Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Only if he is locked in a room with an Apple II or C64.

 

[Infinitron]

Ancient unofficial expansions for Ultima 3: https://ultimacodex.com/2020/12/a-christmas-gift-for-ultima-fans-the-ultimore-egypt-disk-image/

A Christmas Gift for Ultima Fans…the “Ultimore: Egypt” Disk Image

The Ultimore series was a set of expansions for Ultima 3, which were created by Joel Fenton in 1984 and 1985. Fenton reverse-engineered the Ultima 3’s file formats and, using this knowledge, produced the Ultimore add-ons as alternate “Side 2” game diskettes which included new towns and quests. This was achieved without modifying the original game data, so the Ultimore games could be played alongside Ultima 3, and Ultima 3 could still be played to completion as normal.

Five such scenarios were produced: A Divided World, Pirate World, Spaceship Crash, Egypt, and Rule Of The Slave Lords. Most of these are, for now, lost to time; Pix found a copy of A Divided World and blogged about playing through it a few years ago, but until now that’s as much as we’ve known.

Until now, that is. Because this week, a copy of the Egypt disk image was made available by Tobias Hübner (@medienistik) as a Christmas present to the Ultima fandom! You can grab a copy of it from his website, or from the newly-created project entry for the Ultimore games here at the Codex.

And for more information on the series, check out the relevant page at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I tried replaying the best rpg ever made, UVII SI, but the controls were a turn off.

 

[Eisen]

Was having a good time with Ultima 1, until i got to the space, stupid space combat

 

[Infinitron]

RogueU4: https://github.com/Fenyx4/U4DosRandomizer

U4DosRandomizer
Randomizer for Ultima IV Currently this randomizer randomizes the over world map and deals with all the repercussions of the overworld map being randomized.

Requires Ultima IV which is available for free at https://af.gog.com/game/ultima_4?as=1649904300.

1. Download the randomizer from https://github.com/Fenyx4/U4DosRandomizer/releases.
2. Unzip and drop the executable in the Ultima IV directory (same folder as the WORLD.MAP file).
3. Backup your original game. This has an option to restore but don't trust it we're still in alpha.
4. Run the executable.

Options:
-s |--s <seed> The seed for the randomizer. Same seed will produce the same map.
-p |--p <path> Path to Ultima 4 installation. Leaving blank will assume it is the working directory.
-r |--r Restore original Ultima 4 files.
--miniMap Output a minimap of the overworld.
-o |--overworld Sets randomization level for Overworld map. 1 for no change. 2 for shuffle overworld locations. 5 for randomize the entire map.
--spellRemove Put in the letters of the spells you want removed. e.g. "--spellRemove zed" would remove zdown, energy field and dispel.
--mixQuantity Lets you input how much of a spell you want to mix.
--dngStone Randomize the location of stones in the dungeons
--fixes Collection of non-gameplay fixes.
--hythlothFix Fixes an issue with Hythloth dungeon room.
--sleepLockAssist Helps prevent sleeplock in battles.
--activePlayer Allow selecting which characters are active in combat.
--appleHitChance Change hit chance to behave like the original Apple II version.
--diagonalAttack Allow diagonal attacks in combat.
--sacrificeFix Adds a way to gain sacrifice which the shrine says should work.
--questItems Percentage chance to start with a quest item.
--karmaValue Value to override starting karma value for a virtue. Leave blank for random.
--karmaPercentage Percentage chance to override a starting karma value for a virtue. Default 0 (no override).
--spoilerLog Output a spoiler log.
-? | -h | --help Show help information

All the files the randomizer changes get backed up with the extension ".orig" added. Run with '-r' to restore to the original game.

Example: https://imgur.com/qNRxpSy

 

[Infinitron]

https://ultimacodex.com/2021/02/exult-will-now-play-the-extended-serpent-isle-intro-movie/

Exult Will Now Play the Extended “Serpent Isle” Intro Movie

Some big news from Dominus Dragon: Exult will now automatically play the extended version of the Serpent Isle introduction video when you start at new game of Serpent Isle from its launcher.

As easy as that was to type — and as easy as it was to read — it was apparently quite difficult to actually implement the extended intro within the Exult engine. As Dominus explained in a message to the Codex, it began with finding the extended introduction, which was released some years ago by Denis Loubet:

First I needed to find the original videos by Denis Loubet (as Kobra Kai Dragon’s copy had too many artifacts ). Loubet’s former homepage had already vanished but fortunately the Wayback Machine came to the rescue.​

Thankfully, the smallest-sized video had the least amount of image artifacts, and it had almost the correct frame size (320×240). It also didn’t feature the Origin Systems overlay.

