Help getting UU to work

jpast on 16/10/2005 at 17:46

Sorry to forget to do that. I'm actually running Windows ME (I know, there aren't many of us). I don't have Dos Box or anything like that I'm just opening it in the MS DOS Prompt from the Start tab. What should I try next?

baeuchlein on 16/10/2005 at 20:50

I had no problems running UU from the download you mentioned. Since I don't understand what exactly you have been trying to get UU to work, I'll tell you what I did, maybe this will help you.

I downloaded the .zip file and unpacked it with unzip. I got four .IMG files. Since all were 1.44 megabytes in size, they obviously contained images (.IMG=image) of the four installation disks.

To write the four disks I used RawWrite, which is a menu-driven, easy-to-use program. You can download it at (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm) , but there are many other programs which write floppy disks from the four image files (Linux users may use dd, for example). If you get a *floppy disk* with INSTALL.EXE and other files on it, you've done the right thing. If you play with programs and write some files to your *hard disk* without using any floppy disk, no one knows what you will get in return.

If possible, create the four installation disks and install the game from those disks. I have seen a similar installation program (from Wing Commander) going nuts when one tries to start it from hard disk or CD instead of using a floppy disk.

I tried UU on serveral computers (with good old MS-DOS 6.22) and sound cards, but only a Sound Blaster 16 card in an old 486-class machine produced sound. A similar card in a Pentium did not work. So, if you have a problem with sound after installing and can't solve it with UWSOUND, start INSTALL again (this time from inside your game directory on your hard disk) and select PC speaker for sound effects. Better than no sound at all.

jpast on 17/10/2005 at 00:06

You kind of lost me, I was able to extract the 4 images fine. But when I try to run the Install file it doesn't work at all. I'm not sure what you mean in the last post with the floppy disks and such. Could you clarify that for me?

twisty on 17/10/2005 at 01:16

Quote Posted by baeuchlein

...If you play with programs and write some files to your *hard disk* without using any floppy disk, no one knows what you will get in return...

Sorry mate, but that's just not true in this case. Underworld couldn't care less if you play it from a floppy disk or a hard drive. Given a choice, who would want to mess around with a floppy drive.

Quote Posted by jpast

The easiest way really for you would be to just download and install <a href="http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/">dosbox</a> as it does all the memory management configuring for you, but if you would prefer to do battle with the dos shell in WinME, there's a few things that you have do first. WinME is one the more difficult Windows OS's to get this game working on as it was Microsoft's first real attempt at trying to distance itself away from it's DOS roots (which it didn't really do very well). As Config.sys isn't used by this OS, you will need to:
Modify your system.ini file instead (do a search for it in your C:\windows folder). (ensure that you backup this file first, just in case).* Open this up in notepad and scroll down until you get to a section titled [386enh]. * On a new line type in PerVMFiles=40* Save this file and then reboot your computer.
If this looks like too much bother, just download DosBox (it's free) and I will guide you through installing it from that. The beauty of this program is that you will be able to play most of your other favourite DOS games with ease.

jpast on 17/10/2005 at 01:36

Allright, I've downloaded Dos Box. Where can you take me from here?

twisty on 17/10/2005 at 03:45

No worries.

* Install Dosbox
* You will need to mount a drive to begin with. It will probably be easier if you just modify the dosbox configuration file so that it does this each time for you. Go into the folder where DOSBOX is installed ("C:\program Files\DosBox-0.x" by default") and open up "dosbox.conf" in notepad. We are now going to mount the drive/folder where you have those UW install files so that the dosbox prompt is at the location where you can install/play underworld. If the files that you extracted from those images are in a folder on your C:\drive, then you should add the following 2 lines to the very end of dosbox.conf:
[INDENT]mount c c:\
c:[/INDENT]
* Run DosBox now and navigate to where you have your install files. E.g. cd c:\unzip\uwunzip Now type in install and follow the prompts. * You will probably want to install it to somewhere easy to find. eg If your only partition is a C drive then you would choose c:\uw.
* For a sound card, the DosBox sound emulator works great for these games, so you might like to choose SoundBlaster Pro when underworld asks you which sound card that you have.
* Once this is over with, just type UW to play. You can follow these directions for UW2 as well.

jpast on 17/10/2005 at 04:38

I changed the Dos Box to propmt right to my C drive perfectly, but can't seem to get the next part (step 3) of your directions to work. My UU files are all located in a folder right on my C drive called Ultima Underworld then another folder called UW. When Dos Box opens I typed in:

c:\ultima underworld\uw

I hit enter and get the response "Illegal command: ultima."

Then I tried to type this in:

cd c:\ultima underworld\uw

I hit enter again and got a response saying "unable to change to: c\ultima underworld\uw

I'm guessing that I just missed something and am making a silly mistake, but I've got no idea. What am I doing wrong here?

Shadowcat on 17/10/2005 at 05:16

It's confused by the space in "ultima underworld". It thinks you are running a command "c:\ultima" and supplying it with the command-line argument "underworld\uw".

You can probably use an escape character to allow it to accept that space (or perhaps just quote the whole command?), but the simplest thing for you to do is rename the "ultima underworld" directory so that it has no spaces in it.

It should probably also be eight or less characters long (although DOSBox might support longer names). Basically when dealing with DOS, you should always stick to 8.3 format filenames (i.e. eight characters for the first part of the name, and a three-character extension for files that use them).

I suggest "uuw".

jpast on 17/10/2005 at 06:04

Before I bow down and praise you two mods I need to ask one more thing....

I got everything running perfectly. The game runs smooth and has all its sound. My one question is this: Is there a way that I can maximize the Dos Box window from the tiny minimized one it opens in?

jpast on 17/10/2005 at 07:20

Don't worry about it actually, I figured it out. Just had to hit Alt Enter.

Thank you all so much. I can't thank you enough for being so helpful. This game really is the greatest ever made, so thanks for getting me back to playing this classic game I have such great memories of. THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH.

:thumb: