Ultima Patcher

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I’ve not spent long on it, but I cobbled together a simple GOG Ultima game patcher on Saturday afternoon. The idea was to offer an easier alternative to install all the various patches for Ultima 1-4 for anyone who has bought them off GOG. It’s very basic and just copies the patch files, runs any installers inside DOSBox and alters the GOG DOSBox config automatically. There isn’t much point in using it if you know your way around DOS/DOSBox, but it might help a few people out. It needs some serious tidying up and I definitely want to add in links to the project sites and the like but it basically works for now. It’s in the Miscellaneous section in the downloads for anyone who wants it.

I’ll probably add the other games as they are released + the Underworlds, although it does mean buying them all again so I’m tempted to wait until a sale. After buying Ultima 1-3 on GOG that makes it 6 copies of Ultima 1 I own and 5 copies of 2 & 3 in one form or another. Surely I must have paid for these games enough times by now. $6 is not a lot of money though, so I’ll probably stump up the cash for the others.

While I’m posting, one of my favourite channels on Youtube, blacklily8, just added a mini-review of Ultima 4:-

Matt is a guy who is very much into old RPG’s and adventure games, and seems to have very similar tastes to myself. Despite that he’s not played any of the Ultima’s so this is more or less his first experience of the series.

It’s interesting to see what someone new to Ultima, but not to ancient RPG’s makes of it. It’s easy to forget just how awkward the interface is and how much there is to learn when you have been playing these games for years. There is a thread on GOG where several people couldn’t even figure out how to get past the menu screen at the start and thought the game was broken.

Wing Commander Junior Novelisation

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This book was a censored and simplified version of the original Wing Commander movie novel aimed at a younger market. It was published at the same time as the adult version in 1999 by HarperEntertainment and made child-friendly by the original author Peter Telep. Aside from the changes in content, it was printed in a larger format but with far fewer pages, due to the cuts and simplifications.

I would usually read any of the books before I put them up on here, but I’ve made an exception in this case as I’d prefer to stick to the original version. I was curious as to the sorts of changes that were made though so just looking at the first page for instance:-

“He looked past the whirlpool of gases, past the black hole lying at the quasar’s core like an interminably deep maw, until his inner gaze rested on a gentle blue orb bathed in a soft glow.”

becomes:-

“He looked past the whirlpool of gasses, past the black hole lying at the quasar’s core like a giant mouth, until he imagined a glowing blue planet called Earth.”

The same character thinks about friends rather than bikinis in the next paragraph, and fails to give his reason of needing a leak when he asks his buddy to cover for him. Clearly anything even slightly suspect has been removed. There are plenty of word substitutions also to simplify the language used.

If the first page is anything to go by, there are far more changes to the prose than I expected actually. I presumed it would just be a few cuts of the racier parts of the story. The whole book is scanned in for anyone curious to have a look anyway but I’d much rather read Pilgrim Truth first myself. I had a few days away in Wales last weekend and was going to read it on the train journeys there and back, only to discover my ebook conversion hadn’t worked too well on the trip down. Instead, I’m halfway through an Anthony Burgess novel now which I intend to finish before I start on anything else.

In the meanwhile, I’ve added a pile of other new scans including guides to Tex Murphy Overseer, Alone In The Dark 1 & 2, Tie Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, The X-Files and Lands Of Lore 3. There are still more to come but I really am down to the last few now.

Ultima 1-3 on GOG + some Ultima 1 scans

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The first 3 games in the Ultima series were released yesterday on GOG.com for their bottom end pricepoint of $5.99. There are quite a few grumblings on GOG about this price for such ancient games, although there were just as many people happy to see them. I can see where the complaints are coming from but it’s not exactly a big expense provided that GOG are adding some value to the deal. I did have concerns that the earlier games in the series might have been skipped altogether so it’s good to see them arrive at all. I think it’s safe to assume at this point that all of the main Ultima series will be appearing on GOG in due course. Fingers crossed for the Worlds of Ultima games.

