Ultima: Exodus Remastered ROM Hack herunterladen

Ultima Exodus (USA) "Remastered" patch by Fox Cunning
		VERSION 2.03


	--- INSTRUCTIONS ---

See "1.Readme.txt" for instructions on how to apply the patch.

The expected original file name is "Ultima - Exodus (U)[!].nes".
An alternative ROM dump exists with a slightly different header - this patch should work fine with that too.
If you are dumping your own ROM, the CRC32 might be different but this patch should still work.

After the main patch is applied, you will be asked if you want to use alternative fonts.
These are made to be more readable and are based on the Commodore 64 version of Ultima V.


	--- LIST OF CHANGES ---

- Most colour palettes have been slightly altered to better fit the new tile and sprite graphics.
- The intro credits have been compacted to fit into two screens instead of 5.
- The random seed is now properly initialised using the frame counter the moment the player presses the Start button, instead of having a fixed value and thus producing the same sequence of pseudo-random numbers every time.
- Many routines have been optimised for speed.
- New graphics inspired by Ultima IV has been used to replace most sprites and background tiles, including the "cutscene" with Lord British after forming a party for the first time.
- The game can now be saved in Sosaria by pressing the Start button. It is still possible to save at Inns.
- Most maps are now compressed using an LZSS algorithm. As a result of that, the code used to generate loot chests has been completely rewritten, as well as the routines that draw new tiles when moving around the map. Chests now disappear when offscreen. This can be used as a workaround for when a chest spawned on top of a town entrance, forcing the player to open it (at the risk of triggering a trap) if they wanted to enter the town.
- Maps can use additional tiles and have been slightly altered to better use the new graphics.
- Rocks have been added (sparsely) around Sosaria and Ambrosia. The party can try to use them at their own advantage to avoid enemy encounters.
- Each location can now use slightly different colours.
- Battle maps have been modified to include more variety.
- Some maps that had redundant shops have also been altered (for example, Montor West had two bartenders next to each other).
- In Castle British, the Oracle who kept walking on lava is now stationary.
- Some maps have also been altered so that merchants who tent to walk away from their counters won't be able to do that anymore.
- All character metasprites, including NPCs and monsters can now use two palettes for their "sub-sprites".
- Yew is now once again populated by Druids, while Jesters and Scoundrels live in Gray, much like in the computer versions.
- Wild horses have re-appeared in Ambrosia. Unlike in the computer versions, they are not hostile (although the party can attack them).
- A bug that caused loot chests to spawn randomly on the map after fighting townspeople has been fixed.
- Each dungeon now has its own unique colours, fitting its "theme" (for example the Cave of Fire is red).
- Chests use larger sprites in the dungeon pseudo-3D view. They are also visible from a tile away, instead of only being visible when you step on them.
- When stepping on a trap in a dungeon, the character with the best chances (depending on profession and dexterity) will try to disarm it instead of the party leader.
- Simple floors and ceilings have been added to all dungeons (any more comples graphics would have made navigation ever so slightly slower, for no real gain).
- Over 10 typos and misspellings were fixed in NPC dialogue.
- Nonsensical, misleading, and out-of-place dialogue has been corrected.
- 11 lines of dialogue that were missing because of bugs or were just left unassigned have been restored. This includes one critical hint that was present in the computer versions of the game was not visible in the NES version because of a bug.
- The dialogue window now shows a portrait of the NPC the party is talking to. Recurring and important characters have their own unique portrait, inspired by those used in Ultima VI.
- The "pre-made" character selection has been removed. Instead, four characters are choosen randomly from a pool of decent pre-made ones whenever a new save game is created. This allows a player to start the game more quickly and does not require previous knowledge of the game in order to select a balanced party.
