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Ultima IV: cracked copies/image concerns


Gunstar

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I own the original Ultima IV with all the original books and whatnot, but the disks are long dead. I tried a cracked copy I downloaded several years ago but it was corrupted and didn't work right, and more recently I downloaded another crack and it seemed to work, though I didn't get real involved in it to know for sure, but one thing that stood out, and also stands out now on the Maxflash cart image I just downloaded last night is no music! I swear that when I played the original years agom that like Ultima III, there was background music that played (which IIRC could be turned off&on). But there is no music in these cracked versions and I'd like to know for sure if the game is supposed to have music, or if I am confusing it with III and IV never had music. Also, I'd like a small review by someone attesting that these cracks (especially the maxflash version) are stable and can be played through properly. The music I remember from Ultima III and IIRC, Ultima II&IV really added to the atmosphere of the game overall, IMHO, and I am desperately missing it in Ultima IV!

Edited by Gunstar
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that would be great, mainly just wondering if there is background music or not. And if there is, we need someone to re-crack the originals so our SIO2PC, HD and Maxflash images can have the music too! If you mean am I interested in obtaining them from you if they work, then yes, I'd like that too. Especially if the cracks are missing music and who knows what else. I'd rather have the music and a fully working game using my disk drives than a lightning-quick maxflash image with missing music and possibly corrupted in some way that it may crash or I lose my character or can't finish the game for some reason. I remember the first cracked version I had crashed as soon as you tried to talk to people, obviously you can't even start playing the game without that ability!

Edited by Gunstar
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I own the original Ultima IV with all the original books and whatnot, but the disks are long dead.

See - this is the stuff that VAPI/Pasti are great for. I've been imaging my original ST protected disks with Pasti.

 

I'd start doing the same for my original A8 stuff (including my Ultima IV disks) but unfortunately the VAPI imaging tool hasn't been publicly released yet.

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I own the original Ultima IV with all the original books and whatnot, but the disks are long dead.

See - this is the stuff that VAPI/Pasti are great for. I've been imaging my original ST protected disks with Pasti.

 

I'd start doing the same for my original A8 stuff (including my Ultima IV disks) but unfortunately the VAPI imaging tool hasn't been publicly released yet.

 

Well, if I had working originals, I could make A.P.E PROimages of them and get perfect copies that will load up just like .ATR images through A.P.E/SIO2PC. of course this is only good for SIO2PC users unless the new .pro images were converted for a flashcart somehow. I do know that you can write .pro images back to real floppies and they will boot like the original. Since A.P.E/Pro/maxflash are all done by Atarimax I'm sure they could work it out.

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Well, if I had working originals, I could make A.P.E PROimages of them and get perfect copies that will load up just like .ATR images through A.P.E/SIO2PC. of course this is only good for SIO2PC users unless the new .pro images were converted for a flashcart somehow. I do know that you can write .pro images back to real floppies and they will boot like the original. Since A.P.E/Pro/maxflash are all done by Atarimax I'm sure they could work it out.

I've never seen a tool to write back .PRO images. And as far as the flash cart is concerned, I think you're out of luck with trying to get protected software to run in such a manner. Not without some radical rewriting.

 

Anyhow - here's my original UIV disks :cool:

 

Ultima_IV__Originals_.zip

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Well, if I had working originals, I could make A.P.E PROimages of them and get perfect copies that will load up just like .ATR images through A.P.E/SIO2PC. of course this is only good for SIO2PC users unless the new .pro images were converted for a flashcart somehow. I do know that you can write .pro images back to real floppies and they will boot like the original. Since A.P.E/Pro/maxflash are all done by Atarimax I'm sure they could work it out.

I've never seen a tool to write back .PRO images. And as far as the flash cart is concerned, I think you're out of luck with trying to get protected software to run in such a manner. Not without some radical rewriting.

 

Anyhow - here's my original UIV disks :cool:

 

Ultima_IV__Originals_.zip

O.K. your right about the .pro images, I thought I'd seen a write-back option in the Prosystem program, but it wasn't there when I looked, just the option to make an image. Thanks for the originals.

 

I've tried the .pro image originals, and they seem to work fine so far, but there is no in-game or title screen music, so I guess there never was? That's a shame, I love that music in the previous games. But there is another curiosity; the artifacted NTSC colors are swapped! I've never seen Ultima with a RED sea before! The land was always red/purple and the water blue/green! On ALL Atari 8-bit Ultima's, and that's the way it is on the flashcart version too. But these .pro images have RED water! the plus side is that the green land looks better than the red land (green/purple or blue/red depending on the NTSC TV/monitor&tint/hue settings).

 

EDIT: Below I've included pics of the screen to show you all what I'm talking about with the inverse colors.

post-149-1163052526_thumb.jpg

post-149-1163052627_thumb.jpg

post-149-1163053405_thumb.jpg

post-149-1163053519_thumb.jpg

Edited by Gunstar
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I downloaded another crack and it seemed to work, though I didn't get real involved in it to know for sure, but one thing that stood out, and also stands out now on the Maxflash cart image I just downloaded last night is no music!

 

I think you may have seen another version. I had both the A8 and Apple2 version and A8 did not have music. I think they dropped the music to fit in 48K. I do not remember the music in the Atari version.

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I downloaded another crack and it seemed to work, though I didn't get real involved in it to know for sure, but one thing that stood out, and also stands out now on the Maxflash cart image I just downloaded last night is no music!

 

I think you may have seen another version. I had both the A8 and Apple2 version and A8 did not have music. I think they dropped the music to fit in 48K. I do not remember the music in the Atari version.

