So, a sprite viewer for Ultima Underworld 1 and 2.  That's basically all it does, and sometimes not even that.

There are two palette files included, uw.pal and uw2.pal.  They are in JASC format (as used by Paint Shop Pro) and the one required should be called uw2.pal.  This is because the program was originally written to read files from Underworld 2.  The palette file should be in the same directory as the program, or if opening it by double-clicking on file icons, in the same directory as the file.  There are certainly neater ways of doing it, but I couldn't be bothered.  It also means you can set a different palette for the program if you want to.

Stick mfc40.dll in your windows/system directory if it's not there already, and away you go.

The program can read most files with the extension .gr in the data folder of either game.  A few will still generate errors, and some generate complete gibberish.  Sorry about that, but I wasn't in the mood for working out random file access in MFC at the time.  Perhaps in a later version? ...

Of course, a sprite viewer for Underworld isn't quite as useful as for other games because (in later releases) there was a screen shot facility provided.  In fact, the pallette was extracted from one of these.  Ultima 7 has a fairly well-known viewer associated with it, and I've yet to try to hack Ultima 8.  That may be tricky.

Meanwhile, there are a number of other projects I've got in progress:
Ultima 7 items lister - List EVERY occurrence of any item in the game (possibly excluding NPCs)
Daggerfall character editor - In addition to the normal statistics editing, edit and create custom items (I know it's possible, I've done it myself with a hex editor)
WorldLeaper raycasting engine - Yes, I know you've never heard of WorldLeaper, that's because I haven't finished the engine yet.

Oh, and I've never been too sure quite what Microsoft are going on about in the license agreement.  If I'm not actually allowed to distribute this stuff, let me know.  Standard "use at your own risk" disclaimer applies.

Shano Dragon
(James Matthews)
jmatthews@geocities.com
