Enjoying the mod so far, excellent work. I thought I read somewhere that directional combat for ranged attacks has been added? I don’t have a numpad on my keyboard, does it require a numpad to work? I don’t know if there is a new system for “targeting” attacks?

Hi Nick,

Glad to hear you are enjoying it so far. Regarding directional combat: diagonal attacks are supported. However, directional combat for ranged attacks, like Ultima V, are not supported.

For diagonal attacks you must use a numpad. I don’t have a numpad myself, but I believe many DOS emulators include a ‘simulation’ option for that.

Hello. Excellent work! I would like to know if there is any way to keep the original graphics and also have music playing. If I use the Ultima Patcher for the music, I’m forced to use either the more colourful graphics (EGA) or the more enhanced graphics (VGA) that are just fine but I prefer the original graphics.

You can’t use the patcher. Even if it appears to work, (which might be possible) the game will be destroyed, as the graphics no longer match 1-1 with Ultima IV. The graphics driver for the game is changed too, so it is not even just a simple matter of changing the graphics images.

As for the music, you must either play it yourself in the background, or hope someone adapts the music patch for Trinity. I did try to add the music into the game itself, but it required too much code space, and would have meant cutting dozens of featuress, if not more.

I may have a place for you to do prints for manuals… you can do 1 offs, and you can even setup a POD store.

https://mixam.com/

I used them to do my digitally recreated from scratch reproductions for the Ultima Manuals.

Wow. ‘nuff said!

@Matchstick Dragon - thanks for the link. Question: Are these print-on-demand quality, or actual proper printing? The best deal I had lined up was 250 min print run, and included gold embossing, and textured, thick paper, which would match or improve upon the quality of the original Spellbook. Needless to say, it was not cheap, and the cost per book was high (but not craaazy)

Thank you so much for Trinity, this is like a great-great-great grandfather is back walking around having learned from all the games of its children. And its FUN :)

Have you a preferred DOS Emulator? I am using DOSBox for lack of anything better.
I put together this rather lame How-To because some people need the confidence of a guide when they start fiddling .bat’s https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultima/comments/1niy6ga/ultima_iv_trinity_on_dosbox_with_one_double_click/

Your Download instructions are delightfully brief - I wonder if a quick before (GoG/disks) and after (Emulator setup) would make it more accessible.

Do you have a Discord or Reddit we can discuss class builds, (spoiler tagged) discoveries, etc. ?

Why did you replace the graphics with the more primitive Apple II graphics?

@Sam - I’m very glad to hear you are enjoying it and I do like your analogy.

I am on macOS, so I use ‘Boxer’ - the ‘active’ fork, which can be found here: https://github.com/MaddTheSane/Boxer

I didn’t bother to make a pre-packged version, simply because there are so many emulators out there, and forcing people to use one version would have added its own problems. I figure that if you have an interest in playing Threat of the Trinity you must have some knowledge of emulators and setting up/dabbling with old games. I also think that many emulators do a pretty good job of making things easy these days.

Thanks for giving those who can’t a help with your write up! If one more Ultima IV fan gets to try it out, it is a win in my book!

I am not much of social media guy - I have none actually - I pop in here, and a forum or two at times. Maybe I should make a forum If the comments on this page get too voluminous…?

@Redd - I switched not only the graphics, but the overall gameplay as well to an apple II mode - I explained it here, years back: here

I am a bit tongue in cheek there, but further reasons are that Trinity is meant to be a 1986 ‘what if’ i.e. what if we had an add-on for Ultima IV in 1986 - The DOS port did not come along for a year or two after that, so I tried to ‘pretend’ this was written on/for Apple II.

Additionally I think the art for the Apple II is a brilliant example of ‘making the best of the limitations we have’, whereas the DOS version is a bit of a ‘color splurge’.

Perhaps I will release a full DOS graphical version one day. For now we have to enjoy it close to how it was enjoyed 40 years ago - on an Apple II.

In every version of Ultima IV I have played, I could use the sling up close. But now, if an enemy gets too close, I am unable to use the sling. Is there any way to fix this? I’m a Bard sling/bow main normally.

