The goal of this project is to convert Ultima III: Exodus for the PC, a classic role playing game from 1983, up to newer standards. The first phase of this project was to convert the legacy CGA (4-color) graphics to lesser-legacy EGA (16-color) graphics. Let's face it: magenta, cyan, and grey were not exactly pleasing to the eye. I conformed loosely to the C64 color scheme, and used some tiles from the PC versions of U1 & U4. The second phase introduced MIDI music to the game. Many thanks go out to Aradindae Dragon (maker of the U4 MIDI Upgrade) for supplying me with the MIDI package in the first place. The third phase of this project will add VGA (256-color) graphics to the game. Having a series of successes with other upgrade projects, I have learned quite a bit more about assembly language since I first started this hobby, so it is my hope to also change the architecture to be more driver-oriented during this next phase. This will allow for easier maintenance in the future. Other goals that were not necessarily part of any particular phase included adding Quit and Restore hot keys, slowing down or controlling the game speed, and adding an option to disable the somewhat-annoying "AutoSave" feature. At present, the U3 EGA package is on maintenance mode. This means that most of the development effort will go towards bugs as they are pointed out to me. I have conducted some initial experiments on improving the pc-speaker sound effects, but they have proven to be too system-dependent thus far.
Please note that Ultima is/was a registered trademark of Origin Systems Inc (OSI), which is now a part of EA Games. This project is not affiliated with nor endorsed by OSI/EA. You must own a legal copy of Ultima III: Exodus in order to apply this patch. |