While digging through Ultima IX files, I found there were at least 2 pre-release demos of the game and figured it’d be handy for History to have somewhere to record them and some other resources for U9 archaeology.
Demos
General demo notes
- Neither of these demos contain
bitmapC.flx, suggesting the DXT1 compression came very late in the day
CGW Demo notes
- Features an intro video explainer from ya boi Richie G not found in the other demo (
demo_introf.mpg)
- Only contains 16 bit graphics (i.e.
bitmapsh.flx is empty)
- I compared the contents of
bitmap16.flx with the retail version and there are differences but I didn’t find anything juicy
music.flx and speech.flx are in a Sound folder on the disk, not part of the install
music.flx is the same as the other demo but speech.flx is huge - 4,962 KB vs 138,773 KB. It’s bigger even than the retail release’s 138,194 KB
- There’s actually quite a lot of speech here that isn’t in the retail install
- Including a
Demon_ character (6 clips) that doesn’t appear at all
- A lot of lines appear here without post-processing applied:
- A bunch of Avatar lines have been sped up a little in retail
DupreGhost clips don’t have their spoooooky echo etc applied in the demoGenericGargoyle haven’t been pitched down/had reverb appliedOracle has different type of spooky effect applied vs retail- In the demo,
Peiter_02498.umt begins “Say what a bout that pirate girl, Raven?”. In retail “Raven” is scrambled out for some reason.
Avatar_10332: “Why is Britain so lacking in Compassion?”. Yup.- There are some lines of Guardian admonishing the avatar for attacking children, which I’m guessing was cut for obvious reasons
PC Gamer Demo notes
- Only contains 8-bit palette indexed graphics (i.e.
bitmap16.flx is empty)
- I compared the contents of
bitmapsh.flx with the retail version and there are differences but I didn’t find anything juicy
Resources
| Link |
Description |
| Ultima 9 model importer |
Python script to convert models and terrain to Blender format |
| u9ed |
My C# project to view and export bitmaps |
| vgmstream |
Can play/export U9 sfx/music/speech |
Docs