While I don’t have a problem with the asking price, I definitely have complaints with the added value aspect here. For a start, the Akalabeth remake from the Ultima Collection should have been included. Ignoring that, GOG’s extra’s are a bit of a joke. They appear to consist of some pdf’s lifted from replacementdocs.com including my own scans of the Ultima 3 cluebook, and cloth map/galaxy map from Ultima 2. They have removed the replacementdocs logo however which seems highly unreasonable to me. Surely they ought to acknowledge the source rather than hiding it. They didn’t even manage to grab everything correctly and missed one of the spellbooks + the Ultima 3 map is upside down. My scans of the Ultima 2 map were my usual rubbish patchwork job with something too large to scan in one go. There must be better scans available within a minutes googling which they could have used instead. I’d have done them some decent ones myself, if asked.

It did bring to my attention that the maps from the Ultima 1 remake are missing from replacementdocs and hence not available as GOG “extras” either. I’m sure they are available elsewhere but I’ve done some scans anyway and added them into the downloads here, as well as uploading them to replacementdocs. I thought I might as well do the coins too while I had the scanner going.

Apart from the dubious extras, there do seem to have been issues with several of these EA games as they have been released. Some of these I can sympathise with but others are just basic errors. It was poor to release Underworld with the sound defaulting to MT-32, but to then make the same mistake with Wing Commander is ridiculous. It gives the impression that GOG just shovel the games into Dosbox and don’t bother testing them. This is born out again as by all appearances Ultima 2 still has the bug with all the planet maps not being included, due to the filenames being duplicated on disk 3. I’ve not actually playtested this, but there is no sign of the missing files so it’s a safe bet. There is a fan patch for this but I thought the whole point about GOG was that it was supposed to be easy for people to run these games. This bug has been in every Ultima compilation since the early 90’s for crying out loud.

I am glad to see these games being made available again anyway and it’s the first time any of the main Ultima series has been on sale for around a decade. I’m sure GOG will remedy most if not all of the issues eventually, but they aren’t doing their reputation any favours in the meanwhile as far as I’m concerned.

Ultima The Technocrat War Book 3 – Maelstrom

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This was the final novel in the Technocrat War series and was published in 2002 by Pocket Books. It picks up immediately after the events of the previous novel and follows all the various characters as they attempt to do their part in the war against the pact of four.

Once again, Blackthorn is in no way the enemy in this novel and is even fights on the side of good in the later stages. The book is instead about the battle against the pact, making this a civil war in effect although this isn’t apparent to most of the people doing the actual fighting. Only the pact members and their direct associates could be described as being on the side of evil as such.

All of the main protagonists have split up into their own groups, and a large part of the novel flits between them as they each pursue their own agenda. Montenegro has joined up with the Technocrat’s at this point, to the extent of leading troops into battle against the rogue Jukan warlord Bahrok. Raveka in the meanwhile goes back to Britannia, in an attempt to delay their fleet launching to join the war. The Jukan side of things is told through Thullan, who attempts to get her side to accept a truce with the Technocrat’s. That just leaves the Meer, who haven’t figured largely in the series so far, leaving the ambitions of their pact member a mystery. This part is briefly told through the misadventures of Jatha and Fairfax who end up being teleported to the Meer homeland.

It turns out the cataclysm was actually the result of 3 separate catastrophes in different worlds. Sosaria as it is now, is actually the remnants of those worlds which have joined together. There are 3 splits in these joins, which allow the holder to claim huge amounts of power. Controlling all 3 would give the power to split the world apart and hence control everything. The meer chamberlain Kavah is using the war as a distraction to claim these 3 “beacons” for himself and hold the world to ransom.

I’ve tried to avoid too many spoilers with these books so I won’t say any more about the plot. There is certainly enough going on to make this another page-turner and it’s up to the standards of the previous books. I’d have preferred it to concentrate a little more on specific plotlines rather than the incessant switching which prevailed in the middle stages, but it’s only a minor criticism and the strands start to converge in the later chapters.

