Utilities!

Produced by: Jason “Xarton Dragon” Penney
Website: JCZorkmid
Releases:
* Portable Ultima 1-6 Patches (PDAR) (1.8 MiB, 234 hits)
* Portable Ultima 7 Patches (PDAR) (21.7 KiB, 108 hits)
* Portable Serpent Isle Patches (PDAR) (51.2 KiB, 80 hits)
* PDAR for Windows (2.4 MiB, 142 hits)
* PDAR Source Code (ZIP) (24.3 KiB, 69 hits)
* PDAR Source Code (TAR.GZ) (17.1 KiB, 62 hits)

A set of patches for Ultima 1 through Ultima 6, developed by Xarton Dragon, which should theoretically be applicable to most installations of the games, inside or outside of DOSBox. The patches are distributed in the PDAR (Portable Delta ARchive) format, and contain only the differences between the patched files and the unpatched files. This should streamline and speed the process of patch application, and also removes much of the hassle of the actual installation process that other patching utilities utilize.

Most of the major patches for each game are included, and a complete listing (as well as installation instructions) can be found in the main download. Also available for download are a Windows PDAR application and the PDAR source code.

These have been tested against the GOG versions of the games and are confirmed to work thereupon. The newly released the Ultima 7 box set is also supported. Xarton will soon be testing them against the Ultima Collection CD installations, and it is expected that the patches will prove effective for those versions of the games as well.

Note: the Ultima 7 patches are supplied as ZIP files, and each archive contains a pair of files: a General MIDI patch and a “GOG Extra” patch. Here are his instructions for applying these patches:

Ultima7.General_MIDI-1.1.pdar or Ultima7p2.General_MIDI-1.0.pdar

Modifies necessary files in place. No need to run batch installer. After applying simply run INSTALL.EXE to change your music device to MT-32 to activate.

Ultima7.General_MIDI-1.1-GOG_Extra.pdar or Ultima7p2.General_MIDI-1.0-GOG_Extra.pdar

Run the General MIDI patch first. This patch modifies the U7.CFG supplied with the GOG distribution to activate the GM/GS patch without the need to run INSTALL.EXE.

Utilities!

Produced by: Pix
Website: Pix’s Origin Adventures
Releases:
* Pix's Ultima Patcher (5.4 MiB, 676 hits)

With the release of Ultimas 1-3 and Ultima 4 on Good Old Games, Ultima Aiera published an article containing information about patching and updating those Ultima titles that have been re-released for sale thus far. Ultima fan Pix (whose repositories of scans of Ultima documentation are really worth checking out, by the way) took it upon himself to collect all of the various patches and updates discussed in that article into a single, easier-to-use application.

The utility should now cover all Ultima titles available on GOG, including the Underworld games and the Ultima 7 box set.

Pix cautions that while the Patcher should work on clean installations from Good Old Games, installations that have been modified in any way already could cause strange results. It includes DPMI and other necessary files as well, so that the graphical upgrade patches for each game work properly.

Presumably, this utility will continue to be expanded to cover additional Ultima titles should they be released on Good Old Games.

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Produced by: Wiltshire Dragon
Website: Moongates Ultima 4 Annex
Releases:
* Ultima 4 EGA Graphics (118.8 KiB, 171 hits)

An EGA graphics upgrade patch for Ultima 4.

This package should also include Wiltshire’s PARTY.EXE utility, which allows you to change the icon representing the Avatar in the game.

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Produced by: Seth Bacon
Releases:
* Hythloth (Fixed) (4.5 KiB, 337 hits)

Ultima fan and Codex of Ultima Wisdom editor Seth “Fenyx4″ Bacon was messing around in Hythloth in Ultima 4, and came upon a room on the 6th level of the dungeon that should have had an exit to the west…but didn’t. The western rooms on that level of the dungeon also lacked starting locations for players, which made that part of the dungeon behave…rather oddly.

This is a well-known known problem, it seems.

As such, Fenyx4 has produced a patched version of the dungeon, which makes the 6th level work properly. This was achieved by placing a trigger in the first room of the level which opens a section of the western wall thereof. Starting locations for players were also placed in the room.

I would assume that this fix is for the DOS version of the game, as Fenxy4 is also wondering if any Ultima fans have encoutnered the aforementioned issues in the Apple II version of the game.

