Verify Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle + The Silver Seed

[tomojira]

My first attempt at verifying one of the games in Unverified, using the questions we came up with a while back. Please let me know if there's anything more I should do!

Can DoDAT build the game from the disc image?
Yes, using Ultima Collection (USA) (Rerelease) (Redump).

Does the DOSZ run standalone?
Yes, but without sound at first. Run INSTALL.EXE to configure sound and create SERPENT.CFG, which is included in the DOSC.
A DOS.YML is included in the DOSZ to make the game playable with these settings:

mem_ems: false
mem_umb: false

Actually, only mem_ems: false seemed strictly necessary, but sources online say mem_umb: false too, so it was included just in case.
The DOS.YML in the DOSC redundantly included these options again, so I removed them there in this PR.

Does the DOSC contain problematic data (i.e. copyright issue)?
No.

Are there .PIF or .ICO or Win32 .EXE files that could be excluded?
Yes, SETUP.EXE appears to be for Windows. I removed it in this PR.

Does the game have MT-32 support? If so, is it correctly using MT-32 (old) or CM-32L (new), going by the Vogons Wiki?
Yes, it uses CM-32L (new).
However, the DOS.YML was still using the old .dosz extension, so I updated it to .dosx in this PR.

Does the game have General MIDI support?
No.

Is the game running at the correct speed? Is CPU year specified?
Yes, cpu_year: 1993 is set, and the game speed seems okay. The water at the beginning might look a little fast, but reducing as low as 1990 doesn't change it, and GOG doesn't use any lower than that (14000 cycles).

Is the DOSC auto-running and skipping past any obstructions? Is it updated to use WAITMODECHANGE if possible?
The DOSC auto-runs SERPENT.COM, but WAITMODECHANGE is not used since it skips a chunk of the intro. The game starts at 320x200 resolution regardless.

Is the game creating a swap file in the .pure.zip that could be avoided by increasing memory size? Or is it creating other bloated files that could be prevented by adding them in the DOSZ?
No, though the game does create many small files in the .pure.zip while playing.

Does the DOSC have copy protection removed, if possible?
No, but the game does have copy protection according to PCGamingWiki - we overlooked this last time. I have added a patch to remove it to the DOSC - it affects the file STATIC\USECODE.

Can the game benefit from using CHDtoOGG?
No.

Can the game benefit from using embedded data or embedded patches in the datfile?
Yes, the DOS.YML in the DOSZ already uses embedded data.

Does the game share saves with a sequel, expansion, etc? If so, is it updated to use the .savename feature?
Not applicable.

Does a game with separate episodes/executables have the options named and ordered properly in the DOSZ? Do they use the run_utility feature?
Not applicable.

For certain old games only - are the graphics/audio improved by specifying video_card: pcjr, tandy, or generic_cga?
Not applicable.

If the game requires a yml in the DOSZ, has it been added to the yml folder in the repo?
Yes, Ultima VII - Part Two - Serpent Isle + The Silver Seed (1993) (Origin Systems).yml was added.

Have any official patches been applied, if necessary?
This CD-ROM version is already fully patched.

Have digital versions (Steam, GOG) been checked for matching?
Yes, GOG matches. The game is not on Steam.

Is the game set up to run with the best quality graphics options by default?
Not applicable.

For CD games, can the game be set up to run without a CD mounted?
Not applicable.

Do the file timestamps match the installation media?
Yes.

Have adequate installation instructions been provided to match any config files in the DOSZ?
Not applicable.

Summary of changes

• Removed redundant options from DOS.YML in DOSC
• Removed Windows-only file SETUP.EXE from DOSZ
• Updated MT-32 file extension from .dosz to .dosx
• Added copy protection removal to DOSC
• Edited comments and added links

[PureDOS]

Seems pretty good. I think we can remove READTHIS.TXT because that's about the SETUP.EXE that was removed in the PR. Also we should remove SI.BAT and SERP.BAT (they're both pretty much the same) because in the first Ultima 7 we also removed the corresponding U7.BAT.

Did you do any further testing regarding the CPU cycles? We have set the first Ultima 7 to cpu_year: 1990 but now this at cpu_year: 1993. I think I've heard that Ultima 7 is quite notorious about CPU speed (certainly emulated speed but even on real hardware). Maybe they've made improvements to the engine for part 2 to better handle faster CPUs? I think a faster CPU helps with loading times so as long as it plays as good as it can we should use that.

[tomojira]

Yeah, Ultima VII Part 1 was more affected by the CPU and ran too fast. I went with cpu_year: 1990 (14,000 cycles) there because it's what GOG used, and it appeared to be a similar speed to Part 2. Part 2 seems to have a stable speed regardless of the CPU, I tried as low as 1990 but it had no effect. So I just went with 1993 to match the year of release. I think we decided to always include the option with the year of release as a standard in cases when it isn't necessary.

In any case I removed those 3 files, and also added a couple more comments I just noticed

• Can also be extracted from CD matching with TDC#23: Ultima Collection v1.03F (1999)(Electronic Arts, Inc., ORIGIN Systems, Inc.) [bin-cue]
• DoDAT can build this directly from the disc image