Team Return has been blessed to have Panu Aaltio (known amongst us crazy fans as Grotto Dragon) writing the music for our game. Some of you will remember the wonderful rendition of Stones he did a decade ago that was used during the Quotes of Ultima V: Lazarus, but Panu is also a professional and very talented composer having already scored multiple films and videogames.

Panu has already been writing several tracks for us for the last couple of years, but we’ve been keeping them under wraps because… well we don’t want to spill all the beans before our releases, do we? His work has constantly been blowing us away because trully: this is the kind of music a fan-made videogame usually don’t get. But we’ve also been wanting to give you a snippet of Panu’s wonderful work and the musical style adopted for Ultima: Return.

And what better way to showcase it, by a rendition of Ultima’s most beloved musical track: Stones ?

So Stones is now freely available on our media page and direcly at this link.

We hope you all enjoy it, and feel free to share your thoughts!

As you can see things have quiet on the Ultima Return site for the last few months. Fear not, while the site has been quiet, work on the project has still been going on. I won’t lie and pretend everything went as smoothly as planned however: some areas are going better than other and while things have been progressing very well on the writing and coding front, worldbuilding has definitely been going slower and other domains like art have basically reached a stand still. This basically lead us to have to take some measure and reorganise the whole team – meaning we are now fewer that we used to, but nevertheless we are still are committed as ever to bring our project to you all even if it ends up taking more time than we’d hope.

You should also have noticed already that our website has been redesigned and… our project has undergone a small title change. So it’s time to bid farewell to “Ultima: Return to the Isle” and hello to “Ultima: Return”. While there are multiple reasons for this change, the main one however is quite simply that the game was already been called “Ultima: Return” informally for over two years now (notably serving as both our website address and twitter account) to the point where it just made sense to shorten the name.

But the big announcement is this: we have decided it is time to officially announce our first upcoming release which is currently being dubbed: “Ultima: Return – Prologue”. This is not the Chapter 1 of Return, but a shorter module that we begun working on slightly over a year ago. Initially conceived as some form of tech demo in order to showcase our gameplay systems and allows us to gain more experience in crafting our game, it has gradually evolved into a short module of its own to basically learn our craft before starting the biggest chunk of the game and offer Ultima fans something to enjoy.

So what will this Prologue be about?

Our Prologue will be taking place on Claw Isle, about twenty years after the original Serpent Isle. As most of you will recall, Claw Isle was inaccessible in the original Serpent Isle where it served solely as a cheating area. So we decided to make something out of it. We have somewhat rearranged the look of the isle for gameplay purpose (less mountains, but more jungles to explore), but in the end it remains where it was.

But what could there be on Claw Isle? That is what you will have to find out, as one of the few survivors of a Britannian ship who passed through the Serpent Pillars by accident and crashed on the mysterious isle. It should be noted that you will play a different character from the one in the maint game (which takes place a couple centuries after this), but while this module will offers what will mostly serves as a standalone story… it will introduce elements that will have a greater impact on the history of the Serpent Isle in the two centuries between this module and the main game, and will resonate and the main plot of the game as well.

We know better than to announce a release date however since there is still a lot of work to do before we reach this point. So we offer no dates and no promises, beside the fact that we’ll do our best to get it ready as soon as humanly possible!

And indeed I can only end this news by our usual pleas, because now more than ever: WE NEED YOU!

The truth is that some of our Team Members have gone AWOL and we were forced to let them go from the team, and so we need more that ever, new people to fill in the blanks and more. While the writing for the Prologue is mostly covered at this point, we definitely need more Worldbuilders and Dungeon Designers if we are to have any hope of meeting a reasonnable deadline. Artists would definitely be welcome as well, both for crafting Character Portraits and 3D Models because as it is unless we do get some talented artists, we will have no choice but to cut Portraits and Stills altogeter and limit ourselves with whatever models we might find within NWN2 and the community.

Of course we also won’t shy away from any help in other domains, as it is never too late to being preliminary work on Chapter 1.

Si if you feel you can contribute, but most importantly have the time to do so and feel motivated, please drop us a note!

Well another day and it would have been March. Whoopsie.

Don’t worry, the lateness of website update in no way means we are slacking off: quite the contrary actually – we are hard at work with an pretty important deadline for the end of March and hopefully a announcement shortly after that will please a lot of people.

So what has Team Return been up to, you will ask?

Well as you must have noticed we released what I call the “Ultima Game System” over at the NWN2 Vault, which basically includes all our game systems. In addition, Jaakko also released stand alone versions of all these systems with an improved 2.0 version of the Unified Systems upcoming. He has also crafted a very complete Books Plugin for the NWN2 Toolset, which allows to write and create book that you can read ingame as well as adding lot of things to them (such as images, or adding xp when reading a specific book…).