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Produced by: Origin Systems
Website: Ultima Forever
Releases:
* Ultima Forever
* Ultima 4 v1.01 (hosted by Contrapuntal Dragon)
* Ultima 4 v1.01 (hosted by Fortran Dragon)

From The Codex of Ultima Wisdom: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is the fourth game in the series and the first installment of the “Age of Enlightenment” trilogy. It was published and released in 1985 by Origin for the Apple II, C64, IBM-PC and Atari 8-bit. Ports for the Amiga and Atari ST with some enhanced graphics followed 1988, for the NES and Sega Master System ports were released in 1990.

The game became much more complex and deep with this installment, compared to Ultima III. The people of Britannia can talk interactively. The puzzles are more complex, and more information has to be gathered to solve the game. Cities, castles and dungeons are much more detailed, as is the wilderness. The number of items to be found has risen, and the total party size is expanded to eight.

The most significant improvement for the game’s creator is the plot, where the player has to follow a path of Virtue to win. The killing and thievery of the three earlier games is now strongly discouraged. Instead, the player must prove to be a “good guy.” The whole system of virtues in this game changes the RPG experience.

This is the only Ultima that is now available for free (although only from certain sites), and one of the few RPGs in which there is no villain to defeat. Richard Garriott himself sees it as the best part of the series, ranking just above Ultima VII.

Akalabeth on a Nokia

Produced by: Arnim Sauerbier
Website: Arnim Sauerbier
Releases:
* Aklabeth for Nokia Smartphones (33.6 KiB, 556 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Exult - Program (1.0 MiB, 373 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Exult - Data (14.0 MiB, 330 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Music (mono) (12.5 MiB, 322 hits)
* Ultima 7 - Music (stereo) (28.7 MiB, 377 hits)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - Program (766.2 KiB, 354 hits)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - libSDL (16.2 KiB, 303 hits)
* Ultima 8 - Pentagram - Configuration (998 bytes, 290 hits)

These are actually just ports of other Ultima projects (linked below), but as I’ve never seen so many in one place at one time (and from one person!), they are classified not only as ports but as their own separate entry on Aiera.

The following projects have been ported to the Nokia 770/N800 internet tablets:

• Akalabeth – a port of Paul Robson’s SDL version of the game
• Ultima 5 – a port of Nazghul/Haxima
• Ultima 6 – a port of Nuvie
• Ultima 7 – a port of Exult
• Ultima 8 – a port of Pentagram

It serves to note that these ports are ongoing works, and it further serves to note that some of the projects that have been ported (Pentagram, for an easy example) are themselves incomplete. However, O Reader, if you use a Nokia 770/N800 internet tablet, and would like to be able to play some classic Ultima titles whilst on the go, this is likely a project for you!

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Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima IV Gold
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Gold (1.0 MiB, 539 hits)

This project is an improved version of Ultima 4 for the Commodore 64. Notably, it features optimized code and no disk swapping (1541 users will have to flip the disk once only), and the save system has been revamped (saving is now possible in dungeons). Trainers have been improved, and even little fixes have found their way in — the music, for example, no longer interrupts when you are walking around in Britannia.

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Produced by: emuWorks
Website: hack4u
Releases:
* hack4u - Windows (541.8 KiB, 324 hits)
* hack4u - Mac (2.5 MiB, 286 hits)
* hack4u - Linux (1.0 MiB, 286 hits)
* hack4u - Source (289.1 KiB, 273 hits)

hack4u is a program to “edit the save games of Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar for the NES.” Any or all of the three games saved in the SRAM file (I trust that NES users who will be interested in this program know what that means) can be edited.

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Produced by: Ram Dragon
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Map Editor v1.1 (DOS) (598.1 KiB, 88 hits)
* Ultima 4 Map Editor v1.1 (633.1 KiB, 130 hits)

Original Version:
* Ultima 4 Map Editor (75.2 KiB, 338 hits)

A utility to edit the graphics tiles in Ultima 4.

The original editor required EGA graphics and the original shapes.ega file; it was a DOS-based executable. Ram Dragon recently (as of April 2011) issued a recompiled, Windows-friendly version that removes the resolution limitation. This new version also features some improvements built with djgpp and Allegro, such as the ability to take screenshots. It also relies on the upgraded graphics tiles for Ultima 4 (these are included with the download), but still requires the map files from the original game.

Toward the end of that same month, Ram Dragon also released a re-complied version of the original DOS-based editor, which features all the enhancements present in the Windows version.

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Releases:
* Ultima 1, 3, 4 & 5 Cheat (19.2 KiB, 712 hits)

A cheat program that can be used for Ultima 1 through to Ultima 5 (but not, according to its name, for Ultima 2).

