The last of the cardinal Ultima series, finishing the storyline of the Avatar. By default the game includes SafeDisc protection, but a fan-made patch (1.19) removes the SafeDisc protection without needing an actual No CD crack. The game is playable under Wine, but suffers from black/silent movie playback (either move the movie directory or wait for their allotted duration to elapse).
Application Details:
| Version: | 1.19 |
| License: | Retail |
| URL: | |
| Votes: | 0 |
| Latest Rating: | Gold |
| Latest Wine Version Tested: | 3.16-staging |
Maintainers: About Maintainership
What works
Installing
Settings program
Launching game
Basic controls, movement, looking around, combat
Subtitles, audio playback (including music)
What does not
No pop-up tooltips when cursor is over items
No cursor displayed at all when books are open, including the journal (main in-game menu interface)
Cursor slides beneath toolbelt and backpacks, preventing targeting of carried items
Workarounds
What was not tested
Gameplay beyond starting house
Hardware tested
Graphics:
Additional Comments
On a hunch, I tried a glide emulator, however this unfortunately still had the overlay issues. The inability to use books prevented the use of the in-game options menu, and no tool-tips were displayed when the cursor was over objects, which prevented normal gameplay.
| Operating system | Test date | Wine version | Installs? | Runs? | Used Workaround? | Rating | Submitter | ||
| Show | Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic" amd64 (+variants like Kubuntu) | Sep 30 2018 | 3.16-staging | Yes | Yes | Yes | Gold | Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs | |
| Show | Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" | Feb 01 2011 | 1.3.12 | Yes | Yes | Bronze | an anonymous user | ||
| Current | Debian GNU/Linux 5.x "Lenny" x86_64 | Mar 07 2010 | 1.1.40 | Yes | Yes | Bronze | an anonymous user | ||
| Show | Gentoo Linux x86_64 | Oct 18 2008 | 1.1.6 | Yes | Yes | Bronze | an anonymous user |
Install the game as normal
Open the "Options.ini" file inside the program directory
Scroll to the Subsection marked [Game]
Locate the paramter "MultiPassChromakey"
Change the value to 0 (The default is 2)
This should make all the in-game text/speech, item descriptions, inventory, tool belt/HUD and Spellbook/Books/Journal render properly.
The game occasionally will corrupt the default savegame (Which is always the last game you saved). This symptoms of this are the game crashing immediately upon launch once you have already saved once in the game.
The best way to avoid this is to constantly save as new files. If the game begins crashing at launch, delete the last savegame you created from inside the Save directory. It can result in the game behaving like you have launched it for the first time, at which point you can retrieve the Journal and reload from a previous save.
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. WineHQ is not responsible for what they say.
by Craig on Thursday November 26th 2015, 20:05
Any item you can pick up, temporarily acts as a cursor until you drop it. This is the most useful if you grab the wrong item in your inventory; just move it over the item you wanted to grab and let go of the item you didn't want. The item wil return but the invisible cursor will remain stationary.
As suggested by others, open the Journal/Spellbook/Book to the item you need to point at. Point at it with your finger (your real finger, on the screen). Close the journal (ESC key). The screen may move just a bit, note the direction if it does. Still keeping your finger on the screen, press Q to enter u9's cursor mode. Now move the cursor under your finger slightly adjusting to account for any movement that occurred just after closing the book. Open the book again, your cursor should be on the item that was under you finger.
Setting MultiPassChromakey to "2" will show the cursor on some systems, but of course then you can't see text. But, this is still useful to buy and sell items from shopkeepers (when your real finger won't help. See previous suggestion above). With text readable, Note the Shopkeepers dialog and which one you'll want to select. Quit, change the Options.ini (MultiPassChromakey to "2"). Run u9 and used number keys to select the unreadable dialogs that you remembered (pressing 1 selects the top dialog choice, 2 for the 2nd down, etc). Quit and change MultiPassChromakey back to to "0" to continue play with readable text.
Play on a touchscreen device.
VNC or another desktop sharing service can be used from a touchscreen device (another PC or Android) to effectively play u9 using touchscreen during inventory management and shopping (where low frame rate on the client shouldn't be much of a problem).
VNC or another desktop sharing service can be used from another device with a cursor interface if the client has a "show local cursor" option. This can help during inventory management and shopping (where low frame rate on the client shouldn't be much of a problem).
A screen magnifier application that "follows the cursor" may effectively reveal cursor position when running u9. If it does not work when u9 is running in fullscreen (as default), use winecfg. Add u9.exe to the list of applications. Select u9.exe and in the graphics tab, check "[x] Emulate a virtual desktop" and set it to the same resolution that u9 is running at ("GameScreenWidth=####" and "GameScreenHeight=####" in the Options.ini). Note, this will run u9 in a window. To switch to full screen, use F11 (this undecorates/unframes and resizes a window to 'full screen'. But it is still a window). If you are planing to play continuously this way (as opposed to using this workaround for shops on occasion) you'll probably want to change your desktop resolution to match.
The Compiz magnifier works for some systems.
I prefer Virtual Magnifying Glass (low resource reqs) magnifier.sourceforge.net/