A simple editing utility for modifying the graphics ‘chunks’ in Ultima 6.

This powerful editing suite for Ultima 6 allows for the modification of the original game’s maps and graphics, and also includes a complete editing suite for conversations, with opcode highlighting. Currently, the program seems to support both Ultima 6 and Martian Dreams (but not, apparently, Savage Empire).

The always amusing, always inventive DOUG the Eagle Dragon has produced an incredible wealth of software for editing many different aspects of Ultima 6, so much so that a “brief” description is rather difficult to give.

The Unofficial Developer’s Kit is a comprehensive utilities package that includes four programs that can be used to edit Ultima 6:

• Tweak – a party roster editor (add people to your party, even if in the game they won’t respond to the join command!) with a few other bonus features
• Map – world editor, edit the chunks and map
• RedSetter – affix ‘temporary’ objects to the ground, making static scenery
• Undead – repairs characters who have been rendered “brain-dead” by violent death and subsequent resurrection

DOUG has also released some useful subsidiary programs to this utility:

• Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file. – a patch that enables the editor to work with Savage Empire
• Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file. – a patch that enables the editor to work with Martian Dreams
• Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file. – a small program that corrects an occasional error in Tweak that causes ‘solid’ characters

Conversely, the Items List is more of a cheat than a utility (since you can only use the ‘item creation’ feature of Ultima 6 if you use the ‘spam’ cheat); this is a list of many of the items you can get Iolo to create in the game.

The Savegame Manager is a useful program that allows for more than one save-game in Ultima 6, even when using ‘hacked’ versions of the game.

The Book Editor will allow you to UNBIND all the books and signs in Ultima 6 into a text file, and then REBIND them into the game format after you edit their contents.

The Finder utility has two components, both of which will assist in the use of the RedSetter program that is a part of the Ultima 6 Developer’s Kit:

• Stamp – affixes a ‘homing device’ to the Avatar (the location of the Avatar is critical to proper use of RedSetter)
• Finder – tracks the Avatar using the ‘homing device’

Finally, the Editor source code: written mostly in Borland C, this is the code for all of the utilities from IT-HE software, as well as some information documentation to assist in its usage. Note that the source code has been RARed first, and then ZIPped, to make it smaller.

Another character-editing utility for Ultima 6.

Nodling Dragon’s incomplete reference file for some of the Ultima 6 file formats. Useful for editors.

Much as with Nodling’s equivalent utilities for Ultima 4, these files let you decode (decompress) LZW-compressed data files that Ultima 6 uses, and then re-encode them in a way that Ultima 6 can read (although not with the LZW algorithm, which was patented at the time these utilities were written). Nodling Dragon points out that when one uses the encoder, the resultant file will be a bit larger than the equivalent “original” file, for this reason.

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