Ultima Underworld PSX English Patch

[Gertius]

After almost 27 years of being inaccessible to the west (original PSX release date 14th March 1997),
the Japanese PSX port of Ultima Underworld has now received an English translation patch.

Playing the PSX version may be worthwhile,
because there are some notable differences to the PC version:
- Different cinematics
- Creature models are in 3D
- Anime portraits
- Fullscreen 3D display
- Control scheme for console controller
- No typing, all spells, mantras, replies can be selected by a menu
In addition to that, the PSX version can be played in emulators, which for example makes the game available on portable systems like 2DS/3DS.






Links:
PSX Controls:
http://www.zaqmusic.com/UU/UU_PSX_Controls.jpg

Romhacking release page:
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7062/

Romhacking thread (general discussion and bug reports):
https://www.romhacking.net/forum/ind...?topic=37760.0

YouTube demo videos:
https://youtu.be/XuXlTk50Amk
https://youtu.be/_NJFH_EB8ao

GitHub project (software tools created to make this ROMhack):
https://github.com/gertius1/UU_PSX_ENG

[Shadowcat]

Awesome!

[Gertius]

During development I had completed the game twice with the speedrun on YouTube to check that it can be finished and that there are no bugs preventing the game from being completed (apart from the existing ones, looking at you, Judy and inventory bug).

Now that it's all finished I have taken my sweet time to do a regular playthrough and finished it today. I wanted to experience as much as I could and these were my takeaways (bit of a mix of a PSX version review and a general Ultima Underworld review). WARNING, may contain minor spoilers:

- I had only replayed it 1-2 times in the last 30 years and I was looking forward very much to finally playing the PSX version. And I did so lying on the couch, playing it on a New Nintendo 2DS with a PSX emulator, which was an awesome way to replay the game. There were minor slowdowns due to the emulation and the 2DS' CPU power every now and then but in general it ran satisfactorily. Would probably run even better on PSP. The controller interface is complex and took a bit of time to get used to, but after a while it gets like second nature. I preferred it to the original PC interface. There are some smallish bugs with the strings every now and then, like strings not wrapping aroung correctly, or an extra linebreak here and there. These have been already mentioned in the romhack readme. Most of these can't be fixed within the scope of this translation, but by and large my feeling was that it doesn't detract from the fun, and certainly not from accessing the game. If you want minimal amount of text glitches in dialogues, it's recommended use a character name with 4 letters.

- the story and dialog content of the PSX version is identical with the PC version. There had been tiny differences sometimes in tone of the Japanese conversations (as far as Google translate/lens was accurate), but more along the lines how the same thing would be worded differently in Japanese. Essentially expressing the same thing though. It was my impression (also from Google translate), that Garamon is a bit less cryptic in the dream-cutscenes in Japanese. All the cutscenes look a lot better than in the PC version.

- the 3D models are in general a good thing for me. Sometimes they look a little goofy, like the goblins or outcasts. In general they work well though and make the gameworld more cohesive/immersive. The 3D model of the spiders is pure horror, especially when they appear in groups :-D

- the way that mantras and secret spells are handled is that you have to find the information in the gameworld, before that mantra/spell gets added to the menu of possible choices. This is different to the PC version, where you could just type in the mantra or combine the runes for the spell, even if you hadn't heard about it in that playthrough yet. Spells/mantras being added is handled through the text that is being read. E.g. you might find a scroll that explains a spell, and then it contains an invisible command to add that spell to your menu (you still need all the runes for it to appear). So in theory it would be easy to devise a cheat, that adds all the spells and mantras in an early sign or scroll by adding the commands to the text. But I haven't tried that out yet.
On the plus-side, I liked the spell menu, as it seemed less tedious than combining the runes manually and it works well with the controller interface.

- also typing certain keywords in dialogues has been replaced by choosing strings from a menu. This makes some puzzles easier on PSX than on PC.
(Garamon conversation, learning lizardman language)

- Ultima Underworld is still a marvel of a game for me, even all these years later. OK I do have a healthy amount of nostalgia for the game, playing it at release 30 years ago. But even objectively (as much as I can) I think it's still a great experience: the exploration, secrets, atmosphere, story, dialogues, puzzles/riddles, combat, the simulation etc etc. So deep! Granted, some puzzles are way too cryptic and I used a walkthrough from time to time (in addition to knowing some item locations from the speedrun). I'd say that using a walkthrough doesn't subtract from the fun, just the opposite, as it helps smoothing over of the irritating aspects of the game. The shortcomings surely have been mentioned in other places, and they still exist: extensive backtracking, arcade-y jumping bits, cryptic hints for riddles, confusing leveldesign in later levels, targeted ranged weapons and spells. But all these did not spoil the good bits for me.

