Ultima IV Remake, how it began

I was bored. I had a little free time, but I was tired of reading novels, watching Netflix movies, or listening Podcasts. Well, I thought, this might be the right time to start a new project, and that project was something I wanted to do when I was younger. My thinking flew from here to there, and somehow, I decided to remake Ultima IV, and the target language was Python.

I googled a little bit, and found out Marc Winterrowd’s homepage and downloaded the u4decode source from there. The first attempt to run the code was not successful, because I used Python 3.x while the code was written in Python 2.x. After some struggling, finally I got the code running.

After that, I found out xu4 project and downloaded the source code. Then, I encountered ergonomy_joe’s Ultima IV decompiled source, which is an invaluable source for my project.

Those three things were very crucial for me to start my new project. Without them, I would not be able to start the project.

I had been always wondering how Ultima series were made since my youth. Nobody could teach me how to make that kind of game, and no book was telling me how I can hold of the forbidden magic. But now, as I am working for the remake, little by little, the hidden art of making the world-famous RPG is revealing to me.

It is like an archeological study – figuring out how the ancient Egyptians made the pyramid: what kind of support structures were used, how the massive stones were cut and moved, and how did the master architect designed the three dimensional layout, by using the most advanced science and human knowledge. It is so much hard work, but certainly a very fascinating thing to do.

I would like to write and post in this blog what I have figured out and learned in the process of remaking. It would be, I hope, more valuable information than just give out the source files without any explanation.

Ultima and I

I met the Ultima series when I was 14 years old back in 1995. There was this computer magazine published in Korea, and the magazine introduced different computer game genres with one or two recommended games in that category. On November 1994 issue, they introduced Arcade Game together with Lode Runner, next month, Adventure Game was introduced with Palestine Ploy, next month, another Adventure Game, Mask of the Sun was introduced, and so on. On February 1985 issue, Ultima III was introduced. I never knew about Role Playing Games before, and got to know what RPG was and hoped for trying the game.

Back then, copying computer softwares were not regarded as a crime to most of the people, and actually there wasn’t any computer game publisher in Korea, so illegal copying was the only option to have any software for Koreans. So, well, I somehow got a chance to copy Ultima III.

At the first glance, the game didn’t have fascinating graphics nor fantastic sounds as the magazine described, so I got a little disappointed. It took a couple of days for me to really into the game, but once I got the appetite, it was very, VERY hard to resist. So I kept playing the game all the time. My English was very limited at that time, so I really didn’t know what was going on in Sosaria and how to clear the game, but I kept playing. Visiting castles and towns, fighting with those monsters, exploring dungeons, and so on. Sometime during my playing the game, I started to want to make that kind of game in the future, I guess.

After a while, I happened to know the wonderful book, The Book of Adventure Games. I realized that I can clear Ultima III, and followed the book’s walkthrough. My English was still limited to understand what I was doing, but finally I could beat the game.

Oh, there is one thing that I want to mention. When I bought the book, I bought a Mocking Board from the same store. It opened another level of enjoyment of Ultima for me. The background music of the game is simply amazing.

On the April issue of 1986 of the magazine, Ultima IV was introduced. I spent lots of hours to play the game, but partly because of my poor English and partly because now I became a high-school student, I could not clear the game at that time. You know, high-schoolers don’t have much time to play computer games for they are too busy to study, and there are too many things to be concerned with.

Many years later, after I grew up, I figured that I had a little free time to spend to play Ultima series at night, after I helped my daughter going to bed. This time, I did have a legal copy of Ultima CD of mine, and my English was much better, so I started to play from Ultima I to Ultima V, clearing one after another. One day, I want to talk about the experience.

These days, I am remaking Ultima IV in my free time. One of my good friends asked me why I’m doing that. He said it’s meaningless and I can’t make money with that. Yes, maybe it’s just a waste of time, but so what? I like remaking my favorite game and it gives me lots of fun. And who knows? I could make some money, maybe not a good fortune, but just a little to cheer me up, if you “Buy me a coffee” 😉

First post

This blog is my sixth or seventh homepage, if I recall correctly. Most of the previous home pages were abandoned after a couple of posts, and now only two homepages survived. I hope this one lasts long.

The reason I decided to open up a new homepage (or blog, can be used interchangeably in this context) is that I needed to have an English homepage. Recently, I’m working on the Ultima IV remake by using Python, and I wanted to announce this work to the people out there who love Ultima series. The other two homepages of mine are mostly written in Korean, and I think Korean is much more difficult than Britainnian rune characters to the most of the Ultima fans, this was a obvious decision. One problem here is that my English is not perfect, but my erroneous poor English should be much easier to understand than my near-perfect Korean.

But I don’t want to narrow the subject of this blog only to Ultima remakes, so this blog will cover general computer game stuff, and maybe some random subject I would be interested in at the coming years.

Well, that’s it for the first post. I hope this blog survives longer years, and make you come back from time to time.