My driving design philosophy was that you shouldn’t have to type more than your name and a few hidden keywords, otherwise you can tap/click.

That line is Emre Motan’s, posted to the public Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter group, and it’s the driving philosophy of Ultimatum — a week-old (his words; expect bugs) web-and-mobile shell for Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. This is not just another DOSBox port, however. Rather, it’s meant to feel like a modern client for the game, wrapped around original game data you already own. (Similar to xu4, but specifically targeting mobile and browser-based play.)

As is the norm for this sort of thing, you have to bring your own game datas from GOG, archive.org, or wherever you go to get your legal copy of Ultima 4. The site is explicit that original game data is never bundled, but does offer the option of an Ultimatum account if you want cloud sync of saves. (This isn’t a requirement to play; fully-local gameplay will always be supported.)

Other things worth knowing, including some screenshots:

Features include:

• Clients for Desktop Web and Mobile Web portrait+landscape
• Touch-friendly controls for mobile
• Tap/click-to-walk and interact
• Auto mapping and minimap
• Overhead view in dungeons optionally
• Contextual actions button
• A searchable journal for dialogue, clues, bookmarks, and personal notes
• Conversation system like Ultima 7+
• EGA and VGA tilesets
• Three save slots, automatic checkpoints, save recovery, and portable backups
• Option to create Ultimatum account to enable cloud syncing of saves and game data if you wish

My ambition is to generalize this platform to host more Ultima games and other classic PC titles. I’ll probably do Ultima 5 next.

I have an iOS version for U4 as well in early TestFlight, send me your email if you’d like to try it.

The source code is on GitHub under Ultimatum-Project/Ultimatum. Emre says he leaned on AI coding to help realize a project he’d always wanted and never had time for; which probably explains why the Ultimatum site boasts that its Ultima 4 offering is now 98-99% implemented, and the above-teased Ultima 5 offering is already 89% realized.

You can — and should — check out the Ultimatum website if you want to check it out. It’s a very cleanly-designed site, with an easy-to-use workflow that guides you through uploading game data and, at least in the case of Ultima 4, selecting which tileset you want to use. There is also a basic project entry for Ultimatum here at the Codex, though obviously I can’t offer downloads thereat.