explodedlibrary.info

one of my favourite mods, Ultima V: Lazarus for Dungeon Siege

Dungeon Siege (2002) was an ok-ish game. I liked the free form class system - where characters would specialize according to the ways they used their abilities. The mule for carrying extra equipment and loot was an inspired invention. The music and the landscapes were well done, as were the goblins with machine guns and flamethrowers - except that there were too many of them. But it was ultimately a generic and repetitive hack and slash game with a threadbare plot.

But today I am extremely glad that I have a copy of it, because it enables me to play Ultima V: Lazarus (which I'll be referring to as just Lazarus), which recently been finished for the Mac.

The original Ultima V was published in 1988 on the Apple II. It was not good timing for a game's posterity, because at this time people were already replacing their Apple IIs and Commodore 64s for Macintoshes and PCs.

One of the developers of Lazarus explains the reason for re-making the game:

We're doing Ultima V specifically, rather than, say, IV or VI, for three basic reasons:

First, U5 is old enough that its technology is completely obsolete. Ultima VI-IX are still "playable" with today's computers, but V and those that came before it are very outdated.

Second, no one has ever created any patches or upgrades for it. Ultimas I, III, and IV have all at least been patched, if not completely remade.

Finally, I feel that Ultima V has the greatest potential for expansion of all the early Ultima games--its story is rich, its characters are interesting, and its environments are begging to be seen in modern graphics. [official u5lazarus.com web site, in the FAQ section]

Lazarus is actually a mod for the Dungeon Siege game. It's a very inspired combination - mixing a 2 dimensional turn-based game with well-written characters and a rich story into a 3D real-time game engine.

Lazarus is freeware, but a copy of Dungeon Siege (not Dungeon Siege 2) is needed to use the mod. It is definitely a labor of love. It must have been a massive job. I feel that it's unfortunate yet understandable that it took so long to finish, seeing that Dungeon Siege has been superseded and might not be so easy to find these days. I have only just started exploring this game, but have been impressed by the music and interactions between the different characters. It compares very favourably with modern games, and seems to have a maturity which many of them are lacking.

Further reading:

• Wikipedia entry on Ultima V: Lazarus
• Review of Lazarus
• Lazarus wiki

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: "employment of librarians is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations over the 2004–14 period"

The Lethal Librarian wrote this post back in March referring to the Occupational Outlook for Librarians written by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. I missed it at the time, but because it's relevant to the librarian shortage debate, I've decided to repost some of it.

It’s also interesting to note the language they [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics] use - they say in the March 2005 version of the page, “However, job opportunities are expected to be very good because a large number of librarians are expected to retire in the coming decade, creating many job openings.” In the version I saw today, it says “More than 3 in 5 librarians are aged 45 or older and will become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years, which will result in many job openings.” The difference is between “eligible to retire” versus “expected to retire” speaks to me, despite their identical claims about many job openings.

format-shifting in Australia

I guess this is good news. It's not so much a victory for consumers, but an acknowledgement of common-sense and pragmatism. All this decision does is legalize behaviour which people have been doing any way for over 30 years, since the adoption of the analogue audio cassette recorder. Now that this useless legal absurdity is likely to be removed, it will be that much easier to justify the creation of more modern absurdities in intellectual property law.

With the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is obliged to harmonize its intellectual property laws with the US. There was no way of justifying that harmonization only goes in one direction.  - adopting US copyright doctrine in all its 21st century post-DMCA glory - while retaining counter-productive anachronisms which even the US had abandoned.

I have been wanting to link to something more official on this, but so far, all the information seems to be on this seems to be from the print media and other blogs commenting on it. As yet, there is nothing on the Department of Attorney-General's website. I will link to this official information when it appears.

Update: I have just found via Kim Weatherall that there is information about this on the Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's website

Fiona Apple speaks about the making of Extraordinary Machine and the Free Fiona campaign

In her iTunes originals set, Fiona Apple speaks for ten minutes about how Extraordinary Machine came to be. Because of the difference between the spoken and the written word, I've made some edits for clarity ~

She said that she loved the original version which was produced by Jon Brion. "The stuff that we did was beautiful." The problem was that even though she thought the songs were great, they weren't quite what she intended. Fiona felt that she had rushed from writing the songs to recording them, and so she didn't have a clear idea of where she wanted them to go. "And so for lack of intentions and lack of the ability to make any decisions, I just thought, 'well I think I have to kinda start again and try them in a different way.'"

Fiona was adamant that Sony had not shelved the album, because it had never been given to them as a finished product. She did think that they probably didn't like it and couldn't see any hits in it.

She spoke a little about how she knew Mike Elizondo, the person who produced the final version of Extraordinary Machine. After she heard his initial work with the songs, she thought, "Whoa! Ok, I'm awake now, ok I can build meat onto this skeleton, I know what I want with this album now."

The difficulties with Sony started when she was about to begin recording with Mike Elizondo. "So we put a budget together, we were all ready to go and record and at that point a representative of Sony told my manager and I, 'Wait a second, hold on, we're not so sure that you should be doing this.' They said, 'You'll have to do one song at a time, and then, we'll hear the song, and then we'll give you the money to do the next one – oh and you know we'll give you the money to do the next one. We just have to hear it first.'"

Fiona was insulted by this. She was appalled at the possibility that she could finish something which she thought was finished, only to have her record company shelve it. "And then they own a master of something that I’m really satisfied with – which is unthinkable." Fiona was also worried that this would also lead to Sony attempting to write her songs, which would be the beginning of the end for her as an artist.

She decided that she could not work in this way. "So I called up my manager, I just said, really quick, 'Steve, call up Sony tell them I'm not going to record for them anymore. And don't call me back.'" She unplugged her phone.

Fiona did not hear anything on this for months, and she thought that it was over. Then the Free Fiona campaign happened. "I love what they did and I'm really grateful to them, I thanked them in the album and I'm in awe of anyone who can organize to reach a goal – especially something like that for me and my music – that's just incredible. Through what they did and the heat that they created for Sony as well as Steve Barnett coming into Sony made it so that I got the phone call going, 'you can do it with Mike Elizondo, you can record them all, no one's going to ask you to listen to them one by one, no one's going to ask to listen to them at all. Go, be free, be happy, do what you want to do.'"