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Ultima seriesProblems with Ultima III Upgrade patch...(9 posts)solved(9 posts)solved
(9 posts)solved
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Posted March 08, 2012
After installing the VGA upgrade and music to Ultima III, I have a problem with the sound effects (attacking, casting magic, etc.) playing too fast and at too high a pitch when playing at a DOSbox cpu cycles setting that is otherwise a normal speed for the game. Another thing is that I have to set the cycles much higher than without the patch to get a normal gameplay speed, playing Ultima III without the upgrade runs fine at 300 cycles for me.
Strangely, I don't have this problem with sound effects when using the VGA and music upgrade patch for Ultima IV.
Any ideas on how to fix this for Ultima III?
This question / problem has been solved by mcmagiimage
Posted March 08, 2012
Hi Hayden...

Have you tried to use different sound card settings in DOSBOX conf and/or in the setup menu of the patch? Have you tried "auto for the cyles yet?

Did you choose midi card for music or soundblaster?

Which system spec do you have?
Post edited March 08, 2012 by Grisu_HDH
Posted March 08, 2012
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Grisu_HDH: Hi Hayden...

Have you tried to use different sound card settings in DOSBOX conf and/or in the setup menu of the patch? Have you tried "auto for the cyles yet?

Did you choose midi card for music or soundblaster?

Which system spec do you have?
My specs are:
Windows XP Pro SP 3
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz
ATI/AMD Radeon HD 3450
3 GB RAM

I've tried MIDI and Adlib in the sound card settings for the patch. I think I tried Soundblaster before, but it wouldn't let me select that option saying it unavailable or something. I think my actual sound card may be integrated into the motherboard, would that be a possible problem?
I'll try the auto cycles setting you suggested.

Update: It seems Soundblaster can be selected, but it doesn't seem to solve the problem.
I can actually get the correct sound effects pitch and speed regardless of patch settings by setting the cycles to around 500 or so, but if I do that the game seems to respond to inputs and commands pretty slow, kind of like lag or something. Without the patch at around 400 cycles or so, the game's sound effects are perfect and there's no input lag at all.
Post edited March 08, 2012 by haydenaurion
Posted March 09, 2012
Very strange... soundblaster should be ok, although midi has better quality music.

Another possibilty could be to change the grapic option:
Use "ddraw" instead of "surface" or overlay", perhaps that can help to speed game up...

Has anyone else an idea???
Posted March 09, 2012
avatar
Grisu_HDH: Very strange... soundblaster should be ok, although midi has better quality music.

Another possibilty could be to change the grapic option:
Use "ddraw" instead of "surface" or overlay", perhaps that can help to speed game up...

Has anyone else an idea???
I use ddraw by default to keep the image from stretching, so I know that's not the problem. I appreciate you trying to help though.
I wonder if anyone else has had the same problem?
Posted March 09, 2012
Have you tried writing to mmagi aka Voyager Dragon?
mcmaggio AT mcmagi.com or voyager AT voyd.net
Posted March 09, 2012
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TheCycoONE: Have you tried writing to mmagi aka Voyager Dragon?
mcmaggio AT mcmagi.com or voyager AT voyd.net
Well, it could just be my crap PC. I don't want Voyager Dragon to go through the trouble of trying to come up with a fix that may not work with my PC. I intend to buy a much newer and better PC later this year anyways.
Posted March 18, 2012
Hello Haydenaurion & all,

The problem with the PC speaker sound effects in Ultima 3 is that they aren't timed to run at a constant speed. As CPUs increased in frequency over time (an 10 mhz vs a 33 mhz for example) the sound effects increased in pitch by the same proportion. If you try to run U3 natively on modern computers, the sound effects are nearly instantaneous and barely audible. DOSBox of course recreates this effect as you increase its cycles.

The proper way to correct this is to rewrite the sound effects routines so that their frequency is tied to the clock timer and not the CPU. This is essentially what the frame limiter does for animation. I've never looked at U4's code but it may be that the sound effects are linked to the clock timer, so that's why you don't hear them change with DOSBox's cycles. While I wrote some framework code for this as I did think about coming back to it, it really has taken a low priority compared to the graphics and music which I felt were in dire need of being updated.

Anyway, the upgrade has a driver layer that adds some additional CPU overhead and unfortunately makes running at 300 cycles not very feasible, even with the frame limiter turned off. For now I recommend finding a suitable cycle setting that makes the game playable and still runs the sound effects.

Hope that helps,
- Voyager Dragon
Posted March 18, 2012
avatar
mcmagi: Hello Haydenaurion & all,

The problem with the PC speaker sound effects in Ultima 3 is that they aren't timed to run at a constant speed. As CPUs increased in frequency over time (an 10 mhz vs a 33 mhz for example) the sound effects increased in pitch by the same proportion. If you try to run U3 natively on modern computers, the sound effects are nearly instantaneous and barely audible. DOSBox of course recreates this effect as you increase its cycles.

The proper way to correct this is to rewrite the sound effects routines so that their frequency is tied to the clock timer and not the CPU. This is essentially what the frame limiter does for animation. I've never looked at U4's code but it may be that the sound effects are linked to the clock timer, so that's why you don't hear them change with DOSBox's cycles. While I wrote some framework code for this as I did think about coming back to it, it really has taken a low priority compared to the graphics and music which I felt were in dire need of being updated.

Anyway, the upgrade has a driver layer that adds some additional CPU overhead and unfortunately makes running at 300 cycles not very feasible, even with the frame limiter turned off. For now I recommend finding a suitable cycle setting that makes the game playable and still runs the sound effects.

Hope that helps,
- Voyager Dragon
Ah, I see. Well, I still greatly appreciate the work you've done so far. The VGA upgrade alone makes Ultima III much more playable than the default four color DOS version. I have a hard time telling who is who in combat without the VGA upgrade. I will mark your post as a solution. :)
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Ultima seriesProblems with Ultima III Upgrade patch...(9 posts)solved(9 posts)solved
(9 posts)solved