Ultima 8 in Windows

A new and exciting age has dawned for fans of Ultima 8. Dragon Baroque, who is responsible for the amazing U7win9x patch, has once more worked his magic. A similar patch for Ultima 8 is now available for public release.

This patch requires that you already have a copy of Ultima 8. Also - this is important - there are three possible versions of U8. In the version that was initially released, the U8.EXE file is dated 15/3/1994, and is 899 Kb in size. The following year, Origin released a patch in response to consumer feedback - this fixes jumping problems, and tightens many aspects of the storyline. Once the patch is applied the U8.EXE file is dated 10/2/1995 and is 1092 Kb in size. If you have Ultima 8 from the Collection it will be the latest version.
A third version of the U8.EXE file is slightly smaller, and is dated 18/11/95. This is version 2.13, and is in fact equivalent to 2.12. The latest version of U8win9x.exe will work with this file.

The patch will only work on the latest versions. If you have an earlier version, I recommend you upgrade by downloading the free patch from Origin. You can get it here. In case that link is dead, I have mirrored the English version of the patch here.

Having made sure that you have one of the latest versions, the rest is easy:

1. Install Ultima 8 as normal. Remember that it is a DOS game, and you need to run the INSTALL program from the Ultima8 folder to tell the game what sound and music card you have.
2. Download U8win9x.zip, and unzip it to your Ultima8 folder. It will give you U8win9x.exe and a U8readme text file. Please take the time to read the U8readme file - it will answer many questions.
3. Run U8win9x.exe. This can be done by clicking on it, or via the command line, or, if you wish to, from the MS-DOS prompt in the Windows DOS box. This will work on the U8.EXE that is already there, and will create a new file - U8W.EXE.
4. You may need to insert FILES=40 in your config.sys file. (Windows ME users - see note below)
5. Use U8W.EXE to start the game.

That is all.

Click on the disk icon to download U8win9x.zip.

Note: if some of the terminology seems confusing (Sound card I/O address, IRQ, DMA, config.sys etc) these concepts are explained in excruciating detail on my Ultima 7 For Beginners page.

Note for Windows ME users: Ultima 8 requires lots of "file handles", and will prompt you to put FILES=40 in your config.sys file. This is pretty hard to do in ME, as the operating system does not even read this file. There is a solution however - thanks to Scratchy Dragon for bringing it to our notice:

1. Open Notepad; browse until you are looking in the C:\Windows folder.
2. Set Notepad to look for All Files; you are looking for a file called System. (MS-DOS name is System.ini). Open this file.
3. The file has various sections, including [boot]    [keyboard]    [boot.description]    and  [386enh]
4. In this   [386enh]   section type this entry:
   PerVMFiles=40
   Save the file.
5. Reboot your machine. Windows ME now automatically allocates 40 extra file handles - more than enough - and Ultima 8 will be happy.

The article that this is based on is here.

There is also a more "Windows-friendly" method of doing the same thing. This works for Windows 98 and ME - just do as follows:

1. Click on Start, then Run, and type msconfig in the command line.
2. Click on the System.ini tab.
3. Click on 386enh and highlight it. Then click on the plus (+) sign to expand it.
4. That will open up the sub-menu. Make sure that 386enh is still highlighted.
5. Click on the New button at the bottom of your screen. A box will appear under 386enh.
6. Type PerVMFiles=40 and then hit apply, then OK, then reboot.
7. That's it! You're done.

Thanks to Maurizio Peta for that tip.

In Windows XP, you can set files=40 in the folder Windows\system32\config.nt (Thanks to Holger Zinecker for that tip)

The latest version of this patch (1.14) works well in Windows 2000/XP. There are issues that you need to be aware of, and, due to the efforts of our faithful testers (thanks Polychromic), ways to get around them. See Sound Issues, below:

Sound Issues

Ultima 8, being DOS-based, was written before there was such a thing as an "operating system" (ie, Windows). It is programmed to do everything itself; included in this is the ability to send sound data directly to a small number of sound cards, in the format that the card will understand. It can handle a small range of cards, and will expect to find the card at an ISA-type address.
Modern sound cards create a problem. Typically, your sound card will be operating on an IRQ of 11, and there is no way that Ultima 8 can handle this. Also, Windows XP does not allow direct communication between an application (game) and a sound card. Conventional wisdom says that sound just won't work. Not only that, but the digital sound portion of U8 (ie speech) depends on instantaneous, direct, two-way communication between game and sound card. Under Windows XP there is no way that this is going to happen.
Fortunately there is a partial solution. Vlad Romanescu of the VDMSound project has come to the rescue. Rather than buying an extra sound card to plug into your machine, you can use an emulator. VDMSound is just that - it performs the function of an ISA sound card. For example, if you specify in the INSTALL program of U8 that you are using a Sound Blaster, at IRQ 7, VDMSound will "catch" the data stream from the game, process it accordingly, and pass it to Windows. You then get the sound output as it would have been.
Note: VDMSound will only work in Windows 200/NT/XP, not in 95/98/ME.

