Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Just compiled Xu4 1.0 beta 3 to Nokia 770 and it's running nicely with Scale2x.

If you haven't heard of Origin System's "Ultima" series, they are perhaps the most legendary of all PC RPGs from the early days of home computers. Ultima 4 and 5 were pioneers in defining the nature of the computer role-playing game, including dungeons and dragons like stats, main and sub-quests and NPC dialogues.

Homepage here:
http://xu4.sourceforge.net/index.php

Screenshots:
http://xu4.sourceforge.net/index.php

It's a less laggy than Ultima IV running under dosbox, and more feature rich.

Runs the original EGA graphics or a VGA tileset (optional). Currently only running the clickety pc-speaker sounds, but FM or mp3 music is a possibility.

Currently it's only playable with keyboard due to the number of commands needed, but dpad works. For stylus play, I (or somebody else) will need to make a stylus driven UI.

Will check into redistribution license for the original ultima IV data - i hope to make the game install completely without command-line intervention.

You can't call yourself a CRPG savant without having played Ultima. :D

Cheers,

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

I only ever played Ultima Underworld, because it was like a thinking man's Doom. Do you think that one's portable? I must have the game disks lying around somewhere -- unless the digital bookworms ate them, of course.

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Hi Karel, no, you won't see a Nokia Underworld / Underworld 2 any time soon. The free game engines for these were never completed, and Origin hasn't released the source (as Id did for Doom).

In not-so-breaking news, Origin Systems / Electronics Arts has permitted Ultima IV to be freely distributed by select groups, so you can legally download it here:

http://www.enlartenment.com/ultima/u4download.html :D and here (with manual)
http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/...vatar_vga.html

NOTE: This does /not/ mean U4 is now public domain - EA retains the copyright to the game.

Some Trivia and Accolades

• In 1996 Computer Gaming World named Ultima IV as #2 on its Best Games of All Time list on the PC.
• Ultima IV was ranked # 32 in the 50 Best Games of All Time list published by PC Gamer Magazine in its April 2005 issue.
• The designer (Richard Garriott) himself considers this game, along with Ultima VII, to be his favorite game from the Ultima series.

http://www.moongates.com/u4/images/misc/After.gif
Screenshot from the graphics upgrade set available here:
http://www.moongates.com/u4/upgrade/Upgrade.htm

Anyone with a bluetooth keyboard willing to playtest a pre-release build is encouraged to contact me. ;)

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Decided to try this. I still have my original Apple ][ box w/ map.
When I try it, I get this:

/media/mmc1/Games/ULTIMA4 $ /home/user/xu4770/u4
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "config.xml"
xu4: error: error parsing config.xml

Ideas where I should start?
I have a 770 w/ latest itos2006, data files on Kingston 1Gb card default format (fat32 i guess)

Thanx

desiv

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Gimme 1/2 hour and i'll find the fix. Or stop by #maemo irc chat on irc.freenode.net...

EDIT 2

xu4 used to run fine here, now errors out on me because of uppercase filenames in game data? whaa.......?

To spare you the headache, i've put the whole game + renamed lowercase data into the tarball. (Yes, it is legal. Origin/EA has released the game - see sourceforge xu4 page).

So now http://pupnik.de/xu4_it2006_testing.tgz tarball has the whole shebang in one file. Extract to home dir (or somewhere on the root filesystem, or onto an ext2 partition - you can't run programs from vfat). Then cd xu4770. then execute with ./u4.

and that's all i have to say about that.
.

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Ok, not sure if i got your latest version (edit 2?), but i have it playing.
I tried linking the ULTIMA4 dir, but no go.
Then i copied the dir to the xu4770 dir, still no go.
Either i got a "can't find ultima files" type message, or (if i launched it from the ultima4 dir) i got a "can't find config.xml" error.
So, i just copied all the files to the xu4770 dir, and it runs..
No sound, but it runs.
I'm using xkbd with the 1 line layout mostly.
Thanx
(edit)
It seems pretty stable. Still no sound (I see in your readme about no fighting sounds, but I don't notice any sound. No biggie, I can still hear the Ultima Music in my head. I played wayyy too much back then. :) ).
I just wrote a small script that launches
"xkbd -k /usr/share/xkbd/gameflat.xkbd -y 1.5" and then launches U4.
Works great. I can see where a better keyboard layout would help (I don't have my mind wrapped around flat qwerty yet :-) but it's great so far!

desiv

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

I installed your latest and i can hear sounds. No music, but walking sounds.
I can't get the telescope to work tho. It dies with:
xu4: error: unable to load data files: is Ultima IV installed? See http://xu4.sourceforge.net/

Unfortunately, it doesn't say what it's looking for...

