Gigaquad's increased brightness patch

This article is about a fan-made patch for Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II by Gigaquad called Increased brightness for Ultima Underworld 1 & 2

Description

This patch alters the lighting system in Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II. Specifically it makes all light sources in the game brighter.

Self Description

Taken from the UWbright.txt file:

Increased brightness for Ultima Underworld 1 & 2
----------------- by Gigaquad ------------------

I did not like how dark the Underworld games were and wanted to increase the brightness a bit. A well know fact is that deleting data\shades.dat will remove all shades, but this really kills the atmosphere. Shades.dat consists of eight 12 byte groups (probably for different radii from player), where the first byte in a group defines the shade.

I settled for dividing the shade values by two, which hopefully works best for most monitors and brightness settings. A lit torch is now bright enough to illuminate a small room, making objects easier to see.

Installation: Replace data\shades.dat with the file provided in this archive. It works in both UW1 and UW2.

Alternative

A well-known hack for lighting in the Ultima Underworld games is to delete the shades.dat file from the data folder. See details in cheating with permanent light

Difference

Techincal

Spoil

TechnicalLighting/Shading System

The patch replaces the file data\shades.dat. This file contains 8 entries for the 8 light souces in the games and each entry has 8 values. The meanings of these values are described in UW internal formats. The patch only changes the first vale of each entry, which is essentially the shader strength. The following table shows the values of the file, with the first column divided into original (O) and patched (P) version values. The names of lights and enchantments have been added for clarity.

entry	light	enchantment	0		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
			O	P
0	none	darkness	56	28	0	5	0	-3	3	16	16
1	candle	burning match	46	23	0	4	0	-3	3	16	16
2	torch	candlelight	39	19	0	2	0	-2	4	16	15
3	taper	light	30	15	0	1	0	0	4	16	15
4	lantern	magic lantern	28	14	0	0	0	0	5	16	15
5		night vision	21	10	0	0	0	0	6	16	15
6	light sphere	daylight	18	9	0	0	0	0	7	16	15
7		sunlight	18	9	0	0	0	0	7	16	15

Visual Comparison

• 

  Ultima Underworld with the standard shades file

• 

  Ultima Underworld with the shades file patched

• 

  Ultima Underworld with the shades file deleted

Installation

Obtain the patch and copy the included shades.dat file over your game's shades.dat file in the data folder. Don't forget to keep a backup copy of that file handy incase you decide to switch back.

Alternatively, and recommendably, use Ultima Underworld Portable to install and manage this patch and several other quality-of-life improvements for the Underworld series.

External Links

• http://bootstrike.com/Uw1/downloads.php

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User-Made Enhancements (not Translations)
Ultima II	Upgrade Patch (PC)
Ultima III	Ultima III Gold (C64) ☥ Upgrade Patch (PC)
Ultima IV	Ultima IV Gold (C64) ☥ Remastered (C64) ☥ Upgrade Patch (PC)
Ultima V	Remastered (C64) ☥ Upgrade Patch (PC)
Ulitima VI	Nitpickers Delight Patch (PC)
Underworld I+II	MIDI-Patches ☥ Portable ☥ Mouselook Patch ☥ Brightness Patch
Ulitima VII	Glassmyer Hacks ☥ Nitpickers Delight Patch
Ulitima IX	Dialogue Patch ☥ Economy Patch ☥ Forgotten World ☥ German Re-Translation ☥ 1.19f ☥ 1.19h