Ultima 8 is best played with Pentagram, even though its GUI is not that advanced! :)


Pentagram is now part of ScummVM so please use ScummVM now and ask support questions over there.
https://www.scummvm.org

The official page seems to imply that Pentagram is still really buggy. Is that not up-to-date? Just started playing 8 again and would love to try an improved version.

People tend to love Pentagram more than Dosbox to play Ultima 8, and it seems rather stable. We just have never come around to do a proper GUI and, much worse, a proper release.
The warning is the standard release-less warning...

I found this whole thing quite confusing so I thought it'd be handy to add some tips here.

You can download Pentagram here - if you're using Windows 7 or 10 then get the file labeled Windows Binary:
http://pentagram.sourceforge.net/download.php

Run and install the thing but don't launch it because it won't work. You need to edit pentagram.ini which, if you're using Windows 10, is in your \Users\USER NAME\AppData\Roaming\Pentagram folder.

If you downloaded u* through GOG, modify the line that says "path=..." to "path=C:\GOG Games\Ultima 8\ENGLISH". This is because you need to get to the directory with U8.exe in it, which if you're playing in English is in that folder. This tripped me up the first time because when you run Pentagram without setting this up, you see a bunch of text scroll by faster than you can read it so I had no idea what was wrong.

Then just run Pentagram and it should work! I've found the game to be practically unplayable in DOSBox, but MUCH improved with Pentagram. Plus you can configure the keys!

I have some issues with this. When I have it at higher resolution the game feels slower.

Also the Avatar can't jump to where I point the mouse cursor at.

And with it set to 1080p, the game is way too zoomed out. Is there anyway to make it zoomed in while still being 1080p?

But late to respond, but how exactly does that work? Is it built into ScummVM or is it some type of add-in

It uses a scummvm with Pentagram integrated into it.
You will have to set up the ini itself, the file will be located in the users file in the hidden folder appdata. It will be named pentagram.ini
You will need to set up where it needs to look for the u8.exe. that should be in the gog folder for ultima 8/ENGLISH

Sorry for the delay. It's built into ScummVM. All you need to do is to make sure you have the latest version of ScummVM and then point it to your Ultima 8 directory. It'll then recognize and add it to your games list. Same goes for Ultima 4 and 6.

I tried Pentagram, but it doesn't work at all. Launching it causes a lot of text to fly by at superspeed, at which point the screen is just blank, and unresponsive. It looks like the product has been completely discontinued.

I tried ScummVM and it looks okay, but it isn't compatible with my old save file, has weird transitions at weird points of the map, and crashes about as frequently as the original game.

Interesting. Pentagram used to work on my computer. I fired it up just now, and I get the same error you get. It must be one of the Windows fixes or service packs that broke it.

I've played the game with ScummVM a few times. It works about as good as Pentagram did. It had a bunch of bugs, but I reported them and I think most of the annoying ones got fixed. I wouldn't restore an old Pentagram savegame using ScummVM though. If I were you, I'd play Ultima8 from scratch. The game actually doesn't take THAT long to get through tbh. I've replayed it from start to finish over a weekend before.

I've played it through both using DOSBox and ScummVM. DOSBox seems to have fewer bugs, but doesn't have a lot of the nice graphic and sound options that ScummVM has, and ScummVM also has a nice feature that allows you to look through walls to find certain items that are hidden behind walls and such.

Interesting that you have the same error in Pentagram. I thought there was a good chance I had just set it up improperly, but with the text going by so quickly, I had no idea if it was trying to tell me what was wrong, or not.

I started playing the game recently on the GOG version, and my save file got completely corrupted at one point. Certain cutscenes just won't trigger, so I can't progress. I was hoping I could load my save in ScummVM and try to pick it up again that way. I really don't want to start over from scratch.

If it helps; a while back I finished Ultima 8 in ScummVM, and here are my saves:

Hopefully they're labeled well enough for you to figure out where to continue.

I've used a guard house in the center of Tenebrae as an item hoarding spot (the bottom one), and there's sorcerer items in Bane's old house (in the later save games) if you need to make spells.

Edit: I've removed the link.

Hello friends,

only in 2023 playing "Ultima VIII: Pagan" for the first time ever. Unfortunately I've encountered a rather nasty bug relatively late in the game: I've just passed the first test and became a Disciple of Fire, which ist a great thing I guess. Next task was/is to enter the Obsidian Fortress which I did. And there it went all to Hell: Upon entering I saved the game, obviously fractions of a second before an automatically triggered dialogue started. I didn't notice anything was wrong though - went through the dialogue and started fighting some Daemons. But then I got killed and wanted to reload the last save - and the game immediately crashed and sent me back to Windows (with some DOS-Box message that dissapeared too quickly to read).

Worse than that restarting the game won't work anymore and sends me back to the Desktop as soon as the Intro is over. To be exact: After the intro I see my character in Obsidian Fortress just before the auto-dialogue starts, then: Nothing but my Desktop. Problem is that the game always auto-loads the obviously corrupted savegame. Disabling cloud-synchronisation with GOG doesn't help, re-installing the game and copying all but the corrupted file into the SAVEGAME-Folder didn't help, nothing did help.

- Anyone have an idea if it is possible to prevent the game from auto-loading a (the last?) saved file and instead opening the main menu right after the intro?

- If not: Anyone have a clean save game about the time of the game mentioned above which I may use?

- If not: I just installed Pentagram, figuring that's another (and possibly better) way to play the game. I tried downloading a savegame provided by Ultimacodex. The saved game appeared in the main menu but I couldn't load it due to an error, see attached screenshot (rest is unreadable due to window-size). Any thoughts on that?

I know that all of this is a long shot - but I just don't have the heart to start all over again. So any help would be highly appreciated!


EDIT: I just installed ScummVM too - seems to work, but I just couldn't find any saved game via Google. Any help would be appreciated!

Here are my Exult saves.
You'll need to put them in C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\ScummVM\Saved games (or something like that).

They should be labeled clearly enough.

Edit: *sigh* Never mind, apparently the forum isn't allowing this attachment. Images only.

Edit2: You can get it here: <removed>