Ripping Ultima IV & V graphics?

Draugr · May 5, 2006

Hi all!

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the Ultima IV multiplayer project? The project is far along and is really just in bug squashing mode right now. Pretty much everything else is working for the most part. Anyhow, the client is for the PC only, but that got me thinking. I talk to the author of U4mp often and the other night I was asking about adding tiles or replacing the default U4 tile set he has with the client. It turns out it might not be hard to do at all. This is when the wheels really started turning. I thought "It would be neat to have a client for the C64, Atari 8-bit, Amiga, and Atari ST amoung others. I quickly realized this would require a great amount of work as the client would have to be ported over to each system. Disappointed, but not giving up, I had the next best idea. What if there were to be separate PC clients that players could download, and use on their PCs, but each would emulate the graphics of the classic system they chose. After some thought I came up with this concept. Having the separate PC clients with both classic tilesets and music. Ex: The Atari version would have the Atari tileset of U4 and the music as well. Of course the music files would be converted to mp3 or wav to work on the PC, but in essence you'd have the U4 graphics and sounds from the classic Atari system, on a PC client. Again, if this is possible, it can also be done for the amiga, Atari ST system, etc... and any other systems that had a version of U4. This leads me to the question, that I hope some of you here might be able to answer. "Is there a way to export the tilesets and graphics from the Atari versions of Ultima 4, and 5?

Well, if anyone has any info on exporting the U4 graphics and somehow getting them to a PC so they can be modified (if necessary) and imported to the U4mp client, please let me know.

Thanks and sorry for the long message.

John

PS: In case you are interested, here is the url to u4mp.

http://www.shatteredmoon.com/ultima/

Edited May 5, 2006 by Draugr