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What is U6Edit

U6Edit is an editor I designed in my spare time for modifying the data files that come with the classic Origin game Ultima 6. Using this editor, you can modify the maps of the game, import and export graphics that the game uses, and change the behaviour of characters within the game.

News

19/2/05
I've got the midgame editor up and running. One slight hitch - the number of frames displayed for each midgame seems to be hardcoded rather than calculated from the given midgame file. It's no major issue, but it would be cooler if new frames could have been inserted.

On other news, I'm gearing up for a release of the new functionality. I just want to take a bit longer to spruce it up a bit.. things like fixing up the portrait image import bug, and a few more tweaks to the map editor (to get things like object descriptions and container objects to work).

7/2/05
I've got a prototype viewer (screenshot here) up and running for viewing the contents of the MD midgame cutscene files - none of the existing forms quite fit the job since the cutscene files intermingle text and graphics streams. The next stage is to add editting capabilities to the new editor form and test the results in the real game.

31/1/05
I've made some updations to the Martian Dreams Technical Document. In the editor, the Bitmap tab in the Shape Editor now includes more files that I've identified that contain bitmaps.

26/1/05
I've identified that only two new opcodes have been added to the MD script engine, and although I don't know what they do yet, I've set up method stubs for them. Conversation saving now works fine, and the map display is working (with minor problems). I'm now going to devote some time to investigating the scene file formats.

21/1/05
I spent the evening diving into a disassembly of the executables to figure out the font format, and I succeeded. Boo ya! The Martian Dreams technical document (link below) has been updated with the technical details of the font file.

19/1/05
I've gotten the conversation editor working on Martian Dreams now. If anyone's interested, I've just committed a file called md_scripts.zip into the u6edit/doc folder of the project's CVS repository that contains all the actor scripts for the game. I've also got some of the bitmaps to load, although only a few - I still need to investigate way so many of them won't.

16/1/05
I've been a bit lax about keeping the front-end website up to date with that of my work in the Sourceforge back-end for the project. Just to keep you aware, I've spent some time over the Christmas holidays disassembling the Martian Dreams executables to a stage where it's been yielding up information of the various file formats. As of today, I've added editor support for loading in the shapes, objects, actors, portraits, and mouse pointers. I anticipate rapid progress in the next week or two, so I'm going to hold off on releasing a new executable for the moment.

For those interested in the technical details of Martian Dreams, you can download a copy of my in-progress technical document from here.

7/6/04
I've now released version 1.1 of the editor. The most important enhancement is a great deal of optimisation on the memory usage. The initial version didn't work on many people's computers because of it; this new version should work a lot better. There are also other miscellaneous enhancements such as the able to edit the details of all 256 characters (although note that doing so may cause problems running the game on the original interpreter).

18/2/04
Well, the big news is my getting SourceForge project space to hold the editor project. I've tried to set up a project homepage website as best I could, not being particularly talented in designing websites. I borrowed some of the layout ideas from the Nuvie website; they probably won't mind. As I've previously mentioned, I got caught up in doing a work project that required late night and weekend work, so I haven't had a chance to fix any of problems people reported about the initial version; I promise I'll get right on it once I can reclaim some semblence of a private life again. :)