I would like to see more on my screen. Is there any way to zoom out, have it show more of the map at once? I hear the music, go to combat mode, my characters start firing their range weapons at something not on the screen. Using a ship is especially difficult.

Another problem is the only way to exit it is to use the Windows key, and then click desktop, then when I go back to it its stuck on a small window, can't switch it to full size. Sometimes I need to check a walkthrough and don't want to have to save, exit, and reload for every single thing.

Is there a way to make NPCs stay in one spot and not walk around so its hard to find them?

I would think by now someone would've patched it to have modern conveyances, such as a keychain so you don't have to waste time looking every single key you have and trying them one by one. Clicking just one item and it checking to see if you had the proper key put on it, shouldn't be that difficult to add. Or I suppose you'd have to have access to the source code. Maybe a cheat that just unlocked everything so no running around looking for keys and fiddling with them.

I played the game when it first came out many years ago, and loved it dearly. Now its just a dollar or so on GOG.com so I got it again to play it once more.

I may be mistaken, but I think that the "Exult" port might offer some of those conveniences--it might be worth looking into using it in place of GOG's solution. See some of the other threads (in particular the two stickies) in this forum for more information, if I'm not much mistaken.

> I would like to see more on my screen. Is there any way to zoom out, have it show more of the map at once? I hear the music, go to combat mode, my characters start firing their range weapons at something not on the screen. Using a ship is especially difficult.

Yes, Exult is able to zoom out, but don't overdo it, since it's kinda considered cheating. You get to see too much, beyond what the creators intended.

> Another problem is the only way to exit it is to use the Windows key, and then click desktop, then when I go back to it its stuck on a small window, can't switch it to full size. Sometimes I need to check a walkthrough and don't want to have to save, exit, and reload for every single thing.

In Dosbox, if you press Alt+Enter, you switch back and forth to fullscreen mode.

> Is there a way to make NPCs stay in one spot and not walk around so its hard to find them?

Not really. The npcs are supposed to move around as part of their schedules. However, if you have your cycles too high, they might zoom around. You can try to lower your cycles in Dosbox, or use Exult, which has a frame limiter option (4 fps feels around right).

> I would think by now someone would've patched it to have modern conveyances, such as a keychain so you don't have to waste time looking every single key you have and trying them one by one. Clicking just one item and it checking to see if you had the proper key put on it, shouldn't be that difficult to add. Or I suppose you'd have to have access to the source code. Maybe a cheat that just unlocked everything so no running around looking for keys and fiddling with them.

There is a keyring mod that comes with Exult, which adds the keyring from serpent isle and also modifies a few other things. You can also cheat and use the hackmover to rip doors out of their hinges and access everywhere.

Here's a link to Exult: http://exult.sourceforge.net/download.php

i have indeed patched U7 to have a keychain-like command ('k' key on the keyboard) as well as a bunch of other features as part of my UltimaHacks project:

https://github.com/JohnGlassmyer/UltimaHacks

it also adds the 't' target feature (originally present in U7 Serpent Isle) to U7 Black Gate. that freezes the game and waits for you to select an object to use, which might make it easier to catch those scampering NPCs.

zooming out the view - particularly while using ships - is a feature i'd like to add someday (that, coincidentally, i was just thinking about yesterday) but it's not something i'll have time to work on any time soon.
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(one complication of this is that trying to render more than the 5x5 area of 16x16 chunks surrounding the player's position might require much more processing power, especially in certain busy locations. also, there are probably data structures that are hard-coded around this size of view, and reengineering those might be a pain.)

I also highly recommend Exult. Read the "Documentation" for instruction on how to use it. I'd recommend using the latest binary snapshot if you're using Marzo's patch, since both were compiled recently.

Edit the exult.cfg file (read the Documentation) to figure out how to increase the screen size. Although, as Praecor pointed out, you will definitely see things on the screen that you're not supposed to see. The limited screen size was created on purpose to make certain things difficult to see and difficult to find. So when you zoom out and see more than what you're supposed to see, then you may see solutions to puzzles that were originally supposed to be much more difficult to figure out due to the smaller screen size.

Enjoy!