VaragtP: Also I just want to ask regarding chaning the clock speed. Is it safe to do or could it "break" something if you go too high or low?
It depends on the game. Changing the clock speed seems quite safe in Ultima 1 and 5+, and somewhat safe in Ultima 3 and 4, but isn't safe in Ultima 2. Specifically:
* In Ultima 1, everything except a certain mandatory minigame is strictly turn-based, and I don't remember that minigame causing issues when playing without DOSBox on a semi-modern machine.
* Ultima 2 will likely give you a division by zero error if you go to high. (More on that later.) If the game does manage to start, you will have basically 0 time to enter a command, causing the game to essentially become real-time and too fast to be really playable.
* Ultima 3, if set too high, will give your characters fast animations, and the whirlpool, which moves in real time, will move *really* fast. Unlike Ultima 2, however, you'll still have 5 seconds to enter a command before automatically skipping your turn, regardless of how fast the (emulated) computer is running.
* Ultima 4, if set too high, will give you fast animations, and the moons will change faster; they change even faster if you use Ztats to view a character's stats. (Note that some players may prefer faster moon phase changes.)
* Ultima 5, IIRC, also has faster animations. The only real-time aspect of this game is when you hoist sales, causing you to travel quickly across the ocean in real time, but I don't know if the clock speed affects this.
* Ultima 6 and later were developed taking into account the fact that some computers are faster than others, so running the game at a high clock speed won't cause any issues, assuming your computer can handle it (and you don't mind the side effects of having the computer work harder than it needs to). Also, Ultima 6 is strictly turn-based, so high speed wouldn't cause problems. (Note that this last point is not true for Ultima 7 and later, as that's the point where the series switched to full real time.)
As for Ultima 2, I believe what's going on is something like the following:
* When you start the game, the game needs to calibrate the delay loop. Hence, it checks the time, loops a certain number of times, and then checks the time again. It then divides some value by the amount of time that passed, and the resulting value is used to calibrate the game's delay loop, (ideally) providing a consistent speed across different systems.
* This is fine if you run it on a period computer, or an an emulated computer that's slow enough. On a modern computer, however, there is a good chance that the loop will finish so fast that the time, as reported by DOS, will not have changed, resulting in the time passed being 0.
* As a result, the game tries to divide by 0 and gives you an error.
* (Note that you may find that the game occasionally starts, though probably at the wrong speed. This happens if a bit of time actually passes, according to DOS, between the start and end of the loop.)
At least some of these timing issues are fixed by the various upgrade patches (particularly if you enable the frame limiter); in particular, Ultima 2, if you're using the upgrade patch, should not try to divide by zero.
So, at least for Ultima 2, either keep the clock speed low, or use the upgrade patch; otherwise, you likely won't be able to play Ultima 2 at all..
VaragtP: I felt like Ultima 1 also feels very slow like it has input lag almost and after pushing the ctrl-12 command a couple of times I think it feels better. If I have found the right place in the config file this would take the clock speed from 500 to 700.
That should be safe, as this version of Ultima 1 (which is actually a remake) is better coded than Ultima 2 (which is not a remake).
