Dino's Guide to
Ultima VIII - Pagan

Utilities

Contents

Pentagram Ultima 8 Engine

Pentagram is an engine used to run Ultima 8 on modern operating systems. It started off as a Map & Shapes Viewer, but is now fully playable.

Pentagram Map & Shapes Viewer

Pentagram Shapes Viewer Pentagram is a map and shapes viewer developed by some members of the Exult team, and is the precursor to the current It can be downloaded from the Ultima: The Reconstruction Classic Remakes page.

The shapes viewer allows you to see all the frames that make up the animations in Ultima 8. This includes objects, people, terrain and much more. The same can be done in the Picture Saver. To go through frames of the same type, use the left and right arrows, while the up and down arrows will go through different types of frames.

Pentagram Map Viewer The map viewer is a very useful tool as it allows you to see the game areas. The default map, if you simply run mapdisp.exe, is the Docks (map -1 or 3). To get to other areas, you have to run it from a Command Line and type mapdisp and the map number you want after it. You can navigate through the map by using the arrows on the keyboard or by using the mouse. However, the mouse will behave a bit differently from the way it is used in playing Ultima 8 - a right click will make the Avatar run two steps, and a single click will either make him jump (if the arrow is close to the Avatar) or will make two huge jumps.

I have compiled a list of the map numbers, so that you can go to the map you want and avoid simply running maps haphazardly. On most map numbers, you will come on the void (marked in the list with a slash [/]). Some of these might have a map near them, but I did not find any. If you manage to find one, please let me know so that I may add it to the list. There are definately such maps, because I did not find all of the maps. The following list shows the range of map numbers up to which I did actually find maps, as you can type any number (even 1000) but it will just show you the void. Some other maps feature a mess of terrain, which are not maps actually featuring in the game but still there for viewing. Here goes the list:

 -1.| Docks
  1.| /
  2.| /
  3.| Docks
  4.| Fisherman's Reef
  5.| East Road
  6.| Cemetery
  7.| Herdsman's Valley
  8.| Plateau (Bonecrusher Cave, Plateau Cave and Mythran's house can be found from the same map)
  9.| /
 10.| /
 11.| /
 12.| Daemon's Crag
 13.| /
 14.| Obsidian Fortress
 15.| Slayer Quest
 16.| Carthax Lake (empty)
 17.| /
 18.| /
 19.| /
 20.| mess 1
 21.| Stone Cove
 22.| /
 23.| /
 24.| Hall of Lava (empty)
 25.| Hall of Lava (with water)
 26.| Carthax Lake (with water)
 27.| /
 28.| east of Breaking Ground (where you must open ground to free Hydros)
 29.| mess 3
 30.| /
 31.| Hall of the Mountain King
 32.| /
 33.| mess 4
 34.| /
 35.| /
 36.| /
 37.| Argentrock Isle
 38.| /
 39.| West Tenebrae
 40.| Central Tenebrae
 41.| East Tenebrae
 42.| /
 43.| Ethereal Plane
 44.| Plane of Fire
 45.| Plane of Water
 46.| Plane of Air
 47.| Plane of Earth
 48.| /
 49.| Upper Catacombs II
 50.| Skull of Quakes Recall Pad room (Upper Catacombs north of it)
 51.| Lower Catacombs (near the Cheat Room)
 52.| /
 53.| /
 54.| Zealan Shrine (at the Tomb of Khumash-Gor)
 55.| /
 56.| mess 5
 57.| Pit of the Dead
 58.| /
 59.| /
 60.| /
 61.| /
 62.| Ancient Necromancers
 63.| Ghost Quest
 64.| /
.............
159.| mess 6
200.| mess 7
222.| mess 8
223.| mess 9
243.| mess 10
255.| mess 11

Pentagram Map Executer

Pentagram Map Executer A program I wrote on 19th February 2003 is capable of running the Pentagram maps when the user inputs a number. This was made so that a person can go immediately to the Pentagram maps rather than having to find the Pentagram directory from a command line and run it from there to get to a specific map.

It is a command-line based program, so don't expect a beautiful program. My aim was to make something useful, not something outstanding. It requires to be copied to the folder with Pentagram, and will run a map when a number is entered. A list of map numbers is both above in this page and inside the zip archive containing the program. You may download [ZIP] it from Dino's Ultima Page. It is distributed with kind permission from the Pentagram team.

Ultima 8 Graphics Viewer

Graphics Viewer The Ultima 8 Graphics Viewer is a shapes viewer similar to Pentagram.

Developed by Michael De Piazzi (aka Mad Hatter), this program is similar to Pentagram in that it is a shapes viewer capable of reading the game data, but not only the shapes file - it can also read the gumps and fonts files.

You can see the same frames that you would see in Pentagram. However, this Graphics Viewer will skip empty frames, which Pentagram does not. Another difference from Pentagram is that this Graphics Viewer was developed in 1996, so it looks much older. However, it appears to work happily in Windows. This program is very comfortable because it has many functions that make it comfortable, such as the ability to save pictures in .bmp format.

Below is the original description from Mad Hatter's site, along with download links:

Here are a few tools and documents which I've made for Ultima 8. I don't really play this game or have much interest in it anymore, but I thought I'd make this stuff I've done available for other people to use. You can check out my old Ultima 8 page if you want, it's no longer being updated though.

The first zip file (u8_unreleased.zip) contains all of my older DOS tools with source code (note that this code is DAMN old!) as well as various documents explaining Ultima 8 file formats, etc. The zip file contains:

The second zip file (u8_unreleased_windows.zip) contains source code (Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0) for a few Windows based Ultima 8 tools which I started on but never finished. Included in these tools is a more advanced graphics/shapes viewer and a (kinda working) map viewer.

Before downloading these files, please note that I AM NOT SUPPORTING THIS AT ALL! I haven't touched this stuff for years! Now here are the download links:

I recommend visiting The Pentagram Project. These guys have FAR surpassed my progress with hacking Ultima 8 and are working on an Ultima 8 engine which will run on modern operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Ultima 8 Viewer

Ultima 8 Viewer
Ultima 8 Viewer

The Ultima 8 Viewer by Mike Angus is another tool that can be used to view the Ultima 8 graphics, and also allows them to be exported.

You can download the Ultima 8 Viewer from: