THIS POST IS NOW DEFUNCT AND SUPERSEDED BY THIS POST.
In addition to the Roland Sound Canvas Music now available in xu4, I’ve gone ahead and fixed up the Ultima IV Upgrade Pack so that its graphics upgrades now function fully again in xU4. You can download the fix package here.
I’ll let the included README.TXT do the rest of the explaining:
xu4 v1.1 (http://xu4.sourceforge.net/) currently breaks support for the u4upgrad.zip pack (http://www.moongates.com/u4/upgrade/Upgrade.htm) by Aradindae Dragon and Wiltshire Dragon.
Most of that pack’s appearance has been worked into the built-in “VGA-ALLPNG” xu4 video mode. However, there are two issues:
- The base terrain is now green instead of black. This can be quite jarring for Ultima veterans since “black with green dots” has been the standard since Ultima I.
- The “HUD” has been changed.
This pack restores the original appearance of both. Just decompress this ZIP file and overwrite the PNGs in your xu4/graphics/png/ directory with the ones provided in this ZIP file. Then, replace xu4/conf/graphics.xml file with the one provided. The former step replaces the affected terrain tiles while the latter step enables the old “HUD” from the upgrade pack.
When finished moving around files, the “VGA-ALLPNG” video mode should appear and behave just like Aradindae Dragon’s and Wiltshire Dragon’s Graphics upgrade.
I attempted to make the result of this work its own “video mode” in xu4 so that “VGA-ALLPNG” could be left alone. However, adding another video mode caused inexplicable problems with the opening title screen. So this will have to do.
Okay, now I can actually go play the game!
Addendum (3/30/2014)
Here is the VGA-ALLPNG video mode without these fixes. . .
Here is the VGA-ALLPNG video mode with these fixes applied, restoring the Ultima IV Upgrade pack’s UI frame and classic terrain. . .
Also, as of 3/30/2014, I have updated this pack with a fix for and xU4 bug where corrupted display of the endgame “codex” images occurs. This only affects the “VGA-ALLPNG” video mode but it could easily be done by hand to other modes that “borrow” those PNG images.
One final note. . . there are various versions of xU4 floating around. All of this is designed to work with “xU4 1.1svn” (2/22/2013) which you can download from this part of xu4 website. If you download it from elsewhere on xU4’s sourceforge page, you’re likely to get an older version and none of this will work.