How does this work exactly and how can i play the rest of th

[JonGM123]

Hi guys,

I've been reading through the site and am just a little confused about 1 thing, 'exactly' what can I play with exult? Just ultima 7?

Also, does anyone know of any tools to play the rest of the ultima series on your PC?

[marzo]

About Exult:
1.2. What is Exult?
1.6. Will Exult support other Ultimas?
(although strictly speaking Exult + ES allows brand new games to be created/played, there isn't any such game available at the moment)

About the other Ultimas:
Our links page
DOSBox

[Andrea B Previtera]

Only a few Ultimas are faithfully reconstructed (meaning that they're not remakes but real "modern ports" of the originals), and out of those few, possibly only Exult is 100% complete (correct me if I am wrong).


Use Exult to play Ultima 7, 7b
Pentagram (http://pentagram.sf.net) to play Ultima 8
Nuvie (http://nuvie.sourceforge.net) to play Ultima 6
Xu4 (http://xu4.sourceforge.net/) to play Ultima 4
Tylenol (http://www.tylenol.com/) to play Ultima 9

[Oblivious]

You can also play Ultimas 1-5 using the CCS64 Emulator; IIRC RG released the C64 versions of Ultimas 1-5 as freeware back in the late 90's (had to fight EA tooth and nail to do that, I am told), especially since their graphics are inferior to the PC versions. Personally I prefer the C64 version of Ultima 5 since Jaana and Mariah don't have beards in it. Plus the black background gives a nice dark/gothic feel that really sets the mood for the game.
Don't ask me to post links to the emulator or the ROMS though (go find them yourself, it's not difficult) There's also a C64 version of Ultima 6, though it crashes (I think it only works on the C164) and of course it doesn't look anywhere near as good as the PC version. (as standard C64 fare the colors are all muted) When I tried playing it on CCS64, it crashed when I talked to LB.

[Dominus]

Tylenol (http://www.tylenol.com/) to play Ultima 9

huh?

[Wizardry Dragon]

Andrea: I suggest morphine myself

More on topic, Ultima IV is freely available, though I cant recall the download link offhand. You can play it fine with Dosbox, and there's even some patches to make it prettier.

[Andrea B Previtera]

Dominus: just a little shot at U9 being more a headache than a game

Peter: Well you could play any other Ultima with Dosbox anyway, including U7 itself

Going a bit OT: now that there are freeware virtualization solutions like VirtualBox, and lots of free Dos incarnations, what's exactly going to keep DosBox alive given it will never reach the same level of compatibility AND performance of a virtualized dos environment?

[Darkstar]

Obviously you've never really tried to play lots of old games using VirtualBox/VMware

The advantages of DOSbox are:
- Portable (i.e. not x86-only, as VirtualBox etc. are)
- optionally emulates a slow/restricted computer (i.e. 66MHz 486 without SSE for example)
- emulates CGA, EGA, AdLib, Gravis Ultrasound, etc. (which VirtualBox et.al. don't)
- simplified EMS/XMS memory management (if you ever set up your config.sys/autoexec.bat for Ultima 7 you know what I mean
- Thus, the compatibility of DosBox is actually better than VMware/VirtualBox

all in all, DosBox will be even more important as time progresses, especially to play old games.

--Darkstar

[Dominus]

Going a bit OT: now that there are freeware virtualization solutions like VirtualBox, and lots of free Dos incarnations, what's exactly going to keep DosBox alive given it will never reach the same level of compatibility AND performance of a virtualized dos environment?

Actually you got it all wrong, which freeware (or actually commercial, too) virtualization solution offers the same compatibility and performance WITH Dos games than DosBox?
They all work fine with standard programs under Dos but when it comes to games, they all are not in the same league as Dosbox.
Especialy look at the many sound options and graphics options Dosbox offers nowadays. Wich other virtualizer offers hercules, tandy, pcjr, ega and many different svga options?
Joystick support for different joystick types that worked back in the dos days...

The Virtualizer work fine for anything from Windows 9x upwards, but for Dos and Windows 3.x games I'd always stick with Dosbox.

Edit: uarrgh, Darkstar beat me to it...
One more thing, as Darkstar already hinted at, portability, just these days a Dosbox port for the Wii has been released...

[Andrea B Previtera]

Sun VirtualBox + FreeDos

Maybe it is because my cpu supports hardware virtualization, but practically all my dos games work far better with it rather than dosbox.

By better I mean faster and smoother. Dosbox "cpu cycles" tuning is somewhat tricky and oldschool to me, VirtualBox + FreeDos means cycle-exact clocking, with the only downside that some games will run just too fast... like they actually did when they weren't programmed to be correctly clocked

I don't really know about joysticks and other peripherals but as for graphic cards, some svga modes that I never got to work under dosbox, are working with virtualbox (for example Fast Tracker II)

After all I am watching this under the perspective of a system that can run dos games/apps like a dos equipped machine would do, like my pc if I installed MSDOS 6.22 on the boot disk rather than Windows - not something to emulate old video cards or other hardware.

Portability is indeed a point for DosBox, although (let the rocks come to my head) I think that when something has been ported to Windows, Linux, MacOs and possibly a PS2/3 ... the rest is just an excercise in coding that results in something funny and exotic to show to one's friends (Look! Doom running on my washing machine's display!)

[Andrea B Previtera]

Oops I didn't see Darkstar message: you're right on memory management - that may be the golden cornerstone of DosBox after all.

But my VirtualBox experience is still flawless (and I SO love having a virtual hard disk with all my dos stuff inside)

[Dominus]

Dosbox "cpu cycles" tuning is somewhat tricky and oldschool to me, VirtualBox + FreeDos means cycle-exact clocking, with the only downside that some games will run just too fast... like they actually did when they weren't programmed to be correctly clocked

Well, with Dosbox you can tune it with the cycles, so the games do not run too fast...

[drcode]

"Well, with Dosbox you can tune it with the cycles, so the games do not run too fast..."

This is *extremely* important for games like the early Ultimas and Wing Commanders. I remember trying to play WC 1 on an old Pentium and getting shot down before I could blink.

[Wizardry Dragon]

Andrea: Point was, Ultima IV is essentially freeware now.

The other Ultimas ... are not.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca