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Ultima II for the TI-99/4a


adamantyr

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They said it couldn't be done! Or shouldn't be... something like that.

 

Anyway, regardless, feast your eyes on the next upcoming CRPG project, the adaptation of the notorious, infamous Ultima II, Revenge of the Enchantress!

 

post-17978-127015083833_thumb.png

post-17978-127015084934_thumb.png

 

Features include:

- Improved graphics over the original, with more colors!

- Every original bug replicated in precise detail! No way you can get strength in THIS version either!

- All hokey and cheese-ball pop culture references kept intact, to annoy a new generation of gamers!

- A smaller and tighter display than the original, to give you that close-in comfort feel!

 

Coming soon to a TI near you! Well, probably on the desk next to you.

 

Adamantyr

 

Disclaimer: Ultima is a totally-owned licensed subsidiary of Electronic Arts. Any usage, reference, or general thought about this product may result in immediate and fatal litigation.

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Holy cow that's fantastic!

 

Thanks to the wonderful programmers in this forum, I'm going to have to soon dig out one of the 10 or so (if not more, really!) boxed TI 99/4a systems I have in my garage and hook it up! I'd love to see this in cartridge form and I'd be glad to help towards that endeavor. :)

 

..Al

 

PS: I'm a huge Ultima fan...

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Hey--- I'm also a HUGE Ultima fan!! This is very very cool, and I'm jealous!!! I had planned on making "Legend of Beryl Reichardt" look similar to this on the map adventuring stages, but now I'll have to change my thought process, as this new endeavor makes what I was planning seem like a copy-cat.... But hey, Ultima on the TI??? Nothing could be cooler. :)

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*Ahem* Er, April Fools? :)

 

Truthfully, it's totally possible to adapt the game to the TI-99/4a platform. I actually started doing just that 6-7 years ago when I took my TI out of mothballs while going to school.

 

However, there's some considerable hurdles to jump over for the display:

- How to do the 3D? The TI doesn't have point/line style graphics except in the extremely expensive bitmap mode. Character graphics can be used, but it's a whole new system... and everybody HATED the 3D dungeons anyway

- Ultima II has 64 unique tiles. Attempting to define all of these as 16x16 size tiles would burn every single character available, and leave nothing for letters, numbers, or even a space! Some recycling can cut down tile usage a bit

- You'd end up doing a lot of VDP writes every time the character moved if you wanted "rotating" assignments, and you'd have to maintain a tile buffer/assignment system for each pass

- It's possible to use some kind of data structure that does a minimal of tile updates per pass. If a grass tile is already there, it won't redefine it, for example. Still a LOT of work to build and test

- In full-bitmap mode, nearly all the VDP is gone just for the screen, which makes file usage tricky

- Worst of all, in full bitmap mode the screen has three separate tables for each third of the screen. Using my borders above, that means you also have HALF tiles to account for. Argh!

 

For my own part, I decided long ago that I'd rather work on my own unique CRPG. Also, I would leverage it to take advantage of the platform's strengths, rather than create systems and designs that were difficult to replicate. And it would be my own work, which means any cheesy pop-culture stuff would be my own fault. ;)

 

As I said, though, not impossible. The Commodore 64 version of Ultima II would probably be the best version to study for a potential cross-over. It also uses a character set system for most of its graphics modes, so Chuck Bueche ("Chuckles", and the lead C64 programmer for Origin) had to solve these issues as well.

 

Adamantyr

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You're sick, Al. :) If that Air Raid box is your April Fools trick, there will be MANY sad sad 2600ers walking away shaking their heads. :)

I wish I was clever enough to have come up with a fake Air Raid box. It's real, the timing is just piss poor. Although quite amusing.

 

..Al

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I read about 30 replies, I couldn't get through all 23 pages! :). Pretty hilarious--- i'd love to see what this thing goes for, seriouly... It'll surely be quite the treasure chest, for sure. :). I have about 40 copies of "Faxanadu" for the NES.. I imagine they're worth about 40 bucks, combined. :) everytime I see one, I buy it--- except on eBay.... Yuck. :)

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I read about 30 replies, I couldn't get through all 23 pages! :). Pretty hilarious--- i'd love to see what this thing goes for, seriouly... It'll surely be quite the treasure chest, for sure. :).

Yeah, I got home last night and had to catch up on 200+ new messages. That thread was out of control. :)

 

..Al

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I had no idea what Air Raid even was until I read that thread. I've always been a TI guy, collecting and whatnot--- I know the rarest of the rare for our little computer--- unortunately I don't own the rarest of the rare. :). One day.

I have a ton of TI carts, but not a huge number of "rare" games. I'd really like to start collecting more of the uncommon/rare/UltraRare TI 99/4a carts. :)

 

..Al

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I have several rare and uncommon, but nothing super-rare like "Arcturus" or "Tutankham". Tutankham can still be bought from the designer--- in cart form. For a few thousand dollars, you can have one too! That guy strikes me as a jerk... He should make them $100 and sell the sh** out of 'em. Bryan Roppollo bought one for an insane amount of money. He and Bill Gaskill are probably the foremost cart collectors out there--- along with Jim Fetzner and one or two others. I would crap myself if I could see Bryan's collection... :). Bryan (I think) owns the only known copy of Robotron for the TI. He was kind enough to release the code, and it can now be put on one of our dance cart boards Jon Guidry built. Jon owns an Arcturus cart... A-hole. :). We have such a great community, man... And AA gives us a modern home. List servers are fine, but this forum is just what we needed

Edited by Opry99er
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I have several rare and uncommon, but nothing super-rare like "Arcturus" or "Tutankham". Tutankham can still be bought from the designer--- in cart form. For a few thousand dollars, you can have one too! That guy strikes me as a jerk... He should make them $100 and sell the sh** out of 'em. Bryan Roppollo bought one for an insane amount of money. He and Bill Gaskill are probably the foremost cart collectors out there--- along with Jim Fetzner and one or two others. I would crap myself if I could see Bryan's collection... :). Bryan (I think) owns the only known copy of Robotron for the TI. He was kind enough to release the code, and it can now be put on one of our dance cart boards Jon Guidry built. Jon owns an Arcturus cart... A-hole. :). We have such a great community, man... And AA gives us a modern home. List servers are fine, but this forum is just what we needed

 

Hah, I got an Asgard Extended Basic 3 Super-cart! Only six of them made, by rumor. Beat that!

 

Adamantyr

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I can't. My rarest carts are:

 

*Complete collection of Commercial Funware carts

-Henhouse

-Video Vegas

-Ambulance

-St. Nick

-Driving Demon

 

*ROMOX commercial Hen Pecked cart

*Pitfall

*1 of 3 512k multicarts built by hexbus

 

there's some other semi-rare stuff

too, but I'm not looking at my collection right now. XB3 is quite a prize!

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Tell you what--- the map adventure/exploration screen of Beryl Reichardt is starting to have the feel of the Ultima games, mostly like "Quest of the Avatar" I think--- I've been making some graphical changes so it doesn't look so much like it. Anyway, the battle screen is completely different--- players stay stationary and it's turn based combat, melée or magic or scrolls, healing (for your Wizard) and such. Of course the turn sequence can be interrupted by your enemies-- there are stats for that... I'm looking forward to getting it up to speed and posting at least a short video of gameplay to my thread.

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I have several rare and uncommon, but nothing super-rare like "Arcturus" or "Tutankham". Tutankham can still be bought from the designer--- in cart form. For a few thousand dollars, you can have one too! That guy strikes me as a jerk... He should make them $100 and sell the sh** out of 'em. Bryan Roppollo bought one for an insane amount of money. He and Bill Gaskill are probably the foremost cart collectors out there--- along with Jim Fetzner and one or two others. I would crap myself if I could see Bryan's collection... :). Bryan (I think) owns the only known copy of Robotron for the TI. He was kind enough to release the code, and it can now be put on one of our dance cart boards Jon Guidry built. Jon owns an Arcturus cart... A-hole. :). We have such a great community, man... And AA gives us a modern home. List servers are fine, but this forum is just what we needed

 

No need to spend some thousand dollars on the "Tutankham" prototype. I'm working on my own homebrew version.

It is based on the Colecovision version, not on the TI prototype and will be better ;)

Currently going for a 32K ROM image but might end up with a 64K ROM image.

 

Oh, this is not some april fool (living in Germany, we already have April 2nd) :D

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