- The Start button can now be used as well as the Select button to finish character selection when forming a party.
- Attribute points can be distributed in steps of 1 instead of 5 when manually creating a character.
- Each race now can assign a different maximum amount of points to their initial stats, in line with their lore and max attributes:
  - Human: 25 STR, 25 DEX, 25 INT, 25 WIS
  - Elf: 25 STR, 35 DEX, 25 INT, 20 WIS
  - Dwarf: 35 STR, 25 DEX, 20 INT, 25 WIS
  - Bobit: 25 STR, 20 DEX, 25 INT, 35 WIS
  - Fuzzy: 20 STR, 30 DEX, 30 INT, 25 WIS
- Each profession's main attributes are highlighted during manual character creation.
- The UI has been redesigned, with icons used to represent status, race, gender etc. instead of letters.
- When levelling up, characters now gain attribute points (up to their racial maximum) according to this table:
  - Fighter: 2 STR
  - Cleric: 2 WIS
  - Wizard: 2 INT
  - Palading: 1 STR, 1 WIS
  - Thief: 2 DEX
  - Barbarian: 1 STR, 1 DEX
  - Lark: 1 STR, 1 INT
  - Illusionist: 1 DEX, 1 WIS
  - Druid: 1 INT, 1 WIS
  - Alchemist: 1 DEX, 1 INT
  - Ranger: 1 DEX, 1 WIS
- Max MP values and MP/level follows this table:
  - Cleric: = WIS (unchanged)
  - Wizard: = INT (unchanged)
  - Paladin: = WIS/2
  - Lark: = INT/2 (unchanged)
  - Illusionist: = WIS*3/4
  - Druid: (INT+WIS)/2
  - Alchemist: INT*3/4
  - Ranger: (INT+WIS)/4
- Characters have different starting HP and gain different HP per level depending on their profession:
  - Figther: 50 + (125 per level) (starting = 175)
  - Cleric: 50 + (85 per level) (starting = 135)
  - Wizard: 50 + (50 per level) (starting = 100)
  - Thief: 50 + (75 per level) (starting = 125)
  - Paladin: 50 + (110 per level) (starting = 160)
  - Barbarian: 50 + (150 per level) (starting = 200)
  - Lark: 50 + (65 per level) (starting = 115)
  - Illusionist: 50 + (55 per level) (starting = 105)
  - Druid: 50 + (80 per level) (starting = 130)
  - Alchemist: 50 + (60 per level) (starting = 110)
  - Ranger: 50 + (100 per level) (starting = 150)
- The "best armour/weapon" for most professions have been slightly altered:
  - Fighter: no change.
  - Cleric: slightly better gear allows some sort of "battle cleric".
  - Wizard: no change.
  - Thief: can use bow.
  - Paladin: better weapons make it almost as good as a Fighter in melee, but with less protection, compensated by the fact that a Paladin can heal herself.
  - Barbarian: no change.
  - Lark: with slightly better armour, but a slightly worse arsenal, a Lark can be a decent ranged combatant.
  - Illusionist: same as a thief gear-wise to allow the use of bows.
  - Druid: can be somewhat of a backup ranged warrior using a blowgun.
  - Alchemist: same as Druid.
  - Ranger: slightly better weapon choice as this is supposed to be a versatile character.
- To prevent XP-grinding at lower levels, characters slowly gain less and less XP the more they have "stored" until they level up.
- Extra XP is gained by killing monsters in more dangerous areas, such as dungeons and Castle Death.
- Looted chests may contain weapons and armour in addition to gold.
  - Chests found in more dangerous areas can contain more powerful weapons/armour.
  - Vendors now pay less for used armour, on the other hand now you have armour to sell when normally would would have none.
- HP/MP regeneration/loss and food consumption routines have been completely rewritten:
  - Barbarians regenerate 1 HP every 4 steps.
  - Other characters regenerate 1 HP every 5 steps (instead of 10).
  - Druids regenerate 2 MP per step.
  - Other characters regenerate 1 MP per step (unchanged).
  - 1 unit of food is consumed every 20 steps (instead of 10).
  - Poisoned characters lose 1 HP per step (unchanged).
  - Diseased characters lose 1 HP every 2 steps (unchanged).
  - Diseased characters also consume food at twice the normal rate.
  - Starvation consumes 1 HP every step (instead of 5 HP every 4 steps).
- The above values are for Sosaria: regeneration is slower on other maps, but the same ratio applies.
- When on horse, the party can move through bushes or trees at normal speed. According to the manual, horses were supposed to go faster, but in actuality they didn't. This change tries to somewhat honour that promise.
- The slowdown when not sailing downwind has been reduced.
- The second "HEAL" spell has been renamed to "HEAL2" to avoid confusion.
- The general MP cost of spells has been reduced, and scales up in steps of 4 instead of 5 per "spell level".
