Category Archives: Ultima Patcher

Ultima Patcher 1.1

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Today saw the long awaited release of the complete Ultima 7 on GOG and I’ve updated my GOG Ultima patcher to support both games. It adds general MIDI patches for both Ultima 7 & Serpent Isle which should offer an improvement over the default Soundblaster.

As ever if there are any other patches I should include or any problems please let me know.

Ultima Patcher – Fixes

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I’ve had chance to test the patcher more thoroughly and sorted out a few issues:-

  • There were problems with Ultima 4 and both Underworlds when the games weren’t installed in the usual directories. It would ask you to choose the directory but then not open the form for that game. This is now fixed.
  • I’ve tidied up the player transfer substantially for Ultima 5. It would previously never find the correct Ultima 4 directory automatically unless you happened to have the same username as me. To make this simpler, you now just need to specify where you installed Ultima 4 and it does the searching in virtualstore automatically if required. It probably isn’t needed but I’ve made the same changes for Ultima 6 also.
  • I’ve added links to the websites of the various patches, where I could find them.
  • It shouldn’t crash any more if expected files are missing.
  • I’ve added an about page + a version number. I’ve nominally called this version 1.0.

To the best of my knowledge it’s working correctly now. It’s still ugly but I’ll leave it as is unless anyone runs into problems with it, or has good ideas for things I should change. If GOG releases any more Ultima’s, I’ll add them in as well. I think there is just the one more release due in this batch from EA. We’ve had far more Ultima games than I expected already but I’ve still got some hope we might see the Worlds Of Ultima games next week.

Ultima Patcher Update

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I’ve acquired a copy of UW 1 + 2 from GOG, thanks to the generosity of Loaf, and have added both games onto the patcher. Apart from the various patches, I added in a toggle for sound devices. I’ve also included a couple more Ultima 4 patches. The U4 form is looking a little crowded so hopefully that’s all of them.

I’d just about got that ready when GOG surprised me with more Ultima games in the form of the second trilogy. This time I’ve bought them myself and although there aren’t as many patches available for these, what there is I’ve added into the patcher. GOG aren’t supporting character transfer at the moment which isn’t any fun, so I’ve included an option to mount your savegame directory for the previous game to allow the in-game character transfer to work correctly.

There are a few things to note:-

  • The Spanish translation patch for Underworld included a replacement .exe. This has been altered to give loads of experience so you are level 8 by the time you walk down the first corridor. As far as I can tell, the .exe isn’t needed for the translation and only affects the messages during start-up so I’ve not included it.
  • The Ultima 4 Music Patch has some serious slowdown in-game, so I tell Dosbox to run with maximum cycles to improve it. This isn’t exactly ideal and even then it slows down when playing PC speaker sound. I don’t know if there is a later version available which would improve this, or possibly some alternative DOSBox settings. The VGA version certainly doesn’t have this problem. As it stands, I’m tempted to remove this patch.
  • For character transfers in Ultima 5, the PARTY.SAV in the game’s directory is not the one that is used when you save your game. It will no doubt be different on XP but on Windows 7 it uses the directory “C:UsersRichardAppDataLocalVirtualStoreProgram Files (x86)GOG.comUltima 4” or a close equivalent depending on where the game is installed. When asked to choose your save game directory, you need to make sure you get the right one although the patcher will probably select it for you if it’s in the default location. If you have the free Utlima 4 and the one in the trilogy, then you have two lots of savegames. These are never deleted when uninstalling, no matter what you select when asked.
  • Finally, these latest additions are a rush job to get it done before I head out to watch the rugby tonight, so there may be problems. If it all works then I just need to plug the holes and possibly improve the interface next. Please let me know if something doesn’t work, or you have any suggestions.

Ultima Patcher

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I’ve not spent long on it, but I cobbled together a simple GOG Ultima game patcher on Saturday afternoon. The idea was to offer an easier alternative to install all the various patches for Ultima 1-4 for anyone who has bought them off GOG. It’s very basic and just copies the patch files, runs any installers inside DOSBox and alters the GOG DOSBox config automatically. There isn’t much point in using it if you know your way around DOS/DOSBox, but it might help a few people out. It needs some serious tidying up and I definitely want to add in links to the project sites and the like but it basically works for now. It’s in the Miscellaneous section in the downloads for anyone who wants it.

I’ll probably add the other games as they are released + the Underworlds, although it does mean buying them all again so I’m tempted to wait until a sale. After buying Ultima 1-3 on GOG that makes it 6 copies of Ultima 1 I own and 5 copies of 2 & 3 in one form or another. Surely I must have paid for these games enough times by now. $6 is not a lot of money though, so I’ll probably stump up the cash for the others.

While I’m posting, one of my favourite channels on Youtube, blacklily8, just added a mini-review of Ultima 4:-

Matt is a guy who is very much into old RPG’s and adventure games, and seems to have very similar tastes to myself. Despite that he’s not played any of the Ultima’s so this is more or less his first experience of the series.

It’s interesting to see what someone new to Ultima, but not to ancient RPG’s makes of it. It’s easy to forget just how awkward the interface is and how much there is to learn when you have been playing these games for years. There is a thread on GOG where several people couldn’t even figure out how to get past the menu screen at the start and thought the game was broken.