- I noticed a lot of Looking Glass' DNA in Ultima Underworld, something that I never noticed so much before. When you know the successors, sometimes I got a familiar feeling or spotted design elements that I know from their other games (i.e. emergent storytelling through notes, stealth, freedom and choice in problem solving)

- it's emergent storytelling, while great, might be easy to miss. I read up on certain story elements in a walkthrough (backstory Garamon/Tyball https://www.sircabirus.com/uw1walk_tyballandgaramon.php), and it seems too hard for me to piece that together from all the disconnected storybits (notes and dialogue) that can be found in the game. Again this is something, where using a walkthrough at the appropriate time actually added to my enjoyment of the game.

- I sometimes explained it to younger friends who didn't know the game as a mix between Minecraft and Skyrim :-D
I know the comparison is not really too accurate. But I am mentioning it here, because then it got me thinking, that while Ultima Underworld is clearly showing it's age in many ways, I like some aspects even better than in modern open world games. You only get this one dungeon, but everything is more meaningful and dense than in an open world game. Also some of the puzzles are more elaborate and at times even felt like a point & click adventure game e.g. learning to play the flute and playing it, finding and combining the tripartite key, destroying Tyballs orb, creating dragonskin boots, rotworm stew, lizardman language etc

All in all I had a lot of fun, first of all creating the translation and then doing playthroughs with it. It was great to return to that gameworld for this period of time, and it surely wasn't my last visit.

[Sir Robin]

Wow! Thank you for doing this! I've played UW1 since the early demo version first released and been a big fan of it. I've only ever played the DOS version, but I wonder what the difference is in other versions, now I can find out.

[Gertius]

I have now prepared and uploaded the V1_1 release.
It can be found at the the following download link:
http://www.zaqmusic.com/UU/UU_REV1_ENG_PATCH.zip
It fixes a crash occuring through the dialog with the bandits on lvl 3, adds some missing mantras that were not correctly triggered by their readables, and a few minor things with some strings.
Also this patch update makes it work with the Rev1 version of the game.

[Komag]

Thanks! (I had to arm wrestle Chrome to download it from an "unsecure" source)

EDIT - looks like your last link is to the original version instead of rev1 version (which can be found at the website)

[Gertius]

Thanks for your comment!
I forgot to update the link in the above post after adapting the translation for the Rev1 version, but have corrected it now.

[Mawxiwtz]

Here are some bugs and other things I've found. I were playing before version 1.1 was released, so most of these might be fixed by now.

Controls sheet that comes with the hack is missing few hotkeys: L1+triangle to fly up, L1+cross to fly down, start+select skips cutscene, and pressing select while in inventory toggles separation of stacked items instead of just moving whole stacks.
Final slide after the ending is not translated.
Game crashes on Tyball death cutscene when he says "And it's ambitions are horrible indeed", could be prevented by skipping the cutscene. I have also noticed a crash at the end of Garamon dream, but I forget which one. Here are mcr files just before the Tyball's death.
ANRA, ORA, and LU doesn't appear in the mantra list after being read.
Judy bug seems to be absent - tried to push her down the lava, but she won't budge. Can still push her in the opposite direction though by jumping at her from the lava, and when I rested she got back to her original place.
Inventory bug is still there, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as in original - happened to me only once on level 4, maybe because I used knight's armory as an item stash. I've also had a feel that saving the game frequently helps to prevent it, because when it happened I weren't saving for a long time.
Found a minor texture bug on level 4, one of the stone wall textures got replaced with a stair down texture.
When tried to repair Rodrick's magic chain mail with Shak the font in the dialog got bugged.

[Gertius]

Hi Mawxiwtz,
thanks for your feedback! This is very valuable for me.
To address your points:

Control sheet: Flying is already in latest version, I will add the rest.

Final slide: I couldn´t find it in the game files, so I had to leave it like it is. It says "Thanks for your hard work, you can turn off the power now".

Videos: I had tested all these in game but haven´t noticed any crashes before. Will check again. What emulator is the mcr format for?

Mantras: have been fixed in the recent translation version 1.1

Judybug: seems to be better than PC version, so that´s great!

Inventorybug, Texturebug: most likely not connected to the translation. If so, nothing I can do about these, I´m hoping they have been fixed or improved in the Rev1 ROM by the original developers. The translation has a version working with Rev1 since as of the recent 1.1 release

Buggy Shak-dialog: confirmed. This is an error in the translation. I was able to confirm it´s in my code and will fix it in the next release

Thanks again!

Cheers,
Gertius

[Mawxiwtz]

Videos: I had tested all these in game but haven´t noticed any crashes before. Will check again. What emulator is the mcr format for?

Mednafen.