The final part of a trilogy is often the least interesting as events work toward an inevitable conclusion. That is arguably the case here as there is less character development in favour of pushing along the story. Thankfully the characters are well enough established that I was happy enough to go along with this. The ending when it comes is the inevitable huge battle but it does still hold a few twists and turns.

Ultimately, I’d prefer that this series had been steeped in the Ultima lore I know from the main series rather than this UO2 offshoot but anyone with an interest in fantasy novels who can look past that, or has never played an Ultima should enjoy these. They were the best novels I’ve read for the blog, and I wouldn’t have been sorry to see another trilogy of them. This was actually final published novel based on Origin franchises (so far) and is now available on the downloads page with the rest of them. I do still have the “new” Wing Commander novel to read, which I’ll be starting next.

I should quickly mention that GOG are back to publishing EA games as of today and have released Dungeon Keeper 2 and Wing Commander 1/2. I gather that as with every previous EA release, this news has been tarnished by the add-on packs not being included. This is particularly surprising for WC1/2. The same expansions were initially missed off the Kilrathi Saga compilation but later released as patches for the game for free by EA. These patches are still hosted by EA and linked from wcnews, so I gather there is no legal problem with the Kilrathi Saga version of the games even though it’s exactly the same content. If that is the case, why not just release the Kilrathi Saga on GOG instead and everyone would be happy.

I’d be interested to know how the legal rights over something like SM1 ended up being different from WC1 in the first place. It was after all originally released as part of WC1 in a special edition version. I assume my copy must be one of these. There is nothing on the box or disks obviously different, but it has SM1 included straight from being installed. If anyone can shed any light on the legal situation, I’m curious to know what the problem is.

Even without the add-on packs these are still great games of course and worth a lot more than the $6 asking price. If it was me, I’d buy one the compilation CD’s on Ebay instead, but that will probably cost a little more.

Deus Ex Invisible War – Official Guide

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This was published in 2003 and is a joint XBox/PC guide, possibly explaining the extremely large format. It’s relatively short, but there is plenty packed onto each page and the whole thing is in full colour with loads of artwork scattered throughout.

The early pages give all the background detail to the world and it’s characters, including a full summary of the events in Deus Ex. It’s stated clearly amongst all this that in the world of Deus Ex Invisible War, all 3 choices at the end of the previous game were taken. I spotted two of these when playing the game but not that JC had also sided with the Illuminati which I don’t recall being apparent at any point. The reviews I remember reading for the game, stated that it had followed one of the 3 possible outcomes and other sequels would pick another which was clearly not true.

There is a section with general advice on which mods to take and weapons to specialise in. Very unusually, the author just tells you what he tried in his 2 playthroughs and the pros and cons of this. I quite like this approach as there are no right or wrong choices and it leaves you to make the call for yourself. This makes it a better informed choice, without guiding everyone down the same path.

There are backgrounds for all the major characters, and specs for all the weapons and creatures. These are accompanied by notes from the Ion Storm playtesters offering helpful advice. The best general tips for how to play the game can be found in these, if you want to avoid the full walkthrough.

The walkthrough sections each start with transcripts of some of the conversations you will overhear in each area. These are shown out of context but they still get across some of the storyline. The walkthrough itself uses annotated maps, and is fairly entertaining to read throughout, without going into the plot in any real depth. The 4 various endings are spelled out for you allowing you to take your pick, although I expect most players will go back and try them all.

I would like to have seen lists of the more important items somewhere in the walkthrough. I’m sure the vast majority get mentioned but it is definitely the main downside of this guide. The walkthrough is much better organised than Thief 2 was anyway, giving simple indications of which locations and instructions relate to receiving and completing particular quests. I do quite like to see some artwork in these guides, but it did seem a little overdone here with the same images appearing over and over again.

On the whole, this is another decent guide from Prima though. There is a lot less superfluous text than plenty of others I’ve looked at, and this keeps it entertaining and relevant throughout. It is scanned in and available with all the other downloads. I’ve started reading the final Technocrat War novel which will be the next book on here. I’m also planning on a playthrough of Freelancer, possibly starting this weekend.