Ultima V Hits the... TI-89?
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1142
TC: Was there something specific about Ultima V that made it an easy or a challenging candidate to port to these calculators?
DR: Ultima V was a challenge all the way around. The original DOS version totaled over 1MB across 4 floppy disks. My version of TI-89 calculator has only 188kb of RAM and 384kb of flash [memory] available for me (newer versions have up to 2.7MB flash [memory]). I figured if I could fit it into my calculator, then it would work on every TI-89, TI-89 Titanium, TI-92+, and TI-V200.
TC: What was the work like? Tedious? Fun? Challenging? Did you actually enjoy doing it, or did it feel like an obligation?
DR: All of the above. Redrawing by hand every tile of the 512 tiles was very tedious. The original tiles were 16x16 pixels with 256 colors. The tiles for the calculator are 11x11 pixels with four shades of gray. I tried multiple scaling algorithms but they all resulted in less than perfect results. So I redrew every single tile by hand with a sprite editor. I chose 11x11 pixels because it was a good compromise between tile detail and the way the Ultima viewable map is displayed. All of the classic Ultimas display a grid of 11x11 tiles with the main player in the center of the grid. I chose to reduce the viewable grid to 9x9 tiles in order to get a respectable tile detail while keeping the main player in the center of the grid.
Probably the most challenging aspect of Ultima V programming wise was implementing the NPC interaction between merchant & non-merchant town NPCs.
Bizarre, but very interesting nonetheless.
