This question might sound hella weird in a sub dedicated to Ultima. But at the same time where would I get the answer I'm looking for. What is Ultima and why do you people love it so much?

To give you context, I was too young to play Ultima or Ultima Online when it came out. But all my life I kept hearing people talk about this game with a lot of love, deference and respect. It has a bit of the same mythical aura than DAOC for me. I remember watching the "grown ups" play it during lan parties in the neighbouring village. And I was fascinated, but by the time I got access to online games, WoW was coming out and all my friends were playing it. It shaped my experience as a gamer, like Neverwinter shaped my first vision of RPGs.

Ultima always felt like what my big brother would have played, if I had one.

Now 20 years later, I'm still a gamer, I'm even a game dev. And during Next Fest I stumbled upon Code of the Savage demo. I didn't take the time to try it yet but it looked very cool. It claimed to be "Ultima" inspired. Reminded me of Sven Vincke, of Larian, talking about the game too. Or the people of Piranha Bytes (behind Gothic).

So many games that I love and were critical to shape my taste seem to be inspired by Ultima. I feel a bit dumb now to not know much about it. It feels like a blindspot in my gaming culture. So I've started to watch videos and look for resources talking about it, but I didn't find something really convincing or exhaustive yet.

Hence my post here.

There seems to be a ton of Ultima iterations and then a whole Online version. I learned about the original creator behind it, but I would like to hear what it felt playing it from people who experienced it back in the days. Why is it, or was it, so awesome. And how big of a phenomenon was it? Was it a very niche title or did everyone know and talked about Ultima? I really have trouble to project on what it was or is.

I would be super happy to watch or read any resource you guys could have about it too.

EDIT : Wow thank you for the answers, it's really cool.

Hey Fellow Ultima Fans,

For the past few years, I've been planning and working on and off on one idea: Co-Op Ultima 7.

I finally have a stable build that has gone way beyond my initial plan. The new custom Exult build includes:

1. Co-op with a chat system, emotes, connecting via IP, and a custom lobby system (WebRTC over Cloudflare Worker to facilitate peer-to-peer connections). Cross-play compatible between Mac and Windows. Up to 8 players (Avatar + 7 companions) and 4 spectators. Note: I have NOT stress-tested this yet. I've tested up to 3 connections and plan on testing more thoroughly in the next few days.
2. An all-new targeting system that lets you cycle through NPCs, mobs, and items to minimize the pixel hunting of moving entities (yes, I'm looking at you Emps near Yew). It also includes sorting containers, pick up all, and more.
3. Companion skills. Iolo is a bard; let him use bard skills. Every available companion got 3 skills based on their Ultima 4 class with custom artwork for each skill. Skills can be used by any controlled companion or by the AI. New AI hooks for monitoring companion health, determining strongest enemies, etc.
4. Native controller support. With the targeting system and some custom radial context menus, the game is playable by controller alone. Tested with Xbox, PS4 DualShock, and v1 Steam controller (I LOVE this controller)

I put a website where anyone interested can read more about the systems built.
https://xcast3d.com/u7-quest-of-the-companions/

Downloads ready in the downloads section!

I plan to eventually make the GitHub repo public, but I'm still testing and on a quest to complete a full U7 run through while in Co-Op.

If anyone is interested in an early build, let me know, and I'll provide a link.
Note: As always, bring your own copy of Ultima 7. Serpent Isle is not ready yet, that's on a to-do list.

Last night's Ultima VII Revisited stream was just too amazing for one 60-second clip, so here's a whole video of highlights! First-person mode! Object finder! Weather effects! And many thanks to DLBSP, JRenner and UrAnt for their contributions!

I guess it could be worse ?

Update: Dark Mode and Light Mode w/ Definitions

Got tired of trying to read my chicken scratch spell notes…

Enjoy!

A little backstory for anyone interested…

I first played Ultima Underworld with my dad back in 1991. He was at the controls, and I was six years old, sitting beside him “piloting the ship.”

We played a Druid, and I was absolutely fascinated by the runes and spells, even though I didn’t understand what half the words meant.

One of those words was Levitate, which Dad had explained was something like flying or floating.

That became important during our fight with Rodrick.

He kept killing us. Over and over. We couldn’t figure out how to beat him. At one point, Dad accidentally ran off a ledge and fell to his death.

That’s when six-year-old me had an idea.

What if we cast Levitate on ourselves, then lured Rodrick off the ledge? He’d fall to his death, but we’d levitate and survive.

And it worked!

We couldn’t believe it. We also couldn’t carry all the gold and armor he dropped, which was a whole different problem.

I’m 40 now, and my dad has since passed away. That remains one of my earliest and favorite gaming memories with him. We played games together throughout my life, right up until the end.

Needless to say, UUW has always held a special place in my heart.

About 15 years ago, I picked up the Ultima Underworld collection on Steam to revisit the game that kinda started it all for me. Recently, I dug that same PC out of the garage to refurbish it, and there UUW was, waiting for me to crawl back into the Abyss.

After getting back into the game, I wanted a quicker, at-a-glance way to reference spells during combat. So I enlisted the ol’ GPT to help put this together, which I now keep open on my iPad while playing.

Figured I’d share it here in case anyone else finds them it useful.

Hope this makes your adventures a little more fun, and that Ultima Underworld I & II bring you even a fraction of the joy they’ve brought me and my dad over the years.

Happy adventuring!

What Ultima-isms have you baked into your game?

Video on the updated version of Ultima 3.

Source and binaries available at https://github.com/synthwave-pixel/ultima3

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, bug reports, etc. over the last fe weeks. Too much stuff to list, from features (eg harpsichord keyboard UX) to bug fixes (ranging from significant perf fixes to talking to Smith)...

LMK Qs!

Hi everyone!

I've posted about Blood & Chaos here a few times over the past couple of years, and here is a little update. :-)

As some of you may remember, I released the demo at the beginning of the summer, and since then I've been fixing bugs and improving quite a few things based on your feedback.

The updated demo is currently participating in Steam Next Fest, so probably a good time to share it again!

For those who don't know the game, Blood & Chaos is a party-based, turn-based roguelike RPG inspired by the old classics, especially Ultima IV (don't worry, not everything is roguelike, mainly the dungeon levels!). And yes, it even has keyword-based dialogues, although a bit modernised and usable on a Steam Deck haha.

I am planning to release the full game early 2027, if the gods of Chaos aren't against me! :-)

If you give the demo a try, I'd be happy to hear what you think!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2628880/Blood__Chaos/

Yannick

Ultima VII Revisited contributor UrAnt submitted a huge amount of work on Forge of Virtue this week, and last night I got to see it for the first time!

https://github.com/ViridianGames/U7Revisited#ultima-vii-revisited

I arranged my favourite music cue from Pagan for solo piano. Enjoy! :)

Let me start by saying I see the slop discussions - this is not that. I have been working on this on and off for 7 years. Initially with Unity trying to imagine an isometric world - about 1.5 years ago I decided to drop that, and start fresh with my lessons learned and build a more traditional version with what I believe are major quality of life improvements. The blog will describe and show screenshots for more context.

If you don't like it, no prob Bob - the original is still on Gog.com for your playing pleasure. This is the very first RPG I had ever played and because of that it was etched in my brain.

This is a preview and is likely to contain bugs or have some rough edges that I will work through - but the I am working on my end to end playthrough at about 80% completion, making final preparations to go save my good friend LB.

If you want to have a look around at the code, it is here: https://github.com/bradhannah/UltimaVRedux

It also includes compile instructions and download instructions if you don't feel like building it.

I went 6 of those 7 years without any AI assisted coding, but have used this last leg. Every decision on how something was designed, why it was designed that way, every deviation was my human choice. I appreciate people are allergic to slop, I am too - I have put thousands of hours into this over the years, and frankly i am quite proud of it. So live by the virtues and remember there is a human who did this all for free and for the community.

I am leaving this sub I think. I am just sick to death of AI saturating every single niche hobby I have right now. It feels like a firehose has been spraying slime all over the world.

Code of The Savage is heavily inspired by Ultima, particularly Ultima 6 and 7.
The demo is now available on Steam. Here’s the launch trailer. I’d love to hear what true fans of the series think of it.

https://codeofthesavage.com/wishlist_reddit

With the ongoing daily torrent of slop projects being posted, I'm quickly losing my interest in sharing any Ultima archival, historical and ongoing game projects in this sub.

Is there any interest in a new Ultima sub that would have a strict no-AI rule? It sure pains me to see the community come to this, but I can't see the current daily warfare about slop ending any time soon.

Edit: /r/Sosaria is now open and warmly welcomes you!

With so many games getting awesome mods lately, it got me wondering why is there nothing for Ultima The First Age of Darkness?

Hello- so I'm looking to play the GOG version of Ultima V all the way through for the first time ever (back in the day, I just started but didn't finish U5 & 6). I need to use a laptop that has a separate keypad with the NUMLOCK key, but the keyboard in general has issues where I'm not even using it, I use an external USB keyboard plugged in for everything. *That* keyboard is a mini one that doesn't have the extra numpad. No matter what state I have the main laptop NUMLOCK key set to, Ultima V doesn't respond to any of the number keys except 5 and 0.

