New York-based non-profit organization The Moth is, according to their About page, "dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It was founded in 1997 by the novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, when moths were attracted to the light on the porch where he and his friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales." The group does a weekly (I think) podcast…and it just so happens that a recent edition thereof featured none other than Lord British himself.

* * *

Now this is just cool.

David Ribeiro sent me an email a few days ago with a link to the listing of what are called The Richard Garriott Papers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Of course, the name is something of a misnomer, seeing as how the collection "includes papers, hardware, software, published videogames, design documents, production materials, promotional material, oversize art and artifacts that document Garriott's career in game design and production, the daily business of his former company Origin Systems, Inc., and various personal adventures.

The bulk of the collection relates to the development, production and promotion of Origin videogames, including the entire Ultima series. Design binders document games both published and unpublished at various states of development. Hand-drawn maps on graph paper represent Garriott's earliest attempts at designing and coding a videogame, dating to Garriott's first published game Akalabeth: World of Doom and earlier."

I found the original press release for the creation of this treasure trove of Origin documents and items; it's interesting to look at the one small picture of people who attended the inaugural event, and I'm sure many of the faces will be familiar to you Dragons and Dragonettes. That news release led me to what appears to be the official website of the University of Texas' Video Games Archive, where The Richard Garriott Papers currently reside.

I also managed to locate the archivists' blog, which is (appropriately enough) named Continuous Play.

I highly recommend at least parusing the index of the Garriott Papers; some of the stuff they have in their collection is simply amazing. I mean…the original Apple II Plus that Lord British used for his early coding work? Get out.

It might prove that evolution can happen rapidly, however, if the bacteria that are the probable focus of NASA's news conference today are the same aresnic-devouring bacteria which came to light back in 2008. Granted, that's a pretty huge adaptive leap, going from being merely a consumer of arsenic to being a life form that is, in part, based on arsenic...but that may well have been what has happened here.

More here at my Examiner.com page.

Support my Movember campaign!

I joked, some time ago, about building a Minecraft-based model of Britannia.

Now, I don't know if the Rules of the Internet state, at any point, that any articulated idea will, after a set time, be found online…but we had that rule in computer engineering, and it usually worked.

And now, it has worked again.

Seriously...how awesome is this?

Ian Albert may be known to some of you Dragons and Dragonettes already, for his excellent 1:1 maps of Ultima 6 and Ultima 7. (By "1:1″, I mean that one pixel on the map equals 1 pixel in the game…so yes, the maps are massive indeed.)

Building off of his work with Ultima 6, he created a Java application that took the data from the original Ultima 6 map data files and converted it into a blocky 3D world within Minecraft. The conversion is nearly perfect, apart from a few small edits made to get around specific issues with the Minecraft engine. (For example, two trees near Nicodemus's house had to be deleted because they were catching fire and burning down half of Britannia.) He also had to make some lengthy connective corridors in order to properly link together those dungeons that cross-connect in the original game.

I've added a project entry for it; you can download the necessary world file for Minecraft there. You'll need a copy of Minecraft Alpha to play it, though.

Movember? What the? Yeah, some of you are probably asking that right now. Others may already know.

The Movember concept, if you will, started back in 2003, in Australia; it has grown since then to include Canada, the US, UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, the Netherlands and Finland.

The official story: "The plan was simple — to bring the moustache back as a bit of a joke and do something for men's health. No money was raised in 2003, but the guys behind the Mo realized the potential a moustache had in generating conversations about men's health. Inspired by the women around them and all they had done for breast cancer, the Mo Bros set themselves on a course to create a global men's health movement.

In 2004 the campaign evolved and focused on raising awareness and funds for the number one cancer affecting men — prostate cancer. 432 Mo Bros joined the movement that year, raising $55,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia — representing the single largest donation they had ever received.

…In 2009, global participation of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas climbed to 255,755, with over one million donors raising $47 Million for Movember's global beneficiary partners…last year's Canadian campaign was the second largest in the world behind Australia, with 35,156 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas coming together to raise $7.8 million for Prostate Cancer Canada."

This year, I've joined the Movember team formed in my department at work. And I have a bit of a personal stake in the matter, not because I am myself stricken with prostate cancer, but because a close family friend — the ever-smiling uncle who always used to visit us kids with bags of M&Ms in his pockets — had to go through some pretty rough treatment when he was diagnosed with it earlier this year.

He made it through; 4400 men in Canada alone won't have been as lucky, by the end of 2010. So if you can spare a few dollars, good Dragons and Dragonettes, hit up my donation page.

And if you're interested in learning more about the work that is being carried out as a result of Movember funds, feel free to read the details here.

(And of course, feel free to share cancer-related stories or other relevant musings in the comments.)

Just a handful of Origin masterpieces.

Kotaku's Luke Plunkett thinks so. [Update: link fixed! -- Ed.] And I, for one, cannot disagree.

Don't get me wrong: there are a few other phenomenal game developers out there. I'm less sold on Bungie since Halo, admittedly (although that has more to do with the fact that the series went to the XBox; I still love Marathon), and I love me some BioWare (they're kind of like the Pixar of the gaming industry: even their not-so-great games are better than some of the competition's good games). But there is a point to be made about developers like these, which Plunkett hammers home:

…while I applaud "specialist" developers – those like Valve who continually progress the one genre or series – to me, if you're going to talk about the greatest PC developer of all time, it needs to be one that has proven itself across multiple generations, genres and series. Why? Because if a developer can come top of the **** in more than one kind of game, it shows that there's brilliance running right through the company, not just in the engine room or art department.

It's why a studio like Irrational, which has brought us everything from Freedom Force to System Shock 2 to BioShock is so revered. The same can be said of Bullfrog, which was able to jump from Theme Park to Magic Carpet to Syndicate without missing a beat.

