I have been playing Ultima 7 for a while now. I am still in Trinsic and working on the murder quest right after the game starts. My party members - Iolo and Spark - have begun to complain about food. I went to the inn and bought cakes, feeding each of them until they declined the food. However, a few minutes later they started to complain about being hungry again. I wonder whether this is normal or whether it may be a technical problem, due to my computer being to fast. I run the game on an Alienware M17XR3.

It depends on what you fed them. As a general rule meat tends to keep your party full for a long period of time.

Check to see how fast time is passing. (ie. watch how the street lights are lit and extinguished) You should be able to do all of Trinsic in a day or two. If you are getting more day/night cycles than that, slow down the frame rate in dosbox. F11 will reduce it.

I only needed to eat (meat) three times in Trinsic and I looted the town and stacked crates to pick up later.

The street lights are not lighted and extinguished particularly quickly. The food problem has become stranger, though. Now I have bought mutton at the inn and tried to feed my party. All characters decline with 'no, thank thee'. However, hunger messages keep popping up, and they have now changed to 'I am very hungry'. I have tried feeding all party members, including the Avatar, and everyone rejects the food.

Have you brought up the stats for each person? A fork and spoon symbol will show at the bottom for the hungry person. The stats display can be called up by pressing "z". Press repeatedly to get screens for each party member. Sometimes it can be difficult to target the person you think you are.

Hit Ctrl+F11 (not only F11) to decrease the CPU cycle usage as it may be too high, or hit Ctrl+F12 to increase CPU Cycle.

I set it to 9000 cycles (for my 2500K CPU) to get it up to normal speed (like the good old times).

The game never run very smooth, don't use a too high cpu cycle.
My opinion: the game runs slower but you can controll the game better.

BTW: i installed U7 into a ramdisk, in the old days the game shutters every access to the hdd. ;)

Q: can't dosbox simulate earthquakes?

You are remembering to feed yourself as well I take it?

Me neither. I was very confused when Iolo commented on the first earthquake in Trinsic. I was like.. "What? What earthquake? Did a trigger bork up when launching the game?".

I take it there are more of these? :|

A long, long time ago, when 4mb videocards hit the market, this game decided to crash whenever an earthquake would happen. I had this issue with my brand new 4mb Diamond Viper 330.
Someone made a patch for this, which lead to earthquakes happen only horizontally or vertically. (Forgot which.) This solved the problem.
It might be that GoG included this patch. *shrug*

Ontopic: This food problem is very strange. Like food level is calculated differently from time passing? I don't get it.
I'd suggest using Exult to play Ultima 7, but be sure to use version 1.2 if you want a bug free stable version. Never had any issues with that version myself. (And I've used it a LOT.)

I'm having this issue with Iolo also, I'll try lowering the CPU speed as suggested, mine has run well cause I do notice shadows on lanterns and clouds move fairly quickly. But I reloaded from the beginning and got the password in one trip before hearing any complaints about food. I've only been able to feed Iolo once this play through. So I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in this.

Edit: +1 Mappi75 Dude that was the problem, Dosbox plays the game too fast, and we don't notice because we click to do everything. People shouldn't be so hard to talk to because they're moving around too much. Heh, I wonder what that value was meant for when the game came out?
I was running a 700Mhz processor when this game came out once upon a time. I wonder how that would be configured. Thanks again man.

I have just started playing Ultima 7 on my PC and, for the life of me, I can not comprehend how my characters should be fed. I've looked online, and have gathered it has something to do with the crossed utensils at the bottom of the characters's stats. But what? I drag food to the utensil icon, and it reappears in Iolo's backpack. I drang food to the line leading to a character's mouth on his inventory chart, and it appears in Iolo's backpack. I drag food to the characters themselves, and it appears in Iolo's backpack. I've a half-dozen hunks of mutton. Everybody says they're hungry, but no one'll eat 'em. Forgive me for being such a noob. It must be such a simple thing, but I just don't get it. I want to get some sacking done and move on, but the constant whining about food deters me. Can anyone help?

Double click food, click hungry person with crosshair.

Do NOT use Exult 1.2 to play either Ultima VII game. Use the most recent 1.5 snapshot. They've squashed all the 1.4 bugs and added a lot of new options. The biggest 1.4 bug that terrified everyone (the disappearing objects bug) has been fixed for quite a while now.

http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Food_Values_in_Ultima_VII