Added: Ultima 5 for iPad
I was alerted to the existence of this project on Tumblr (Aiera has a Tumblr feed; the developer followed it) a couple of days ago, and have taken the step of adding a project entry for it.
Because, really, the prospect of this…
[singlepic id=111 w=500 h=392 float=center]
Not an actual screenshot, sadly.
…is awesome.
Hmm, did I miss something on that page? All it does is mentioning how to play it, mostly by mentioning Dospad (http://www.litchie.net/apps/dospad.html – Dosbox for iPad). It doesn’t seem to be an actual project with the goal of porting U5 to iOS.
I would say that it isn’t even a nice blog, since the author doesn’t even have it running yet on the ipad through Dospad.
If you want I can easily give you a real photograph of U5 running on the ipad…
The author, as noted in the project entry, is waiting on the iOS 4.2 release and the jailbreak for it. He’s also mulling a downgrade to iOS 3.1, since there is a jailbreak for that already, but I’m thinking he’s opted for the “wait it out” approach.
What it would be really sweet to see is these guys figuring out how to make U5 (or U4) under DOSpad or any other scheme into a cohesive, standalone app.
One could easily make a semi standalone version of dospad either with the yet unreleased source or probably the deb package, add u5 or any other game and change the autexec section in the dosbox.conf accordingly so the game is started on startup. Then change the app icon, the app name, all done 😉
I still think putting this under projects is a bit overestimating the guys ambition (judging from his blog) 😉
I figured it was a relatively simple process like that, but having never messed with it personally, I couldn’t be sure.
And yes, this entry is a tad premature, but hey, I don’t mind. If nothing else, it’ll give the guy some traffic, a shot in the arm and a morale boost. (As much as it continues to surprise me, Aiera has a bit of power like that.)
Think the easiest way is have the Dospad guy do a nice little “Ultima Interface” where you can choose all the keys needed for the relevant Utima game and map them on the screen. It’s sort of done but still would be good to be able to choose more keys and be able to place them acordingly on the screen. Obviously no midi support.
I understand that DOSpad lets you choose which keys to display to the user, which would indeed be an excellent feature to exploit for this sort of project.
And if a working standalone app could be created, it might (as I note in the project entry) attract some pretty high-level interest, as might a similarly structured port of Ultima 4.
Whether Apple could be coaxed into approving said apps for sale through the official App Store is another question entirely, of course.
Thanks for the mention; I look forward to the forthcoming feedback.
Truly, I don’t have anything actually running yet. The point of the blog is simply to follow my process, as I jailbreak, run DOSPad and get Ultima V to work. As I discover tweaks, secrets, or perhaps new ways to run Ultima V, and maybe other Ultimas, that will go up, too.
Not everybody is super-comfortable or familiar with the ins and outs of iOS, jailbreaking, or running an Ultima in DOSbox, so hopefully I will help somebody else run my favorite game of all time on their iPad.
Donn, sometimes aka Adric Dragon
*Adric*? Really?
Doctor Who FTW!
Yeah, really! Got a problem? J/K 🙂
All I can say is, back in the day when I started playing D&D, Adric was my go-to character name, ’cause I was a young Whovian, and I didn’t realize what a tool Adric really was. Still, it’s a cool fantasy name, so it’s always the name of my Avatar.
just testing, sorry, please, delete this if you will 🙂
Rather than delete it, why don’t I reply so your test can actually progress?