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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Ultima on Linux 22

Posted by CowboyNeal from the blast-from-the-past dept.
Mortimer.CA writes "O'Reilly has a story about someone hacking Ultima VII so that it's multiplatform. Exult is replacing the the rendering engine so the game can be played on more than just DOS. A legal copy of Ultima VII is needed to play Exult. I have 'wasted' so many hours on the Ultima series that it's not funny: now I can waste them again on my Unix box." I might have to see if I still have Ultima VII kicking around. I haven't played it since my college days.
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Ultima on Linux More

Ultima on Linux

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  • Legality? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kruetz ( 642175 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @10:48AM (#5881743) Journal
    Just a question, but is this legal? I have no idea what license Ultima VII is available under (is it even still available comercially?), but unless the source has been released, couldn't this be considered illegal under the DMCA? Or are they able to do this without any 'reverse-engineering'?

    As the FAQ says ... "So there is no chance for the Exult team to have a look at the actual code"

    I guess that Origin probably wouldn't feel a strong desire to take Exult to court, but if they did, would they have a case?

    BTW, FP!!
    • they're probably on the same level as any of such projects (scummvm,sarien & etc). what they're providing is platform to run the original games.. though one could argue that they're cracks to get around copy protection :). potential backslash is great though, and theres no money to be gained by dragging them to court (and often the developers themselfs take them as compliment).

      ah well.. when dosbox [sourceforge.net] gets good enough we can just screw that too :). though engine rewrite provides more possibilities, fixing
    • Well, when Lord British was in charge of things, he said he had no problem with projects like these. ...He's not in charge anymore though.
    • couldn't this be considered illegal under the DMCA?

      I know I know, "skyralov" but most of them team aren't US based (with 3 whereabouts undisclosed ):

      Jeff S. Freedman, working in the EDA industry in Oregon
      Dancer Vesperman is an Australian
      Willem Jan Palenstijn in the Netherlands
      Tristan Tarrant aka "Nadir", resides in Italy
      Luke Dunstan, student in W. Australia
      Max Horn, a math student from Darmstadt, Germany
      Simon Quinn in England
      Travis Howell in Australia
      Aurelien Marchand in Canada

  • Follow id's example (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @10:59AM (#5881844) Homepage
    I'd like to see more game companies follow the example set by John Carmack and id Software: after the period of greatest commerical gain has expired, release the source to your game, but require it be used with legally obtained data files.

    Benefits:
    - Your game lives forever. When everyone upgrades to the newest Windows and your game doesn't work, someone can fix it. When a new platform arises, someone can port your game for that community of users.
    - Your game can be extended by any inventive, industrious fans.
    - You gain a lot of good will with the community of gamers.
    - Generates interest in your older products, which leads to interest in newer ones.

    Potential harms:
    - Increased potential for piracy.
    - Increased potentially cheating if an online game (although having the source can mean that anti-cheating measures are easier to implement)
    - Ugly coding exposed. ;^)

    Anyway, when I see things like Exult and ScummVM which reverse-engineer game engines, I'm struck by how much easier life would be for all involved if the company simply realized that releasing the source could be a great idea, both for them and their customers.

    Ok, I admit it, I just want Lucasarts to release the source to Grim Fandango. So sue me. :^D

  • Ultima Copy Protection Warning (Score:5, Informative)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:08AM (#5881952) Homepage Journal
    Danger Will Robinson!

    You can easily obtain all the Ultima games by downloading them from an abandonware site or (more legitimately) buying an "oldies" CD. One little problem: Lord British was fond of document based copy protection. And he was very creative about it.

    I used to think this was pretty cool. Unlike games where you have to find the 3rd word on line 5 of page 23 of the manual to play the game, some Ultima games came with fancy maps (printed on cloth!) or lengthy treatises that you just had to read in order to solve some of the puzzles. And unfortunately these are not provided with most CD re-releases (and not at all with downloads of course). Some fans have provided online versions, but coverage is spotty. Make sure you have Googled all this info before you start the game, or you may find youself stuck in the middle of a game -- forever!

    • err, I believe all the main Ultima games came with fancy maps printed on cloth. I'm not sure about the first 3, but after that, I believe they all were. This, however, excludes the Underworlds and the Worlds of Ultima.

    • And unfortunately these are not provided with most CD re-releases (and not at all with downloads of course).

      Um, don't know about that. I have two copies of the game - the Complete Ultima 7 and one from some EA compilation - and both have a list of the asked coordinates and stuff on the documentation. The Complete Ultima 7 has it even on the printed installation instruction booklet / quick start thing, and it also has the whole map as PDF. Neither came with a cloth map, which is obviously a great shame,

      • I never got past Ultima VI. Been a long time since I played Ultima 1 (on an Apple II!) so I don't remember what copy protection it had. Never played II or III. Started to play IV on the Apple II, then finished it up many years later on a dumpware CD (fortunately I still had the stuff that came with the Apple version). Never finished V, because there was a musical puzzle that I couldn't solve without the materials (no PDFs on the CD set I bought), I couldn't save the game in the middle of the puzzle, and I d

        • Never finished V, because there was a musical puzzle that I couldn't solve without the materials

          Come on, everyone knows how to play "Stones"... =)

          (no PDFs on the CD set I bought),

          Let me guess: "Ultima I-VI Series" published by Encore? People were driven mad by the lack of documentation on that one. Not me, I was probably insane before that too. Can't remember.

          Some helpful people have published the documentation for I-VI precisely for the reason that no proper manuals existed. The basics (includi

  • Ultima for NWN? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday May 05, 2003 @12:13PM (#5882575) Homepage Journal
    Am I imagining things, or have I seen someone recreating at least one Ultima game in the Neverwinter Nights engine?

    On a very related note, there is an implementation of Pool of Radiance for NWN, more or less using 1st edition D&D rules. Like the original, walk around town with weapons equipped and people get upset... It's very cool.

    • Ultima 4 was rather faithfully recreated under the NWN engine. Even the mildly painful (these days) character interactions are there! (;

      Although, I looked for the Rune of Compassion in its usual spot, but, erm, don't know how to 'search' an area. I didn't end up finding it.

      I did only play the conversion for a little bit, I wandered through Britain and the Castle, but that was it. I do intend to play it more extensively, as I was a big fan of Ultima 4 back on my C64.

  • Works great, less filling (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @12:32PM (#5882753) Journal
    I used Exult a few months ago ... was able to run U7 and U7.5 with the expansion packs for both.

    I bought and played these on the PC a long time ago, but had tossed the boxes so I downloaded them again from an abandonware site in France (I don't remember the URL). Technically illegal, but since I'd paid in full for the games back then I feel morally sound :)

    It was quite interesting to play Exult not only in 1024x768 on my Linux PC, but to then copy my saves to my Zaurus and play on the road on the Zaurus (though with less enjoyment than the PC just due to speed and interface issues).

    Quite a piece of work. Highly recommended if you're into that sort of thing ... my latest romp down memory lane has been to play Eye of the Beholder on my GBA. Wahoo! :)
  • What suprises me is that Exult has been around for a whole hell of a long time now, and it's still popping up in news posts here and there.

    It's always a worthwhile news item, though, as not many of us have old DOS boxen around to mess with to get the original engines working. Origin's memory manager for these games was a bear and Exult, thankfully, takes that out of the picture.

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