Exult Forum

I dont spose anyone knows how to run u8 in winxp??

I've tried that u8win9* program but it wont work....any other ideas guys?

Boot up with a boot disk into dos.

Very difficult to boot in DOS with Windows XP as your operating system, even with a disk I guess... I´ve tried the U8win9x in XP and it works for me with some problems: The game speed is slowdowned and it causes a flag error ( with no visible consecuences ) when you exit the game. It´s annoying, but nowadays I think it´s the only way to do it with the XP... Until some good fellow with more knowledge than me do anything about it ( usind wonderful SDL if possible like Exult ). I´ll be happy that day!

If you use VDMS you can also find a speedset utility with which you can speed u8 up a bit (haven't tried though).
Using VDMS enables you to hear the music but unfortunately not the sfx and speech (these are distorted).
VDMS is found at http://ntvdm.cjb.net/
and if you can't find the speedset program visit the url below
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/forumdispla ... forumid=15

I can run U8 at normal speed in XP *IF* I disable the sound.

I tried many work arounds, and even a little hacking, but it just made it worse. I managed to get music working decently but I never have been able to get sound to work properly.

Not difficult at all to boot DOS with XP, unless you use NTFS on all of your hard drive partitions, which you really shouldn't be. But if you are really having difficulty, run it in dos in VirtualPC. Works fine in there, assuming your computer is a decent speed.

http://www.connectix.com

I have my own custom boot disk, so it's not hard to boot into dos, you just have to set your system up properly in advance, like having a fat32 partition seperate from your ntfs winxp one for example.

Or for the easiest route, just throw together a 486 machine. That's what I've done to play all my old dos games on. I have:

486 dx2 66
486/586 pci motherboard
64meg ram (4x16meg 72pin simms) Yea it's overkill, but I had them spare.
4meg s3virge pci video
Soundblaster 16
Intel 10mb/s isa nic
1x cdrom plugged into sb16
2gig hdd
FDD
Win95 operating system for networking (easy), and just choose shutdown, restart in ms-dos mode, and away I go to play games in dos. Plus I've got my own custom autoexec.bat, config.sys, and dosstart.bat files.

All that can be done really cheap. <~$100 And what's a 15" monitor worth? $40-$50? That's what I've seen them for. (Prices in AUD).

I wrote a very small DOS boot maker program - you select either Win 95 or Win 98SE, it's called MultiBoot, and can be downloaded from:

www.ozemail.com.au/~lpcd/downloads.html

With over 600 downloads to date, it has been very successful with other gamers from another site. You create the boot disk add your sound card drivers and that's it. If you use SBLive, then the autoexec is already configured for you.

However, if all your partitions are NTFS, nothing will save you as far as boot disks are concerned...

HTH

suraimu, how did you get u8 to run in virtual pc? I didn't succeed in this.
Honestly, I'd really like to know (which dos version did you boot with, which config.sys and autoexec.bat and so on...)

Of course, if you have fat32 or even fat16 somewhere on your hard drive you could run U8 rebooting on Win-DOS or with DOS itself as it was designed for. But you´ll need "Partition Magic" or something similar in order to make a new partition and install a NEW OPERATING SYSTEM if you don´t. Anyway, if you only have NTFS, U8win9x is the only way to do it. And it doesn´t works very well for me because my sound card´s not compatible with Sound Blaster so I hear the music but I can´t do anything about sound and speech. That´s why I claim for a SDL solution... or Direct Sound... or whatever...

Well, to get the music right you need vdms (the ntvdm built-in sound emualtion is not working properly). And there it can't be that your card is incompatible. VDMS emulates a soundblaster compatible card even on systems that have no soundcard at all.

>suraimu, how did you get u8 to run in virtual pc? I didn't succeed in this.
Honestly, I'd really like to know (which dos version did you boot with, which config.sys and autoexec.bat and so on...)


I just used FreeDOS and had very little problems. This was a while ago so I don't remember the exact config.sys and all, but if you want I could try and install it under it again sometime.

well, I'll try myself when I get back to my machine.

Hi,
I have U8 running on my Win XP machine at home. I didn't need the VDMS program although this works as well.

In order to run it you make a short cut to the application and then go to properties --> advanced (under compatability) and choose different and files which can be tailor made for U8 to run with. I cannot remember to correct settings as I am at school now but it is easy to discover the correct settings.

To start with it is a good idea to make a copy of the *.nt files selected by default and then to edit them. From memory there should be a SET Files=40 line in the autoexec file as well as something along the lines of SET Blaster=h220 i5 something which tells the game what sound card is used.

To set up the sound you should use the same settings when running the installer or it wont detect the settings.

VDMS is only needed to get some decent music. The build in so-called sb-emulation of XP is so crappy I wouldn't bother with it.

Try dosbox. It's a Dos emulator

dosbox.sf.net

Forget that link above. They don't have their webpage there. Use that instead :
http://dosbox.zophar.net/

AFAIK dosbox is not quite far enough to support U8. At least I couldn't run it with the last releas.

I have tried extensively to get native sound in U8 and XP. It was just horrid.


I construct lots of old machines though, and in fact make extensive use of old hardware all the time.

I put together a Pentium 233 MMX with 128mb RAM, PCI Diamon Stealth 3d Pro 4mb video card, 15 inch smile SVGA monitor (AWESOME quality), dual boot windows98 and DOS 6.22, with a 2gb HDD.

I play u7 and u8 a lot, as well as getting into ultima 6 again. I have win98 setup for fast networking but am currently searching for a packet driver for DOS for my NIC, so I will be able to web browse while in DOS using arachne.

older games, namely before serpent isle (serpent isle has a frame limiter) run obscenely fast of course, but I use MoSlo very well and with in-game speed adjustment it makes it perfect.


Also: A 17 inch super flat CRT monitor can run you low as $25 at wacky willys here in oregon And the typical price on the 1998/1999/2000 15 inch monitors are $15-25, which is very very good.

.....I dunno if I would trust buying anything from a guy called 'Wacky Willy'.

It's a surplus store. There's only three in the entire U.S. actually - One in Portland, Oregon, one in Hillsboro, Oregon, and the last in Honolulu, Hawaii.

I love that place though, purchased many things there at great prices.