- ROLE
- Creator, as "Tamino"
- DATES
- 2000–2001
- STACK
- C++TCP/IPmachine language
- STATUS
- Past
Ethereal Void was a server emulator for the pre-alpha of Ultima Online, which I built in 2000 and 2001 under the handle Tamino. The pre-alpha client, the first one ever released to the public in 1996, had been lost for years. I found it in an old, forgotten FTP archive. It wasn’t playable, though. When started, it just displayed a black screen because the game servers, run by Origin for a brief period in 1996 for the pre-alpha tests, had shut down long ago. I brought it back by writing a server for it in C++ and machine language, speaking its TCP/IP protocol.
The Ultima Online fan archives credit Tamino as the first known person to get that client running again. A 2009 BetaArchive thread names Ethereal Void as one of only two pre-alpha server emulators ever made, and sums it up as “working, but there was no combat.”
Only 25 small screenshots survive, kept with their captions by the archivist Razimus: House Ruins, Bridge of Death, Orc Fort, Where the Alpha Ended.
