Hey friends. So... playing Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, I accidentally killed Captain Hawk when we arrived at Moonshade, and then accidentally saved the game afterward instead of loading from a previous save. I figured maybe it'd be okay, since we'd arrived, and I didn't expect to need him anymore... but nope, now I can't advance to the Furnace because I need to talk to an alive Hawk to get the dialogue from Julia where I can get the gate key.

The only way I can avoid starting over from a reeeeeally old previous save is via cheating. But how do I do that with a GOG version of the game on a Mac? Other threads have said I need to access the game's installation files, and edit a .conf file, but all I can do on a Mac is "show package contents" for the game folder in Applications, and nothing in there matches the supposed "dosboxSERPENT_single.conf" file I'm supposed to edit.

And I can't seem to find a way to bypass Gog's launch wrapper in order to launch the game differently.

Anyone know how to get cheat mode from GOG on a Mac? Please walk me through it patiently, as I am dumb and not super savvy about this kind of thing.

If you can get to Monk Island, I think you can then pick the mandrake roots, to obtain the spellbook from Fedabiblio. Then purchase the "Vibrate" spell from one of the Mages and use it on Julia to get the key? I haven't tried that but it may work.

Or perhaps just kill Julia... SPOILER - she will probably die later in the game anyway :)

Here's a screenshot of "Show Package Contents" on the GOG Serpent Isle Launcher.

Oh! I did find the SI.exe file and its enclosing folder... but what do I do with that? The .exe isn't executable or openable or anythingable on a Mac. I tried killing Julia :) no key! Does "vibrate" just make people drop what's in their inventory? 'Cause she doesn't seem to have the key in her inventory. Maybe the game spawns it in her inventory AFTER you have the conversation with Captain Hawk, I guess I'll never know

UPDATE: Hey, pocococo, I also just tried your hack patch, and there's no cheat menu popping up when I open up the game. "Alt" on a mac is "option," and I tried that and also shift-option-backslash, and any other combo that might've worked, and nothing. Any advice?

You haven't gone deep enough. From the "Resources" folder you need to "Show package contents" also on "Ultima 7 The Complete Edition.boxer", then navigate down a few more levels.

dosboxSERPENT_single.conf is located at:

~ / Ultima VII - Serpent Isle + The Silver Seed / Contents / Resources / Ultima 7 The Complete Edition.boxer / C.harddisk / U7 / SERPENT /

*PS: SInce this game is still using Boxer,I don't think it will run under macOS Catalina so don't upgrade while you're in the middle of playing!

Oh mang, thank you so much!

OKAY NEW PROBLEM: So... I located and edited the .conf file, adding "manimal" after "serpent.com"... but within the game, pressing F2 does nothing. (I tried editing keyboard preferences to use function keys normally, still nothing.) Now what?

Did you replace SI.EXE with the patched file? To test whether you are running with the hacks applied, press v in-game to show version information and the text there should mention UltimaHacks.

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what would map to Alt+Backslash in DOSBox on a Mac, though you could use the DOSBox keymapper to map some key to it. That keypress then should cause the text "Cheats enabled" to show over the Avatar's head. Maybe attach a screenshot of the conf file, or the conf file itself, to verify that you've done it correctly.

(Another test: if you replace "serpent.com" with something bogus like "asdfasdf", does anything change?)

Here's the screenshot of the conf file and its location!

Did you try this?

Wow okay it didn't work the first time I tried, but I just tried again and yes UltimaHacks is working! Lovely. Thanks so much for this... Should be able to find some sneaky bypass for the dead Hawk situation now.

THANK YOU IMMENSELY TO EVERYONE WHO BOTHERED TO CHIME IN ABOUT THIS RIDICULOUS TRIVIALITY! I LOVE YOU!

How did you do exactly?...i'm playing the first part, black gate, and have no idea how to use cheats :/




P.S. I see many people recomend using EXULT but can't find it, there is this page online with a bunch of files and have no idea what I should download...I'm running a mac with high sierra...

Still trying to figure out how to use cheats...i don't wanna use exult cause i read it will wipe out my progresses...and cant use the patch you gave me cause it asks me to choose a file on my computer which i can't select on a mac, i to access the file i need to right click on the game icon, select show package content and so on...any ideas?


This is what i see when i try to select the file after choosing the patch for U7BG

To find U7.EXE, do Show Package Contents on that .app file and then do as 01kipper wrote above.

I think you ought to first find U7.EXE (nested deep inside of those packages) and copy it to your desktop or somewhere, and then apply the patch to it there, and then save the patched file as "U7.EXE" and put it wherever you found the original U7.EXE.

I'm not really a Mac guy so I'm kinda guessing what you should do based on what I've read above.