Black Gate source

[wintermute_turing_ai]

This post is more geared towards Exult developers than anyone else..
Would The Black Gate sourcecode be helpful in developing Exult in the future? Are there plans for developing Exult beyond its current status?

WM.

[Dominus]

I doubt that the sourcecode of BG or SI would be much help now. Most of the stuff is working and needs mostly finetuning. And even if it may seem like it would help, I guess going through the original's code and actually understanding it would require more time and work than the actual benefit. A good example for what I mean is exult's code, for many people even that is too complicated to look into.

That said, I sure would like to have the BG or SI source code

[wintermute_turing_ai]

excellent reply -- thank you. I suspected that Exult was too far along to make BG sourcecode useful. Not to mention that BG is extremely poorly documented. The rumors regarding SI code being lost seem to be completely true however.

Thanks.

[Armchair_Avatar]

The U4, U6 or U8 sources would be very helpful to their respective remake projects, though

[MV]

I feel a few things like combat and party formation would be able to be vastly improved with the sourcecode.

Combat is just painful, and I read a statement about having the party formation the same as the original would require too much work on pathfinding, but, with the source, it should be easier to implement, one would think.

[wjp]

The problem is that our implementation of things is likely going to be very different than the original's. This would probably make it virtually impossible to directly use the original's combat and party formation algorithms.

[Andrea B Previtera]

Pathfinding. Pathfinding. Pathfinding. I would instantaneously unveil the mystery of that extremely smooth pathfinding that managed to run SO fine even on a good old 386 40 mhz (and Origin has never been reknown for optimizations!)

[Kennedy]

I thought that the code for "The Black Gate" was lost as well?

[wintermute_turing_ai]

I apologize for forgetting about this thread this past week...

I agree with wjp that Exult likely employs a "convergent evolution" approach to emulating U7... the end-result is quite similar, but the coding style is likely radically different.

In regards to U4, U6 and U8 source -- I am unsure in regards to U4 and U6, but I do know that U8 source still exists. Last I spoke to a programmer on Tony Zurovec's "Crusader" team, he had the full source; U8's engine was used to drive Crusader: No Remorse (and No Regret). I haven't spoken to him in years however, and I have no idea where he is.

Re: Black Gate code. It being "lost" was an urban myth. It indeed exists in its extremely cryptic and poorly documented glory.

[Armchair_Avatar]

Re: Black Gate code. It being "lost" was an urban myth. It indeed exists in its extremely cryptic and poorly documented glory.

Cool. How did you find out that it still exists?

[Colourless]

I'm sure he has his sources... and I wouldn't expect him to reveal them.

My opinion is, yes it does exist

-Colourless Dragon

[Andrea B Previtera]

> I'm sure he has his sources... and I wouldn't expect him to reveal them.

Heh. Why? I am sure Ultima VII sources contained a number of nifty algorythms, but in the end we're speaking of a ten years old game. Ten years old technology. Ten years old programming techniques (this last point doesn't count too much, but...)

Ahem... except for the darn pathfinding, of course : )
I feel it's like Fermat's Last Theorem: trying to recreeate their pathfinding algorythm we fall into terrible pits leading us to a solution that's probably lenghty, complex, cranky - while mr. Zurovec probably had that little, rare sparkle of intuiton that drove him to the easiest, elegant solution...

[Dominus]

sure it is ten year old technology but still it is copyrighted and you might take a look at it but legally you would not be able to use that nifty pathfinding algorythm...
Or of course even give the code out of your hands....

[Telemachos]

wintermute:
You wouldn't be thinking of Jason Ely would you? I talked to him a few years ago about the U8 memory management system and I got the impression he still had the code He's doing his own thing now at dransik.com

- Tele

[Andrea B Previtera]

At last, ID software released the Doom sources because the "Doomers" were requesting them, everyone was trying to perform retroengineering on Doom, and after 6 years it was a seriously surpassed game.

Ultima VII meets all those requirements... except one: you Exult coders are the only serious retroengineers of the game! There's much hype around Ultima, but around it's technology. If so, maybe sooner or later Origin would drop the sources free.

Maybe.

[drcode]

Origin talked about releasing the source a few years ago, when Ultima 9 came out. Then they had their big layoff; and it seems like the people left only care about online games.

[wintermute_turing_ai]

Tele: indeed I am speaking of Jason Ely. He managed to snag a sizable chunk of source from OSI when he finally left. I have reason to believe he he 'borrowed' quite a bit more than just U8 I e-mailed him once a few months ago, asking the same questions, and he chose not to reply unfortunately.

Andrea: Indeed I agree. Plug'n'pray is no way to go about clean and robust coding.

Re: copyrighting. This is why the code cannot be released in its present form. All it would take would be permission from EA. But you just try passing that one by their law team ...
I assume RG would be willing to give the go-ahead, but he has long departed from what used to be OSI, and I assume no longer has the power to make such decisions.

//ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
// Ultima VII
// Module ACTIONQ.C
// Begun 4/3/91 by Ken Demarest
// (C) 1991 Origin Systems
//ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ

The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be, indeed.

[Armchair_Avatar]

it seems like the people left only care about online games.

All the more reason for them to release the source for an old offline game

[Colourless]

Ely, I'm pretty damn sure has the sources to U8 , No Remorse and No Regret at least. He probably has more.

[Kennedy]

> Ely, I'm pretty damn sure has the sources to U8 , No Remorse and No Regret at least. He probably has more.

He wouldn't by any chance have any of the files associated with "the Lost Vale"? It would be nice if there were more than just the screenshots.

[wintermute_turing_ai]

Like I said -- I'm not sure what Jason took home with him, but from what I heard from another person, it was a sizeable chunk

Many many Origin folk have copies of The Lost Vale source. One person in particular has 2 diskettes that contain all that ever existed of LV. The game was about 30% complete, very buggy, and required a lot of modification before it would even run without crashing. LV does exist, and people do have it. They just can't give it up for the aforementioned reasons.