Next on his plate? A brand new Journal system, yup!

On the writing front, things are going well, and we’re notably very happy to announce that Kat – our extraordinary writer/editor – is back amongst us. We know now have 7 NPCs currently being written with plan to have all the NPCs for this specific region being finished by the end of March.

On a worldbuilding front, preliminary design work has now begun on our dungeon areas, with the actual building meant to start pretty soon.

So this is it for this month, but as usual let me say:

WE STILL NEED YOU!
We still need extra team members to keep development going and most importantly: make development go FASTER. Writers and Worldbuilders would definitely come in handy, and we are still sorely lacking in 3D Artists. While NWN2 has a lot of art, and there is a lot we can use from the community – if we want to create some real Ultima creatures and placeables – we definitely need 3D artists to craft these new objects, keeping in mind they could also come in handy for other projects!

Again: this project will not be finished without you!

See you all next month!

Features includes:

Cumulated with JansonNH’s mindblowing Sea Travel System and Uncle FP’s excellent NPC Schedules System this is everything one would need to create a full fledged Ultima module!

Expect updates and additions over the months are new systems will be grafted to this released, and older ones continued to be improved, but in the meantime you can grab the thing here.

As for us, we’re now back at crafting actualy gameplay content!

First and foremost allow me to apologize for the lack of update in the last couple of month. Things have been a bit more hectic than I would have liked, and we were also hoping to have a special release ready which postponed the update… until unfortunately the new year passes us by.

We’ll do our best not to miss our monthly update anymore!

While we have to confess that production has somewhat slowed down over the last month (but with Christmas and Holidays coming this was to be expected), we’re back with a vengeance and I’m happy to say that there has still bit quite a lot of progress since our last update.

You’ve all of course saw Jolyn’s beautiful portraits, and she keeps working on them as we speak with more incoming.

We’ve been doing some UI work as well, notably crafting a somewhat new look for the dialogue window based on Storm of Zehir’s assets in order to allow you guys to fully appreciate the work Jolyn has been doing with our portraits. Jaakko has also added a new Food bar next to the portrait and our already new Mana bar in order to track in real time if your characters need food without having to go on the character sheets or the inventory.

On the programming front we are now hard at work on crafting a solid unified system integrating all the systems we created for Return in one single package. Expect some news on that front soon. Work has also begun on an editor to allow for careful writing of Books and Scrolls within the game.

As far as writing goes, with all the NPC Profile finally finished we are now hard at work to actually writing our NPCs. Things are progressing pretty well, but a few NPCs already done.

The worldbuilding is also progressing well with most of of our outdoors areas for the current part of the project being close to completion. I’m also happy to announce that MokahTGS know from the Grumpy Strumpet and Realms of Ultima fame has offered his skills to our team and has been doing simply jaw-dropping work.

We hope to finish with the outdoor areas soon, and then begin work on a our dungeons areas which promise to be interesting.

So this New Year begins well for Return and we certainly expect to have something playable to offer you all during 2011!

But even with this new year, some things does not change and indeed:

WE STILL NEED YOU!

We still need extra team members to keep development going and most importantly: make development go FASTER. Writers and Worldbuilders would definitely come in handy, and we are still sorely lacking in 3D Artists. While NWN2 has a lot of art, and there is a lot we can use from the community – if we want to create some real Ultima creatures and placeables – we definitely need 3D artists to craft these new objects, keeping in mind they could also come in handy for other projects!

Again: this project will not be finished without you!

See you all next month!

As mentionned in the last update, production of 2D has now actively begun under the careful care of Jolyn “Nytefall” Kitzer. For those who might not know, she was Ultima V: Lazarus‘ main 2D artist and crafted all the Introduction/Endgame stills of that game as well as many of its character portraits.

She’s back on Return, and I am happy to say she has lost nothing of her talent. Indeed, I am probably biased but I will argue her work here is even better than what she did on Lazarus! You’ll notice Jolyn has also used a somewhat different approach than Lazarus, with a more handpainted feel that just feels fitting.

So without further ado, here are a couple of NPC Portraits we are happy to share with you!

First here comes Alston:

Alston is shall we say, a businessman. Who is a nice and sympathetic but is in it for the money if you get my meaning.

And now here is the lovely Cassandra:

She is a powerfyl Mage, but most importantly a companion for the player !

We have more to share, but we don’t want to spoil all our beans at once now do we ?

We feel very proud and happy to have such talent on hour team in any case, and we hope you all like these portraits (which by the way, have also been added to our media page).

