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Ultima VII: The Black Gate

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Ultima VII: The Black Gate
Ultima VII: The Black Gate cover
Developers
Origin Systems
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS April 16, 1992
Windows (DOSBox) November 29, 2011[1]
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) January 24, 2013[2]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, Expansion pack
Modes Singleplayer
Genres RPG
Themes Fantasy
Series Ultima
Ultima VII: The Black Gate on HowLongToBeat
Ultima VII: The Black Gate on IGDB
Ultima VII: The Black Gate guide on StrategyWiki
Ultima VII: The Black Gate on MobyGames
Ultima VII: The Black Gate on Wikipedia
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress 1982
Ultima III: Exodus 1983
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar 1985
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness 1987
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny 1988
Ultima VI: The False Prophet 1990
Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire 1990
Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams 1991
Ultima VII: The Black Gate 1992
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss 1992
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds 1993
Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle 1993
Ultima VIII: Pagan 1994
Ultima Online 1997
Akalabeth: World of Doom 1998
Ultima IX: Ascension 1999

Ultima VII: The Black Gate is a singleplayer RPG game in the Ultima series.

It is recommended to use Exult for various enhancements.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Prompts for answers from manual, code wheel, etc.
Run in DOSBox or Exult.
DOS
GOG.com
Prompts for answers from manual, code wheel, etc.
Includes the Forge of Virtue addon and Ultima VII Part Two. Pre-packaged with DOSBox.[3]
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Origin
Origin
Prompts for answers from manual, code wheel, etc.
Includes the Forge of Virtue addon and Ultima VII Part Two. Pre-packaged with DOSBox.
Not available in some regions.
Windows
The manual is needed to answer copy protection questions (see answers.pdf for the GOG.com version).
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Forge of Virtue Included with complete edition.
DOS
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Essential improvements

Patches

The Version 3.4 Patch updates the English floppy version of the game. CD-ROM and digital versions are already patched.

Exult

Use Exult to play in higher resolution, add new features, use mods, etc.
Set up Exult (Windows)[citation needed]
  1. Download and install the latest Windows snapshot.
  2. The installer will prompt for the installation folders; for the GOG.com version these are ULTIMA7 for The Black Gate and SERPENT for Serpent Isle.
  3. Optionally, install the All-In-One Audio Data for enhanced sounds and music.
  4. Run Exult from the Start screen/Start menu and both games will now be playable.
Set up Exult (OS X)[citation needed]
  1. Download and install the latest OS X snapshot.
  2. Optionally, install the All-In-One Audio Data for enhanced sounds and music.
  3. Go to the game installation folder and copy the data files.
    • For retail versions this will be wherever you installed it to.
    • For GOG.com, open Finder, open the Go menu, choose Go To Folder, then go to $HOME/Applications/Ultima 7 The Complete Edition.app/Contents/Resources/Ultima 7 The Complete Edition.boxer/C.harddisk/U7/.
  4. Open Finder, open the Go menu, choose Go To Folder, then go to $HOME/Library/Application Support.
  5. Make a folder called Exult.
  6. Paste the Black Gate and Serpent Isle folders here.
  7. Rename the Black Gate folder to blackgate and the Serpent Isle folder to serpentisle.
  8. Run Exult from Applications and both games will now be playable.

Skip intro videos

Use Exult[4]

Use Exult (set in Misc Options).

Game data

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\GAME**.U7
Windows <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
macOS (OS X) $HOME/Library/Application Support/Boxer/Gamebox States/com.gog.ultima-7-the-complete-edition/Current.boxerstate/C.harddisk/U7/ultima7
<path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Saves are GAME**.U7; DOS settings are stored in the save file rather than shared.
Exult saves and settings are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Exult on Windows, $HOME/Library/Application Support/Exult on OS X, $HOME/.exult on Linux.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin

Video

Exult video settings.
Exult video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use Exult.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Toggle with Alt+ Enter (when using Exult or DOSBox).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Exult has choice of 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 FPS. Determines game speed.

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Use Exult (see Exult keys).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller types

Audio

Exult audio settings.
Exult audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
On/off only. Note that if you are run into sound issues, the game may decide to toggle its music/speech/sfx options in the Save menu 'off', frustrating further debugging attempts.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Speech from NPCs is text-based. Voices from The Guardian are not normally subtitled (he gives minor hints). If no sound card is detected or "Speech" is toggled off on the Save menu, the Guardian speech in the intro and popups have subtitles.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Use Exult.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Chinese, Polish and Korean retail versions only have the manuals translated; the game itself is still in English.[5][6][7]
Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
French retail only. Not available digitally.
German
German retail only. Not available digitally, but as Fanpatch Download
Russian
1) Use Перевод Ultima 7: The Black Gate (requires Exult).
2) Fan translation by «Sleepy Emp & Quester»
Spanish
Spanish retail only. Available a fan translation (includes Forge of Virtue expansion) by Clan Dlan (author: L@Zar0), download.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes MCGA, VGA

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 3.3
Processor (CPU) 386SX
System memory (RAM) 2 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 21 MB
Video card (GPU) MCGA
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.6.8
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Duo 2 GHz+
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

References