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.