Just a heads up.

desiv

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Thanks for finding this . I will fix.

I'm looking at how to map the 24 keyboard commands to a reduced set of onscreen buttons - first layout is here...

http://pupnik.de/xu4_onscreenctls.png

(edit) If you have artistic skills, feel free to submit button/keyboard art - heck do a whole woodgrain RPG-ey border - go nuts - we just need these button commands and a keyboard onscreen for entering text - game window is 640x400 afaict

http://pupnik.de/xu4_onscreenctls4.png

also the keyboard isn't needed until talk dialogues come up - so since u4 has like 24 commands, we can use more real estate for buttonszors.

http://pupnik.de/xu4_onscreenctls5.png

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Ok that wasn't so great... how about this one? View on the 770 / N800 to get a good feel for it.

http://pupnik.de/xu4_onscreenctls7greywood1_sm.png.jpg

I'm looking for something that will be thumb-able...

xu4 has about 24 commsnds, Game will need about 16-22 buttons. The less buttons - the more work is requred hacking the game engine...

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

The on-screen button/keyboard idea sounds damn good.
You just need someone to do the graphics/layout or someone to do that as well as code said buttons/layout?
I'm neither, I just test about everything you port over. ;)

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

That is incredible. I played Ultima IV a little bit, but I'm embarrassed to admit how much time I spent in high school playing Ultima III. I have the Ultima 1-6 box set for PC, but I remember the Commodore 64 version being better.

If only I had time to play those games again. Thanks for the nostalgia, dude. :)

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Right now i'm going with the bottom layout - the whole buttonscheme will be just one .png so anybody can edit it to their liking easily. (Pupnik's 'Ultra Simple Theme' tech) Layout will be fixed out of laziness. Bottom center row of 8 keys will be split into 4 letters per button for text entry during talky bits.

http://pupnik.de/xu4_onscreenctls7greywood_smc_ani.gif

dunno if i'll make it a bitmap or let sdl draw the text... hmm two different background versions on the animation there. OH well others can do better art i'm sure.

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Wow, that looks great. I was thinking of either a scoll look or a stone look (maybe a stretched out scroll on the bottom and stones on the side), but I like your all stone look.
If you can easliy do it, a dropshadow on the fonts might make them looked etched in the stone, and you wouldn't have to bitmap them.
(I did that once back in the day when I thought I was a programmer on my Amiga. They didn't have dropshadow fonts, so I drew the font twice, once in black, and then once up and back two pixels white for depth.)
Just a though...
Looks great. Thanx!!

desiv

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

I had a thought. I know it will take up a button worth of space, but I was thinking about a compass in the bottom right. That way, you could move and fight (attack would be the center, then the direction) without having to use the buttons, if you wanted to play all stylus.
Just a thought, something like this: (stolen, not drawn!)
http://www.celnav.de/vacation/compass.gif
(Although a basic 4 point with a center button would be better)
Just that hitting the "a" and then using the direction pad (and sometimes the pad registers twice) can be a bit awkward...

desiv

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

So far so good, pupnik, keep it up and let us all know when it's finished so I can go bang on it for bugs. ;)

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Looks like the file is no longer available. I managed to track a mirror copy of it, but it has the 'hawkind bug', where you cannot talk to hawkind. This makes completing the game rather hard, so I took the liberty of compiling and putting a version for maemo3 (Bora) online myself, for the time being. You can get it here : http://users.edpnet.be/evanhoof/dist...80410_bora.deb
I compiled it for os2007, but it will probably run on os2008 as well.

It has the vga update and game files builtin, but sound does not work, but that is not exactly a bad thing, since you will get sick very quickly of hearing the same midi file all over anyway.
This is just a plain compile from cvs, not hildonized at all, and requires a hardware keyboard (I use a bluetooth keyboard, which works fine, and I guess a usb keyboard would work too, if you enable hosting).

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

I've just tried to install this on a N810 and sadly get an incompatible application error message :(

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Try through xterm with apt-get/dpkg

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

dpkg -i seemed to work fine. It seems to work really well. Thanks a lot for this rittf800.

Can someone get the sound working now? :)

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

It seems that timidity is missing, normally a requirement for the midi music, but I don't know why the 'sound effects' don't work, which are just plain ogg files. I didn't want to put too much work in this one, because ArnimS is working on a proper hildon port with vkb support, but I might give sound a go 'in the near future'.

BTW you can also play the nes version with fceu, allthough the sound in there is choppy as well.
If only someone would port a sega master system emulator, because that one has imho the best version of the game...

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

Dos-version is also available via RubyBox' game downloader.

Re: Ultima IV RPG (Xu4) running
 

I've just setup Ruby and Dosbox. Wow. That's some impressive work :)