Hail, Worthy Adventurer!

Last Updated July 18, 2000.

I apologize for not getting anything else new up here. I am taking night classes, which severely curtail my spare time to work on this hobby. I often have this project in my mind but don’t have the time to work on it. I expect it will be February 2001 before more updates will be posted. My plan for winning the lottery and having plenty of spare time isn’t working... can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong? :-) (aside from playing in the first place, I mean) (joke... no, really, I wasn’t looking for more email about the futility of playing the lottery)

These pages are designed to aid those hardy travellers who bought the Ultima I-VI CDROM and/or the Ultima Collection CDROM, only to find that the included digital manuals were not up to the game’s usual high standard of quality, essentially missing. The background, the “flavor,” if you will, the reason for playing the games... These things were missing. Sure, they told you that pressing I ignited a torch, and Appar Unem dispelled Orcs, but why would you want to play the game in the first place? Of course, it’s a role-playing game, but what’s the plot? What is the player’s motivation? What’s the game’s zeitgeist?

Thus was born my Ultima Documentation Project. I began to scan and transcribe my original Ultima IV History of Britannia manual. It took a while, but I was proud of the finished product, an Adobe Acrobat readable document that faithfully reproduced the manual, in electronic form. Now players of this game could get some of the background of the game, what had been happening in Britannia since they played Ultima III, and so forth.

I began to search for the other original Ultima games so I could have the other manuals to work from, as well as their coveted cloth maps. During this quest I discovered that Micro Dragon was working on a similar project. He was putting the manuals into Microsoft Word format. After some introductory emails, we resolved to share our text and scanned images so as to complete our respective projects sooner. He has finished his project, and I’m still working on mine, so if there is something you need that I don’t have, you are of course welcome to visit his site. He’s also got some Win95 Themes, fonts, and other stuff available.

To get around this site, just click on the appropriate tab at the top of the page. Due to the table structure, it may take a minute or two over slower connections before the pages render; I hope you’ll wait for them!

• July 18, 2000: I’m busy! No updates! I’m a whiner!
• August 30, 1999: Added a paranoid disclaimer about my GIF files.
• August 11, 1999: Updated the Complete Maps of Ultima IV. Still not complete, but a lot more complete than it was. Dungeons! Dungeon rooms!
• July 24, 1999: Posted U1 Handbook and U4 History of Britannia, both incomplete right now (missing most graphics). I’m almost finished with the Complete Maps of Ultima IV.
• May 16, 1999: Regenerated all the fonts and their info files. Actually tested the info files on a system that didn’t already have the fonts installed.
  
• May 13, 1999: Corrected some tab links. Thought I’d already fixed that, but I looked at it today and they’re busted. Added manual for Akalabeth. Noticed most of the font info files (except Outdoor) don’t seem to have the font embedded. Grrr. I worked on it for a while but still don’t know why they broke.
  
• May 2, 1999: Added the Ring of Dragons page and links on the other pages. My sincere apologies to those who came here via the webring and had nowhere to go. The webringmaster, Kurse Dragon was (surprisingly and pleasingly) responsive, more responsive than I expected, and I didn’t have my page ready by the time he put my site into the ring. My compliments to him. Updated the Fonts page with individual files.
  
• April 11, 1999: Another site redesign, for easier updating; it scales better on larger monitors. Added the Complete Maps of Ultima I and Ultima II, and the partially completed Complete Maps of Ultima IV (oxymoron?). Corrected Micro’s link to what it was before; his other server disappeared mysteriously. Added the Disk Art section with scans and the Miscellaneous section (nothing there now). See also What’s Next below for some exciting news.
  
• October 28, 1998: Added the Ultima V Quick Reference Card, a quick scan & upload (by request).
  
• March 25, 1998: Site design rev 2, with color! graphics! Lightened the maps. Added thumbnail images of the dox.
• March 11, 1998: Changed Micro’s link address, fixed the nasty nbsps.

What’s Next?

• Manual for Ultima I. Oh, by the way, a kind and generous soul who requested no credit (the virtue of humility, doncha know) has snailmailed me Zip disks full of hi-res scans of the original Akalabeth and Ultima manuals. (Yesss!!) I intend to work on these next.

What Nut Would Do This?

I’m Trigon Dragon of the Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter, and I can be reached at trigonman3@aol.com if you have any questions, comments, complaints, or whatever.

Anything Else I Should Know?

Most of the .ZIP files are .PDF files that have been Zip-compressed; some are other formats. Mac users can use StuffIt Expander or ZipIt; PC users may use the UnZipping utility of their choice. Once unzipped, read .PDF files with Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater, available for Mac, PC, or even Unix at Adobe’s web site. Use your favorite image viewer for the .JPG images. 24-bit color is the best to view these in, but 16-bit looks good too, and 8-bit is still passable. Printing of these files gives excellent results.

If a file is listed but not linked, I’m still working on it, or haven’t started it yet, but I’m planning to. If it takes a long time before a doc is completed, it’s because I’m concentrating on one of the following: 1. my wife; 2. full-time job; 3. Projects around the house; 4. sleep; 5. making the doc as good-quality and as small as possible.

The Ultima series of games and their trademarks are owned by Electronic Arts/Origin Systems, which maintains its own Ultima pages. I am not affiliated in any way with Electronic Arts or Origin. I’m just a rabid fan of the Ultima games. The GIF(SM) images on this web site were generated with registered, paid-for copies of GraphicConverter and Photoshop, whose authors have licensed the LZW and/or GIF specification.