Anyone With PlayStation Game Modding Experience In Need Of A Project?
So I was having a conversation with Bandit LOAF (from the Wing Commander CIC) and Sergorn Dragon on Twitter, concerning the PlayStation port of Ultima Underworld. Yes, such a thing exists. Sadly, it was only ever released in Japan, and only ever in the Japanese language.
Anyhow, LOAF mused thusly:
I wonder how hard it would be to put together an English language version of Ultima Underworld for the PSOne…
I offered to put up this article, an idea which LOAF welcomed, which brings us to…here.
Like LOAF, I’m essentially operating from a position of ignorance here. The PlayStation is (by choice) largely a foreign object to me, a “black box” in engineering terms. I’ve no idea what would be involved in cracking into a game for the system and editing its data files, nor do I have any idea how different those files might be (in terms of format) from the original game data files. Nor do I know if the game files can even be modified in the way LOAF is wondering about.
However, many Ultima fans are incredibly technically savvy, and it’s my hope that some of you have experience modding PSX games. If so…is what LOAF is proposing feasible? And if so, would you be interested in taking a stab at it, assuming that a copy of the game could be obtained or provided?
I have a legitimate copy of Ultima Underworld for the Playstation I picked up while living in Japan, and even though I’m pretty attached to it, I might be willing to donate to the right person. Heck, I gave the Pentagram team a free copy of Japanese Ultima VIII.
That would be cool, but what UW really needs is an Exult-style engine reimplementation, which could optionally the resources from the PS version.
Well, I checked the files on the PSX version and it seems that everything is stored in a single file of 10 mb called Avatar. The header has pairs of bytes that probably represents the size of the files inside (like what happens in Super Wing Commander). So extracting them wouldn’t be that difficult (I think).
The videos are very easy to extract, they are in str format that’s very common among PSX games, and finally the 2 extra songs from the game are in 2 separate CD tracks.
About the Avatar file, I don’t think it uses any compression algorithm, but I may be wrong. The only problem is that it’s probably encoded in JIS so if you open it in ascii mode you wouldn’t be able to see any text at all.
About donating the game, I don’t think it’s really needed. Probably sending the 10 mb file would be more than enough.
It’s definitly *doable*. There are already similar patches for other Playstations games in Japanese, so there is no reason why this couldn’t be done for Ultima Underworld.
Now you’d need an experience coder able to extract and edit the files and someone verse in Japanese to know there to put what, altough this would be easier that with other translation, since as the game as far as I know use the exact same dialogues as the original PC version they’d have their work cut out of them and it’s just be about putting the english dialogue in its stead (rather than Savage Empire which would require a full translation for instance).
@Infinitron – A Exult kind of recreation would be awesome. Last decade both Underworld Adventures and Labyrinth of Worlds seemed very promising… but they both died 🙁
As cool as DOSBOX is, I think it spell the doom of many engine recreations, there is a common attitude which is “Why bother with an engine recreation since you can play the game as it with DosBOX ?”
A shame really, I can’t even begin to express how awesome an Underworld engine with full screen and improved UI would be.
I really don’t know why Ultima Underworld hasn’t gotten the same modder love as other classic franchises have. (Including games from the same pedigree like System Shock, Thief and Deus Ex)
Forgive my ignorance, but is there any compelling reason to translate the Japanese version into English? Is there extra dialogue, quests, or something not found in the English versions already?
It has better graphics.
Heh, they tried porting it to sega cd but only ever ported it to psx japan. Who did the port for it anyway?
I think the graphics is tad of a mixed bag actually : areas looks a tad better, and most importantly you play full screen, which is great!
However they repleced all the bitmapt creatures by 3D models, and these are rather uneven, downright ugly for some.
@Micro Magic – I’m not sure who did the PSX port, since depending on the games these ports tended to be done either by FCI or internally b Orisin themselves (ironically, I think the FCI port were usually the better one). I would suspect with UW1 being done so late, it was done by OSI but… not sure.
Aha, making me do my own homework. Well it builds character. Apparently it was ported by some Japanese company named Infinity co. I dunno though dude, those 3d models are some of the best I’ve seen on a psx. Although, I’ve never played uw1 before, can’t compare it to much.
It looks like a Captain Blasto kind of character models. Not many poly’s used for the game world, so they used them all on character models. Looks pretty interesting, I’d give it a run.
Maybe romhacking.net has someone experienced to redesign fonts and extract the string tables.
I already did some translations from English->Portuguese on some old SNES/GB games(also helped with Ultima Underworld PT-BR translation). But with Japanese it’s harder since there is no Latin characters to work with.
I saw the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxLSW1PyrOo
There IS Latin characters, so maybe it will make your life easier.
Oh, I had never seen this before. Here is the FMV ending to Ultima Underworld, but unfortunately it’s in Japanese. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UczZcq_fLwA&feature=related Anyone know where to find an English copy of the FMV ending?
It looks like all the videos have been lip-synced to the Japanese dialog so their lengths are different from the original English. That leaves 4 options:
(1) Throw away the Japanese videos and re-encode the English clips from the original game
(2) Keep most of the Japanese video, but replace the audio with English and edit the clips to more closely match the the English audio
(3) Keep the Japanese video as-is and replace the audio with English, but edit the audio to match the Japanese video as much as possible (i.e. Godzilla style)
(4) Keep the Japanese audio but add English subtitles to the video
If you would like some insight and guidance on how to do each of these, shoot me an email.