Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Developers | |
---|---|
Origin Systems | |
DOS | James Van Artsdalen |
Publishers | |
Electronic Arts | |
Release dates | |
DOS | September 16, 1985 |
Windows (DOSBox) | September 1, 2011[1] |
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) | October 18, 2012[2] |
Taxonomy | |
Monetization | Freeware |
Modes | Singleplayer |
Genres | RPG |
Themes | Fantasy |
Series | Ultima |
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is a singleplayer RPG game in the Ultima series.
While the original Apple II version had music through sound card support and most other versions played music using their native sound hardware, the unpatched DOS version does not have any music.
The unpatched game has issues on faster systems; use the upgrade patch to fix this.
General information
- Can be run under ScummVM.[3]
- Ultima Codex - A huge wiki for the series
- GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
- GOG.com Support Page
Availability
Essential improvements
Patches
- Ultima IV Upgrade Patch fixes the game's speed issues and adds the missing music to the game. Requires DOS or DOSBox to play however the patcher itself is a Windows console app. For Mac or Linux, use the DOS avpatch.exe.
Source ports
- xu4 is a reverse engineered "source port" of the game for modern systems.
Game data
Save game data location
System | Location |
---|---|
DOS | <path-to-game>\*.SAV |
Windows | <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1] |
macOS (OS X) | <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1] |
-
PARTY.SAV
contains the current party. -
MONSTERS.SAV
contains the monsters table (data about NPCs and objects in the game world).[5] -
OUTMONST.SAV
contains a backup of the monsters table. -
DNGMAP.SAV
contains dungeon map data.[5] - xu4 stores config and save data in
%APPDATA%\xu4
on Windows and$HOME/.config/xu4/xu4rc
on Linux.
Save game cloud syncing
System | Native | Notes |
---|---|---|
GOG Galaxy | ||
Origin |
- ScummVM 2.1+ supports cloud saves on third-party cloud storage services. See the ScummVM documentation for details.
Video
Graphics feature | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Widescreen resolution | 320x200 only. | ||
Multi-monitor | |||
Ultra-widescreen | |||
4K Ultra HD | |||
Field of view (FOV) | |||
Windowed | Toggle with Alt+↵ Enter (DOSBox) or set in options (xu4). | ||
Borderless fullscreen windowed | |||
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | |||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | |||
Vertical sync (Vsync) | For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds). | ||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS |
Input
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Remapping | Default key bindings can be found in the included readme, on page 24 | |
Mouse acceleration | ||
Mouse sensitivity | ||
Mouse input in menus | No mouse support. | |
Mouse Y-axis inversion | ||
Controller | ||
Controller support | For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds). |
Controller types |
---|
Audio
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | Volume ON/OFF with V. | |
Surround sound | ||
Subtitles | All speech is text-based. | |
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file. |
|
Royalty free audio |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
English |
Other information
API
Technical specs | Supported | Notes |
---|---|---|
DOS video modes | CGA, CGA Composite, PCjr, Tandy, EGA, VGA | Use the Upgrade Patch for native VGA support. |
System requirements
DOS | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 2.0 | 3.2 |
Processor (CPU) | 8088 / 8086 | |
System memory (RAM) | 256 KB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | ||
Video card (GPU) | CGA | EGA |
Windows | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | XP, Vista | |
Processor (CPU) | 1.8 GHz | |
System memory (RAM) | 512 MB | 1 GB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 27 MB | |
Video card (GPU) | DirectX 7 compatible | DirectX 9 compatible |
macOS (OS X) | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | ||
Operating system (OS) | 10.6.8 | |
Processor (CPU) | Intel Core Duo 2 GHz+ | |
System memory (RAM) | 1 GB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 2 GB | |
Video card (GPU) | 64 MB of VRAM |
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to
<path-to-game>/cloud_saves/
even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in thecloud_saves
folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).
References
- ↑ New release: Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar ● GOG.com - last accessed on 9 June 2023
- ↑ GOG.com goes Mac ● GOG.com - last accessed on 9 June 2023
- ↑ Sep 27, 2020: ScummVM “Interactive Fantasy” 2.2.0 Sees the Light - last accessed on 2020-09-28
- ↑ List of GOG games using DOSBox, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Ultima IV Internal Formats - The Codex of Ultima Wisdom, a wiki for Ultima and Ultima Online