrowind engine fairly early on, and I think that it's not likely wise to keep trying to upgrade to the latest engine, as each change likely sets one back significantly.

If it goes on for much longer then even if they did change to the Oblivion engine they could still be asked why they didn't change over to the Skyrim engine...

Ugh, that isn't wonderful to read, I will admit. :/

I've now raised the point on their fora, I believe — thank you for pointing it out.

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An update on the issue of the grammar in the FAQ:

In short:

• The FAQ is old
• The writer speaks English as a second language
• The writing that goes into the actual game is checked by native English-speakers.
• The homepage is to be updated

The original post can be found here for those interested.

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