 

Well, as long as no one says otherwise, I'm guessing your right, but it wasn't another version I was remembering, but Ultima III which did have the music, and IIRC, I think one or the other or both U1 and U2 had music as well. I'll have to load them up and check it out. Plus, even though I've owned the game for years, I've never really played it. I played II and III a lot, got IV and then got the Alternate Reality RPG's soon after, and just sort of forgot about UIV. I've finally decided to really play it through now, and I'm just noticing things.

Edited by Gunstar
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But there is another curiosity; the artifacted NTSC colors are swapped! I've never seen Ultima with a RED sea before! The land was always red/purple and the water blue/green! On ALL Atari 8-bit Ultima's, and that's the way it is on the flashcart version too. But these .pro images have RED water!

That's a CTIA/GTIA difference thing I believe. Hit control-X during bootup and it should ask you about what artifact color you see and adjust accordingly ;)

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Pretty cool, huh? I have four color scheme choices! Actually 6-8 depending on where I have the tint/hue set, but I showed the red/blue, purple/green variations since they are the most common.

Edited by Gunstar
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But there is another curiosity; the artifacted NTSC colors are swapped! I've never seen Ultima with a RED sea before! The land was always red/purple and the water blue/green! On ALL Atari 8-bit Ultima's, and that's the way it is on the flashcart version too. But these .pro images have RED water!

That's a CTIA/GTIA difference thing I believe. Hit control-X during bootup and it should ask you about what artifact color you see and adjust accordingly ;)

 

I'll check it out. so your saying that one may be set for CTIA mode and one GTIA? Becuase both of my machines have GTIA's...

 

I just booted it up and your right! I never knew about that option! So I can just switch it to my preference, which is really with the water being blue/green.

Edited by Gunstar
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i havent knew that you can select "colour palette" with CTRL+X.

 

gunstar... Ultima 3 has music but 4 never had on 800...

Do you get any colors besides black and white on your PAL systems anyway? I thought artifact colors only worked on NTSC?

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IIRC there was a stink about U4 on the 8bit series - Origin was going to make it 64K to get everything in and alot of folks at the time had 48K 800's (like me) - so they dropped the music to allow it to work on 48K machines.

 

Seems it wouldve been easy enough to make a check for music/no music since the 800 could produce some great music like in U3 :( - then again not many folks were making extra time for 800 titles.........

 

U4 was great and I finally finished it 6 years ago with my characters I started way back

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I just booted it up and your right! I never knew about that option! So I can just switch it to my preference, which is really with the water being blue/green.

I forgot how to activate it until I recently booted an Ogre original image and the colors were wrong, so I had to look it up. ;)

 

U4 was great and I finally finished it 6 years ago with my characters I started way back

Ultima IV is one of the most amazing RPGs ever written. I finished it 'way back when' - played it for an entire year. :D

 

The UIV music on the Apple II with a Mockingboard is really great, but even it gets to the point where you turn it down or off.

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IIRC there was a stink about U4 on the 8bit series - Origin was going to make it 64K to get everything in and alot of folks at the time had 48K 800's (like me) - so they dropped the music to allow it to work on 48K machines.

 

Seems it wouldve been easy enough to make a check for music/no music since the 800 could produce some great music like in U3 :( - then again not many folks were making extra time for 800 titles.........

 

U4 was great and I finally finished it 6 years ago with my characters I started way back

 

VERY interesting. I wonder what else they removed as well though, as I highly doubt the background music took up 16k! Does that mean that Ultima III is only a 32k game with a 16k soundtrack? I'm suprised the beta version WITH the music has never shown up in all this time, if in fact they had it in the game an then removed it. Does anyone know the original authors so this possibilty can be looked into? Also, to Atari coders: Has anyone ever given any thought to porting the Apple II or Commodore 64 Ultima's beyond Ultima IV? Those other machines also got at least Ulitma V and maybe VI and beyond didn't they? I'd think it would relatively easy port from those machines. I know Ultima is still a VERY active copyright, with the online game and all, but maybe they wouldn't mind. I have the ST of course, which I believe has several of the series beyond IV, but I just hate switching from one machine to another with sequals in a continuing series. I had to do this with Mercenary(A8-ST) too, and Wing Commander (3DO-PSX), Iron Soldier(Jag-PSX/NUON), and many more...I hate that. I'd like to see at lesat as many of the Ultima games on the A8 as came out for the C64 and/or ST&Amiga. One more question; at what point did the Ultima games (on any platform) lose the "stick figure/icon graphics" in favor of more colorful and detailed graphics? After IV or V or? Ok, two questions: when did the game go from over-head 2D map style to 3D?

Edited by Gunstar
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One more question; at what point did the Ultima games (on any platform) lose the "stick figure/icon graphics" in favor of more colorful and detailed graphics? After IV or V or? Ok, two questions: when did the game go from over-head 2D map style to 3D?

Ultima moved to the three quarter iso overhead view at VI.

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"In 1999, Richard Garriott declared that Ultima IV was now freeware..."

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Ultima%20IV

 

Also check out this:

 

http://www.moongates.com/U4/

 

"Why bother with an update after almost three years? To make sure you know about xu4 - Ultima IV Recreated!

 

This Sourceforge project is a cross-platform, faithful recreation of Ultima IV using and requiring the original data files. Especially for people who want to hear the MIDI music but liken the VGA graphics offered here to the colorization of a classic film (what a horrible, ghastly thing I've done ;-) this is a great way to go!

 

Furthermore, you can plop the zipped upgrade from this site right alongside the xu4 program file and the new graphics will be recognized immediately. No need to patch! Xu4 is a complete solution that adds many interesting features to U4, and they are all optional, which is sure to please the purists."

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