An Ultima 4 Development Challenge
This is just a Photoshop job, not a real screenshot. Sadly.
I was told the most interesting thing today.
As the good reader is probably aware, a port of Akalabeth was recently released on the iPhone (or, more correctly, iOS) platform, Apple’s mobile device operating system. The good reader is also probably aware that I’ve had some contact with Mythic Entertainment. Mythic, as most hopefully know, basically holds the rights to the Ultima name at present, and produced the most recent expansion to Ultima Online.
Well, it turns out that Mythic would be very interested in any effort made to port Ultima 4 to the iOS platform, so much so that they would work to get any functional, well-implemented port published on the Apple App Store under the EA Mobile label.
So…if anyone out there has some experience with development on the iPhone platform, and if such a person would be interested in creating a port of the original game, which offered context-dependent controls not unlike how the Akalabeth port does: here’s your big chance. Not only to remake an Ultima title (and a darn fine one, at that), but to get it officially approved and published.
As Aragorn, son of Arathorn, asked: What say you?
Bioware Fairfax said this huh? I’d be interested to see that happen.
As would I. Almost makes me want to pick Objective C over C# as the winner of the not-really-coveted “language I will learn next” designation.
We are HUGE ultima 4 fans here and have been busy with lots of ultima r and d. It would be great to get any of the old games up and going on the iPhone and iPad.
What do you mean by context-dependent controls? You mean like how controls change depending on whether you’re in a dungeon or on the surface?
I’ve been tinkering around in Xcode, teaching myself iPhone development stuffs. I’d love to be involved in this.
Just make a wrapper that can interpret BASIC for the iPhone. Then you can just take the C64/128 Ultima 4 and interpret it.
I’m not 100% sure of the legality of it, but EA -did- release U4 for free.
~Wiz
Actually: I do take that back to a certain degree. Making the interface work with an iPhone -would- be a consideration unless you figured a way to make the keyboard display with all the U4 keybindings (or at least all the keys it uses) at all times. Or at least all times when playing the game proper.
~Wiz
you can already run the early ultimas through Dospad http://www.litchie.net/apps/dospad.html a Dosbox port for ios. Only for jailbroken devices though. I haven’t tried U8 recently but with earlier versions it didn’t run, I may have to try on the new iphone, that should hold more power than the ipad.
I’d assume EA/Mythic wants proper proprietary port they can sell at app store, not free OS port. You’d also need to adapt computer control sceme to Iphone.
Or depending on whether you’re in combat or just walking about, yes.
Let’s face it: the screen area on an iPhone is already pretty small. You can only present a few keys to the user at any one time. Changing the keys presented depending on the in-game situation makes sense in that case.
I found DOSPad over the weekend, and it looks promising.
I also downloaded the Commander Keen series from Steam over the weekend, and all id Software did is create a series of DOSbox wrappers, tuned to the performance needs of each game in the series, and then publish these. When you run any of the Keen games, you first see a DOSbox window, which goes full-screen after a second and then loads the chosen game.
I imagine something similar could be done under Windows for any of the Ultima games, which leads me to believe that something similar could be done for DOSPad as well. DOSPad also lets you customize the keyboard that is presented to the user, or so I gather, so you could trim out all but the necessary keys (though whether you could have contextualized keys, I don’t know). And forcing a portrait orientation lock wouldn’t be difficult.
(If you forced portrait orientation, you could run U4 at 320×240 in the top half of the screen, and still have half the screen to present a keyboard to the user.)
And here’s the rub: you could probably sell that package.
I observe that you can buy Inherit the Earth (ITE) in the Apple App Store, and that app is basically ScummVM (which typically requires jailbreaking to install and use) wrapped around the original game data files and modded to autorun ITE. Oh, there’s a bit more to it — they added a touch-specific control scheme — but basically that’s how it was built.
I don’t see why it would be different for something built in almost exactly the same way with DOSPad. Especially if Mythic and EA put their weight behind it.
My guess — I stress the word guess — is that they’d want some sort of control over the published work, yes, and I would guess that they’d arrange to, in effect, buy the port from the dev(s) who came up with it, or at least remunerate them in some way for their work.
But again, and I must stress this, that’s just me guessing. We’ve heard from Mr. Barnett, Mythic’s Creative Director, above, and hopefully he can give us more details about the exact arrangement in due time.
That said, this is all academic until someone pops in and says “hey, check out my work in progress” and drops us a link. So for the time being, we may have to go without specific confirmation of the exact arrangement that would be…uh…arranged.