[Gertius]

I have now updated the translation to version 1.2.
It can be found at the the following download link:
http://www.zaqmusic.com/UU/UU_REV1_ENG_PATCH.zip

It fixes the bug with Shak´s repair dialog on lvl2.
The control sheet has been updated with "Skip cutscene", but I couldn´t verify Select for splitting item stacks.
I have tested the Tyball video with your save files on Mednafen with the initial version of the rom but couldn´t reproduce a crash or aberrant behaviour.

From the 1.2 release on, I decided to only support the Rev1 version of the game rom.
By this I want to make sure it has a s few bugs as possible for future players.

With romhacking.net shutting down I have uploaded the releases also to the project´s GitHub page:
https://github.com/gertius1/UU_PSX_ENG

[Mawxiwtz]

I guess my iso is corrupted in some way, I've tried updating Mednafen but it still crashes there.
As for stacks, when on level 2 I tried splitting gold from the inventory I couldn't do it, the only way to split it was by dropping it and then picking up, but once I pressed select or it's combination with something it got fixed. I've tried now to replicate this, but couldn't do it either, so it might have been another bug.

[Sir Robin]

Hello Gertius, and thank you so much for doing the work to create this patch!

I first found the demo for this game when I was about 12 years old and have been facinated by it ever since. I played through the demo so many times just waiting for when I could get the full game. Then when I did - WOW! 8 whole levels? So much to explore! I played all the versions I could, was a little disappointed that they were all more-or-less the same. I found out about the Japanese PS1 version, and started it several times, but just couldn't get past all the Japanese. When I heard there was a fan-made English patch I thought, finally, I will be to give it a try.

Again, thank you so much for all the work you put into making this happen.

I've played through the game and made notes on the differences between it and the standard PC version. I just posted a thread to disuss that here:
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthre...2860&p=2523267

[Gertius]

Hi Sir Robin,
thanks for checking out the translation and for your kind words!

I am happy that another UW fan got enjoyment out of the translation. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun to create it.
As I wrote above I am also a big fan of Ultima Underworld.
I felt happy and blessed to subsequentially find all the infos and clear all the showstoppers to be able to make the translation happen.

I´ll check out your other thread too.

Cheers,
Gertius

[Gertius]

In a late response to Mawxiwtz, it could be that triggering the Shak bug, which is now fixed, corrupted your gamestate somehow.
I encountered a similar thing when I fixed the bandit´s dialog on level 3. Triggering the dialog bug led to memory corruption and even crashes thereafter.

The bandit´s dialog bug and Shak´s dialog bug are both fixed since version 1.1 and 1.2.
On top of that I switched the release to the Rev1 of the game ROM, hoping to get rid of any bugs that may have made the Rev1 release necessary from the original developers.

[Sir Robin]

Reading your "UU_PSX_Information.txt" file, I can answer a few things for you.

Section 1.2
Yes, I doubt block 10 is used at all. The LOOK feature seems to ignore walls, textures, and bridges entirely. As in, if you look at a wall and there is an object on the other side, you'll get a description of that object. See my notes here: https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Te...t_Interactions

Section 3
Interesting about "\mX" for mantras. In the PC version, "\p" pauses the dialog for a moment and "\m" pauses until the players hit a key. I'm guessing that was changed in the Japanese version?

Section 3.1
Your "number words" like first, second, third, etc are called ordinals.

Section 3.2
I can clear up some of these conversation blocks:
3595 - Thorlson - Has strings and conversation code, other than that he doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the game.
3609 - The talking door - This one is definitely in the game. If you found this because you have some code to find strings that aren't attached to actual NPCs, it's because this conversation has no NPC. Door objects don't have a conversation slot, so to make a talking door they had to trigger the conversation from a do-use trap attached to the door.
3699 - Crazy Bob - another one with strings and code but no instanciation. I get the feeling this character was created to debug the barter system.
3770 - The Failed Levitator - Another with strings and code but no existance.
3879 - The Impatient Mage - Another with strings and code but this one can be called into existance with a summon monster spell.

You didn't mention this next one, does he not exist in the PSX version or did you just miss him?
3610 - Celaven - strings and code, no spawn.

The blocks you noted were duplicates:
3730..3733 - These are the trainer knights. They train 4 different mantras but it looks like the devs made a super knight will all the mantras, copied it to all four blocks, then had the codes written to only use the strings that each knight trained. I suppose you could trim out the unused strings of each knight.
3846 & 3847 - green goblins, I'm assuming one is for club wielding and one is for the sword wielding models. If so, they forgot to assign it, because the sword wielding green goblin doesn't talk
3852 & 3856 - gray goblins, same assumption as greens, and sword guy talks
3860 & 3862 - there are two mountain man definitions in the game, same dialog but different models/portraits. One is all the generic mountain man instances on level 2, the other is only visible with summon monster spell.
3861 & 3864 - I'd assume these are the green and red lizardmen, they have the same dialog
3875 & 3881 - in the PC version they aren't exactly the same but similar, only one line different between them. These are a ghoul and a dark ghoul, similar dialog but different models
and portraits. Neither appears in game but can be found with a summon monster spell.

So in all there are 4 creatures not normally seen in the game unless spawned with a summon monster. I can find these pretty easily in the PC version but have yet to get them in the PSX version, so they may have been coded out.

FYI, details on the summonable monsters is here: https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/NP...ima_Underworld

[Sir Robin]

Some things I've noticed:

• A few strings have seemingly random characters at the ends. I've noticed this in Shak and the trainer knights.
• Can't rob Shak. He's missing the "I demand you give me these items" option in the bargining dialogue, he has it in the DOS version
• owned items have a newline in the world and no whitespace in inventory. For example an item in the world will be described as "an item"(new line)"belonging to a creature" and in inventory will be "an itembelonging to a creature"
• Eyesnack's prompt "Is you again.\nWhat can me help you with?" has 4 responces. The third is cut off, the fourth is completely unseen.

I don't know if you change any conversation code or just the strings, but:

• Goldthirst can ask you to kill the beast again after it is already dead and the prize has already been given. His dialogue offers the prize again but he doesn't actually give anything.
• Eyesnack's dialogue can offer to teach the song again after it is already known.

[Gertius]

Thanks for sharing your feedback!
May I ask which version of the game (Rev1?) and translation patch (1.2?) you were using?
I may be able to look into some of these points but I don´t really have capacity to do more work on the patch in the foreseeable future.
Here are already some comments though:

A few strings have seemingly random characters at the ends. I've noticed this in Shak and the trainer knights.

Edit: saw this now with Shak, an "O" appearing at the end of the reply when asking to teach repair. Because you said the other place are the trainer knights and they also teach you mantras, this is most likely connected to the mantra text codes inserted at the end of the sentences. Possibly when you ask them a second time to train you and you already know the mantra... this is speculation though.

Can't rob Shak. He's missing the "I demand you give me these items" option in the bargining dialogue, he has it in the DOS version

I noticed that in my playthroughs but I never knew it worked in the DOS version. Always thought it may be intentional from the game.
I just compared this to the Japanese original Rev1 and it´s the same behaviour. "demand" line is missing from the trade dialog.
I noticed in the source strings that Shak has the trading dialog twice, once with and once without the "demand" line. Maybe for PSX they decided to only use the one without.
I also noticed that you cannot really anger Shak, not even by taking his items that are lying on the floor or attacking him. Maybe that´s why they left out that dialog option.

owned items have a newline in the world and no whitespace in inventory. For example an item in the world will be described as "an item"(new line)"belonging to a creature" and in inventory will be "an itembelonging to a creature"

I can imagine that I may have added the newline to prevent chaotic linebreaks in the world window. Most likely the inventory does not render a newline escape char.
I just rechecked this behaviour as I couldn´t really remember seeing that before. When rechecking, the item loses the "...belonging to" part in the inventory completely. At least for the two of Shak´s weapons I checked it with

Eyesnack's prompt "Is you again.\nWhat can me help you with?" has 4 responces. The third is cut off, the fourth is completely unseen.

Confirmed, this is a bug in the translation. It only happens when talking to Eyesnack again after learning the flute song. This is most likely why I did not encouter it before. Dropped replies sometimes caused memory errors, similar to the bandits and Shak bugs, that were fixed in 1.1 and 1.2. If I ever find time to do another release this bug would be on the top of my list.

I don't know if you change any conversation code or just the strings, but:

I did not change any conversation code/logic, at least not intentionally.
Only exchanged the text contents. I had looked into conversation code but was unable to figure out the code tree structure.
For some NPCs I had to insert or remove replies from the English original, to match the Japanese dialog structure, so there were definitely some changes between PC and PSX versions. Simple example I remember: the English PC version differentiated in Shak´s dialog between one "piece of gold" and multiple "pieces of gold" when displaying the cost for something, by using a variable that linked to separate dialog lines. As in Japanese singular/plural seems to work differently, they scrapped that variable and also the lines of dialog it referenced. I had to remove the variable and delete the lines from the English translation, so that the rest of the lines would line up again with the adapted Japanese dialog structure (that I was unable to change).

Goldthirst can ask you to kill the beast again after it is already dead and the prize has already been given. His dialogue offers the prize again but he doesn't actually give anything.
Eyesnack's dialogue can offer to teach the song again after it is already known.

Also for these points, one could compare to the Japanese original to see how it behaves
Edit: I just checked with Eyesnack and the flute. It´s the same behaviour in the Japanese original, you can ask him to teach you the song repeatedly after having learned it.