Akalaupdate: Pix has updated the patcher again, this time to add support for the latest Forgotten World patch (among other things):

It’s only been 2 days since the last one but I was persuaded that there was a need for Ultima 9 support and have uploaded a new version of the Ultima Patcher. This adds the new Forgotten World mod, as well as an easier way to change screen resolution and swap between Glide/D3D. I’ve also put in the monster/economy and dialog patches which people may or may not prefer to the vanilla experience.

I’ve updated the download available below and on the various game-specific subdomains; grab it from where you will!

Original post: Pix reports that he has updated his patching utility for the Ultima games:

This doesn’t add Ultima 9 patching but does add easy MT-32 emulation for the remainder of the relevant games (Ultima 6, 7, Serpent Isle and Underworld 2). You will still need to bring your own MT-32 ROM’s however.

There are a couple of bug fixes as the previous build didn’t always allow users to change the sound settings in UW1 & 2. Also patching UW1 to use MT-32 would break UW2 since they shared a copy of DOSBox.

One thing to note, because of these shared copies of DOSBox if you add MT-32 support for any game that was installed with another title in the same package you will also add it to that other title. i.e. installing MT-32 support for UW1 installs it for UW2 and so on. I’ve attempted to allow for all possible combinations of patches in these situations and apply restrictions/fixes as appropriate. Please email or post on here with any bugs or if I’ve missed anything.

Since Pix’s patcher can be downloaded on pretty much any of the Codex’s subdomains (the ones devoted to specific titles, at any rate), I’m not going to bother linking you all to any one download for the utility. You can hit up one of the game-specific subdomains, or just grab it right here:

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Pix also had the following to say about the various Ultima 9 patches that exist:

Unless there is a clear demand, I’ll probably skip Ultima 9. It’s a Windows game so it should be easier for people to patch and I’m not convinced anything further is needed with the work other people are already putting in. Also mods like Beautiful Britannia are fairly big and I don’t want to force people to download anything that size to patch all the older games.

This is probably the correct stance for him to take. Realistically, the GOG version of the game is — from now on — going to be the go-to release of Ultima 9 for pretty much everyone, and it was in fact the GOG-released Ultimas that Pix first built his patcher to support. The GOG version of the game is already patcher to version 1.19f, which is the last patch released for the game prior to Forgotten World’s various bugfixed and updates.

Which, in turn, means there’s no real need for Pix’s patcher to support Ultima 9; the most current available version is already as updated as it needs to be.

That’s not to say, of course, that we shouldn’t all pay rapt attention to Beautiful Britannia and Forgotten World; those are both very interesting and promising projects that are working wonders within the Ultima 9 engine. But I do think Pix is correct to consider them outside of what his patching utility needs to cover.

Update: Sergorn also raises a good point in the comments: the upcoming 1.19H patch from Forgotten World corrects many of the issues that GOG attempted to address by using nGlide, which of course locks the resolution for the game at 800×600 and limits it to 30 frames per second. The 1.19H patch, coupled with a handful of adjustments to the OPTIONS.INI file in the game’s installation directory, corrects many of the same issues…but also allows the game to be run in higher resolutions. Moreover, Forgotten World allows the game to run natively, without the need for any sort of wrapper (which nGlide is).

Which might just be the sort of thing Pix would want to support. If you agree, head on over to his place and drop him a comment about it.