Dino's Complete Guide to
Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness

Projects

Table of Contents

Ultima 1 Revenge

U1Revenge World U1Revenge Town

Ultima 1 Revenge is a project I (Dino the Dark Dragon) started in March 2007 as a Reverse Engineering Effort (hence the name RevEngE) for Ultima 1. The goal is to understand and the structure of the Ultima 1 data files and engine, and use that knowledge to produce tools for U1. This project was, like many others of its kind, inspired by Exult.

Much of the progress towards understanding the Ultima 1 files can be found in the Technical Info section of this Guide. Other technical information includes the savegame file format as well as a list of locations and dungeon locations. These can be obtained from:

Development of the engine and tools has been occasional and resulted in a number of incarnations:

Two demos from the XNA era were released in May 2012. The latest of these allows general interaction with the overworld and towns, and can be downloaded from the U1Revenge project page at The Ultima Codex. This requires both the .NET Framework 3.5 and the XNA Framework 3.1 Redistributable. A map viewer and a tile viewer have also been developed but were not released.

When Microsoft decided to pull the plug on XNA, this project was left hanging until 2016 when it was rebooted using C++ and SDL2. Most features from the XNA era were reimplemented, and a demo for Windows was released. The project lives in its own BitBucket repository, including source code, a wiki with information about the project, and some downloads (which include the demo). However, the project has been dormant in recent years.

Ultima Saved Game Editor

U1 Sagegame Editor

The Ultima Saved Game Editor is a tool by Xenerkes Dragon and JTG Dragon that allows editing of savegames from Ultima 1 to 5. It was originally released on 12th January 2000, and the latest version (1.3) was released on 23rd February 2001. You can download it for Windows or Mac OS X from:

For Ultima 1, this tool allows you to edit the various character stats, weapons, armour, spells, and a few other things. Transports may not be changed, and although the player's location may be modified, there is no list of locations to go to as there is for other games.

Ultima 1: A Legend is Reborn

U1Revenge Town U1Revenge Town U1Revenge World U1Revenge Town

Among the many Ultima remakes that appeared in the early 2000s, Ultima 1: A Legend is Reborn was one of the most popular and most promising. This remake was being developed by the Peroxide team and led by Telemachos, who built their own 3D engine for this project and also developed other smaller Ultima-related projects such as the Underworld Viewer and the Mount Drash PC port.

When they failed to secure permission from Electronic Arts to publish this remake using the Ultima name, Peroxide changed course and instead announced that they would be developing a game called Era: The Arken-Throne with no direct relation to Ultima. Unfortunately, this game was also short-lived and disappeared entirely not long after.

Before its demise, Ultima 1: A Legend is Reborn released various media as well as three tech demos.

The tech demos can be downloaded from:

For other media, check out:

The First Age of Duckness

The First Age of Duckness Title Screen The First Age of Duckness Title Screen The First Age of Duckness Title Screen

The First Age of Duckness is a parody fan game by Yulo Tomorrow. It captures the essence of Ultima 1, with dungeon crawling, space flight, saving princesses, and Mondain, and adds ducks to the mix.

Other

Other projects, ranging from graphics patches to total conversions, can be seen at The Ultima Codex's Ultima 1 section.