U9 Flex Extractor

[Pat Grimes]

Hi, I've just recently found out that an Ascension music ripper was written for U9 (I'm guessing 2 years ago). An internet search directed me to an Exult dicussion page where it was stated that this "Flex Extractor" could be found on www.fansforultima.com. Unfortunately, www.fansforultima.com appears to be dead. Does anyone have this program? I thoroughly enjoyed Ultima 9 (which probably puts me in the minority) and am trying to get a clean music rip. Thanks.

[Paulon]

The original author of the music extractor was Aquamarine Dragon. He has it at http://publish.uwo.ca/~jdrexler/ultima/u9decode/

There's also a set of data extractors for U9, including music support, at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~froods/u9tools.html

Unfortunately FansforUltima is dead and gone. They didn't have the time and money to maintain the site and pay for the domain if they couldn't keep it updated. It's worth keeping an eye on Voyager Dragon's Ultima: The Reconstruction site instead. It's at http://reconstruction.voyd.net/

[Grimlock Dragon]

That's some good information, BUT I still have yet to find a program that will extract U9 speech. I remain convinced that I've sometimes heard a female Avatar "Hmmmm"ing when the Avatar just stands around. It seemed to happen more often when I had my Voodoo 3 graphics board in for some reason. I also know that the female Avatar did have a voice actress, eventhough the final U9 didn't have a female Avatar option. Chances are, if there is a voice of a female Avatar, there may be more dialog discovered that wasn't in the game, but no one seems to know what format the speech was saved in to decode it.

[Dominus]

it was so rushed that i'm sure that no other dialog was recorded. you might want to search google groups for this as i remember a similar discussion either here or in the dragons group.
There are older maps of the game to explore with special game options and hacks but I don't remeber where I found them. Some are instant blue screeners btw.

[Grimlock Dragon]

That may be true, but I'm still convinced that I hear a female humming every so often. It's definately different from the male humming. And as I recall, the dialog was recorded more than once due to plot changes. I also remember that there was an actress that stated her part as the Avatar in her resume. With all of the unused graphics that shipped in the game, it may not be such a stretch of the imagination for there also to have been unused speech. Surely there must be some audio guru out there that can figure out how it is encrypted?

[Maigo Dragon]

Hi all, I am the former webmaster of Fans for Ultima and one of the three people who worked on the Dialogue Patch and the 1.19 and 1.20 patches for U9. I can 100% guarantee you that there are no text files for any female avatar lines. I haven't listened to 100% of the -sound- files, but there is absolutely not any text related to any latent female sound files, if any (which I don't think there are). Hope this info helps.

[sslaxx]

Hmmm... I'd be interested in a speech file decoder for U9 too. Was any work ever made on one?

[Grimlock Dragon]

Greetings Maigo Dragon. I wanted to thank you for keeping up Fans for Ultima for so long. It was appreciated, and it was very useful....

As far as extra speech in U9, all I can say is I heard what I heard.... The Avatar was humming with what sounded like a female voice more than once. And no, he wasn't doing that after someone kicked him between the legs. :0)

I think it's worth checking out since other people have decoded other files, and found extra material.

[SB-X]

Do you still have it? You could check now to see if you still hear it. Someone else who has U9 might do the same. I havn't ever played it myself (except the demo).

[dag]

Maigo Dragon:

There is a 1.20 patch for u9??? The latest I have installed
is 1.19.
Where can I find it? What's new in the patch?

[sslaxx]

1.19f was an unofficial patch by one of the Ultima IX team. I doubt there's a 1.20 patch.

[Grimlock Dragon]

The problem was that it was a rare occurance. It did seem to happen more often when I had a Voodoo 3 in my machine instead of my current Voodoo 5 for some reason. I think it might be handy anyway for someone to come up with a speech extractor.... If they could do that, they might also be able to insert speech into the game (i.e. the dialog patch with spoken words. Although they'd have to hack apart the character's current words, and reassemble them in order to keep the same voice actor's pronunciation).