Ultima VII: The Black Gate / Serpent Isle (Exult)

Games: Ultima VII: The Black Gate → (DOS, 1992) · Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle → (DOS, 1993)

Exult: a new engine for Ultima VII, written in C++ with SDL, that uses the original data and graphics files of the game, a DOS title with a very nonstandard memory manager that is hard to run on current computers. It fully supports The Black Gate and Serpent Isle, both of which can be finished, their Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed add-ons, and the Serpent Isle beta. It adds any resolution with scalers up to 8x, a game area larger than the original 320×200, Serpent Isle’s paperdoll in Black Gate too, a shortcut bar, combat options, and MIDI music through a real device, FluidSynth, an emulated MT-32, or FM synthesis. Since 1.8 it plays Serpent Isle’s long intro, which Origin cut down to save floppy disks. It includes Exult Studio, an editor for making mods, and the Windows installer offers to install some, such as Keyring or the Ultima VI remake made by other fans. There are builds for Windows, macOS, and Android, and on Linux it’s on Flatpak. The latest stable release is 1.12.1 (January 8); 1.13 snapshots, already on SDL3, come out often, the latest on October 21. The repository includes that intro, restored from an old recording (about 10 MB of animations), and, in its documentation, a disassembly of Black Gate’s usecode, the code behind the game’s scripts and dialogue (about 6 MB). Separately, its website offers as optional downloads the game’s music recorded on a Roland MT-32 and its sound effects recorded on a Sound Blaster and on an MT-32, which the Windows installer can download.

You needThe files from your own copy of Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, or both, already installed (the GOG, CD-ROM, and floppy versions all work), without mixing one game’s files with the other’s; the Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed add-ons are optional. For the emulated MT-32, the ROMs from your own MT-32 or CM-32L. Plus Windows 7 or later, macOS 10.12 or later (snapshots need 10.15), Linux, Android, or iOS.

How it gets to PC

Fan reimplementation

Console

MS-DOS

Original studio

Origin Systems

Year

1992

Author

exult

Stars

702

Last activity

2026-10-30 · 1 day ago

Latest version

v1.12.1 · 2026-01-08

License

GPL-2.0

Language

C++

Ultima VII: The Black Gate / Serpent Isle (Ultima7_Decomp) See all →

Ultima VII: The Black Gate / Serpent Isle (Ultima7_Decomp) See all →