- The low level "REPEL" and "UNDEAD" spells are now actually random as they were supposed to be, but have better chances to succeed depending on caster's attributes (respectively INT and WIS).
  - They also work on Trolls and Zombies (as they do in the computer versions of the game).
- The damage of "projectile" spells ("MISSILE", "FLAME", "PSI") now scales up with caster level.
- Multi-hit spells ("REPEL", "POISON", "PSI KILL", "DEATH") which had a fixed hit chance per target, now have better chances to hit each target depending on caster's level. The chance is about 50% at level 1, and 80% at level 25. Their average damage is also increased, although the minimum and maximum damage values are unchanged.
- The duration of the "LIGHT", "GLOW", "BRIGHT", "STAR" now also scales up with caster level instead of being a fixed value.
- The "ROT" spell was an overpowered spell that never missed. Now that its MP cost is significantly reduced, it seems fair to add a hit chance (per target) based on caster's level.
- The "OPEN" spell now has a success chance that scales up with caster's level. Also it does not consume any MP if cast by mistake (e.g. when there is no chest to open).
- Healing spells now heal more hit points depending on caster's level and Wisdom. For example, the second HEAL spell (now renamed "HEAL2") had a random value between 100 and 250. In a game where character can easily have over 2000 hit points, that was insignificant. Now the HP gain ranges between 142 (for a level 1 character with just enough Wisdom to cast the spell) to 596 (for a level 25 caster with 99 Wisdom).
- The "RAISE" spell's success chance now scales up with level, instead of being a fixed 75%. The success chance at level 1 would be 61%, reaching 75% at level 15 and 85% at level 25.
- The "RECALL" spell was meant to punish the caster by permanently taking away 5 Wisdom points. However, because of a bug in the code, 5 was subtracted from one of the palette colours (only effective if the screen flashed, for example if immediately casting another spell afterwards). This bug has been eliminated, but instead of permanently decreasing the caster's Wisdom, it reduces their HP to 1 (the current HP, not their max value).
- The screen-flashing time for most spells has been vastly reduced to speed up the game flow.
- The "hit" sprite also disappears more quickly as not to disrupt the pace of the battle.
- Almost all the enemies that were in the computer versions but not in the NES one have been reintroduced. This includes the Pincher, Troll, Zombie, Cutpurse, Fighter, Wizard, Orcus and the special Chest encounter in Castle Death.
- Gargoyles and Manes now have magical attacks again.
- During battle, the turn is not forfeited when cancelling an action (for example choosing the spell menu and then pressing B) or when an action is not possible (for example choosing the "Tools" menu on a character who has no items). The turn is still forfeited by pressing B before any action is chosen.
- Enemies cannot steal items anymore, but they can steal a small amount of gold.
- The enemy AI in battle has been completely re-written and is now a bit faster and a bit smarter, being somewhat able to navigate around obstacles and other enemies.
- Some other routines have been hugely re-written to make battles much faster.
- Obstacles in the form of rocks have been added to some battle maps. They can be used to the party's advantage when fighting with spells and ranged weapons, but also to the enemy's advantage, since they can attack diagonally.
- The delay between choosing the direction of an attack and the actual attack has been largely reduced.
- The currently equipped weapon is displayed in the battle UI when choosing the direction of the attack.
- An icon in the battle UI now indicates whose turn it is.
- The text that appeared when a character was hit would not fit into the UI when the name was five letters long. This has been fixed by altering the text.
- Armour now also absorbs some damage.
- Characters with a high Intelligence or Wisdom have a chance of receiving less damage from magical attacks.
- Thieves now have a critical hit chance, based on level. The extra damage depends on Dexterity and on the weapon used.
- Barbarians deal some extra damage per level, starting at level 2. This extra damage is applied to every successful strike.


	--- CHECKSUM ---

Original ROM CRC32: C1A9E6C0
Remastered version 2.03 CRC32: E71FFE85
Remastered v2.03 (altfonts) CRC32: C24E546A


	--- CONTACTS ---

Twitter: @FoxCunning2
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