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8
Jul

Request from a reader! (Updated!)

   Posted by: wtf_dragon   in Site News

Add Comment  Discuss in the Forum 

I got this email about a week ago, and have been lax in posting it to the site here for community input.

Do you know where I might find technical information about how the tile shape data is stored/encoded on disks? The graphics for the tiles for the version of are mono-coloured. i.e. a single coloured. Therefore, I suspect the characters do not follow the same encoding format as was is used for the version in shapes.ega.

I recently discovered that the map data is actually stored as 256 chunks of 16×16 data. (the DOS version uses 64 chunks of 32×32 data)

To be honest, I haven’t the first clue about how to answer this question. The C64 predates my first foray into computing by a few years, and I’ve no “hands on” experience with that system, nor with the Ultima 4 version released for it. I had perhaps thought that Nodling Dragon would be a good resource to ask, and have suggested that the reader try and contact him…but any input from the community at large would be much appreciated!

Update: I love this community. Thanks everyone for helping George out! (see the comments)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Site News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 comments so far

MagerValp
 1 

You can find a bunch of information about U4 on the C64 under Tech info on my U4 Gold site:

http://www.paradroid.net/u4/

The tiles are stored in file 41, which loads at $b000-$cfff. They are stored in two halves, with the upper half of each tile at $b000-$bfff, and the lower half in $c000-$cfff. The tiles are in normal C64 bitmap format (1bpp, 8 bytes per cell, 40 cells per line). Color data is in file 4c, at $e1b0-$e2af.

June 27th, 2009 at 6:10 am
wtf_dragon
 2 

Thanks for that, Mager Valp! I hope the reader who made the request finds this information useful!

June 27th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
MagerValp
 3 

So, reader who made the request, did that help or did you need something else?

July 7th, 2009 at 5:01 am
George
 4 

Hi MagerValp and Marc,

I found this information very useful! It helped me understand how the data is stored. I wanted to figure out a way to read the original C64 disk images (in D64 format) and render the map using the C64 graphics/colours. All of the details you provided me were very helpful. I was able to find the tile information on the “program” disk. The first half of the tiles are at 0×16700 and the second are at 0×17700. The colours are at 0×130b0.

I wrote a little Java application to read the C64 disks and generate the map. My goal now is to work towards replicating as much of the original C64 game as possible. :)

Thanks!
George

July 8th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
MagerValp
 5 

Excellent, glad to hear it got you going in the right direction.

Good luck with the remake!

July 10th, 2009 at 6:35 am

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