On a side note, it should be pointed that should any 2D artist which to join our team (and this might come in handy down the road – we don’t want Jolyn to collapse from overwork!) it would be important to respect the style Jolyn has set for use and that his presented in those portraits.

Things have admittedly been going a bit slower than anticipated during this last month. Fear not, this has not prevented us from making some progress even if not as fast as we’d hoped.

For starter, Jaakko has crafted a new harvesting system for us. It basically allows resources (such as fruits you can eat or reagents you can collect) to grow dynamically on the world depending on a fixed set of time. Said resources will either be available at a fixed location (while on a regular exterior area) or randomly based on your character’s skills (while on the overland map). We obviously intend to do this in a way that will make harvesting stuff worth it.

On the worlbuilding front, some polishing has been done on the areas mentioned last month which have also been assembled into a single module. Preliminary work has also begun on our main village area and our first dungeon caves, with some maps being drawn up to help our worldbuilders.

I am also happy to inform you that writing has actually begun, with two NPC already written and now in editing phase. A third one is also being written as we speak, with even more upcoming!

We are also working on some modification of the game’s UI – notably in order to offer a bigger dialogue UI that would allow us to show bigger character portraits.

Speaking of which, production of 2D arts has begun as well and we hope to be able to share some of this very soon.

So things continue to progress well, and we hope to have more things to share by the next update!

But as always I can’t finish this update without our usual reminder:

WE NEED YOU!
I really can’t stress enough how much we need extra team members to keep development going and most importantly: make development go FASTER. Writers and Worldbuilders would definitely come in handy, and we are still sorely lacking in 3D Artists. While NWN2 has a lot of art, and there is a lot we can use from the community – if we want to create some real Ultima creatures and placeables – we definitely need 3D artists to craft these new objects, keeping in mind they could also come I handy for other projects!

Again: this project will not be finished without you!

See you all next month!

But first, you might already have noticed that there have been some updates in the last month, as well as some changes on the website. Now if you missed it, don’t forget to have a look at our Character Creation video on youtube and note that you can download it here at NWNVault to try it out yourselves!

Also while it doesn’t include all the logic behind the skills system, it will also give you a good idea of what we are aiming at with them.

You might also have noticed we have put a new Team Roster page, and most importantly a media page which includes some WIP screenshots of the area Kenneth has been working on lately. For indeed I can say it: actual worldbuilding have now begun, and both Kenneth and Dan (which has been transferred from coding to worldbuilding for the time being) are doing a very good job!

On the writing front we have pretty much finished writing the detailed NPC profiles for the area we are working on, and actual dialogue writing should begin very soon. I’m also happy to announce that a new talented writer Chris aka Midnight Crow has joined our writing team as well. We also have another potential one waiting, so stay tuned…

On the musical front, Panu has produced us two wonderful new musical themes. First a dungeon theme, which I dare say it, puts to shame any of the generic crap dungeon music we tend to hear in game nowadays. But most importantly, he has written us a brand new Character Creation theme which is nothing short of breathtaking. Partly inspired by Ultima VI’s character creation, it is both a blend of old style and new music, which gets very reminiscent of the traditional U6 music while evolving into its own thing. Alas I’m afraid we will be keeping it to ourselves for now, but I can promise you our music will not disappoint you!

On the coding front, things have progressed more slowly as there are not that many feature left to implement, so Jaakko is focusing for now on crafting a fully unified system which includes all the stuff we have created during this year in a single and unique module.

Most importantly, we have been giving careful thought about dungeon design – and it became obvious to us that we do NOT want the dungeons in Return to consist solely of repetitive hack’n slash crawls and offer more variety, in the veins of what you could find in Ultima VII, VIII and IX. As such we have been working on trying out any kind of puzzles, secrets or trap we could think of with the NWN2 engine to try out there feasibility – and we’re pleased to announce that short of Jumping Puzzles, pretty much anything IS doable and we will be working very hard on doing dungeons you can all enjoys and worthy of the Ultima name.

In addition we’ve also been trying out the workability of scripted events in the veins that you could find in Serpent Isle and Ultima VIII – and needless to say: they work!

So this is it for September, but we of course need to finish with our usual reminder:

WE NEED YOU!

We still need many more motivated team members, and we are notably sorely lacking in 3D Artists. Also, we could definitely need some extra hands in writing and worlbuilding so if you feel you have a knack for good dialogue, or that you can handle the NWN2 Toolset like a pro do not hesitate to contact us!

This project will not be finished without you!

See you all next month!

Neat, heh?

It is now directly accessible through the menu to your right.