I've looked up solutions to this and started by sprinkling numlock=off all over dosboxULTIMA5.conf and visited the https://ultima5.ultimacodex.com/numlock-patch/ site, but Windows 10 on my laptop says it can't run that file. Are there any other solutions to this issue?

Seems really odd this problem popped up of a sudden for this one entry in the series.

I have a working map now, no more gems and no more of the simple map display that U6 had. I really wanted to mimic U7 as best as possible using the snes u6 engine.

Here we also have the new title screen, with the appropriate music from U7 downgraded to fit the snes music chip.

And the rest of screenshots of spark, finnigan, and klogs dialog trees

Hey all, I'm just posting here because I thought some people might be interested in a project I've been noodling away on.

I was inspired by Majuular's Ultima IV video, and was looking for the best way to play Ultima IV myself. In various historical reddit threads, I saw posts about different versions being the "best" one to try, and often the SMS and XU4 both pop up.

I've kept my work as a fork because I'm still heavily testing this and haven't engaged the original developers of the port, as I am just experimenting for now. I would be more than happy to clean it up and work with the original devs, but because there were some foundational changes I didn't feel comfortable just opening this as a pull request or something.

I have spent some time porting the Sega Master System dialogue system to XU4, enabled by a full decompilation of that version I am having Claude work on. I have open-sourced this too, but it is not completely rewritten in C yet. I have enough so far to work on what I really wanted.

I am still testing this heavily, and in fact playing through the full game right now with this to make sure everything is rock solid, but I would love any feedback as I go too.

The goal of this project is to make it as easy as possible for someone new to check out Ultima IV and help keep the legacy of the game alive. I don't think any content needs modification that way, but with modern conveniences, we can make the game more accessible and less overwhelming with out-of-game reading required, etc.

Releases · alexdia25/xu4-legacy-edition

The feature set so far is:

• the game now has an option in the interface settings which allows for a full SMS-style UI. This will enable by default when a controller is used. When you press A (or Enter on the keyboard), a menu of options will pop up. In conversations, options will unlock through talking and no typing is needed. This is the main reason I wanted to make this, when I saw it in the XU4 "feature wishlist" for a long time, it seemed like it would be really cool to fulfil this

• with a set of Apple II disk images alongside the exe, you can now use the tileset and music from that original release.
• When the SMS version is fully decompiled, I will add that as an option too, to show up if a user provides an SMS ROM.

• on Windows, the game will now look in the default GoG install location for your copy of Ultima IV and just run using that copy out of the box, but you can still use the xu4/u4 location as a fallback
• If you have the ULTIMA4.TXT file from GoG, it will split this up and allow you to display this in the XU4 menu (esc or select/back/minus key on controller).
• In the future I'd like this to be more robust, and support more formats, and potentially be able to open to specific contexts. (For instance, when you're asked to read the book of history, allow this to be opened immediately). I'm also still wondering how to handle the map in a robust way.

• a minor tweak to the module loading, items like the u4upgrade mod or the apple II graphics + music mods will only show up at all if the files needed by the .mod file are actually provided.
• I also upgraded to a more modern framework, so this may allow more ports of XU4 to be made in future. Currently looking at adding mouse support to everything so we may have mouse-only control and full touch screen control possible too.

Just did my first "solo" run-through of Ultima IV (as in, let everybody die off except the Avatar). Turned out it was way more fun to play without having to manage a full party, and I also think Ultima IV introduced friendly fire to combat (but I could be wrong), so the larger parties were more annoying to manage than Ultima III anyway. Definitely way easier navigating the dungeon rooms when you don't have inaccessible Reapers or whatnot constantly putting somebody to sleep!

Anyway, my understanding had always been that the Mystic Weapons were a requirement to win based on the in-game lore. Since I was using a Mage, during this play-through I decided to hold off equipping it until the last possible moment since it's a melee weapon and I wanted to stick with my Magic Wand as long as possible. Imagine my surprise when I got through the entire Abyss with the Wand and was not required to use the Mystic Weapon at any stage of the proceedings. I am using the GOG version, so is this a bug, or has this always been this way (side note, I did have the Mystic Armor on, as this is always going to be better than cloth for a Mage).

Sorry in advance if this is an inappropriate question here, feel free to report or whatever if it is.

Searched high and low for Ultima’s various soundtracks on YouTube, can’t find the track that plays at 1:49:00 at all. I’m basically at my wit’s end here.

Hi, I am solo-developing Knights of Frontier Valley, a low-fantasy RPG with gridless tactical combat, deep character customization, complex NPC behavior, and procedural world building. Explore a new valley each game run, solve quests, make meaningful choices, and gain riches and glory while staying alive.

