Ultima IV Upgrade Patch

The Ultima IV Upgrade Patch is a fan-made upgrade to the MS-DOS port of Ultima IV. The upgrade began as two parts: Aradindae Dragon’s Music Machine, and Wiltshire Dragon’s Graphics Package. The upgrade is a combination of their efforts. The latest version is 1.3, dated March 9th, 2001.

The patch includes the following upgrades:
 * It upgrades the graphics to 256 colors, replacing the tileset, font, game, and cutscene graphics.
 * It improves the graphical user interface.
 * It adds MIDI music support, and adds the original music from the Apple and Commodore versions of the game.
 * It corrects several conversation bugs within the original .TLK files.
 * It adds command keys to Reload the last saved game and Exit to the OS.

The patch can be downloaded from Auric's Ultima Moongates. DOSBox is one way to get the DOS sound drivers working properly.

The upgrade can't be installed under DOS, as one of its files, "avpatch.exe", is a Windows console application. However, there is a patched version. Downloading the patched avpatch.exe here and replacing the old one with it, fixes the problem. This new version can be run in DOS, Windows, and DOS emulators.

Under DOSBox, a bug makes the game crash every time after character creation. Fixing this is simple: create a character and save it, before patching the game. After that the upgrade should work fine.

Comparison of tile sets:

