"Prepare yourself for a grand adventure: Ultima IV, sixteen times larger than Ultima III, is a milestone in computer gaming. Lord British has produced a game to challenge, not only your physical and mental skills, but the true fabric of your character. The evil triad of Mondain, Minax, and the hellspawn Exodus, have been vanquished and peace reigns throughout the land of Britannia. Evil yet abounds, but in isolated pockets and in the hearts of men. A new age awaits the coming of one who can conquer evil on all frontiers through the mastery of both magic and the use of force. Daemons, dragons and long-dead wizards still plague the countryside and must be destroyed. The seeker on the path of the avatar will faces hostile groups composed of mixed enemy types and will survive such encounters only by strategic use of weapons and terrain. Earthly victories over seemingly impossible odds lead to the final conflict, where the ultimate challenge -- the self -- awaits..."
-- Back cover of Ultima IV boxXU4 is a remake of the computer game Ultima IV. The goal is to make it easy and convenient to play this classic on modern operating systems. XU4 is primarily inspired by the much more ambitious project Exult. Linux is the primary development platform but it gets ported to Windows and MacOS X regularly. It should be trivial to port to any system with SDL support.
XU4 isn't a new game based on the Ultima IV story -- it is a faithful recreation of the old game, right up to the crappy graphics. If you are looking for a game with modern gameplay and graphics, this is not it -- yet. New features that improve the gameplay and keep with the spirit of the original game will be added.
XU4 also tries to maintain strict compatibility with the original for its savegame files. You can use a game saved in XU4 with the original and vice versa, at least in theory.
See the original readme README for details including the current version number.
The actual data files from Ultima 4 are loaded at runtime, which means that a copy of Ultima 4 for DOS must be present at runtime.
Fortunately, Ultima IV is available as closed-source freeware on the internet (legally). A copy is mirrored at xu4.sourceforge.net.
In this version the Ultima4 and Ultima IV VGA upgrade are used directly from the zip files. These files are included in this RISCOS distribution and have been put in the required location in the !xu4 application directory.
At the title screen, a configuration menu can be accessed by pressing 'c'. Here, the screen scale, filter, volume and other settings can be modified. Note: the game must be restarted for the new settings to take effect. These settings are stored in the file UnixEnv$HOME/.xu4rc.
xu4 also accepts the following command line options:
| -f | - fullscreen mode |
| -g | - german keyboard - swap y & z |
| -i | - skip the intro, go directly into the game |
| -q | - quiet mode - no music |
| -scale n | - scale the original graphics by a factor of n |
| -filter n | - use a filter on the scaled images; point, 2xBi, 2xSaI, and AdvanceMAME can be specified |
| -v | - verbose output; prints out information useful for troubleshooting |
Included with Ultima 4 for DOS, as downloaded from one of the above sites, are electronic copies of the printed documentation from the original Ultima IV box. HISTORY.TXT contains the "The History of Britannia", a general introduction to the world of Ultima IV. WISDOM.TXT contains "The Book of Mystic Wisdom", which explains the system of magic and provides descriptions of the spells and reagents.
Version of these documents converted to HTML are included with the RISCOS Version.
There is also a HTML version of the keyboard references converted from the original MS Word format document
PDF versions of these books may be available from: http://members.aol.com/trigonman3/u4.html
An image of the cloth map from the original Ultima IV box can be found at either of these sites: http://members.aol.com/trigonman3/u4.html http://www.dengler.net/xedragon/hrump/
See http://xu4.sourceforge.net/links.html for some other interesting Ultima IV related links.
Please send me a mail at andrewtaylor@users.sourceforge.net if you are interested in helping.
This original README document that this file is based upon is supplied in the games main directory.
Copyright Source code: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, version 2. See COPYING for details.
Copyright Ultima4 files (in ULTIMA4) sub-directory: Closed-source freeware.
Ported to the RISC OS GCCSDK Autobuilder by Alan Buckley July 2008.
Version 1.0beta3 and later
Ported to RISCOS by Alan Buckley October 2003.
Version 0.9 ported June 2004.
This program is 32 bit compatible and requires RISCOS 3.6+.
It requires the SharedUnixLibrary available from http://www.riscos.info/downloads/gccsdk/sharedunixlib/system.zip (This includes the Digital Renderer module).
The Music requires the !Freepats directory to have been seen by the filer (available from http://www.riscos.info/packages/).
The !UnixHome application (also available from http://www.riscos.info/packages/) must have been seen by the filer.
