ULX Converter

Extract text from Glulx game files (ULX)


Drop or upload your .ULX file
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How to extract text from your ULX file

  1. Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your ULX file.
  2. You’ll see a preview, if available.
  3. Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert ULX to another file type

To convert ULX game files to another format, you need Glulxe or other Game software.

Convert a file to ULX

To convert other file formats to the "Interactive Fiction Binary" file type, you need software like Glulxe or a similar tool.


About ULX files

The .ulx file extension primarily represents a compiled Interactive Fiction game file for the Glulx virtual machine, originally created by Andrew Plotkin. It can also function as a device data log archive used by the Xylem Avensor Xam8000 system. The Glulx format is a proprietary binary designed specifically for massive text adventure games. It requires specialized interpreter software like Gargoyle or Glulxe to run. This presents a major disadvantage for users: these files cannot be opened natively on Windows or macOS, and they cannot be edited because they are compiled machine code. Furthermore, they are often locked into specific interpreter ecosystems. The secondary use case, Xylem data logs, are structured as standard ZIP archives but use the obscure .ulx extension to prevent accidental user tampering. Standard online converters fail with .ulx files because they lack the specific decoders for Glulx binaries or fail to recognize the hidden ZIP structure of the data logs. Drag and drop your file to convert.guru to see what it is and convert it if supported. If our analysis detects the underlying ZIP format of a Xylem log, we can extract the internal data to CSV, TXT, or ZIP. For Glulx games, we can inspect the binary to extract embedded text strings. This file format is difficult to open or convert because often only the original software or a specific virtual machine can properly read or export the data.

Convert.Guru analyzes your ULX file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.


FAQ

If you want to convert ULX file to , you can use Glulxe or similar software from the "Interactive Fiction Game Binary" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert files to ULX, try Glulxe or another comparable tool in the "Interactive Fiction Game Binary" category.



The ULX Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ULX converter.