Note: this update may not work with Ultima 3, and may also be missing the strength attribute. This has been found to be the case in DOSBox, at any rate, although at present it is not known whether the error is within the program proper, or whether it is in some way related to DOSbox.

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Produced by: Shattered Moon
Website: Classic Ultima Online
Releases:
* U4 Multiplayer Client (2.6 MiB, 506 hits)

This promising multiplayer game, made in the style of Ultima 4 brings a classic tile-based single-player RPG experience into the realm of online gaming! Johnny Wood has implemented a UI and tile-based graphics engine that will be instantly familiar to long-time fans of the Ultima series, and continues to make improvements to the game to further enhance the Ultima-like feel of its gameplay.

The project is currently in an alpha stage, and there is a client available. You can download the client from Aiera, or through Dennis DeMarco’s website.

To play: launch the client, specify u4m.demarco.com as the game server, and then create a player.

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Produced by: Andrew Taylor, Darren Janeczek
Website: xu4- Ultima IV @ SourceForge
Releases:
* xu4 - Windows v1.0b4 (3.4 MiB, 312 hits)

Snapshots – May be unstable
* xu4 - Windows Snapshot (7.6 MiB, 451 hits)
* xu4 - Mac OS X Snapshot (19.7 MiB, 340 hits)

Andrew Taylor’s SDL-based re-creation of Ultima 4 is intended to be a cross-platform version of the game much as Exult is for Ultima 7.

xu4 is also compatible with the graphics update for Ultima 4.

The project fell dormant after 2008, but has since been restarted (as of January 2011) by Darren Janeczek, who intends to improve xu4′s game play experience, and restructure the code to facilitate the goal of porting the game to modern mobile platforms.

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Produced by: Nodling Dragon
Website: Ultima Tech Info and Patches
Releases:
* Atari ST File Formats (2.7 KiB, 240 hits)
* EGA Driver Information (6.6 KiB, 215 hits)
* Bugs in Ultima 4 (5.2 KiB, 415 hits)

These three files from Nodling Dragon include a description of the Ultima 4 game data file formats, although only for the Atari ST version (u4atarist.txt), general information about the EGA driver that the game uses (u4ega_driver.txt), and a list of bugs and undocumented features of the game’s PC version (u4_bugs.txt).

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Produced by: Nodling Dragon
Website: Ultima Tech Info and Patches
Release:
* U4Encode Source (4.2 KiB, 231 hits)
* U4Decode Source (13.8 KiB, 218 hits)

These two files allow you to de-compress (decode) or compress (encode) Ultima 4‘s game data files, which have been compressed using the formerly-patented LZW algorithm.

NOTE: the packages here include only the source code necessary to compile a command-line utility in each case.

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Produced by: Nodling Dragon
Website: Ultima Tech Info and Patches
Releases:
* Replacement for avpatch (7.6 KiB, 751 hits)

Nodling explains: “You can’t install the Ultima 4 Upgrade under DOS, because avpatch.exe is a Windows console application. The new avpatch.exe can be run in DOS, Windows and DOS emulators.”

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Produced by: Nodling Dragon
Website: Ultima Tech Info and Patches
Releases:
* Rune Font (5.7 KiB, 301 hits)

Replaces the Latin characters in Ultima 4 with runic font. There are actually two patches bundled into this package — one for EGA and one for VGA resolutions. Nodling points out that CGA isn’t supported yet.

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Produced by: Nodling Dragon
Website: Ultima Tech Info and Patches
Release:
* German Keyboard Patch (2.9 KiB, 314 hits)

From Nodling’s site: “If you play Ultima 3 or [Ultima 4] with a German keyboard, the y and z keys won’t work until you remove the German keyboard driver. But that doesn’t really fix the problem, because now the y and z keys are swapped.

With this utility, both keys will work as they should. The program is compatible with DOS, DOS emulators and Windows 9x, but unfortunately not with Windows NT or XP.”

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Produced by: Gary Thompson
Releases:
* Character Editor (39.2 KiB, 532 hits)

A character editor for Ultima 4.

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Produced by: Centurion
Releases:
* Map Editor (38.8 KiB, 239 hits)

A map editor for Ultima 4. Be sure to read the included documentation, as the process of editing the map is somewhat complex at first.

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Produced by: Xenerkes Dragon
Releases:
* Ultima Savegame Editor v1.3 (204.7 KiB, 1,091 hits)

Another utility from Xenerkes Dragon, this program allows you to edit your savegames from Ultima 1 through to Ultima 5. It allows you to change everything, including character location, and also makes it possible to get horses and boats in Ultima 3 (which is otherwise more than difficult).