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| Here I shall discuss in great detail how to get the Ultima 1-6 CD to run on your machine. Since I don't know your skill level with computers, I will try to guide you step by step. I will describe how to accomplish this in DOS. |
| Page Index |
| Make the Ultima 1-6 CD work! |
| Do you know where I can buy the Ultima 1-6 CD? | |
| I don't know. I found my copy packaged with 5 other CD's--sold as part of a compilation. You can check auction web-sites, check in bargain bins at computer stores, and old-software shelves. Good luck! | |
| Where's Join.Exe and Subst.Exe? | |
| Those files no longer exist in DOS. Someone at Origin had the bright idea to use these two non-stable programs to pull some DOS tricks. Then Microsoft removed them from DOS and Windows 95 altogether. The way Origin wants you to play the U1-6 CD will never work. So your only other choice is to run the games from your hard drive. | |
| What's the goal of the instructions on this page? | |
| The goal is to copy all the games from your CD to your hard drive. That way you may play the games from your hard drive. This will only take up around 7 Megs of hard drive space for every Ultima. Additionally, I want to help you overcome a few of the obstacles that you may encounter while trying to play one of the older Ultimas. | |
| How do I install the games from the Ultima 1-6 CD to my hard drive? | ||
| 1) |
To keep things organized, create a directory called "Ultima" in a games directory. If you don't have a games directory, make it in the root directory.
NOTE: From now on I will assume that you have a directory called C:\Games\Ultima. | |
| 2) | Create a directory for the Ultima game you wish to copy to the hard drive. Let's choose Ultima 1 for starters, and call the directory U1.
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| 3) | Copy the contents of the Ultima 1 directory on the CD to the Ultima 1 directory on your hard drive. (I assume that your CD-Rom is your D drive, so be sure to change it if your CD-Rom is a different drive letter.)
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| 4) | Remove the "Read Only" attribute from all of the files. This is necessary if you want to save your progress in some of the Ultimas. You do this by using the Attrib command.
You are now ready to play Ultima 1 from your hard drive. Repeat this process for each of the other Ultimas that you wish to play, substituting "u1" with "u2" for Ultima 2, "u3" for Ultima 3 and so on. If you know a little bit of DOS, you'll understand what I'm doing and can shorten the command lines I describe above appropriately. | |
| What file do I run to play each Ultima? | ||
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Ultima 1 -- Ultima.Exe Ultima 2 -- UltimaII.Exe Ultima 3 -- Ultima.Com |
Ultima 4 -- Ultima.Com Ultima 5 -- Ultima.Exe Ultima 6 -- Ultima6.Exe | |
| NOTE: If you are using the Ultima 2 Divide by Zero Fix program, you will run U2.Com for Ultima 2. | ||
| Ultima 1 looks garbled (or is in Black and White) when I run it, making the game unplayable. What do I do? | |
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Ultima 1 appears to have been coded for true-blue EGA video cards and took advantage of an inherent "feature" of those cards. Some of today's VGA cards do not fully support all of the EGA features. So when you try to play Ultima 1, the screen may be in black and white, or garbled. Yes, it's the program hating the video card, not you. I have found two solutions for this problem: 1) You can force Ultima 1 to play in CGA mode by typing: ultima cga. 2) Try a different video card.
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| Ultima 2 keeps crashing! Help! | |
| Ultima 2 will crash with a "Divide by Zero" error because your machine is running too fast. I've written a small program to fix this called U2Fix.Zip. | |
| Ultima 2's maps are all the same! What's wrong? | |
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Here is Ultima II -- The Fixed Version by Mike Marcelais, The Moonstone Dragon. This is a patch which fixes the maps in Ultima II. Many of the cities and worlds on the non-earth planets use the Earth maps. If you want to play Ultima II the way it was supposed to be played, apply this patch. | |
| What special instructions do I need to make Ultima 6 run? | |
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For Ultima 6, you must go through the steps to copy files to your hard drive twice. Ultima 6 has a subdirectory in it called "SaveGame" . To get Ultima 6 properly installed on your hard drive, go through the steps above using "u6" instead of "u1" to get half the files on your hard drive. Once you're done, type in:
You're almost done. Now to get music, you need to run the Install program and answer a few questions. Thankfully, the following procedure works 99% of the time. Just type each line as it is shown, except for the [Enter]--just press Enter on that line.
You are now ready to play Ultima 6. | |
| I thought more Ultima's had music. Where is it? | |
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On the IBM, there was no music in any Ultima until Ultima 6. It was the first Ultima to support Adlib FM Synth and MT-32/LAPC1 cards. All prior Ultimas were silent. However, with a little ingenuity and some coding know-how, Aradindae Dragon (Ryan Wiener) has been able to put the music back into the IBM version of Ultima IV with his Music patch! Check out the Files section to download U4Music.Zip! | |
| These games are all running too fast! What can I do? | |
| If the games run to fast, get MoSlo to slow your computer down and make those games playable again! | |
| All I have are documents on how to play the game. Where are the rest? | |
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When I picked up my copy of the Ultima 1-6 CD, it was packaged with 5 other games. I didn't get any maps, and very limited documentation. Mechanically, I could play the game, but I had no idea what I was doing or what the current state of affairs in Britannia were. So I started the Ultima Documentation project. In my Docs section, I have made available for download all the support documentation for several Ultimas in Word format. | |
| Ultima Main |
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E-Mail me at stice@earthlink.net with ideas, suggestions or improvements! This page last updated on June 5, 1999 |