Ultima III Gold

[MagerValp]

I quietly released Ultima III Gold at Big Floppy People this summer,
but didn't have the time to type up docs and make an announcement. I
*still* haven't found the time to do a proper webpage or scan the game
manuals, but I've at last managed to put the docs online, together
with a download link:

http://www.paradroid.net/u3/

Ultima III Gold is an enhanced and bugfixed of Ultima III for the
Commodore 64. The original port from Apple II suffers from a heap of
technical problems and has some of the sloppiest code I've ever seen.

Feaures:

Fastloader
Supports 1541, 1570, 1571, 1581, CMD FD, CMD HD.

Fits on a single disk side

Keyboard remapping
Movement keys are now sane on non-english keyboards.

Trainers
Unlimited Magic
Unlimited Food
Unlimited Torches
Unlimited Keys
Unlimited Gems
Press T to teleport (X/Y coord 0-63)
Press (B) to mount (H)orse or board (S)hip
Press (X) to exit combat
Yell "AMBROSIA" to travel to/from Ambrosia

Code optimizations
The tile plotting routine has been rewritten which speeds up the
game significantly.

Revamped save system
Removed redundant sosaria save for performance reasons.
Sosaria map is cached in ram when entering townes.
Only saves to disk when asked to - no automatic save when the
party dies.

Buy more than one dagger at a time

Select default character
Press 1-4 to select a default character for actions. Press 0 to
revert to the games default behavious where it asks.

Ask on location exit
The game asks before it throws you out to the main map.

Bugfixes
Delete key now works when entering player name.

[r***@value.net]

Post by MagerValp
Ultima III Gold is an enhanced and bugfixed of Ultima III for the
Commodore 64.

Congratulations on your achievement! You are the man! :-)

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

[christianlott1]

Post by MagerValp
Ultima III Gold is an enhanced and bugfixed of Ultima III for the
Commodore 64. The original port from Apple II suffers from a heap of
technical problems and has some of the sloppiest code I've ever seen.

In the intro you mention the on the fly conversion of Apple2 graphics
to C= bitmap. Could you post that snippet?

Post by MagerValp
Code optimizations
The tile plotting routine has been rewritten which speeds up the
game significantly.

I noticed the intro story scene moves a bit too fast for my tastes.
Before it moved like a story book, now it's like a hurried commercial.

Post by MagerValp
Revamped save system
Removed redundant sosaria save for performance reasons.
Sosaria map is cached in ram when entering townes.
Only saves to disk when asked to - no automatic save when the
party dies.
Buy more than one dagger at a time
Select default character
Press 1-4 to select a default character for actions. Press 0 to
revert to the games default behavious where it asks.

Cool idea.

Post by MagerValp
Ask on location exit
The game asks before it throws you out to the main map.
Bugfixes
Delete key now works when entering player name.

That was a feature :)

I'd love to see the disassembly.

Any plans for Ultima 2?


Christian

[MagerValp]

MV> Ultima III Gold is an enhanced and bugfixed of Ultima III for the
MV> Commodore 64. The original port from Apple II suffers from a heap
MV> of technical problems and has some of the sloppiest code I've ever
MV> seen.

CL> In the intro you mention the on the fly conversion of Apple2
CL> graphics to C= bitmap. Could you post that snippet?

Dammit, I had a long reply written breaking down the routine when the
connection dropped, and for some reason there wasn't an autosave.
*sigh*

Anyway, the code is here:

http://www.paradroid.net/u3/tech/files/updt.html

The draw routine starts at $CB01. It draws the view a scanline at a
time, instead of a tile at a time, requiring a horrible amount of
address lookups and 16-bit adds for every byte, instead of two lookups
(tile src and screen dest), two 16-bit adds (for even/odd char lines),
and a 2x16 byte copy. It's amazingly inefficient.

MV> Code optimizations The tile plotting routine has been rewritten
MV> which speeds up the game significantly.

CL> I noticed the intro story scene moves a bit too fast for my
CL> tastes. Before it moved like a story book, now it's like a hurried
CL> commercial.

Yeah... I had been sitting on it for 8 months though and needed to get
it out the door.

MV> Select default character
MV> Press 1-4 to select a default character for actions. Press 0 to
MV> revert to the games default behavious where it asks.

CL> Cool idea.

Well it's from Ultima V :)

CL> I'd love to see the disassembly.

I haven't had the time to make a proper page for it, but the raw files
are here:

http://www.paradroid.net/u3/tech/files/

CL> Any plans for Ultima 2?

Yeah, I'd like to do U1, U2, and U5 as well. U6 would be a waste of
effort on the C64, it's so much better on Amiga and PC.

[christianlott1]

A beautiful job. Really.

Thank you.

[Payton Byrd]

Post by MagerValp
I quietly released Ultima III Gold at Big Floppy People this summer,
but didn't have the time to type up docs and make an announcement. I
*still* haven't found the time to do a proper webpage or scan the game
manuals, but I've at last managed to put the docs online, together
http://www.paradroid.net/u3/
Ultima III Gold is an enhanced and bugfixed of Ultima III for the
Commodore 64. The original port from Apple II suffers from a heap of
technical problems and has some of the sloppiest code I've ever seen.

MV,

Superb Effort! This works great on my NTSC 128 with JiffyDOS enabled and running from drive 15. Cracks like this are fabulous!