To set up VDMSound:

1. Download VDMSound version 2.0.4 from the VDMSound home page, or all the files can be located from here. Install it.
2. Download VDMSound 2.0.4.2 update; install it over the top of 2.0.4.
3. Download VDMSound Launchpad 1.0.1.1; unzip it into your VDMSound directory, and run Install.bat.
4. Run the INSTALL program in Ultima 8. The default settings for VDMSound seem to be A220, IRQ 7, DMA 1. (Personal note: for reasons quoted above, digital sound will not seem to work in U8. I can get it to run tolerably well if I specify "no sound card" - you get text on screen - and Sound Blaster or General Midi for music.)
5. Right-click on the U8w icon, and select "Run with VDMSound" - the choice with a musical note next to it. The Wizard will appear, offering you the chance to set up a configuration. You can either accept the default one, or choose a custom one. Then the game will launch. You will notice next time there is a VDMSound shortcut - you can use this to start the game.

Other tips and hints for W2K and XP users:

• After installing Ultima 8, it is advisable to run the INSTALL program (sound setup) through DOS in order to get a valid U8.ini, and successful sound setup.
• Ultima 8 is sensitive to refresh rates and performance settings of monitor and video cards in Windows 2000. It may be necessary to lower the refresh rate to 60, colours to 256 and reduce video card performance to minimum - this will prevent the game "hanging" with a black screen.

This patch also works in a DOS box in OS/2 Warp 4. All you need to do is change DPMI support from "auto" to "enabled" for this session. (Thanks to Guido Hörster (aka Resonator Dragon) for that tip)

Disclaimer: Despite extremely encouraging testing results, it cannot be guaranteed that this program will work for all users and in all hardware configurations. So far it works well in Windows 95, 98, ME and Windows 2000/XP. It has worked with processor speeds from 166 to 800, and RAM from 64 to 768 Mb.
One especially pleasing feature is that the "memory problem" has been solved - Ultima 8 would crash if there was more than 128 Mb RAM in the machine. As stated, we now have reports of successful operation with 768 Mb RAM.
As machines have grown in power, I have had one report that U8w.exe would not run in the presence of 1 Gigabyte of RAM, but worked quite well when the RAM was reduced to 768 Mb with a Ramdisk. So there may still be a memory limit, albeit huge.
****Stop Press!**** Joe Wolf has succeeded in running Ultima 8 on a Windows XP machine with 1 Gb RAM, using a boot disk. I am checking this out; in the meantime I am assured that digital sound etc all function. He is happy to help Ultima fans - give him a mail.
The author and I are willing to answer queries and endeavour to solve any problems, but no other assurance is given or implied. This program is used at your own risk.

The latest edition (version 1.14) has been produced by Gilbert Rouquie to combat sporadic and isolated crashes which were reported with version 1.11. It is part of a continual program of improvement aimed at making the patch useful to a wide audience - it should now work in Windows 2000/XP and Linux. In spite of this, there have been reports of occasional problems. In my opinion, version 1.05 seems about the most stable - if you do not have Win2K/XP, and if you are having a problem with version 1.14, try 1.05 instead. You can get it here.

Any questions, comments or feedback please email me.

Dragon Baroque is also happy to look at trouble reports - when reporting a bug or problem, please include as much information as possible - including your hardware details, processor, RAM, operating system, peripherals, and any error messages that occur. Please also mention which version of the patch you are using. Also if you notice any event related to the game or your system that seems to be associated with a problem, include that as well.

There is an alternate way you can play this and many other classic DOS games. An emulator called DOSBOX can be downloaded from here. Briefly, this is a small program which, when run, completely emulates a full DOS-based computer within your machine. This is done completely with software; the only requirement is that you have a fast processor - it is pretty demanding. The latest version of DOSBOX will run U8 succesfully, although a bit slowly; it works of my computer if the cycle count is wound up to about 13000. The advantage is that everything is as it was in 1994 - and the sound is perfect.

Back To Top

"Theme", from the excellent collection available at The Bard's Library; copyright Origin Sytems Inc.