Ultima V - Flaky keys

[hawkman]

I finished Ultima IV a month or so ago and my plan was to move on to Ultima V, a game I recall buying but didn't recall ever finishing when I had my Amiga back in the early 90s. Unfortunately, I have now had the recollection of why I never finished it - the keyboard control scheme is diabolically terrible.

I booted it up on my Amiga 1000 (WHDLoad on the Parceiro) and the first thing I noticed was that it didn't seem to register when I pressed a key every time, or sometimes registered the keypress twice. I would hit the down arrow to go south and sometimes it would do nothing and sometimes it would move twice. In my first battle with some lowly snakes, I kept missing attacks because of this. It didn't take more than 5 minutes to give up on it.

So I thought maybe this game needs a faster machine? Fortunately I have an A2000 with A2630 which is a little faster than the A1000. The result? Now almost every keypress results in two actions. To get one action I'd have to almost "peck" at the key.

I tried UAE with a variety of processors and got similar results.

There's no way I'm going to spend the weeks required to play this game with these sorts of problems - you lose the whole role-playing vibe when you're focused on the physical controls. But I'm disappointed because from everything I've heard, Ultima V is one of the best of the series and I'm a huge fan of Ultima IV so I was really looking forward to this.

My question, is there any solution to the control situation on the Amiga? Or do I have to give up and play in on DOS? (I can actually do that on the A2000 with the bridgeboard)

[jasonsbeer]

I had the same problem back in the early 90's on my Amiga 500. I called Origin customer support. Their response to me was (paraphrasing) "It doesn't work with some keyboards. We don't know why and have no fix. You can return the game for a refund." So, that's what I did.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by hawkman

I finished Ultima IV a month or so ago and my plan was to move on to Ultima V, a game I recall buying but didn't recall ever finishing when I had my Amiga back in the early 90s. Unfortunately, I have now had the recollection of why I never finished it - the keyboard control scheme is diabolically terrible.

I booted it up on my Amiga 1000 (WHDLoad on the Parceiro) and the first thing I noticed was that it didn't seem to register when I pressed a key every time, or sometimes registered the keypress twice. I would hit the down arrow to go south and sometimes it would do nothing and sometimes it would move twice. In my first battle with some lowly snakes, I kept missing attacks because of this. It didn't take more than 5 minutes to give up on it.

So I thought maybe this game needs a faster machine? Fortunately I have an A2000 with A2630 which is a little faster than the A1000. The result? Now almost every keypress results in two actions. To get one action I'd have to almost "peck" at the key.

I tried UAE with a variety of processors and got similar results.

There's no way I'm going to spend the weeks required to play this game with these sorts of problems - you lose the whole role-playing vibe when you're focused on the physical controls. But I'm disappointed because from everything I've heard, Ultima V is one of the best of the series and I'm a huge fan of Ultima IV so I was really looking forward to this.

My question, is there any solution to the control situation on the Amiga? Or do I have to give up and play in on DOS? (I can actually do that on the A2000 with the bridgeboard)

the keyboard handling was properly rewritten by Stingray in its slave of Ultima V under whdload.

[StingRay]

I actually only added 68000 quitkey support, the keyboard routine itself was rewritten/patched by Dark Angel.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by StingRay

I actually only added 68000 quitkey support, the keyboard routine itself was rewritten/patched by Dark Angel.

can you make an ADF version of the game with fixed keyboard support ?

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by hawkman

My question, is there any solution to the control situation on the Amiga? Or do I have to give up and play in on DOS? (I can actually do that on the A2000 with the bridgeboard)

Solution is already mentioned in the thread, but...


IMHO the Amiga version of U5 was kind of a disappointment. My favorite version is actually the C128 version (well, C64 version, but C128 enables music).



The music on the Amiga version is just the same tune over and over and over and it gets old very quickly. On the C128 you get many different songs.