
Ultima IV - kryptiskt
http://www.filfre.net/2014/07/ultima-iv/
======
ascotan
I loved Ultima IV. I think I still have the original cloth map and ankh
somewhere. I believe it came with 5 1/4" floppys for the C64.

You have to remember that at the time, that there were really 3 game media
back then. A) board games like DnD, B) the 8-bit Nintendo/Gameboy and C) the
PC.

The Nintendo was cool and fast paced and was great to play with your friends,
but the PC had all the adventure games. Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure
Bonds, Bard's Tale II, Zork, etc.

PC Adventure games were all MUCH more involved that today's stuff. All the DnD
games had decoder wheels and 500 page journals. You were expected to play it
slow, read the journal entries, and immerse youself in the game. The closest
thing I can think of today that comes close is Skyrim.

Most PC games today are built for kids with ADHD that aren't going to sit down
long enough to use a decoder wheel. Heck, how many people actually read the
quest text in world of warcraft?

Ultima IV actually had pretty good graphics for the time. The UI layout was
really great. Most of the other games of the time were based on the old
"wolfenstein maze" view of a game. Having an top down map was quite
innovative.

There was a lot of 'searching' in Ultima IV. You had to find party members,
you had to find secret doors. You had to find hidden items.

You had to run around do /say job, /say name, /say health, /say quest.. to
every npc in the game to see if they'd tell you something.

Anyway loved the game, but it was built for a different time.

~~~
danielweber
I'm going through all the Ultimas now. (Currently on U5 but I've been busy for
a few weeks.) The sense of world-building is the series is fascinating. With a
minimal amount of space a wide world was developed and it feels to persist a
lot more than in any modern game, where a bunch of spaz happens and then the
game is over.

I'm not sure if having to write down notes in a notebook is something
beneficial to game play, or just a limitation we had to live with. In a modern
game you don't have to remember shit. If Joe tells you to ask Bob, you get a
Quest Item reminding you to see Bob, and Bob has an exclamation point over his
head to remind you to go to him.

(About the article: it bugs me when people alphabetize the virtues instead of
the proper order of HCVJSHSH. ;> )

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Yes, not only space, but also limited hardware. U5 was the last Ultima that
still ran on 64kb of memory -- of course with several floppy discs to swap (a
second floppy drive was a big advantage for that game) -- I think, there where
6 or 8 of them, but you had to swap mainly two (overworld and town disc).

It was the genius of that time, that a game of that size could fit into such
limited hardware (64kB RAM, no HDD, only Floppy drives with 180kB size limit,
<1MHz clock with unbelievable slow 8bit processor (I guess, today they sell
such stuff as a smartcard "SOC" \-- but of course with out the Floppy drive --
even the processors on SD-Cards are faster today, I guess) [Specs from the C64
version, but there existed versions at least also for Apple II with similar
specs (It could even be, that it ran on Apple II with only 48kB) -- and
(later?) of course for IBM PC].

U4 was technically similar to U5 (also several discs to swap and a big world
on limited RAM), U5 did just drove the concept to the technical (and swapping-
endurance-) limits. I think, they doubled the disc number (and so the content,
I think 4->8 discs), improved the combat system (I liked the U5 combat system
the most from all Ultimas I know) and made a new story, that showed the other
side of "righteous" living.

Even, when I never found the time, to finish U5, for me it is still the best
of all time.

~~~
CamperBob2
Speaking of memory issues, I could've sworn that the Apple version of U5
required a 128KB //e. I just went and checked the box on my shelf, and you're
right, it only required 64KB. It's a memory issue -- with _my_ memory --
because I probably wrote about 50% of the code in question. :-P It's cool to
see that people are still enjoying it, though!

~~~
talloaktrees
I would read a blog post about your experiences.

