Exult Forum

http://cgi.ebay.com/ONE-OF-A-KIND-Ultim ... dZViewItem

I saw this over at the Underdogs forum.

How real do you think this is? But the seller is rich! (for nearly $2000)

I e-mailed Denis Loubet a few days before the auction was over, and he confirmed the authenticity.

> On 10/13/05, Denis Loubet wrote:
>> The background image of cracked ground was done for a poster for Ultima
>> VIII. The figure of the Avater is my mesh (you can see it in the meshes
>> section of my site) but the pose is by someone else. The female figures
>> in
>> the crystals are only vaugely familiar.
>>
>> Obviously whoever did it had access to the raw graphics files, so that
>> suggests that it was, in fact, done at Origin.
>>
>> It is possible that the illustration is authentic.
>>
>> Denis Loubet
>> dloubet@io.com
>> http://www.io.com/~dloubet
>> http://www.ashenempires.com

=====

From: Denis Loubet
To: Stephen Emond , Daniel D'Agostino , Sheng Long Gradilla , b_kirst@gmx.de, gromitron@gmail.com, geniusloci@sbcglobal.net
Date: Oct 19, 2005 10:57 AM
Subject: Lost Vale Cover

I have researched the cover and tracked down a person who remembers it. It
is authentic, and most likely a cover done by the Origin marketing
department for a never-released addition to Ultima 8.

Denis Loubet
dloubet@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
http://www.ashenempires.com

There has been much talk about it on the Ultima usenet group.
It seems legit, but then I could do that as well and then write "I tracked down a person who remembers it."
So far no proof has been presented, just that he talked to some people and one remembered it (I think he wrote who that was but that proofs nothing).
Insane to buy it for that much money with so little proof...
This auction which makes fun of the Lost Vale box auction, sums it up nicely:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 8227512856

I wasn't happy with the auction either, as I thougt a donation to the Origin Museum was a more legitimate attitude for such an unique item, if authentic. It seemed to me like the guy wanted to make a quick buck on expense of an Ultima fan. I asked Denis Loubet the day the auction started, while this guy never thougt about it until someone suggested it.

by the way, my first post didn't aknowledge that you asked Denis Loubet, I somehow confused it with that the seller claimed he had asked him...

That's a hefty amount for a hobbiest. Maybe someone who'd been fairly high up at Origin bought it.

Would have been nice if the seller / buyer at least made some reasonably good scans of the front and back available. I'd like to be able to read the box-back, and see the screenshots on it clearly.

The scans at dino's page are readable: http://shiftedphase.com/dino/ultima/u8/u8tlv.php#tlvbox

Savage harpies? Water zombies? Man! How is it possible to have been so far in development as to create such a polished game box for it and than have the expansion somehow disappear beneath the sands of time.

Does Dennis know the fate of the 'Lost Vale' disks?

I doubt Denis Loubet knows. He is an artist by comission, not an Origin ex-employee.

Denis Loubet originally worked by comission (for early ultima's), but he WAS hired full time as an employee for ultima V onwards I believe. So I would take his word for it.

I'll try to contribute what I know of the lost LV diskettes, to the best of my memory:

- two separate and unrelated friends of mine both worked at OSI back in the mid-90s, and they both had copies of the unfinished LV diskettes.
- I vaguely remember one of them mention that it was 'a couple disks'. He was on the QA team at the time.
- My other friend was one of the coders on the Crusader project and he was working with the U8 source (Crusader uses its engine, of course). He had gotten a copy of (parts) of the LV source with it.
- Up until around 2000, when both of my friends left OSI in pursuit of other careers, they had the disks 'somewhere'. It is not clear to me whether they kept personal copies, or if they left them at work. I haven't had the chance to talk with them since those days.
- I remember at one point that Jason Ely (U8 coder, among other projects) had mentioned he was working with U7 code as an example for gumps in U8. There is a very high likelihood that he hung on to a fair bit o' code, although that's pure hearsay (even if a lot of my friends confirm that . He's over at Ashen Empires now (formerly called 'Dransik'). I e-mailed him about this a couple years ago, but he didn't reply. Probably a good idea.

As much as i'd love to get my hands on those disks, it'd probibly be a good idea if they never came out. I can't image the legal repercusions that could be felt by the parties involved in leaking something like that.

Although, on second thought, i'd still love to get my hands on those disks...

-ultimaIX

Denis Loubet did 'a lot' of the art for Ultima 8. His website has (had?) the 3DStudio files for The Avatar and Pyros.

