ivanhoe2010: - Anyone have an idea if it is possible to prevent the game from auto-loading a (the last?) saved file and instead opening the main menu right after the intro?
bliznik: You'll need to play with the files in your savegame directory. On my computer it's D:\Games\GOG Games\Ultima 8\cloud_saves\SAVEGAME, so you'll probably just need to find the Ultima 8 directory in your computer and edit the /cloud_saves\SAVEGAME directory. You'll see a bunch of files called "U8SAVE.***" where *** is replaced by a number ,like 001, 002, 003, etc. U8SAVE.999 is "The Beginning..." savegame, and then U8SAVE.001 - U8SAVE.011 are save slots 2 - 12, respectively. When you save your game, the SGHEADER.DAT file will be updated, and will indicate which of the files from U8SAVE.001-U8SAVE.011 is your "latestl" savegame. So if the last savegame that you saved was in slot 2, the game will load U8SAVE.001. If the last savegame that you saved was in slot 12, the game will load U8SAVE.011.
So you can back up that directory, and mix and match and rename those savegames until your game automatically loads a non-corrupted savegame, and can go from there.
ivanhoe2010: - If not: Anyone have a clean save game about the time of the game mentioned above which I may use?
bliznik: Here is a group of savegames near the end. I believe you'll want to load Savegame #5, which is titled "Sorcerers"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RRsOoHEv4psI0NhSY4yAJoqm2fv21oAY/view?usp=sharing I'll set an alarm to delete it in a couple of weeks.
ivanhoe2010: EDIT: I just installed ScummVM too - seems to work, but I just couldn't find any saved game via Google. Any help would be appreciated!
bliznik: Here are my ScummVM savegames. Again, you'll want the savegame titled "Sorcerers," which I think should be savegame #19. Hope that helps!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rFHcrnY8aTvN8xdb1blYlh321oyj_Hsz/view?usp=sharing Again, I'll set an alarm to delete it in a couple of weeks.
I guess the problem was that I didn't notice which directory is REALLY used for savegames. I turned off cloud-synchronizing and copied my savegames - except the most recent and corrupted save - into folder ...\Ultima 8\ENGLISH\SAVEGAME Obviously the game won't use that folder - even if cloud-saving is turned off.
I'm really glad - as a completionist I couldn't stand the notion of not finishing the game when I have already gotten that far. On the other hand I hadn't the stomach to start all over again (the game isn't that good, though far from as bad as some people dub it).
