Talk:Ultima IV internal formats

SMS Version Trivia

I have no idea where to dump this random bit of trivia but in the SMS version of Ultima 4 it has a bunch of random place names just before the dungeons names.

VENUS
EARTH
KRYPTON
VULCAN
KARAMEIKOS
GLORANTHA
SORCERIA

I've no idea if they are ever actually used in the SMS verison but they are buried in the data. -- Fenyx4 02:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps in Easter Eggs? I recognise two of them at this moment;

1) Krypton; This the planet where Superman came from.

2) Vulcan: This is a race and a planet in Star Trek. Famous one: Dr. Spock. Although, he is Half-Vulcan. --Arthgon (talk) 08:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Edit: Memories came back!

3) Karameikos: This is a fictional nation located within the Mystara campaign setting.--Arthgon (talk) 11:53, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

4) Glorantha: As far I can remember (not that much) was this created by someone called Greg Stafford. It was first introduced in the board game White Bear and Red Moon. --Arthgon (talk) 12:05, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

5) Sorceria: is from from Dragon Quest 6 according to Google. -- Fenyx4 16:16, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Found it! It is a list of responses to the question "I hear that thou art from another world? What is it called?" https://youtu.be/EMbQRBwYOqE?list=PL6--6xZlgfcpOx1W06R8_aikEqyyKMsjs&t=219

The list must have been too long to include in the normal conversation stuff. -- Fenyx4 03:22, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Ceiling Hole

The Ceiling Hole appears after the Falling Rocks trap is triggered.

Party.Sav

Food

I simply do not understand "Food (in units of hundredths)". I don't have time to explore now, but my bytes are 0x93 and 0x75, which are read as Int16 30099. The game reports my party's food at 9710 so I'm at all sure of how the conversion is handled. Are we sure positive we have the correct address in that file for food? I guess the only way to find out is to let science decide, and actually perform some experiments. Uniblab (talk) 17:06, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

The food is stored in 4 bytes not 2 bytes. So, your example is missing two bytes. For example I have A2 B8 02 00 which little endian Int32 is 178,338. But I only have 1783! Which is where the hundredths thing comes in. The game doesn't show you the last two numbers. 178338 -> 1783. Each move removes 1 food per character in your party but it will only show the difference every 100 food. Hope that clears it up! -- Fenyx4 03:03, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

The right-most bytes were both 0'd when I checked, and showing the difference only once every 100 moves explains the rest perfectly. Thank you. Uniblab (talk) 00:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Run-Length Encoded EGA Files

I'm sorely tempted to patch the rune, virtue, and principle EGA files, so the glyph/line/circle appears in the same colour as the corresponding stone is advertised. It doesn't cost any money, but sure helps with the thematics. Uniblab (talk) 02:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

3D Dungeon Map

I admire how LCB, by sharing walls, was able to encode some rather elaborate dungeon levels into just a 64byte array. Once one cracks the code, Deceit Level 4, for example, is seen in an entirely different light. It's like that moment when Neo sees "the matrix" for the first time. Uniblab (talk) 01:36, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Sharing walls also makes the energy field bug that destroys walls really useful. :) -- Fenyx4 20:18, 14 September 2021 (UTC)