~~~
CamperBob2
It would be about as exciting as any other programmer's blog, I'm afraid. This
guy's other blog entries on Ultima and the history of 8-bit RPGs in general
are outstanding -- see
[http://www.filfre.net/tag/garriott/](http://www.filfre.net/tag/garriott/) for
a lot of fun background details. I'd recommend reading his stuff instead. :)

One correction I'd offer: Richard never received a letter accusing him of
being a "Satanic Perverter of America's Youth," at least not in so many words.
That particular sobriquet was mine, after he made the mistake of letting his
car windows get a bit too dirty. It was hilarious at the time... but I 'fessed
up pretty quickly because he was either genuinely mortified, or doing a great
job of acting like it.

------
jkarneges
"I love to think about it, love the fact that it exists, that Richard Garriott
had the courage to make it — but just thinking about playing it makes me
tired. Like a work of conceptual art, to some extent the real power of Ultima
IV today is just the fact of its existence."

I played the NES version, which was probably a little more tolerable. Even
though it's a slog, it is one of my favorite games at least in concept. I love
how the air vehicle is a hot air balloon that you can't control other than
cast spells to change wind direction. Good times when you run out of MP.

The game is up there with Inindo for the SNES, which is another game that is a
chore to play, but is one of my favorite concepts.

~~~
danielweber
Nit: MP was rapidly regenerated in U4. However, you could run out of _W_ ind
Change spells. ;)

I'm a dork.

~~~
jkarneges
Ah yes, and I remember it not being so much the MP but the herbs needed in
conjunction to cast. Can't make anything simple. :)

------
snake_plissken
The only Ultima game I played was Ultima VII. I love that game. It's one of
the high water marks in computer gaming. I recall being around 7 or 8, playing
it with my younger brother, both of us completely obsessed, but at the same
time unsure of how really to play it. The game-play and world were for the
most part completely open, and immense; you could either talk to every person
you cam across and progress through the game, or you could explore the woods,
dungeons or go to random islands complete with pirates to battle. Then there
were the character development aspects of the game, like if you steal too many
things, your companions will leave you. I loaded it up again a few years ago
after seeing it for sale on GoG. It is timeless in every way. And now I am
feeling very nostalgic :]

Also, was there a secret way to kill Lord British in Ultima IV? I know of two
ways to do it in Ultima VII. You can either surround him with like 8 barrels
of gun powder, or double clicking this anvil thing in his castle while he
stands under it at 12:00 PM every day.

~~~
mratzloff
> _Also, was there a secret way to kill Lord British in Ultima IV?_

The Ultima Wiki actually has an entire page devoted to killing Lord British in
the various games:

[http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Killing_Lord_British](http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Killing_Lord_British)

------
xiaoma
Of all the 1000+ games I've played from the original Nintendo games on, if I
had to pick a list of five favorites, Ultima IV would be on it. The Ultima
games were impressively ahead of similar games such as the Wizardry series.

All of Wizardry I on consisted of building characters with stats, navigating a
menu-based town with no graphics, taking steps through a first person
perspective dungeon, and fighting monsters. Ultima I on the other hand, had
equivalent dungeons, many towns with top down views and people to talk to, an
overland world a space ship and more. The difference was staggering!

In terms of plot, early Ultima IV was a quantum leap from its predecessors.
Here were the goals in each game:

Ultima I - Kill an evil wizard.

Ultima II - Kill that wizard's evil apprentice.

Ultima III - Kill an evil monster.

Ultima IV - Become an avatar who symbolizes the eight virtues and inspires the
people of the land!

Needless to say, against the backdrop of RPGs with rigid or non-existent
plots, it was refreshing and immersive in a way that would be very hard to
replicate in today's flooded game market. In some ways the frustrating nature
of the game that the author mentioned, like the conversation system actually
made the game _more_ immersive. Since any stray word in a conversation could
be the keyword to unlock further secrets in a conversation with someone else,
I hung on every word. I filled a notebook with notes—"Talk to this person
about mystic armor", "Ask that person about navigation", "Ask the mage in the
woods at Yew about deep magic", and so on. I can certainly see how modern
gamers wouldn't want to go through all of that note-taking or draw their own
maps of dungeons. I probably wouldn't either, now that I'm not eight.
Nonetheless, Ultima was an impressive work of art I'll never forget.

I lived and breathed Richard Garriot's fantastic world for months until I
finally made it to the final question at the bottom of the Stygian Abyss,
ready to open the Codex of Ultimate Knowledge. And I kept getting the damned
answer wrong, which resulted in me being sent back up to the surface and
losing hours of work. Stuck within a single word of victory I finally gave up.
For three years, I didn't play the game. And then one day, somehow all of the
game conversations I'd burned into memory came together and I had it! I felt
confident knew the answer to the last question. I booted the game back up,
fought through the 8 levels of the Abyss, got to the final riddle, and with
trembling fingers, entered my answer.

