Great Hierophant wrote:

I just tried the Ultima VII Windows 9x patch on my Gateway Pentium III 600E machine. The resulting speed seemed equivalent to a 486DX2/66. The scrolling, however, was vastly improved over my real 486DX2/66. Graphics card was a Voodoo 3 300 PCI, sound card was a Sound Blaster 16 PnP. Maybe I will take a video of it running. The WIndows 9x patch is doing a lot of work in real time to make the game work. My system unfortunately is not capable of much in the way of speed adjustment. Perhaps a somewhat slower processor may give a more perfect character speed.

I think there could be some new life in this old patch.

Seems to work pretty damn good on my Pentium III 500Mhz setup. I have an ATI card in there, can't remember which one, but nothing fancy.

Make sure that whatever graphics card you're using supports screen shaking (i.e. moving the origin up and down). This is used in Ultima VII both at the start (if Forge of Virtue is installed), and near any Cyclops.

Good call on running a DX2-66 at 20MHz - hadn't thought of that! I've got that in my 486 retro box at the moment, and it's a bit too fast, so maybe with a little jumper tweaking I can improve things.

Seeing as it's typically jumpers, I wonder if it's possible to break out the CPU speed adjustment to the front/side of the case, so it's possible to tweak the speed when necessary. Shouldn't be difficult.

I have a question, If I'm using a compact flash card at a HDD will running SMARTDRV make much of a difference? currently I can run U7 no problem with SMARTDRV enabled but for serpent isle I'm short by just the slightest amount.

soviet conscript wrote:

I have a question, If I'm using a compact flash card at a HDD will running SMARTDRV make much of a difference? currently I can run U7 no problem with SMARTDRV enabled but for serpent isle I'm short by just the slightest amount.

I don't think so. I'm guessing the CF access time and transfer rate are pretty close to your system RAM. I ended up playing Serpent Isle on a 486 with a 1GB Seagate and no smart drive. It didn't make that much difference, even on a spinning disk. It probably would make a bigger difference on an older, slower hdd.

I just ran Ultima VII for the first time -- on a 386SX-20. Big mistake. I got a black screen after the intro where you step through the moongate. I thought the game had crashed, but now I think it was still loading.

I have this super-versatile setup with a 486 motherboard with VLB and PCI. I have a Cyrix 5x86-120 in it. At full speed, the system is somewhere between a P75 and P90. I can adjust the FSB to 25, 33, or 40 MHz. With SETMUL, I can select the 1x multiplier. So I might give it a go with the Cyrix 5x86-25 and Cyrix 5x86-33. Lots of video options at hand too.

boxpressed wrote:

I just ran Ultima VII for the first time -- on a 386SX-20. Big mistake. I got a black screen after the intro where you step through the moongate. I thought the game had crashed, but now I think it was still loading.

I have this super-versatile setup with a 486 motherboard with VLB and PCI. I have a Cyrix 5x86-120 in it. At full speed, the system is somewhere between a P75 and P90. I can adjust the FSB to 25, 33, or 40 MHz. With SETMUL, I can select the 1x multiplier. So I might give it a go with the Cyrix 5x86-25 and Cyrix 5x86-33. Lots of video options at hand too.

🤣. I *beat* U7 on a 386SX-20 back in 1992-3. 😲
Here's some U7 performance musings I had about a month ago:
Measuring Performance in Ultima VII : The Black Gate

clueless1 wrote:

🤣. I *beat* U7 on a 386SX-20 back in 1992-3. 😲
Here's some U7 performance musings I had about a month ago:
Measuring Performance in Ultima VII : The Black Gate

That chart is a great resource, clueless1. About how long does it take to get to the pacing guard scene after you walk through the moongate (right after the intro)?

boxpressed wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

🤣. I *beat* U7 on a 386SX-20 back in 1992-3. 😲
Here's some U7 performance musings I had about a month ago:
Measuring Performance in Ultima VII : The Black Gate

That chart is a great resource, clueless1. About how long does it take to get to the pacing guard scene after you walk through the moongate (right after the intro)?

It's right where you spawn when the game starts. When you end the opening conversation tree, just turn around and walk a few paces. 😀

Got the black screen again on this different system. Must be my version of Ultima VII. It's the full version, but it was part of a Sound Blaster CD bundle that included 10 pretty good games. I may need to procure a new version.

Got it to work. Not sure what was wrong in the first place.

Cyrix 5x86-25 (via SETMUL): 39.75 seconds.

boxpressed wrote:

Got it to work. Not sure what was wrong in the first place.

Cyrix 5x86-25 (via SETMUL): 39.75 seconds.

That's about 29fps, very close to my results with a 486DX2/40.
(10/39.75)*115=29
That should be a very comfortable speed to play at?

boxpressed wrote:

Got it to work. Not sure what was wrong in the first place.

Even my "ultimate" machine does that sometimes. Instead of that red patterned loading screen, the game just hangs with a black screen. I had a theory that the 'FILES' variable in my autoexec.bat had something to do with it - or was it 'BUFFERS'? I can't remember! At any rate you can use the boot configuration generator (part of the installer I think) to get an idea of what the game would prefer all these variables be.

My other theory was that Smartdrv was messing with it, but it doesn't happen often for me so I haven't been motivated to do anything about it.

Are you playing off a CF? The fast reads really make a difference to the hitching.

badmojo wrote:

Even my "ultimate" machine does that sometimes. Instead of that red patterned loading screen, the game just hangs with a black screen. I had a theory that the 'FILES' variable in my autoexec.bat had something to do with it - or was it 'BUFFERS'? I can't remember! At any rate you can use the boot configuration generator (part of the installer I think) to get an idea of what the game would prefer all these variables be.

My other theory was that Smartdrv was messing with it, but it doesn't happen often for me so I haven't been motivated to do anything about it.

Are you playing off a CF? The fast reads really make a difference to the hitching.

Yes, this is a CF machine.

I went ahead and let the install program make the bootdisk. The AUTOEXEC doesn't add anything, and the CONFIG has only these lines:

FILES=20
BUFFERS=25

Also, I tested with the external cache disabled (via BIOS setting). No difference.

And I consistently got the black screen, then time after the scene with the stone (before you even see the moongate). I even used the settings provided by the bootdisk.

I can bypass the black screen problem by hitting Esc during the intro, and I get taken to the menu. But I wonder if other animations later will end up hanging the game.

boxpressed wrote:

I went ahead and let the install program make the bootdisk. The AUTOEXEC doesn't add anything, and the CONFIG has only these lines:

Sorry yep those variables are in CONFIG.SYS of course! Sorry to hear that it's being problematic - it's an amazing engine but fussy.

Maybe it would be worth snagging the GOG version and giving it a go?

I may have the GOG version already, 🤣. Can it be used from a DOS-only machine?

boxpressed wrote:

I may have the GOG version already, 🤣. Can it be used from a DOS-only machine?

Yes, that's what I'm doing. Just copy the folder over. Delete unneeded files (.dlls, .pdfs, dosbox*.*, unins*.*) to save space if you like.

BTW, I use option 5 on Phil's MS-DOS boot config (extended memory with mouse) and it works fine with U7.

Turns out the GOG version does the same thing, but I think I figured something out. If you load SMARTDRV, the intro doesn't hang on a black screen, and you eventually see the menu.

Have you tried hitting ESC during the black screen?

I actually turned smartdrv off when I was playing Serpent Isle because I got file corruption a couple of times that led me to have to reinstall the game. Fortunately my game saves weren't affected!

Yes, hitting Esc always works, but it bugged me that I had to do that. It seems like QA should have caught this one right off the bat.