emkay Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 But the NES version shows how the A8 version had to look, sound, and play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 Blech, it's horrible though... they basically turned U4 into Japanese Anime. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 Blech, it's horrible though... they basically turned U4 into Japanese Anime.At least it looks a gazillion times better than the C64 version The main point for a better "A8 version" on the A8 ist to forget a hires version, make it scrolling in colour mode and open hires windows for Text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 I think PMs can enhance the visuals... and could it not reduce and/or eliminate in PAL regions the ugly artefact look? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 I think PMs can enhance the visuals... and could it not reduce and/or eliminate in PAL regions the ugly artefact look? Yeah, you could do some visual enhancements, but they wouldn't equal the need of the gameplay... just some optical enhancements... Colour mode solves all problems. Another Idea could be to create a time machine and to send a Book of "wisdom" to the creator of the GTIA chip, that there exist better solutions than NTSC... Really, that hurts the brain, if you think about it. 256 colours , and the Atari is only able to put 1/2 colour in hires. If only the registers had been enabled to use the colours, when pairing 2 hires pixels... waaaaahhh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagerValp Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 As Mermaid said the source is on GitHub and if anyone is seriously interested in remastering the Atari version I'd be happy to help. Most of the improvements should port straight over, but the main limitation is that the in-game graphics are limited to monochrome or artifact colors which I find a little underwhelming. The intro graphics could look pretty splendid though, but that really is the last part of porting - you'd have to bring up the main game, loader, compression, music, etc first. I'm curious if anyone could spread some light on how conversations are stored in the Atari version though. They're compressed, and I don't know enough about Atari disk structures to extract the data. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 Mainly 128 byte per sector Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sack-c0s Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 would end up being a cartridge job i reckon... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagerValp Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 Mainly 128 byte per sector Yes, but the Atari data is compressed in a custom format. One would have to disassemble the game to see how they're decompressed, presumably with some kind of LZ or Huffman scheme. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted September 3, 2020 Share Posted September 3, 2020 On 4/16/2015 at 1:20 AM, emkay said: But the NES version shows how the A8 version had to look, sound, and play. Still the best looking version of Ultima IV. Not sure how I didn't know about the release of the Remastered along with the source! I've been wanting to do a visual upgrade of it for a while, though I wanted to use the VBXE to get rid of any artifacting and use more than 4 colors... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted September 3, 2020 Share Posted September 3, 2020 The Ultima games were always a bit of a problem for the Atari 8-bit. They were developed on the Apple II. Apple II uses artifacting similar to Atari on NTSC, except Apple uses a bit to switch between red/blue or green/purple. Atari doesn't have that, it can only produce two colors from artifacting, but those colors will differ depending on what model Atari you had, so you might get colors that are completely wrong. But it was either keep the resolution and lose two colors or go with a higher color mode and lose the resolution. It would have been hard to use P/M graphics to fill in the missing colors because the grid was 11x11 and no way to control how much of each color was on the screen. I think they made the right choices, and fortunately we have emulators that can emulate the artifacting and set the correct colors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted September 3, 2020 Share Posted September 3, 2020 1 hour ago, zzip said: The Ultima games were always a bit of a problem for the Atari 8-bit. They were developed on the Apple II. Apple II uses artifacting similar to Atari on NTSC, except Apple uses a bit to switch between red/blue or green/purple. Atari doesn't have that, it can only produce two colors from artifacting, but those colors will differ depending on what model Atari you had, so you might get colors that are completely wrong. But it was either keep the resolution and lose two colors or go with a higher color mode and lose the resolution. It would have been hard to use P/M graphics to fill in the missing colors because the grid was 11x11 and no way to control how much of each color was on the screen. I think they made the right choices, and fortunately we have emulators that can emulate the artifacting and set the correct colors. By the way, you can hit control-x during the title screen and it will ask you what color these two bars are and set the right color for your machine! (Found this out by loading the ATX version!) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted September 3, 2020 Share Posted September 3, 2020 3 minutes ago, leech said: By the way, you can hit control-x during the title screen and it will ask you what color these two bars are and set the right color for your machine! (Found this out by loading the ATX version!) Interesting, did the older Ultima's have that too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted September 3, 2020 Share Posted September 3, 2020 15 minutes ago, zzip said: Interesting, did the older Ultima's have that too? Good question, sounds like something someone should test! I want to say I tried it on 3, but now I don't remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted January 22, 2021 Share Posted January 22, 2021 On 4/17/2015 at 12:12 PM, MagerValp said: As Mermaid said the source is on GitHub and if anyone is seriously interested in remastering the Atari version I'd be happy to help. Most of the improvements should port straight over, but the main limitation is that the in-game graphics are limited to monochrome or artifact colors which I find a little underwhelming. The intro graphics could look pretty splendid though, but that really is the last part of porting - you'd have to bring up the main game, loader, compression, music, etc first. I'm curious if anyone could spread some light on how conversations are stored in the Atari version though. They're compressed, and I don't know enough about Atari disk structures to extract the data. it doesn't have to be, it could be moved to another graphics mode or have pm's etc spruce it up 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 On 9/3/2020 at 1:02 PM, leech said: Good question, sounds like something someone should test! I want to say I tried it on 3, but now I don't remember. I thought I responded to myself here. I did try it it on Ultima 3 and it did not work. So only Ultima 4 has the Control+X option (or it asks the first time you use a copy). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugarland Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 This is well worth a watch!! 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 (edited) truth be told, the demoscene and pixel artists of today could definitely give the Atari versions a nice face lift, while the work of vinscool would definitely help the music and sound... using xxl's research and work on compression... well the... in fact I know a team, a community of people who just recently released a number of works that accomplished very high standards for our machine. There are a handful of games that kick ass and take names because of it. Imagine what they could do... Atari Ultima remastered, I like the sound of that. 3,4,5, and perhaps the full monty doing 6 from the bottom up. Simply some of the best group of people have been hitting the Atari with a passion the past few years... it's an amazing time, thank you and consider this a project that could be challenging and fun... and may take some restraint not to go too far... ah heck, do it both ways! Tixelated characters perhaps? Maybe a little Soupp, the realm within Globe's grasp, it could be huge and XXL could make it fit in the palm of our hands. Such sphere would need the touch of ambiance the sounds now possible could give. There are so many more talented folks in community that might have a go at such an adventure... they would have to be courageous, and tenacious in order to do touch what some consider arguably the most iconic rpg on these old machines of all time!! Edited November 5, 2021 by _The Doctor__ 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sargie Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 This is awesome. A brilliant update to a seminal game. Works like a treat on the real hardware. Intro graphics are beautiful IMO. Thanks to all who put this together! You rock! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 7 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: truth be told, the demoscene and pixel artists of today could definitely give the Atari versions a nice face lift, while the work of vinscool would definitely help the music and sound... using xxl's research and work on compression... well the... in fact I know a team, a community of people who just recently released a number of works that accomplished very high standards for our machine. There are a handful of games that kick ass and take names because of it. Imagine what they could do... Atari Ultima remastered, I like the sound of that. 3,4,5, and perhaps the full monty doing 6 from the bottom up. Simply some of the best group of people have been hitting the Atari with a passion the past few years... it's an amazing time, thank you and consider this a project that could be challenging and fun... and may take some restraint not to go too far... ah heck, do it both ways! Tixelated characters perhaps? Maybe a little Soupp, the realm within Globe's grasp, it could be huge and XXL could make it fit in the palm of our hands. Such sphere would need the touch of ambiance the sounds now possible could give. There are so many more talented folks in community that might have a go at such an adventure... they would have to be courageous, and tenacious in order to do touch what some consider arguably the most iconic rpg on these old machines of all time!! Seriously, if we could even get a generic Ultima engine made, 4 and five were pretty close to function. 3 was a bit more basic. There was a remaster of 1 for the IIGS with upgraded graphics that a port could be based on. Getting a group together to show what the Atari could do would be a dream of mine... if you create a new thread, ping me in it, I would follow that for however many years it takes. Failing that, I am going try this coming year to learn to code... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlan_Roland Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 well, i'm just working on an Ultima5 "Map Explorer", which is based on the datafiles of the MS-DOS version. Right now i'm at implementing NPC logics. Just today got the first NPC running around town doing his schedule, which is quite funny will make another source release when that's kind of stable.. so anybody interested can check out, pick up or improve then. 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted November 6, 2021 Share Posted November 6, 2021 If you could extract the map data some of it could fit in A8 U4 as the main map is the same size as whats used in U5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlan_Roland Posted November 6, 2021 Share Posted November 6, 2021 i guess it wont be easy though, as the internal data structures of the Britannia maps are different: (but i have no experience with U4 yet) Quote The Britannian map. Its size is 256x256 tiles. It is divided into 256 chunks. Each chunk has a size of 16x16 tiles, and each tile is stored as a uint8 (in Ultima IV, the chunk size was 32x32 tiles). https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V_internal_formats#BRIT.DAT The page https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V_internal_formats is my guide through the datastructures of U5, without it i would not have gotten anywhere. Great resource! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted November 6, 2021 Share Posted November 6, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, Goochman said: If you could extract the map data some of it could fit in A8 U4 as the main map is the same size as whats used in U5. Ha, Well I had figured out the entire Britannia map of Ultima IV when I was 10 years old so I could patch the two sectors where Empath Abby was and.. I think it was Mondain's Skull. The original data was just on the disk, figuring out how it decides which sector to read would be the challenge I suppose. If I recall the data for the mappping is something like; 00 deep ocean 01 shallow ocean 02 grass Etc. My 10 year old self got some graph paper and recreated the sector by first laying down the town icon over the whole thing and trying Enter on every square until it let me into the caslte, then drawing the surrounding forest... Disk Wizard II ruled for that! Xu4 project though should have all of the things needed for pulling the original data out, one would think. Edited November 6, 2021 by leech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted November 8, 2021 Share Posted November 8, 2021 (edited) On 11/6/2021 at 11:48 AM, leech said: Ha, Well I had figured out the entire Britannia map of Ultima IV when I was 10 years old so I could patch the two sectors where Empath Abby was and.. I think it was Mondain's Skull. The original data was just on the disk, figuring out how it decides which sector to read would be the challenge I suppose. If I recall the data for the mappping is something like; 00 deep ocean 01 shallow ocean 02 grass Etc. My 10 year old self got some graph paper and recreated the sector by first laying down the town icon over the whole thing and trying Enter on every square until it let me into the caslte, then drawing the surrounding forest... Disk Wizard II ruled for that! Xu4 project though should have all of the things needed for pulling the original data out, one would think. You can find alot of the mapping info for U4 here: There is also a topic for U2 and U3 covering the same info. Edited November 8, 2021 by Goochman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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