~~~
danielweber
The raw answer never appears in the game, AFAIK. Smith The Horse was supposed
to tell it to you, or a critical clue, but they forgot that part of the game.
His two talk prompts are both "A" "A".

Smith became a running joke after that; in each game, he would tell you
something critical _for the previous game_.

~~~
xiaoma
Yeah, that was great! I'd almost forgotten about all the inside jokes and
easter eggs. Also interestingly, I tried to edit my stats and Lord British
appeared killed my party for pirating the game.

Good times.

~~~
danielweber
Which Ultima was that? I got scolded by _Beyond Zork_ for messing with stats
and not handling the checksum: [http://danweber.blogspot.com/2008/08/shove-
beyond-zork-under...](http://danweber.blogspot.com/2008/08/shove-beyond-zork-
under-rug.html) control-F for "checksum"

------
drcode
I think one essential part of the Ultima formula was its geometric
discreteness- The world was one in which the physics is broken into motion in
orthogonal directions through discrete cells, and everything in the game
leveraged this fact for maximum effect. It led to a really different gameplay
feel than many modern games. Other games of that era had that as well, of
course, but not many really leveraged it as well (Boulderdash and Archon would
be two other highlights)

Some modern games of course also use this approach to physics (Advance Wars
comes to mind) but it is far less common.

~~~
jeffmk
As someone who's never played this series, can you give more detail about what
this means?

~~~
math0ne
I think this is just the most complicated description of "grid system" I have
ever heard.

------
bcRIPster
Ultima IV was awesome. Here's text maps that were passed around from when the
game first came out. Designed for 80-column, tractor-feed output. Just print
them out, and tape them together. Woot! =)

World maps:

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__world_map__part_1.txt)

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__world_map__part_2.txt)

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__world_map__part_3.txt)

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__world_map__part_4.txt)

City maps:

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__city_maps__part_1.txt)

[http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV...](http://www.kitchencloset.com/home/bryan/text_files/ultima_IV__city_maps__part_2.txt)

------
morsch
CRPG Addict is replaying all computer RPGs - yes, _all_ of them -- in
chronological order and writes about his experiences. Here's his first post of
many on Ultima 4: [http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/2010/04/game-16-ultima-
iv.html](http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/2010/04/game-16-ultima-iv.html)

If you've got any other 80s era CRPGs you want to read about, the likelihood
of him having played it and written about it in-depth is pretty much 100%.

------
hyperion2010
Damn, it would seem that I need to play this. After playing Fallout 2 my dream
was the play a game like that set... in a fictional renaissance Italy with
more tech and maybe some magic. There would be no evil in the world. Just the
possibility to raise one town or family above the others and at the end of
your life/game have a retrospective on how your actions made a difference in
the world.

Maybe dwarf fortress can get us close to this, because to pull it off you need
a reference history (or rather set of histories) from which to compare. But
the idea of being able to see whether you as an individual can actually make
an impact on a simulated world seems incredibly valuable and educational.
Sadly most cRPGs today have completely forsaken the idea of truly simulating
the world in favor of narrow story telling. What happened to games made by
programmers?

