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
Mouse pointer missing when reading books - it is there but it is drawn under inventory - it is possible to guess where it is but it is annoying. - Wine bug 13683.
Workarounds
What was not tested
Play thru from beginning to end.....only played for - for a few hours.
Hardware tested
Graphics:
Additional Comments
I am just adding this information since there has been no recent reports since Wine 1.2. The game is possible to play through. The following keys can be used to get around the book problems / shop problems. The following keys can be used. ctrl+m = open_world_map ctrl+s = journal_save ctrl+l = journal_load ctrl+o = journal_options ctrl+j = journal_diary_last_page ctrl+k = journal_diary_first_page ctrl+b = journal_bestiary ctrl+t = journal_history ctrl+z = journal_stats You can use the "left number-keys" to answer the questions or turn the pages. "Right mouse" button to left bookmode. Also "page-up/down" and "esc" are useable in bookmode. With button "j" you can save. At restart the last savegame will be loaded. You still need to do this as well: HOWTO get text, menus and toolbelt to render properly 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.
| 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 | |
| Current | Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" | Feb 01 2011 | 1.3.12 | Yes | Yes | Bronze | an anonymous user | ||
| Show | 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 Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs on Thursday November 17th 2022, 7:48
I'm currently playing Ultima IX with wine-devel (7.21 I think... from winehq ubuntu packages) and the only thing that does not work is movies. (They are just skipped.)
Also there's a plot hole if you re-enter despise after already leaving it once and talking to Raven, in that case she will stay at the exit of descpise and never be at the docks. This makes it impossible to complete the game. (To avoid the plot hole, you should not re-enter despise, at least not until you've been to Buccaneer's Den, I guess.) I seem to remember that this plot hole also exists in 1.18f on windows and is not related to wine.
This may be fixed in the fan-made dialog patch, which I didn't apply this time.
This runs fine at full 2k laptop resolution and the farthest rendering distance (remote objects look really great... close ones not so much).
Will update my old review after I've played the whole game (which I think will work).
by Friedrich Delgado Friedrichs on Thursday November 17th 2022, 7:50
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/