While I have great respect for all the developers named above, though, none can match the standards set by Origin Systems.

Plunkett correctly notes that Origin released games in many genres (RPGs, FPSs, flight sims, so-called "interactive movies") and almost always did it well. Some of the biggest names in the gaming industry were either inspired by, or worked directly for, Origin at one point or another. They could (seemingly) do almost anything; even the modern MMORPG craze owes much to Origin's Ultima Online.

Sadly, Origin did not last, due to a combination of their own mistakes and meddling from Electronic Arts, which back in 2004 had a much-deserved reputation as the place that good game franchises went to die. EA is quite a bit different nowadays, thankfully, and Origin's spiritual successor — BioWare Mythic — will hopefully be able to do at least some (if not all) of the grand things it has planned for the various Origin IPs that, as Plunkett notes, EA has been sitting on (and doing precious little with) since 2004.

I've been meaning to restore/overhaul the gallery at Ultima Aiera for a while, and I can think of no better way to kick that process off — and to thumb my nose at Lord of Ultima's ridiculously-named new update, which launched just recently — than with sixteen photographs of maps that were part of the original design for Serpent Isle, back when the game was supposed to have a more Caribbean flair, with a focus on pirates and voodoo magic.

All sixeteen pictures were generously provided by Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum.

Some further details on exactly what the original Serpent Isle was supposed to be about can be found at Sheri Graner Ray's blog:

Originally Bill Armintrout and I were doing the initial design on Serpent Isle. The mandate we were given by Richard and Jeff George (the producer at that time) was that it was to be about the conflict between Brittanian magic and VoDun (VooDoo) magic. And that the island was to be called Serpent Isle because it we were suppoesed to make it in the shape of the snake necklace that Richard wore (and still does, I think.) So I spent a month at the UT LIbrary checking out and reading books on VoDun as that was my side of the design. We'd been in design about three or four months when there was a "re-org." Jeff George quit and the game was given to Warren Specter to produce. We were told to essentially toss everything out and start over. I recently gave the maps and docs from the earliest part of that design to the Origin Museum.

And so the circle is complete: here are those maps.

And for more Serpent Isle goodness: check thou out Sergorn Dragon's Ultima Adventures, where at present he is working his way through, yes, Serpent Isle. And don't forget to check out his fan project set in the land as well!

My team leader has just posted the September news update for the Ultima project he's heading up (and for which I am doing worldbuilding), Return to the Serpent Isle.

He makes mention of the character creation video that was news earlier in the month, and of the various other systems that have been developed and/or updated for the project. The team is currently exploring the feasibility of having in-game scripted sequences — of the sort that were so commonplace in Serpent Isle; work is also proceeding on adjustments to the Neverwinter Nights 2 crafting system.

Additionally, their (our?) talented musician, Panu Altio, has produced two more excellent pieces for the game's soundtrack; yours truly has heard them, and they are awesome.

And then there's this:

I swear I've had this feeling here before...

Which is to say: worldbuilding has begun in earnest! I've been working on the overland map of Claw Isle and on a beach with a shipwreck, while team member and coder Loony has been working on a fishing area. The team has even added a Media page to the site, as well as a Team page.

Finally, he re-iterates that the project is still in need of 3D artists. They are also looking for writers and worldbuilders. So if that describes you, Dragons and Dragonettes, why not sign up?

(And yes, I designed the area pictured above.)

I was alerted to the existence of this project on Tumblr (Aiera has a Tumblr feed; the developer followed it) a couple of days ago, and have taken the step of adding a project entry for it at my Ultima website.

Because, really, the prospect of this…

Not an actual screenshot, sadly.

…is awesome.

If you were following Paul Barnett's Twitter feed yesterday and today, you'll have noticed some exceedingly exciting news. Granted, it's nothing to do directly with Ultima, but I would direct the good reader who hasn't already heard that Mythic Entertainment and the folks behind DOSBox have been talking to get themselves up to speed on the matter. (Yours truly has played a small role in it.)

It started yesterday with this heady news:

I missed Wing Commander's 20th birthday?

Which was followed a while later by a call to arms of sorts:

If you're on Twitter, do this!

And hear this, ye Dragons and Dragonettes; if you have a Twitter account, click the link above and retweet this message! I'll explain why shortly.

Moving on, the news this morning was even more incredible:

This is promising...

Followed shortly thereafter by:

...and here's hoping this gets passed!

Now, what does all this mean?

Well, on the face of it, it means that Mythic is working hard to get a DOSboxed version of Wing Commander built and (now) approved by EA's legal department.

But as I said above, any Dragon or Dragonette with a Twitter account should immediately retweet the tweet by Paul Barnett I indicated above, because it goes to demonstrate that Ultima fans are every bit as hot to trot, every bit as keen on a re-release of the series, as are Wing Commander fans for their favourite Origin Systems title(s).

If Mythic can get a Wing Commander game DOSboxed and pushed out onto Steam, Impulse, or Good Old Games, that puts them in a very good position to do the same with any or all of the Ultima titles. Even Savage Empire and Martian Dreams.

"Long before America was even an idea, this land of plenty was home to many peoples. The British and French, the Dutch and Spanish, to Mexicans, to countless Indian tribes. We all shared the same land,"she had to say at a recent Tea Party rally.

Mexicodeclared its independence on September 16, 1810. It was recognized on September 27, 1821.

The United States of America declared its independence in 1776.

UPDATE:Someone spoiled the joke. The above was ACTUALLY said by Barack Obama, to the Hispanic Congressional Caucus (I think that's what it's called).

Notice how quickly some people assumed it was, in fact, Palin who had said something idiotic, however, without bothering to vet the source (for which I suspiciously did not provide a link).