Morgaelin

Ultima VIII: Pagan, is a controversial game.

Putting aside its sadly infamous issues with platforming, clunky combat, and repetitive environments, it was actually well received at its time, with people praising its graphics, sound, and dark atmosphere.

However, it was certainly a big departure from the traditional Ultima games up to that point of time, the concept of overworld was now totally gone (Ultima 6 and 7 had already started to ditch it, but it remained in some sense as the scale of the towns and the wilderness was greatly uneven), there was no party, combat (provided it worked as intended) was no longer tactical, and the magic system was a lot of great ideas that didn't really work well when applied to the gameplay.

This project attempts to recreate the world and the plot of Ultima VIII in a more traditional way, using as a foundation the map of Morgaelin created by Slashing Dragon, and doing a complete reverse data engineering of the original game.

Status

Most of the development was done over August to October 2013, with another wave of work during early 2017 to add support for cutscenes and start doing the hard work of recreating all the conversations and plot. 

The game was open-sourced in 2019, but there hasn't been any real movement.

Right now you can navigate the overworld and some towns, talk with people, and even combat is implemented. The engine should be mostly complete but there's a long way to add enough content to complete the initial goal.

Links

• Source Code
• Devlog
• Online demo (unstable)