------
samstave
My first ever computer game that I got into was Utima II on the Apple ][e.

I have played every Ultima since. I was also in beta and then a long time on
UO -- which for me was my golden age of gaming as I worked in the Intel Game
lab and played 4 accounts on 4 machines side-by-side on what was one of the
fastest corporate inet connections at the time!

I still reminisce about Ultima and UO a lot.

I still think I have the Ultima V cloth map somehwere... I used to be fluent
in the Rune Alphabet when I was in 7th? grade and my buddy morgan and I would
write school notes in the Runes...

EDIT: in one of the Ultima games, I recall finding a bug where you could dupe
ships -- I had oceans full of ships that I could use to bridge between
continents/islands...

Anyone recall this dupe bug and how it was done?

~~~
davidjhall
I seem to remember you could board enemy ships at sea? Something like you
would sail out, X-It your boat and stand on the enemy ship and then board it.
The enemy ship would still be there "underneath" and you would have another
ship you could use.

~~~
xipho
This! I remember it as well. Edit -> pretty sure it was II, or III... hell I
don't remember, can picture it though. What about dropping a coin in the lake
in I to get a random weapon, do it enough times and your puny starting
character gets a blaster (most powerful weapon).

~~~
danielweber
In U2 you get ships by having some item that lets you "take over" the ship,
and then by a pretty easy bug[1], duplicate the ship repeatedly.

[1] It was hard to _not_ exploit the bug.

------
pimlottc
Nostalgia trigger warning: Classic PC games

Seriously, there should be a warning--I just lost a few working hours. I don't
think I've ever seen so much well-written, well-researched content about
classic PC gaming and interactive fiction on a single site. Bravo!

------
reboog711
I loved all the Ultima games. But, as others have said; I can't imagine
putting in that much time today. [Because I'm old with responsibilities and
can't spend 8-10 hours a day on a game for weeks at a time].

A few others mentioned cloth maps; so at the risk of tooting my own horn; here
is the "Jewel" of my collection; a cloth map for the First Ultima game,
apparently only released in Japan and very rare:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kMprGHococ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kMprGHococ)

------
acomjean
The game stands in contrast to Ultima 3 (which I loved as well).

Ultima 3 you could go into a city fight and loot, then leave and go back
again, and everything would be back to the way it was before.

I remember exchanging hints with friends also playing.. I can't believe I
finished it. Those games where hard.

Some of the difficulty (and complaints in the article) was the lack of hand
holding and guidiance the game gave you. Given the limited hardware of the
time (64K memory...cpus of 1 -10 megaHz) these games were astounding.

~~~
danielweber
U4 reset cities, too, although the virtue penalties to massacring a town could
be severe.

In U5, you could permanently kill off city residents, even residents who still
hadn't given you a critical piece of information or equipment.

------
danielweber
_the only place where Ultima IV does even lip service to the idea that there
can be conflicts between its virtues, debate about their merits, is in those
questions that open the game_

There are some actions in game where you might have to choose one virtue over
another. Such as running from battle versus being victorious in it. If you
weak enough, you might have to take some karma-hits on the chin.

------
JeremyReimer
This was one of the first games I ever played on my brand new Packard Bell XT,
with its tiny orange monochrome monitor running SIMCGA to simulate a 320x200
4-color CGA screen.

It was a cracked copy, and so I didn't have a cloth map. Instead, I would use
the in-game map "gems" to show a tiny part of the map, sail a little bit
further, use it again, and so forth, all the time drawing a complete map of
the world in pencil.

I also didn't have a manual, and so I didn't know how to mix reagents to make
spells. In one town I had to get past a magical barrier and didn't know how to
make the "dispell" spell. I ended up writing a poor man's map editor in
QuickBasic, finding the hex code that corresponded to the wall, then using a
hex editor to zap that section out of existence. I figured that was some
pretty powerful magic right there.

