Oh um.... ok lets pretend I know nothing about DOSBox. Is there a step by step I can use?

Edit: Nevermind I figured it out finally.

Get Ultima IV Gold for the C64:

http://www.paradroid.net/u4/

I highly recommend using the .D81 3.5" floppy disc-image file in WinVICE64SC to play with/from. hehehehe That's what I, myself, am doing hehehe

Try Ultima Aiera. They have patches specifically designed for the GOG releases of I-IV. While GOG may not have the "official" permission to include upgrades, Ultima Aiera has been getting very enthusiastic nods from EA by way of the Ultima Forever Twitter page. Ultima Forever is constantly complementing Ultima Aiera. If that's not an official nod, then what is?

I've never been able to get these versions to load properly for some reason (I'm also using VICE)... is there an emulator setting I'm forgetting about?

There here two things you can do. One is the easiest: Get a handy little utility for Windows called Quick64! You can get that from this page, near the bottom:

http://www.gb64.com/downloads.php

But since I recommended using the .D81 3.5" floppy-disk image, and Quick64! doesn't support those, you'll have to do what users of a real C64 did (with, in this case, a C1581 disk-drive) and learn a little CBM BASIC, just like how you gotta learn a little MS-DOS to use DOSbox hehehe

As far as the disk-drive, fortunately it's already included and integrated into WinVICE64 (and WinVICE64SC).

After starting the VICE emu, make sure that under Settings > Keyboard settings... that Positional is selected.

Then do

Settings > Drive settings... > Drive 8 > 1581 > OK

Then under Options, make sure that True drive emulation is checked. You're nearly ready to play!

Under File, do

Attach disk image > Drive 8, then browse for the .D81 file for your copy of Ultima IV Gold. Once you've found it and "attached" it to your emu, then type into the virtual C64

LOAD":*",8,1

Then press ENTER, which to the virtual C64 is pressing RETURN.

Because the C64 arranged its keys a bit differently than IBM-clones did and do (because your Windows computer is just a newer gestation of ye olde IBM-clone), you must use SHIFT+2 to make the double-quote mark, your real semicolon key (";") for the C64's colon (":"), and your real close square-bracket key ("]") for the C64's asterisk ("*"). The letters, numbers, and commas are the same as on your real computer keyboard.

Here's a nice pic of the C64's keyboard. By that, you can probably figure out which keys to press on your real IBM-clone keyboard to get the needed C64 keys in the WinVICE64 emu as they will be in (more-or-less) the same position on the keyboard, hence the Positional setting in your emu's Keyboard settings... that I mentioned earlier above hehehe Here ya go:

http://images.pcworld.com/reviews/graphics/139100-commodore64.jpg

So that the C64's CTRL is your keyboard's TAB, the C64's RUN/STOP is your CAPS LOCK, the C64's Commodore key (the one with the Commodore logo on it) is your Left CTRL key, etc. hehehe

Now that you've done all that, you should--after it's done loading up from the virtual C1581 3.5" floppy-disk--see a little intro made by the fella who put this new version of Ultima IV together while a simple syntha-tune plays. You can read the scrolly if you wanna, but you don't gotta. Press SPACE when done with that and wanna move on. You'll then see a little about what's been added (like an "EXIT?" prompt when leaving any towne, village, ruins, or castles) and some options to use cheats. I'm a real gamer! I got skillz, so I don't need no cheats like a n00blet-baby does. You can cheat if you wanna, but in either case, press ENTER (RETURN) to get to the game. Voila! There it is! Enjoy! hehehehe

If you need any further help, lemme know and I'll do what I can to help hehehe

Ahh, that was the difference maker; I wasn't setting the drive type properly to 1581. Been so long since I used anything but 1541 images that I forgot that setting was there. ^^; It's working now, no problem.

I'm no stranger at all to how Commodore 8-bit machines (or even Amigas) work; I grew up on them. 8^) Still, thanks for the reminder.

how do i get the music to work on windows xp

Can someone step me through how to add sound to the Mac version of Ultima 4? I see the steps for Windows, but not step by step for the Mac version.

Thank you.

I used the previous poster's help to get it to run on Win 7 64 with no problems.

Except - I'm not sure I like the new graphics. Can I play with the score but sans the new graphics is that possible?

Thanks for any help!

Surprised nobody's answered you yet...;) You have to run setup.bat in dosbox. Easiest way to do that is once you've extracted the upgrade files to your U4 directory, open you "#U4.conf file" (# meaning whatever yours is named--I made my own and called it "dosboxU4.conf". It opens with notepad, and after you open it once it will always automatically open with notepad just by double-clicking.)

Wherever in your #U4.conf file you see the following:
(Note that ".." can be any folder where you have installed U4, such as "D:\Quest of the Avatar-U4\")

mount C ".."
cls
c:
ultima.com
exit

...edit the lines to look like this and then save the file:

mount C ".."
cls
c:
setup.bat
#ultima.com
exit

...then setup.bat will run and allow you to choose your midi device. You'll wind up back at a DOSbox c:\ prompt. Close dosbox, then edit your #U4.conf file again so that it looks like this:

mount C ".."
cls
c:
#setup.bat
ultima.com
exit

The game will now run in the upgraded mode!

You can also add

#switch.bat

underneath the #setup.bat line so that everything looks like this:

mount C ".."
cls
c:
#setup.bat
#switch.bat
ultima.com
exit

...then if you want to "switch back" to the original game's graphics and sound you would remove the # from in front of switch.bat and put a # infront of ultima.com and save the #U4.conf file and run the game as usual, which will run the switch.bat, after which you can remove the # from in front of ultima.com and put a # back in front of switch bat, and then the game will run in its original state. Takes but a minute or so.

Hope this helps!

I'm going to give this a try with windows 10 hopefully it works!

It should work fine--I have no trouble doing that with Win10x64. Even though my original post here is years old, we're still talking about dosbox and its associated syntax, which works the same in Win10x64 as it did in Win7x64. Hope you get it working...;)

Thanks I got it working. Unfortunately I had purchased Utlima V from Origin, which wasn’t compatible with the patcher for some reason. I bought the GOG version and it worked fine! Won’t be making that mistake again.