But there WERE artifacts.​

The video was also not in a format that would work with Ultima 7, of course, which necessitated a conversion. Fortunately, the video codec used for the Ultima 7 cutscenes, while not exactly common, is not something proprietary and thus lost to time after the closure of Origin Systems:

With VideoMach Professional I was able to convert the video file recovered from the Wayback Machine to the FLIC animation format used by Ultima 7. But for that to work, I first had to re-encode the source video to some another format (I opted for AVI, without MPEG compression) that VideoMach Professional could import.

VideoMach Professional worked perfectly to convert the video, and also allowed me to resize it to 320×200; I was also able to split the video into the same number of FLIC files the original game had used.

And with a bit of hackish code and some adjustments to the file headers, I was able to get Exult to use the new FLICs, as well.

And then life happened. My wedding, a big move…a pandemic…and, and, and…​

Dominus dropped the idea for a while, but recently re-discovered it and set to work on making it work in a less “hackish” way:

We added the new intro FLICs directly into the data we provide with Exult (rather than requiring users to download it separately) and dabbled a bit with the hackish code of four years prior. It took a bit of work, but we finally came up with something presentable! In particular, the castle scene now displays the lightning flashes, and we kept the original Lord British/Paladin/Guardian scene as it is completely the same; doing so allowed us to avoid using the more artifact-heavy version from Loubet.

The biggest problem we had was that the intro was now around 15 seconds longer than the original one. The music track is synced to the intro, the actual music starts with the second thunderclap; there is a subtle wind when the Guardian’s speech is shown, and the music changes when the ship travel begins. There is also a high pitch note playing when the ship teleports (this is actually mis-timed in the original). The choice we faced was: either everything except the teleportation note would be out of sync, or there would be around 15 seconds of silence at the end of the intro. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it feels very odd when you try it.

Exult makes use of digital music tracks recorded with a real Roland MT32, and every option to play music in the engine depends on XMI (eXtended MIdi)-format files. There are no working editors for XMI and it’s just a bit too different from standard MIDI for any MIDI editors to work with it.

As such, I spent a night hex-editing the original XMI files (one for MT32 playback, the other for FMOpl and General MIDI) and managed to add some extra loops for the ship travel sequence; with that change, the music syncs up nicely. Thankfully my family was out of the house, so I didn’t wake anyone up by playing the intro very loud at 2:00 AM! The last step was recording the new intro music with Munt (a Roland MT32 emulator) for our digital music track replacement.​

Here’s what those changes looked like, by the way:

Before…

…After!

And with that, Dominus was done…though Exult itself wasn’t quite ready yet:

Finally I was finished with my part of the work. Marzo took over and made the vital changes in the code!

And here we are! By running our latest snapshot (both Windows and MacOS builds are available) you can now enjoy the extended intro in Exult. Actually you have no choice as we hardcoded* it to be the default!!!!

(*there is an undocumented exult.cfg setting you can use, though: config > gameplay > extended intro > yes/no)​

The Codex doesn’t maintain links to Exult snapshots on its project entry, as those builds get updated quite often. However, you can always grab the latest Exult snapshots from the project’s downloads page, and if you want to see the new Serpent Isle intro in action, you should definitely do so.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ancient unofficial expansions for Ultima 3: https://ultimacodex.com/2020/12/a-christmas-gift-for-ultima-fans-the-ultimore-egypt-disk-image/

A Christmas Gift for Ultima Fans…the “Ultimore: Egypt” Disk Image

The Ultimore series was a set of expansions for Ultima 3, which were created by Joel Fenton in 1984 and 1985. Fenton reverse-engineered the Ultima 3’s file formats and, using this knowledge, produced the Ultimore add-ons as alternate “Side 2” game diskettes which included new towns and quests. This was achieved without modifying the original game data, so the Ultimore games could be played alongside Ultima 3, and Ultima 3 could still be played to completion as normal.

Five such scenarios were produced: A Divided World, Pirate World, Spaceship Crash, Egypt, and Rule Of The Slave Lords. Most of these are, for now, lost to time; Pix found a copy of A Divided World and blogged about playing through it a few years ago, but until now that’s as much as we’ve known.

Until now, that is. Because this week, a copy of the Egypt disk image was made available by Tobias Hübner (@medienistik) as a Christmas present to the Ultima fandom! You can grab a copy of it from his website, or from the newly-created project entry for the Ultimore games here at the Codex.

And for more information on the series, check out the relevant page at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom.

Damn! That's awesome. Getting closer to all 5 being back in action.

A total of 5 alternative scenarios were released, including:
1. A Divided World,
2. Pirate World,
3. Spaceship Crash,
4. Egypt, and
5. Rule Of The Slave Lords.

These setting were advertised via software magazine ads and sold directly to consumers for $20. Little is known about these alternative settings except for the first, A Divided World.

 

[Infinitron]

The old Ultima IV Reborn module for NWN1, now reworked into Ultima IV Rebirth for NWN EE: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwnee/module/ultima-iv-rebirth-nwnee-only

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[Cael]

The old Ultima IV Reborn module for NWN1, now reworked into Ultima IV Rebirth for NWN EE: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwnee/module/ultima-iv-rebirth-nwnee-only

An Ultima game for NWN? Dang.

How many ports of the Ultima games are there other than the Dungeon Siege ones???

 

[Desiderius]

Virtue is its own reward.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Why always 4-6? Damn, When will someone try to reimagine 3 or even A-2? I know flight and spaceflight might be an issue. 3 was great murderhoboing. Shot LB with cannons. Dethrone the king! (1-2 you can just chop or blast him with your weapons)

It looks interesting enough. It plays better than a few DOS remakes (well on modern machines... maybe on the old dos machine it was better [xu4, or something. It had other quests actually added and even baking bread])

 

[oldmanpaco]

When will someone try to reimagine 3

I cannot wait until I can insert some puch-cards into an evil computer to delete the BBG in 4K/144 fps.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Why always 4-6? Damn, When will someone try to reimagine 3 or even A-2? I know flight and spaceflight might be an issue. 3 was great murderhoboing. Shot LB with cannons. Dethrone the king! (1-2 you can just chop or blast him with your weapons)

These fan remakes are made for storyfags who only care about playing the plot-heavy games without struggling through the original gameplay, so of course no one would care about an Exodus remake.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Oh crap, that's really hard to watch. Not only Garriott's a narcissistic old person telling again the same old stories, but this time the interviewer is a complete moron.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I'm only a 1/4 way through vid 1.

 

[:Flash:]

Oh crap, that's really hard to watch. Not only Garriott's a narcissistic old person telling again the same old stories, but this time the interviewer is a complete moron.

How did this guy end up Interviewing Garriot for hours? He has 600 subscribers (probably a lot less when he did the interview), and he makes the impression that, well, how do you say it, "no one is really home"?

 

[OndrejSc]

He strikes me as ex-military on heavy sedatives.

 

[Desiderius]

Garriot has questions he can’t afford to have to answer.

 

[Butter]

Oh crap, that's really hard to watch. Not only Garriott's a narcissistic old person telling again the same old stories, but this time the interviewer is a complete moron.

How did this guy end up Interviewing Garriot for hours? He has 600 subscribers (probably a lot less when he did the interview), and he makes the impression that, well, how do you say it, "no one is really home"?

Garriott probably felt like talking about himself for several hours anyway. The audience was just a bonus.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Oh crap, that's really hard to watch. Not only Garriott's a narcissistic old person telling again the same old stories, but this time the interviewer is a complete moron.

How did this guy end up Interviewing Garriot for hours? He has 600 subscribers (probably a lot less when he did the interview), and he makes the impression that, well, how do you say it, "no one is really home"?

RG actually covers this. This was long and drawn out but it bounced around skipping a lot topics in each ultima that could have been explored and expounded upon. Yeah, if you didn't watch it... skip it. I fell asleep several times.

The best bits is showing mint boxes that shine and that he still sends certificates to those who write him. Also, every 5 years he talksto EA about the Ultima Property and what's being done and if nothing, then perhaps he coukd buy it back or collaborate. Its nothing we don't know. There are a few unique stories like Dupre & the duck so... it is what it is. Wash dishes, listen while you play some other game. Multi-task as visually, not much to see.

 

[:Flash:]

Oh crap, that's really hard to watch. Not only Garriott's a narcissistic old person telling again the same old stories, but this time the interviewer is a complete moron.

How did this guy end up Interviewing Garriot for hours? He has 600 subscribers (probably a lot less when he did the interview), and he makes the impression that, well, how do you say it, "no one is really home"?

RG actually covers this.

Come on, then, tell me. I don't feel like watching Garriot for hours telling stories I've already heard him tell in past.

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

He only has a couple years left. Hope you guys are ready for it.

 

[OndrejSc]

He should play Larry Laffer in a game movie before it's over.