Offtopic - Ultima 5 file formats?

[Automaton Dragon]

I am thinking of possibly recreating Ultima 5. Unlike the Lazarus project I don't plan to totally redo the game in 3D or anything; instead, it will be more like the U2 in Windows program, or the Lairware version of Ultima 3 for the Macintosh: i.e. it will still be 2D tile-based and operate something like the original. My first step will be to make a U5 map viewer (sound familiar?)

To that end I am trying to find any documentation I can about the Ultima 5 file formats. So far I don't have much at all. I do have a small program that reads and decodes the britannian map and the underworld map into 256x256 byte arrays.

The only file format I've found documented so far is the SAVED.GAM file...

So does anyone have any info on this?

Thanks!
Automaton Dragon

[wjp]

http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/~psimoons/ultima5t.htm has all conversations. You could try asking Pieter Simoons (the creator of that page) if he has any docs for the file format.

[Armchair_Avatar]

Some of the U5 data files are compressed.
There's an open-source utility that can decompress them.
You can get it here:
http://www.geocities.com/nodling/
(in the section titled "Technical Information about Ultima 6")

Note that you can download a zipped version version of the entire website (link is at the bottom of the page).

[Armchair_Avatar]

wjp:
How can I insert clickable links in a post?

Automaton Dragon:

Xenerkes Dragon has written a saved game editor for Ultima 1-5:
http://www.geocities.com/xenerkes/
You can only download the binary, but maybe Xenerkes will open-source it if you ask nicely.

Taranion Dragon might have some more info on the U5 file formats:
http://groups.google.de/groups?hl=de&lr ... &frame=off

If you find out anything new about the U5 file formats, please write it down and put it on the web. Something similar has already been done for U4:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/view ... t?rev=HEAD

[wjp]

> How can I insert clickable links in a post?

I think Dominus wrote that down in the 'readme' thread (the 'frozensticky' one)

[Gileatane Dragon]

Continuing with the U5 off topic topic... I;d like to get U5 running. MoSlo (eval version) doesnt cut it.
Can't get it slow enough on my p4 =( .
Anyone got any suggestions ?

[Matthew]

Try running moslo within moslo, ie create a batch file to run U5 with moslo and then run moslo on the batchfile. This should work fine and give you that 286 performance!
Matthew

[Gileathane Dragon]

Gah! Shoulda coulda ..

Nice one Matthew, thanks.

Gileathane Dragon aka Gileatane Dragon (when my typings off =)

[suraimu]

Or run the Apple ][ version in an emulator.

[Automaton Dragon]

wjp & Armchair_Avatar: Thanks for your help! The LZW decompressor in particular is quite helpful. I was looking for the source to that

I have seen Xenerkes' page and have conversed with him in email but he never answered my questions about source code. I plan to make my project open source at some time.

Matthew: moslo doesn't work that well for me. It seems like it slows some things down more than others, which makes the game rather jerky and unenjoyable. Also, the PC version doesn't have very good sound & music.

suraimu: Actually, I have been playing the Atari ST version, in Steem. It works great. But emulation is a pain to set up. I also really want to put an optional auto-combat system into place, similar to the one in Lairware's Ultima 3. The U5 combat tends to get rather annoying because there are so many steps to each round - even a fight you easily win takes forever. The U3Mac auto-combat system is really nice and once you use it you won't want to go back.

[Francois424]

Has this gone anywhere beyond the conceptual phase or was it abbandonned ?

I'm a huge fan of Ultima5, and any improvement while keeping the classic look is a huge thing for me. Lazarus was pretty good, but had few game killing bugs that drove me away mid-game (anything using teleportation tends to ruin your game... be it shadowlord warp, moongates, or the spells).

Keep me posted if anything happens.
Thanks.

[Dominus]

Duuuuude, it's been 12 years...

[Francois424]

I'll take that as a no.

Allright, have a nice day folks !

[agentorangeguy]

Holy crap I didn't realize how old this thread was until Dominus mentioned it. Lol 12 years... geez

[Random Person]

abt. the same age as the ultima 7 is scary thread. just shows how old exult is. i bet in12 yrs. ppl will look at our thrds in wonder.

[drcode]

Almost a little scary how long this has been going on, isn't it?

[Random Person]

yeah... You shouldn't have done that. *screaming*