The game is heavily influenced by the isometric RPG classics of the 80s, 90s and 2000s such as Ultima and Baldur's Gate.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1085830/Knights_of_Frontier_Valley/

The second Steam Playtest is still on for another day - join and try it out yourself.

The engine was written from scratch. Using a 3rd-party engine was not an option for me, I wanted to do this like Richard Garriott, Sid Meier and everyone back then, from the ground up.

All art is hand-made with no AI involved. Music was made by top composers including Kevin Manthei (Neverwinter Nights, Jagged Alliance 2, Wizardry 8...)

The decomp+port recently released by u/abedegno (reddit post here) has shed some light in this infamous bug. I've even written about how to fix it here, but it's a complicated and long process. Here's what they found out:

Thanks for the saves. They pinned this one down, and it's a bug in the original game that the port reproduces exactly.

When you ask for part of a stack on the floor ("Move how many?") and the game then says it's too heavy to pick up, the game has already made a copy for the part you asked for. It puts the amount back on the stack but never frees the copy, so one object is left over, belonging to nothing. The next time you change level or restore, the game's own check counts 767 objects where there should be 768 and prints "Problems in object list". Both your saves have exactly one such object: arrows in the first (13 minus the 5 asked for) and coins in the second (8 minus 1). Both characters were close to their weight limit. I reproduced it from scratch in DOS and in the port, and the leftover object is the same in both.

It's harmless. Nothing you own is lost, because the real stack keeps its full count. It isn't related to the bug that deletes key items. And destroying items can't clear the message, because a destroyed item still counts towards the 768. Each leak does use up one of the level's object slots for good, but your levels have more than 200 to spare.

The next release (UW1 1.0.2) adds an optional gameplay enhancement, tidy-objects. It frees the copy, as UW2 already does, and when the check fails on arriving at a level it puts the leftover objects back, so your existing saves heal themselves. It's off by default, like every enhancement, because the original game behaves this way. Until then, the message can be ignored. To avoid new leaks, don't split a floor stack when you're near your weight limit.

So there you have it. It's a relatively harmless bug, and by using your save in the port with the new option, you can fix it easily. Since many people have asked around about this, I've deemed it useful to share.

Note that this isn't the infamous bug about losing items in levels with too many. That's still a hard cap because of how the save game file is structured. This structure also causes a rare bug in UW1 where you can crash your game if you load a map edited in a very specific way. Also fixed in the port.

Just finished playing Ultima III for the first time since it's original release and there were a couple of things that bug me (pun intended) about the game. I know at least one of these gets brought up very frequently but I can't recall seeing any discussion on the other two...

The big one obviously is the guy in Dawn that you can't talk to without murdering the people next to him. Given that Lord British doesn't care as it is that the hero leads the life of a thief, and you could bribe away all the guards in town before doing the deed, being a murderer doesn't seem much of a stretch. Has he ever said in an interview or anything that he considers the blocked off guy to be a mistake?

The clues to get past the Snake say you have to 'Invoke' the special word EVOCARE, with 'Invoke' framed in quotes like it's a special command, except that you have to 'Y'ell the word instead, so this seems like another bug where a special command didn't get implemented. And speaking of those, it doesn't affect gameplay but I saw come inconsistencies in how these commands were presented, sometimes in single quotes ' ' and sometimes in < >.

One of the clues you get says something along the lines of "you can't win the game without visiting Death Gulch", and when you get there, there's this demon hiding so deep in a river of lava it's probably impossible to get there without the mark of fire (maybe a full party of level 25 bobbit clerics, who knows). Yet all this demon has to say is "Exodus is four as one" which is totally irrelevant to winning the game (and for nitpickers who might say "well, this is how you learn he has four parts", you already get the "4 cards, 4 panels" clue elsewhere). So much hype for a total nothing-burger, was this demon meant to say something else? And I don't think any other character in the whole town has anything to say, so you could complete the entire game without ever going to Death Gulch. The whole point of the town seems to be just to set you up for free money.

What is the formula for the rate of mana recovery? The manual says that Druids have twice the recovery rate of everyone else, but it must be more complex that that as I didn't start seeing an increased rate with my Druid characters until I had their stats increased pretty high.

Finally, not strictly a bug I guess but still feels like one- Sanctu Mani costs 5x the mana of Sanctu, but doesn't give 5x the healing, so it's pointless to cast.

Ah... unrelated to bugs, but how often to players bother with pure Wizard characters? They don't seem that useful since the most helpful Wizard spells are all accessible to other classes that can use better equipment than Wizards do.