While I’m not a big fan of Apple or their products (understatement), I am a big fan of Ultima IV. Consequently I’ll give the best advice I can:
Contact Andrew Taylor and Michael Ryan of the xu4 project
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xu4/
http://sourceforge.net/users/andrewtaylor
http://sourceforge.net/users/solus
and ask them if they’re interested. They’re responsible for why I’ve been playing Ultima IV in Linux lately, and already have most of the project fully in hand. This would be a great alternative to emulation, which has been suggested by most of the posts previous to mine.
One caveat is that the xu4 project requires SDL, which I believe in turn requires OpenGL. The feasibility of an iPhone/iOS port should probably be propositioned to the xu4 developers.
Apropos of Kevin’s comment, I seem to recall reading somewhere that somebody had ported SDL to iOS. So that particular development hurdle may already have been surmounted.
Hmm, Dospad should work fine for U4 and yes you are right, it would make sense to create a “wrapper” around it.
If you have some contect with Mythic… they could most likely easily adapt Exult’s code for the iphone/ipad. I’d love to see it on the ipad though I would still play on the iphone as well.
We have a lot of work done to our code and it’s behaving very well on macs these days … so a port wouldn’t be much harder than porting ScummVM and that has been ported 🙂
To Petrell who said:
—
I’d assume EA/Mythic wants proper proprietary port they can sell at app store, not free OS port. You’d also need to adapt computer control scheme to iPhone.
—
Open source software may be sold, distributed, etc., providing that the source code is included or linked to as actively available. Combine that with the number of iPhone users who can compile anything and the fact that Apple controls which applications are published to their store and there is no discomfort in charging people money for an open source application compiled specifically for the iPhone.
Remapping keyboard buttons for Attack, Board, Cast, etc. would probably result in a hybrid “main commands” menu and a full or alternate menu for executing the other commands. Implementing GUI-based manual remapping and template-based copy/paste remapping of buttons would enable players to feel more comfortable with the control scheme.
Of course, the IP owners of the “Ultima” name may have no understanding of any of that and get chills from potentially having to test to legal strength of an open source license, so who knows. I say they’d be lucky to reap the publicity benefits, if it came to it.
Someone would have to produce the paperwork that made Ultima IV free, and under what license as decreed by the IP holder at the time. Hopefully it’s under a license similar to BSD, so it’s completely free.
I have strong doubts as to whether anyone would be renumerated for this. That said, I personally would only want comphensation if they were selling it, anyways, as opposed to giving it for free.
~wiz
Pretty sure they just released the U4 Dos Port to the public domain, but they did NOT release the source code or any other version, and releasing one does not automatically make the other versions or the source code free game.
~wiz
Wiz, that is true, but xu4 isn’t a DOS port but an open source program basically recreating Ultima IV from scratch (someone correct me if I’m wrong). Once you figure out the data file formats and know the gameplay mechanics from playing the game, the rest is probably relatively easy to string together if you’re a competent programmer. You’re pretty much recreating the engine and copying the graphics and data files verbatim.
Assuming the xu4 team wants to give it a go, my main concern is that the end result would somehow violate Apple’s TOS and get the app booted from their store. I haven’t read their TOS, but based on previous bad behavior can only guess that it’s Draconian (must be based on original IP, contain no trademarked names, subject to lawyer’s whims, etc.).
An example, if memory serves, is a Lemmings clone that was roundly banned. Of course Lemmings isn’t public domain…
Well, an Akalabeth port got through…so evidently there is some wiggle room.
How much wiggle room exists is up for discussion, and Apple does tend toward the draconian (and arbitrary, natch) when it comes to approving apps. That said, keep in mind that EA would work to get a good Ultima 4 port published through their own Mobile label, right up there alongside The Sims 3 and all the rest.
That should serve to help sidestep at least some of the legal issues surrounding IP and original content.
There are things that can be done, for example there is a Tyrian 2.0 port (or actually a port of OpenTyrian) and that one isdownloading the game files of Tyrian 2.0 (which is free these days under whichever license) on first start. Right now the port is limbo since the author has some problems getting his app resubmitted after some fixes for ios 4 and ipad. But a lite version is available.
So yes, I think xu4 would have chance, even exult could have a chance, especially since apple is a bit more forgiving with code running inside an app (previous this alone would have made exult impossible on the app store because of usecode).
I can do that. Email me if you’re serious.
I am indeed serious.
As such: email sent, from my Gmail account. Do thou look for it!
Ok, here’s the demo 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsJgU3XsGbc
Is there anything new with that demo? It’s been a couple of months. If that has stalled for whatever reason, I might be interested in pursuing this project. I have previous experience with re-implementing Ultima games. 🙂
Ultima 3 for the Gameboy Color
The work on the xu4 fork is ongoing, mostly targeting the iPad right now. You’re welcome to have a go at it, if you like…always nice to see innovation. Which platform would you target?
Could you please shoot me an email?
Thanks
Email away!