Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
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|
| 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.SAVcontains the current party. -
MONSTERS.SAVcontains the monsters table (data about NPCs and objects in the game world).[5] -
OUTMONST.SAVcontains a backup of the monsters table. -
DNGMAP.SAVcontains dungeon map data.[5] - xu4 stores config and save data in
%APPDATA%\xu4\on Windows and$HOME/.config/xu4/xu4rcon Linux.
Save game cloud syncing
| System | Native | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GOG Galaxy | ||
| EA app |
- 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. | |
| Keyboard and mouse prompts | ||
| Mouse Y-axis inversion | ||
| Controller | ||
| Controller support | For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds). |
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 | |||
| Storage drive (HDD/SSD) | ||||
| 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 | ||
| Storage drive (HDD/SSD) | 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 | |||
| Storage drive (HDD/SSD) | 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_savesfolder 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