I don’t check the r/Ultima community on Reddit all that much — mainly because I don’t check Reddit all that much — but I’m glad I took a quick look there last week. Someone who goes by the handle hadokenzero has posted a new fork of the xU4 engine, with the goal of making Ultima 4 as easy as possible for someone who has never played it. Inspired by Majuular’s Ultima 4 video, the project also took some inspiration from the xU4 “feature wishlist” and the menu-driven interface of the Sega Master System version of the game:

The goal of this project is to make it as easy as possible for someone new to check out Ultima IV and help keep the legacy of the game alive. I don’t think any content needs modification that way, but with modern conveniences, we can make the game more accessible and less overwhelming with out-of-game reading required, etc.

The big addition is an SMS-style interface. Instead of one key per command, you get an action menu, and conversation topics are listed as you discover them, so there’s no typing keywords. It switches on automatically when you use a gamepad (support comes through SDL3), and you can also turn it on for keyboard play under Configure > Enhanced Interface Options. The rest of the feature list:

• Apple II graphics and music, if you supply the four Apple II disk images
• Windows auto-detection of the free GOG release of Ultima IV
• The GOG release’s ULTIMA4.TXT split into the History, Book of Mystic Wisdom, Hints and Reference Card, readable from the in-game menu
• A module browser that only lists modules whose game data is actually present

Version 1.0 is out now for Windows and Linux. There’s a caveat, though: the author says gamepad play hasn’t been widely tested yet, and he’s still playing through the whole game with it. Mouse and touch controls are on his list for later.

He also says he used Claude to help decompile the SMS version and study its dialogue system, which has drawn some grumbling in the comments. (Personally, I don’t fault him the use of AI in this effort; decompiling binaries is not for the faint of heart…or the short of time. Or it wasn’t, at least, before the advent of AI tools that could actually do a decent job of it.)

You can grab the release from the project’s GitHub page, and read the original post on r/Ultima. I haven’t added a project entry for it as yet, but expect to see one soon!