There's this relatively new patch for some Ultima games. (https://github.com/JohnGlassmyer/UltimaHacks) In the specific case of the Underworld games it makes a few changes to the controls -- changing movement to regular WASD, adding a button to toggle mouselook,. I applied this patch to the DOS exe from the GOG version of the game, and I'm trying a few different methods to run it but none have been successful so far.

The problem lies in the fact that I have to extract the exe from the (game.gog) iso and then run that back in DOSBOX somehow, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without something going wrong.

Method 1: Repack the patched exe into a new (game.gog) iso. I tried doing this with a couple free ISO writing tools but GOG's version of DOSBOX won't accept the new ISO I create and just crashes as soon as I launch the GOG shortcut.

Method 2: Reconfigure DOSBOX to mount a folder with the patched exe in it. I still haven't actually figured out how to properly mount stuff in DOSBOX. Sometimes I get it to actually run but it ends up not running the patched version even though that's what I told it to mount.

Method 3. Just run the patched exe in D-Fend Reloaded. D-Fend Reloaded is a GUI front end for DOSBOX that seems to make running DOS games easier. I got everything up and running there, only there's no sound. The sound and music settings in the game itself are locked on "off" and I can't figure out which sound settings to change in D-Fend.

Hi. I'm the one who made the UltimaHacks patches. I'm glad you are willing to give them a try!

I'll try to clarify the instructions a bit. Here is how I do this (for UW1):

1. Extract the contents of game.gog into a new directory "cd" within the GOG UW1 installation (e.g. C:\GOG.com\Ultima Underworld\cd)

2. Replace this line in dosboxULTIMA1_single.conf with this: ...and now the D: drive within DOSBox will be that "cd" directory, rather than being the game.gog image.

(And you would then replace the cd\UW\UW.EXE file with the patched version.)

Please let me if this helps you out or if things are still unclear.

I'll try this, but at this point I think I'm also gonna just learn DOSBOX for situations like this that come up in the future.

Okay I tried this, but it still crashed whenever I tried to launch the GOG shortcut.

So, I I tried setting up my own entire separate DOSBOX installation of the game using the patched exe, learning DOSBOX along the way. I've gotten to a point where I've set up a shortcut that starts the game and runs the hacked exe smoothly. Had to figure out all that UINSTALL business to get sound working properly.

Thanks.

I'm glad that you got it working. Configuration of sound devices is saved in the file "Ultima Underworld\UNDEROM1\DATA\UW.CFG", so you should be able to copy that file over into the new location to copy the sound configuration.

By the way, if you run into problems or have suggestions while playing with my patches, please file those as Issues on the Github site:

https://github.com/JohnGlassmyer/UltimaHacks/issues

Thanks.