Hi Possum Power - sorry, but that is a feature. Using ranged weapons in hand-to-hand combat is removed. You will need to set your ranged fighters back behind melee PCs or obstacles, and/or equip a melee weapon when the enemy closes.

There are a lot of other small changes like this that will require players to adjust their strategies.

@Cambragol You can contact me directly or on the UDIC Discord. And I can share some stuff, and not have to have a back and forth here.

Thanks for your reply, I have a couple more questions.

1) The runes have been moved? for example the NPC’s tell me the location but when I search that location the runes are not there? .. is there a new way to reveal the runes?

2) at one point in original Ultima IV i am required to cast the ‘dispell’ spell to reveal a pressure plate to open the hidden passage. I am now not able to dispell the lightning fields required. Is this a bug?

Hi Nick,

I’ll answer your questions straight away. Good questions.

1.) Some runes have been moved (quite a few). All quests and hints should point to the new locations. Some are a slight change, others are more involved. Is there a specific rune you are having trouble with?

2) Dispel works in towns and dungeons. There are no ‘pressure plates’ in Ultima IV - can you be more specific about this?

I was being a bit vague as worried about spoilers for anyone who doesn’t already know how to complete the game, however, I guess it is a 40 year old game now:

1) lets take the ‘ rune of compassion’. Sprite says talk to pepper. Pepper says its at the end of hall. I search here (same spot as in vanilla ultima IV). it’s not there. I go upstairs and talk to another NPC who also mentions he saw it down the hall. I search all along the hall, cannot find it.

2) to get the green stone in dungeon wrong, on level 8 you have a dungeon room where there are lightning fields. casting dispell no longer removes the fields so i cannot stand at the required location (what i referred to as pressure plates) to reveal the hidden passage. Cannot get the green stone. Interestingly, when i cast my own energy lightning field using magic, I am able to dispell this field, just not the field that already is present in the room and the one required as part of the questline.

Sorry Nick,

My mistake, I should have realized you meant pressure plates in dungeon rooms. Duh.

Well, I should have known better than to make last second changes. And this was one of them. This is a bug, one it looks like I added as a last minute ‘fix’ to energy/dispel spell. Should have known better. Argh.

Well, thank you for pointing it out. I have fixed it and it is included in the download link already. You can grab it, and just copy over avatar.exe to make things right.

As for the other issue, the rune is at the end of a hall. I can say no more.

Thanks again for your detailed feedback. I appreciate it very much.

Thank you! I thought this might of been a bug. also I did encounter another weird bug when I entered into the ‘Active Player’ mode. One time for some reason it began controlling TWO of my characters both moving according to the key input, both characters at different X,Y co-ordinates. I am not sure how to reproduce this, as it only happened to me once. The other times I have used ‘Active Player it has been fine.

Interesting, regarding rune. I might need to broaden my search outside of the city of Britain then? As I have searched all the halls of all the buildings and floors in that city (above weapon and armour shop too, which i figured was where I should be looking.)

Found rune ;-).. fun.

Loving this! I noticed that the sextant appears not to be working in towns, etc. (anywhere but the main outdoor map). I was in Vesper (D’L” M’J” on the main map) and everywhere inside the village has the same coordinates…

Hi, just downloaded this, but after starting it just says “No active game!”

@Nick - Good to hear you found the Rune! That was one of the easier re-locations. As for the Active Player bug - very weird. That was bug tested to death, and no bug-tester ever reported such an effect. I’ve never seen anything like that myself. Let’s hope it is a one-off and doesn’t show up again. (certainly do let me know if it does)

@MrKnitster - Hey! An Avatar! - That is a feature/bug fix. The sextant is scaled to the outdoor world, where one space is one letter. So it holds that in a town it would register the coordinate of that town.

@Adamantyr - to start the game you must run ‘ultima’ (ultima.com) - It sounds like you are trying to start the game with ‘avatar.exe’ `

@Cambragol - Glad this is out there being enjoyed! I wonder about the sextant… It measures latitude and longitude, so would it be possible to add ‘’’ to towns? In other words, within Vesper, readings could be D′L″A‴ M′J″A‴, D′L″B‴ M′J″B‴, etc.? It’s helpful sometimes to know where you are in a town or to make a note of where you found something for future reference. Might be too much code space, however…

Found another tiny weird thing as well. Searching somewhere for free armor, instead of finding “CHAIN” or “LEATHER” I found “LORD BRITISH”. Nothing was added to my inventory. Not sure what on earth happened there. Don’t want to spoil it, but can let you know where this happened if it helps.