While in the hex editor I found a strange bunch of text, including the words
"Note: you can't win!" and "Yvonne Yu has big balls!" The latter was in the
world map and manifested itself as a giant structure in the southeast ocean
consisting of dozens of writhing characters floating in the sea.

I took painstaking notes, writing down every possible hint I received from
every person in every city. It took months. I became somewhat obsessed with
the game, thinking about it during all hours.

At one point I realized I wanted to equip all my party members with magic
bows. I did this by going to the bridge just to the east of Castle Brittania
and walking over and over until trolls appeared. Shoot, get treasure, walk
back to Britain and sell, rinse and repeat. Over and over. I did get those
bows though.

Eventually I made it to the depths of the Stygian Abyss and faced the final
question. That's when the game bugged out and would say nothing more than "It
looks like you could use a good horse!" repeatedly. I figured this was Yvonne
Yu's handiwork. Damn you, Yvonne Yu, wherever you are!

A few years later I saved up enough to buy the Ultima 1-6 collection, which
included all the games on a single CD with manuals and many of the cloth maps,
and a single token (the metal coin with the virtues symbol on it from Ultima
V). Disappointed that it wasn't the ankh, I went and bought an ankh on a chain
from a street vendor and wore it a couple of times before it started feeling a
bit weird.

Anyway, I went back, using my handwritten notes, and finished Ultima IV
completely, getting the end scene noted in the article.

Ultima IV was my favorite game for a long time. Even then I knew there was
something special about it.

~~~
saraid216
> Eventually I made it to the depths of the Stygian Abyss and faced the final
> question. That's when the game bugged out and would say nothing more than
> "It looks like you could use a good horse!" repeatedly.

I haven't played the game, but this struck me as suspiciously relevant:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022817)

------
tunesmith
Ultima IV and Infocom's Sorcerer are the only two games I remember
solving/finishing without taking any hints. I remember both as hugely
satisfying experiences. I even called the company to ask for an extra ankh so
I could give it to my girlfriend. :-)

~~~
danielweber
I came _really_ close to finishing U5 without any outside help whatsoever, but
I didn't even realize there _was_ a harp puzzle. :/

~~~
djur
The 'bad ending' to U5 is probably the cruelest in video game history,
considering how hard Dungeon Doom is, and how you have exactly one chance to
learn about the very existence of the sandalwood box from a single character
that you're not supposed to trust and who will only talk to you if you tell
them a password you get by doing something extremely unvirtuous...

I'm pretty sure that you were intended to get through the entire game without
finding the sandalwood box, get the bad ending, and go back and replay the
whole thing the right way. That's how you got value for your dollar in those
days.

The sandalwood box in U5 is right up there in the pantheon of obscure paths to
victory in games, along with the numerous unwinnable states in King's Quest V
(eating the pie, not saving the mouse) and the legendary Grandmaster Ending in
Wizardry IV (itself arguably the hardest RPG in gaming history).

~~~
danielweber
At least in U5, if you clear a dungeon room it stays cleared, so the next time
through Dungeon Doom is lot easier.

U4 really kicked us in the crotch, though, with its "INFINITY" riddle ending.
There was only an extremely vague way of figuring it out: each time you would
get an eighth, a runic letter would be put on the screen. But reading runes
wasn't really required for U4, so at the time I didn't even _recognize_ them
as runes.

Entirely by coincidence, I had a card where I had all the virtues listed
horizontally, and I manually drew the "weird symbols" I saw at the bottom.
When you play U5 you get good enough to read runes by heart, and I glanced at
that card once and _immediately_ saw the answer leaping out at me.

------
thisjepisje
I have Ultima: Runes of Virtue for game boy lying around somewhere. Worth
checking out?

~~~
mratzloff
Ultima IV and Ultima VII: The Black Gate are widely regarded as the high
points of the series. The Runes of Virtue games are mostly forgotten
afterthoughts, but they're supposed to be decent games for what they are
(action-adventure games). They're not representative of the mainline series,
however.

