XU4
===
   
   "Prepare yourself for a grand adventure: Ultima IV, sixteen times
   larger than Ultima III, is a milestone in computer gaming.  Lord
   British has produced a game to challenge, not only your physical
   and mental skills, but the true fabric of your character.  The evil
   triad of Mondain, Minax, and the hellspawn Exodus, have been
   vanquished and peace reigns throughout the land of Britannia.  Evil
   yet abounds, but in isolated pockets and in the hearts of men.  A
   new age awaits the coming of one who can conquer evil on all
   frontiers through the mastery of both magic and the use of force.
   Daemons, dragons and long-dead wizards still plague the countryside
   and must be destroyed.  The seeker on the path of the avatar will
   faces hostile groups composed of mixed enemy types and will survive
   such encounters only by strategic use of weapons and terrain.
   Earthly victories over seemingly impossible odds lead to the final
   conflict, where the ultimate challenge -- the self -- awaits..."
     -- Back cover of Ultima IV box
   
XU4 is a recreation of the classic computer game Ultima IV. The
purpose of the project is to make it easy and convenient to play on
modern operating systems.  xu4 is primarily inspired by the much more
ambitious project Exult.  Linux is the primary development platform
but it gets ported to Windows regularly and is rumored to work on Mac
OS X, too.  It should be trivial to port to any system with SDL
support.

XU4 isn't a new game based on the Ultima IV story -- it is a faithful
recreation of the old game, right up to the crappy graphics.  If you
are looking for a game with modern gameplay and graphics, this is not
it -- yet.  New features that improve the gameplay and keep with the
spirit of the original game will be added.

XU4 also tries to maintain strict compatibility with the original for
its savegame files.  You can use a game saved in XU4 with the original
and vice versa, at least in theory.


STATUS
------

New in v0.5
 - lots of combat refinements, random monsters
 - lots of fixes to vendor code (weapon, armor and food fully
   implemented)
 - Lord British nows heals party when asked about health
 - "Mix Reagents" command works
 - the "Yell" command now controls horse speed
 - lots of the game mechanics that were guessed before now match the
   original Ultima IV
 - two new utility programs are provided for encoding and decoding the
   graphics files used in the introduction (lzwenc & lzwdec)
 - the usual bug fixes

New in v0.09:
 - first go at combat; still need to figure out true U4
   combat algorithms
 - food vendors now work and buggy weapons/armor vendors are fixed
 - AdvanceMAME scaler (now the default), handles x2, x3, x4
 - configuration menu at startup, settings saved in .xu4rc file
 - drops frames when needed to better handle slow computers or X displays 
 - lots of code cleanup and bug fixes

New in v0.08:
 - 2xSaI scaler (now the default)
 - fullscreen mode (-f on the command line)
 - skip intro mode (-i on the command line)
 - shrines and meditation, more actions affect karma
 - sleep fields and poison now work
 - if the party dies, they are now resurrected by Lord British
 - spell casting improvements: Awaken, Cure, Heal, Dispel, Resurrect work

New in v0.07:
 - items searchable (runes, white & black stones, bell, book, candle,
   etc.)
 - city residents now move and have animated tiles
 - gem viewing (tiles aren't quite right)
 - getting chests
 - some actions now affect your virtues (stealing chests, talking to
   hawkwind, finding runes and stones)
 - companions will now join the party if asked
 - added filtering to the scaled images, like exult (2xBilinear only,
   for now); the -scale parameter now accepts a number or "2xBi" for
   filtered scaling (2 is still the default, 2xBi looks bad without
   the VGA upgrade)

To do, in no particular order:
 - sound
 - dungeons
 - autoconf, automake
 - everything else :)

Some thoughts for possible improvements:
 - Ultima 5 style aiming in combat (i.e. allow angle shots)
 - support for higher-resolution tile sets
 - allow the map view to display more of the world
 - read Ultima 4 for DOS files straight out of zip file
 - automatically fetch Ultima 4 for DOS if not found
 - move hardcoded data (tile attributes, starting attributes, etc.)
   into xml config file
 - menu-based interface, like Sega version


COMPILING
---------

Note that you need SDL, the SDL development libraries & headers, and
the SDL_mixer library to compile.  TiMidity++ may be necessary on some
platforms, too.  Assuming they are present, type make in the src
directory to build it.  An executable called u4 is created.


RUNNING
-------

The actual data files from Ultima 4 are loaded at runtime, which means
that a copy of Ultima 4 for DOS must be present at runtime.
Fortunately, Ultima IV is available as closed-source freeware on the
internet (legally).  A copy is mirrored at xu4.sourceforge.net.

It is also available from
http://www.zip.com.au/~mfleming/ultima/u4download.html,
http://members.tripod.com/~hardwire1/ultima4.zip, 
http://www.members.aol.com/tommage/UltimaPage/ultima4.zip, or
http://www.nightfall.org/~deep/ultima/main.html among many other
sites.

Once downloaded, it must be unzipped in one of four places:
 - the current directory when u4 is run
 - a subdirectory named "ultima4" of the current directory
 - "/usr/lib/u4/ultima4/"
 - "/usr/local/lib/u4/ultima4/"

As of version 0.02, xu4 can handle uppercase or lowercase filenames.

xu4 accepts the following command line options:
 -f       - fullscreen mode
 -i       - skip the intro, go directly into the game
 -q       - quiet mode - no music
 -scale n - scale the original graphics by a factor of n
 -filter n - use a filter on the scaled images, AdvanceMAME 2xSaI and
            2xBi can be specified
 -v       - verbose output; prints out information useful for
            troubleshooting


ULTIMA 4 DOCUMENTATION
----------------------

Included with Ultima 4 for DOS, as downloaded from one of the above
sites, are electronic copies of the printed documentation from the
original Ultima IV box.  HISTORY.TXT contains the "The History of
Britannia", a general introduction to the world of Ultima IV.
WISDOM.TXT contains "The Book of Mystic Wisdom", which explains the
system of magic and provides descriptions of the spells and reagents.

PDF versions of these books may be available from:
http://members.aol.com/trigonman3/u4.html

An image of the cloth map from the original Ultima IV box can be found
at either of these sites:
http://members.aol.com/trigonman3/u4.html
http://www.dengler.net/xedragon/hrump/


MISC
----

See http://xu4.sourceforge.net/links.html for some other interesting
Ultima IV related links.

Please send me a mail at andrewtaylor@users.sourceforge.net if you are
interested in helping.
