Ultima IV Upgrade Patch

Ultima IV pre-patch

Ultima IV post-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 is intended to be used under DOSBox, the same as the game. The patch can be downloaded from Auric's Ultima Moongates or installed with Pix's Ultima Patcher.

Improvements

The patch includes the following upgrades to the game:

• It upgrades the graphics to 256 colors, replacing the tileset, font, game, and cutscene graphics. This makes it the best-looking version of the game. (dungeon graphics are not affected)
• 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.

Issues

The patch does have several issues due to its age and history.

• Some components are packed in a way that requires you to first issue the "loadfix" command. Otherwise you will get an error about corrupt packed files.
• The upgrade cannot 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. You also need to use the modded avpatch.exe in DOSBox, because otherwise the game will always crash when starting the journey.
• A bug in the endgame code introduced by the patch causes the endgame to hang. This can be fixed with a patch from Voyager Dragon, found at The Exodus Project.
• Dungeon Hythloth has a broken room since the original game. A fix for that can be found here.

Comparison of Tilesets

EGA tileset	VGA tileset

See Also

• Ultima II Upgrade Patch
• Ultima III Upgrade Patch
• Ultima V Upgrade Patch
• Ultima IV Gold

External Links

• Auric's Ultima Moongates
• Alternate download location at The Exodus project
• DOSBox is one way to get the DOS sound drivers working properly.