That's nice.

that's good to know. while we are shring experiences, I've been able to run UW2 since 1997 on every computer i owned and even on my XP it ran fine (ok I#m lying it didn't work on my laptop with vdms due to EMS problems). And now it runs verrrrrrrrry nice with dosbox. I admit I had always problems but a little search did help me everytime...
😀

It's advisable to patch both Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 prior to playing them on XP. Other than that, they work both using VDMSound and DOSBox.

DosFreak wrote:

That's nice.

Excellent suggestion.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

It's advisable to patch both Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 prior to playing them on XP. Other than that, they work both using VDMSound and DOSBox.

Where might I find patches for such an old game? I may already have the patched version, I got both UW1 and UW2 on one CD, ca '95 or '96.
Have never had any problems with UW1 but no computer I've had since '97 will run UW2. Tried VDMSound on my current system with the same results: the game starts fine, graphics appear normal, music and effects play properly, then, midway through the character creation stage I'm unceremoniously dumped back to the desktop. No black screen, no error message, nothing.

Excellent suggestion.

Well, you had an excellent question.

Where might I find patches for such an old game?

depends, just think about what you are trying to do. You want to find a patch for running Ultima Underworld on Windows. This gives you four excellent words to search for in your favourite search engine. Just the first hit on google is giving you more information.
But I wouldn't even do this, I'd try to run it under Dosbox and if that didn't work I'd ask for help here.

Here is the patch. It allows both UW1 and UW2 to run under Windows XP.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- uw2wnt.exe version 1.1 […]
Show full quote

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
uw2wnt.exe version 1.1

patch makes ultima underworld I und II running with windows nt

according to the problem solution by Moscow Dragon
see following copy of news entry

--------------------- begin of news entry -------------------------------
From : Moscow Dragon (maxim__s@mtu-net.ru)
Subject : UW2 on NT: looks like solved!
Newsgroups : rec.games.computer.ultima.series
Date : 2001-12-23 15:06:51 PST

Patching :
- make a copy of the original UW2.EXE, for a case if something will go
wrong.
- open UW2.EXE in your favourite hex editor like HIEW (or use some UNIX
tool).
- go to offset 0x24719
- you will see the bytes of:

FA 52 BA 03 00 E4 64 A8 02

If you see some other bytes, do not proceed. Looks like you have some
other build of UW2 then me.
- patch the FA byte to C3
- save and exit

Technical details:
- UW2 has a function which sends "set LED indicators" command to the
keyboard ports, bypassing BIOS.
- this way of accessing ports is incompatible with NTVDM and hangs it.
NTVDM waits forever on some Win32 event as a result of the DOS app
reading the port.
- the patch switches the function away at all, C3 is RETN
- I do not know whether the function is vital for UW2. Probably not.
- for now, I also do not know whether the function called many times from
UW2 or only during the introduction.

Max

--------------------- end of news entry -----------------------------------

I found out that the offset is dependent on the Ultima Underworld version,
but Moscow Dragon's solution should work with all versions and even with
Ultima Underworld 1 too. Just search for the pattern and change the first
byte according to Moscow Dragon's description.

Many people don't own an hex editor or are not familiar with the operation
of this tool. For all this folks I've created this patch which will do the
necessary work automatically. BTW - should work means that I wasn't able
to test this with all Ultima Underworld versions and with all Windows NT
versions. My Ultima Underworld 2 version is different from Moscow Dragon's
(not the same offset) but this patch program works fine for both of my
Ultima Underworlds and with my Windows 2000 (SP2). Can't say anything about
Windows XP but Windows 2000 is actually Windows NT 5.0 and Windows XP is
Windows NT 5.1. So it should work, but who knows.

Put the patch program uw2wnt.exe into the Ultima Underworld directory and
start it. uw2wnt will look for UW.EXE and UW2.EXE and patch it so you can
use it with Windows NT (2000, XP). It will also create a backup of the
original file which is called UW.EXE.BAK or UW2.EXE.BAK. The patch program
will shelter the back up file from overwriting by setting the read only
attribute.

After patching you must modify the properties of UW.EXE respectively
UW2.EXE. Select the Memory tab (hope this is the correct term, I own
the German version and my tab is called 'Speicher' which means 'Memory').
Select the Expansion Memory (EMS) listbox and choose 8192. Then select
the Screen tab and activate the Fullscreen radio button (again I can only
guess the English terms, just secure that Ultima Underworld don't start
in a window).

Run Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 with VDMS for sound and music. Get VDMS for
free, visit http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound .

Now have fun with this patch and let me know if you like it 😉

development : Sir Cabirus Dragon aka Frank Wolter
email : SirCabirus@gmx.net
homepage : http://www.SirCabirus.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where might I find patches for such an old game?

depends, just think about what you are trying to do. You want to find a patch for running Ultima Underworld on Windows. This gives you four excellent words to search for in your favourite search engine. Just the first hit on google is giving you more information.
But I wouldn't even do this, I'd try to run it under Dosbox and if that didn't work I'd ask for help here.[/quote]

Having, in the past, spent entire evenings searching for older data on the net, all to often in vain, I thought it might save time to come somewhere where someone might already know the exact location of that which I sought. (It is highly irritating to find half the sites any search engine brings up to be dead links.)

And about a year ago I did find a patch that supposedly allowed UW1 and UW2 to run under XP ...I didn't need it for UW1 and it didn't work for UW2. So I came here, expecting assistance - not sarcasm.

Sorry, but we really didn't know what you were getting at in your initial post.

Was it a question?
Was it a statement?

Were you just lazy and unable to form a proper question?

I'm thinking the latter.

I'm tired of decoding people's posts on forums because they are too lazy to form a proper question. If you ask a question in RL of a person you have to phrase it correctly. I expect the same of a forum poster as well.

DosFreak wrote:

Sorry, but we really didn't know what you were getting at in your initial post. […]
Show full quote

Sorry, but we really didn't know what you were getting at in your initial post.

Was it a question?
Was it a statement?

Were you just lazy and unable to form a proper question?

I'm thinking the latter.

I'm tired of decoding people's posts on forums because they are too lazy to form a proper question. If you ask a question in RL of a person you have to phrase it correctly. I expect the same of a forum poster as well.

When you go to the doctor, you tell him what's wrong and, hopefully, he fixes it.
When you take your car to a mechanic, you tell him what's wrong and, again hopefulyy, he fixes it.
I came here and told you what was wrong and, hopefully, we'll fix it.

(OTOH, were I any lazier I'd be comatose.)

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Here is the patch. It allows both UW1 and UW2 to run under Windows XP. ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[/quote]

Thanks, I'll give this a shot. Just out of curiosity, what does the hex edit do?

turns off the lights on your keyboard. The game gives some status back to the lights on your keyboard (the ones above the numblock - a disappearing species) and that fails under Windows NT based systems. If you had used the web wide search you'd already know.

When you go to the doctor, you tell him what's wrong and, hopefully, he fixes it.
When you take your car to a mechanic, you tell him what's wrong and, again hopefulyy, he fixes it.
I came here and told you what was wrong and, hopefully, we'll fix it.

We are neither doctors nor mechanics. We need to know what you want to do and what you did do to get there. Since you posted that in Dosbox the assumption is you want to play with Dosbox, so you should have at least told us what you tried with Dosbox already.
Next it would have been nice to know with which versions of the game you have the problem (there is a floppy version and a CD-Rom one).

To get back to your example, when you go to the doctor or mechanic you tell them your exact symptoms. You failed that.