Differences between PC and PS1 versions

[Sir Robin]

Hi there, I'm long time fan of Ultima Underworld, I have play it through and through. I had never played the Japanese PS1 version of it until about a year ago when I heard there was a fan made English patch so I finally gave it a go.

I made notes of the differences I noticed in the versions and have posted the list on this wiki page:
The Ultima Codex: Technical Differences in Ultima Underworld on the PSX
Note this was about a year ago with the 1.0 patch, so i mention things like the Bandits bug which has been fixed in later versions of the patch.

Did I miss anything? Did you notice anything that I didn't? Let me know!

Also, if anyone has an idea on how to extract resources from the PS1 version, please let me know. Using the PC version file format documents that have floated around the internet I've managed to get a lot of info out of the PC version and am hoping to do the same with the PS1 version. The differences I noticed were all based on external observation, no under-the-hood comparisons.

[Gertius]

Thanks for creating the wiki! It was a very interesting read for me.
One tool that I used to check the game´s resources for creating the translation is jPSXdec.
It allows you to simply open the PSX game´s bin file and shows a list of detected resources.
In the case of UW these were images, videos and textures.
There are many other resources which it doesn´t show but maybe it´s still of interest to you.

Cheers,
Gertius

[Sir Robin]

Thanks for your reply, and check back on the wiki from time to time, I've been updating it as I find more things.

That tool was a big help, you're right it doesn't get everything but it got me started. About the graphics, I know they're in there, if I dump the whole avatar file into a graphic file, I can see the graphics in there. They're just 8-bit paletted uncompressed raw bitmaps. But unlike the PC version that has a single 8-bit palette, the PSX seems to have a separte palette for each graphic, because it has so many more colors available. Anyway, I haven't found all these palettes yet.

But from what I got, I made a comparison of the player graphics:
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Fi...yer.PC-PSX.gif
and the object graphics:
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Fi...cts.PC-PSX.gif
and the NPC portraits:
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ul...rld_Characters

[<Username>]

Very interesting comparison.

The dark-skinned and red-haired women have been merged to make room for an new woman.

Uff... Your description is correct, but one could also write they erased the dark-skinned woman and replaced her with a white-skinned woman.

[Sir Robin]

Very interesting comparison.

Thank you! I'm working on the Pocket PC version now, next probably FM Towns

Uff... Your description is correct, but one could also write they erased the dark-skinned woman and replaced her with a white-skinned woman.

Yeah, there's many way to say the same thing.

So actually the PC version has 5 females, the second is dark skinned and the third is light skinned and red haired. The PSX version also has five females, the second is dark skinned with red hair and the third is a new character. I only switched them in the comparison because I thought the two redheads compared better. So it would be just as accurate to say the dark skinned gal got red hair and the original redhead was replaced with the new character.