Ultima VII auf Deutsch

Title screen

Ultima VII auf Deutsch is a fan-patch created by Sir John which fully translates Ultima VII into German, which can be found at Die Heimstatt des Sir John.

The Patch[edit]

While an official translation of Ultima VII into German does exist, it is very difficult to find, as it was only published on floppy disks. Additionally, Forge of Virtue was never translated into German. Also, the original German translation has several weaknesses and bugs. Due to that, Sir John decided to completely re-do the translation. Also, a new translation of the original manual is available in PDF format (more in its own section). Version 1.6 ironed out many problems that plagued the older versions thanks to a cooperation with Tribun Dragon, who playtested the game to not only find errors, but also inaccuracies that did not mesh with established lore. For Version 1.70 a German version of Eureka Dragon's U7-Hacks have been added, making the more comfortable Ultima VII Part Two controls available for Ultima VII. The newest version of the patch is 2.0.^[1]

Installation[edit]

The original CD-version of Ultima VII is needed for the patch. The patch files then are simply copied into the game directory, and that is basically all that needs to be done, apart from extra steps for additional content. Other than manual copying of the files, a DOS- and Windows-installer version are available as well. The resulting game can then either be played in DOSBox or Exult.

Features[edit]

Looking at the stats

Talking with Jaana

Buying from Apollonia

The spellbook

The following things are part of the patch:

Full and complete translation of all text in the game to German. The existing translation got massively overhauled and greatly improved in the process, while Forge of Virtue is a first translation. Many German names for places and things that got established with the German translations of Ultima V: Lazarus and The Ultima 6 Project replaced sub-optimal names from the original translation.
- In the original translation, the rules of Chuckles' game were broken due the correct answers also having more than one syllable. Here the answers are modified to adhere to the rules of the game properly.
Re-drawing of all English graphics into German graphics (as seen in the title screen), this does include multiple spells with altered names. The text in the intro also got altered and re-drawn.
The German speech files of the Guardian from the original translation, which were rather lackluster, are replaced with newly-recorded lines for intro, outro and in-game speech.
Looking at people now gives the correct label gender-wise (German is more strict about that).
Alternate optional antiqua-font for better readability of the text, can be turned on or off.
Addition of JohnGlassmyers U7-Hacks in German.

Fixes of Original German Version Bugs[edit]

The originally translated German version of the game from 1992 had some bugs that the English original did not.

Fix of a bug of the old German version, in which several keywords had their triggers missing and thus could not be used.
Fixing of the spacing between the lines, which had caused only three instead of five lines of text (as per original) being visible in dialog, which also limited the visible keyword selection to that amount. That severely crippled the shops – especially since German words in general are longer and take more space.
Further fixing of shops that had more than five lines of products visible in the selection, since everything after line 5 could not be selected. Words were shortened to fit everything on five lines.
Fix of a bug that causes single reagents in the world (not bought ones) to have a quantity of "0", thus they could not be used for spellcasting and disappeared if one tried to stack them.

Fixes of Bugs of the Original Game[edit]

Some bugs were already in the English original and also got fixed.

Fix of the Rankin-bug, he can now be forced to confess with the cube.
Fix of the Tseramed-bug when the player's name is "Avatar".
Fix of the broken code when wasting a potion.
Fix of the Iskander-quest, which in the original was unsolvable due to a bug.
Fishes now no longer have a size of 0 (bug in the original game). Thus fishing is now possible.
Additional fixes for the static in the intro and the earthquake-effect, which before did not work properly in DOSBox.
The bug where Jaana can no longer heal (the five-hour timer was bugged) got fixed.

Correction of Wrong Content[edit]

Many content errors in the dialogues were corrected, and these corrections are also available for the English version in the Ultima VII Nitpickers Delight Patch. (more could follow)

Correction of the dungeon confusion, dungeon Shame (where the Sphere Generator is located) is now labeled correctly in dialogues.
Jillian now correctly puts Moonglow on Verity Isle.
Penumbra now correctly locates the generator on Dagger Isle.
Gorn's god is now correctly spelled "Brohm".
Change of Asterellon's logbook to correctly identify the Isle of Fire being under water during his stay.
Julia now says more logical things about her working as a tinker.
Gordon now no longer has a wagon that does not exist.
Sam also no longer has an imaginary wagon.
Gwenno's scroll was corrected to avoid continuity errors with Serpent Isle.
More text when initially meeting Thad (without wearing a medallion).
Addom now says correctly that Jhelom is on an island.
On Buccaneer's Den, Danag, Gordy and Sintag now correctly identify Dungeon Hythloth (where the gate is built) and the Buccaneer's Cave (where Hook lives). Both places had stayed strangely nameless in the original, despite being in the correct places.

New Manuals[edit]

Sir John also again translated both, The Book of Fellowship and A Guide to the Isle of Fire, since the original German translation at times was not exactly up to today's standards. However, the layout of that first new translation was somewhat bland and not optimal, while still containing errors of the original. In 2019, a second new translation was done, this time Tribun Dragon helped spotting the errors while also providing all the illustrations and page borders in high quality to re-create the original layout. This version actually holds more illustrations to compensate for the sometimes lacking original and both books got new covers – Guide never having one in the first place.

The books coming with the patch have the lowest quality due to size issues. Sir John offers higher quality downloads on his page.