^
| still has

My question is. What does EA really care? It's dated. It's only important to die-hard fans (like us). EA hasn't done anything about the Privateer remake have they?

While I realize EA "could" do something. It wouldn't be cost effective to care about an old game enough to take it to court.

We really need to get some of the people that "have stuff" to talk about it. If they want to keep their identity a secret, we should provide them every means to do so.

All that stuff violates NDA (non-disclosure agreements). Why on earth would any reasonable person put their head in a noose when EA is looming a few hundred miles away, for the sake of settling the curiousity of a few fans?

We all know that EA is famous for their brutal business tactics, and silencing a few yappy ex-employees couldn't make them happier. Not that I'm against them sharing this information in any way, but I think being realistic is important here. And we've all seen the attempts at having EA release any source code (for any project): a complete waste of time.

I think, in the end, fan-made projects are the best way of reviving that old stuff. Nobody said LV was going to be a good addon anyway, and I'd be happier seeing a fan-made project based on a few ideas from U8. Maybe pentagram will eventually afford that project.

Nevertheless, I do hope to see the 'Lost' Vale. I am curious to how the add-on progressed the story. I am sure the add-on had patches that addressed plot loopholes.

However, the disks that would turn up would be undoubtly incomplete. We have to hope for talented programmers like the Exult team to use the salvaged data for the Lost Vale.

Which is why Pentagram is so good. If bits of the Lost Vale are ever recovered, it should be much easier to incorporated them (with the understanding gained by making Pentagram).

I agree maybe it is under NDA, but, wouldn't that also apply on the box? The box, for a ultima fan ($2000 dollars worth to some), is in the same way part of Ultima itself.

Why doesn't EA go ballistic on this eBay post?

I think it's right to assume a BIG company like EA will not care, to the point of sueing, about a product that got cancelled 10 years ago. It's simply not cost-effective.

I agree maybe it is under NDA, but, wouldn't that also apply on the box?

Not necessarily, the NDA is mostly in the contract with the programmers and the game artists. An external contractor for the box design or maybe even just for putting the design of the (NDAed) artist on a real box might easily not be hindered by a NDA.
And to me the difference between a box and the real game is apparent and probably to EA as well. And after all it is ONE box. Someone sells it, someone buys it but it remains ONE box. Software is different. Someone puts it online and fromthere the copys multiply.

But yet again, why should EA care? The game is very old. They also do nothing with the characters anymore. If EA really cared, the new remake of Privateer would have been chalenged. Granted developers are still under NDA agreements. But if something were to magically "pop" up with no source...

Well, it is easy to say that when it's not your head on the block, isn't it?

Yes, it is, but we all take certain risks in life. That's why any developer that decides to give info should do so with trustworthy people who would not divulge their identity (like myself).

yup, I'm sure any developer of the Lost Vale would trust you
IT' just that certain risks don't mean EA going after you with all their lawyers and your reputation as trustworthy developer is shot after that...

Anyway, no need to further speculate on that, since it is not in our hands.

I'm pretty sure most NDA's have an expiration date on them as well.

I think the problem is probably more along the lines that any code/content created for the Lost Vale still belongs to EA as it was probably "work for hire".

I bet somebody with a working copy of the near-completed Lost Vale looked at this topic and was sorry he couldn't say anything about having it.
EA definitely would never release it. They're all about the money. They could care less about you... which is why they bought Origin and ruined everything.
Didn't the EA ads all over in Ultima IX: Ascension and the retarded expansions for Ultima Online clue you in?

What perplexes me the most - is that, as far as I've gathered, the game was indeed finished but never released. Then why on earth did EA not release the expansion with the Ultima Collection? The expansion should have been finished before UC - and, it would most likely make UC sell a lot better than it did.. oh well, I guess there's no logic in EA's destructive and sinister behaviour - after all, all they do is destroying worlds; the opposite of good ol' Origin.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but has anyone ever TRIED contacting EA about the use of the code if it did surface? I'm sure this is a stupid question as you would likely never even have access to the people that would even have any say in such a thing.. Just curious is all.

If what I know is correct, Lost Vale was still in pre-production when it was cancelled. If what they did was released, it wouldn't be of any use to anyone other than as a curiosity.

Not true, it WAS finished and was simply waiting to be duplicated for the masses when it was promptly cancelled... So says everything I've read about it on the Ultima Codex.

So if someone out there has the disks on them, you can be rest assured that it's a complete copy and not some unfinished Alpha/Beta Code.

Peg.

Here is an interview between Sheri Graner Ray and Gamebanshee about Lost Vale:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/1 ... rview.html