I thought about that for the sextant, but it would be a lot of code for almost no benefit. There are no cases where an object is located via sextant coordinates in a town. It could have worked though, if added muuuuch earlier on, during the dialogue/quest building process.

That other little bug does sound very weird - maybe let me know the details on the old bug reporting github forum. I’ll look into it right now.

I was running ultima.com, but I fixed it by running title.exe which created a proper save that then worked with it.

Found a bug, I think. Was looking for the Rune of Valor in Jhelom, noticed it wasn’t in the usual spot. Then I saw in the NE tower a ladder going down. But when I try to descend it dumps back to the DOS prompt in a weird fashion.

Ran into a bug in Jhelom. When attempting to go down the north east ladder in the town wall, I am getting kicked out of the game and sent back to the dos box prompt.

@Adamantyr and @Brandon - thanks for the report. Sorry for the issue. It looks like a town map did not get copied into the release - not sure why or how - nevertheless here is the file - Jhelom basement just drop that into your install folder and you are on your way.

I will add it as a hotfix shortly.

Thanks a lot guys!

Thanks! I felt like that was the issue, a missing map.

Also, I was a bit frustrated trying to find the new places to go in the game, so I went ahead and wrote a map extractor/creator to create PNG’s of all the maps using the in-game graphics. You probably have your own set, but if you want I’ll send them to you. :)

“A bit frustrated trying to find the new places…” - What!? Exploration and discovery is one of the core gameplay elements! Well, to each their own I guess. It’s a big expansion.

Thanks for the offer, but I think I have everything memorized. I’m sure that eventually people will want them though. Maybe as part of a cheat/hint/quest guide. In that case perhaps you could slide those along… My email is on the footer.

I’m still a little perplexed by Ultima.com not working for you. I feel like some errors may be the result of different DOS implementations.

Not sure if this is a bug. Casting gate spell in the underdeep gates the party into a cliff-face and instantly kills everyone.

@Nick - that is the correct behavior - The gate spell takes you to the lat/long of the moongate, several hundred meters below the surface. So you merge with solid stone.

Though, it might make more sense if the magic sent you to the actual location of the moongate…

Moongates magic only work on a two-dimensional plane? There is no concept of a Z-axis? Interesting..

I wonder if having the spell fizzle could be another ‘realistic’ feature, since you are too far hidden from the moons?

Failure of the spell is a good, clean alternative to teleporting you into solid stone. The moons are ‘absent’ after all when in the Underdeep.

I find it appealing though to imagine a desperate venture into the deeps, culminating in the party surrounded by beasts, closing in all sides, party members injured or dead - and at the last moment - the mage of the party gates everyone out of there.

@ADAMANTYR–I would love a set of maps! I would probably play through once completely to enjoy the surprises, but a set of reference maps afterwards would be great…

And also, @CAMBRAGOL, it would be great to have a hint guide from you for the same reason–after playing through completely, I’d love to see what I missed!

@Cambragol Dropped you an email!

@Mrknitster Sure, just shoot me an email to adamantyr@gmail.com

Also, I think there is a missing ladder on the 2nd level of Dwimmerstone. (My maps helped me find that.)

Wow… almost 180 maps. Thats more than 10x more than vanilla Ultima IV. Didn’t realise it had gone that far.

@Adamantyr - nice work on those. They’ll have to be part of some quest guide at some point. Regarding Dwimmerstone - no missing stair that I can see. There are ‘hidden’ stairs though…

I see! That said, at what point did you add a hint that you may have to search for hidden stairs? Just sayin… ;)

@Adamantyr - there are a number of characters that introduce the concept as a gameplay element/addition - after that the clues are always there, but must be inferred from conversations or visual cues.

Unlike ‘secret doors’, ladders lack a direct visual cue, so need ‘hints’.

@Adamantyr Thank you! I dropped you an email. Looking forward to viewing the maps