Integrated journal

[ShadowChaser]

Has anyone thought about providing the ability to write notes in a journal, right in exult?

Alot of 'hardcore' Ultima people keep journals, but I always end up loosing the papers all over the house. Sure would be nice to keep notes right in exult itself...

I also noticed a bug with the 1.1 branch, if you load serpent isle at the beginning and run as fast as you can south, you get past the area where the monks appear and the world looks strange - the ground is mostly water and there is a stair in the mountain. If you climb the stairs really fast, the mountain reappears and you end up stuck there!

[wjp]

I think Jeff fixed this bug yesterday.

[artaxerxes]

integrated journal sounds like a nice idea. I don't think it would be technically impossible either.

As for keeping a journal, you're right on! I probably still have some old pocket notebooks in cartons at my parents' place containing clues, missions and notes from ultima 3 to ultima 8.

Artaxerxes

[drcode]

That would be a nice feature.

[Annorax]

That sounds like a great idea.

[Soul]

Heh... on a side note... the map isn't actually "strange" - It is a different map.

The map has two (actually, two and a half, but enough of that) "coastal" pieces - One of them is the intro map piece. I discovered this when trying to escape the teleport storm in the original.

The first map piece that you land on is nearly identical to the other, you are teleported to the other at the end of the teleport storm. I noticed this by placing certain objects on the ground over and over and noticing how when there was a certain "pause" in the game that the objects dissapeared - regardless of where they were. So on instinct, I started a new game and instead of heading south, I killed enough rabbits to make a rabbit meat stairway to heaven - It takes 10 total, and climbed up the mountain.

Heading east resulted in a cutoff mountain that was put directly into the sea, at certain points I could see another coastal shore.

If you hug the east side (the water/mountain break) you can head south and avoid the teleport storm. You will fnd a stairway and an infinity bow. If you head back up the stairs and hug the east side again you will probably find that the rabbit meat decayed. If you head north up the grassy area you will hit the monks if you backtrack a bit.

This is the reason you can't stash items in the first area then head back and retrieve them later - they are completely different areas!

The first map is "impartial" because you only need a small chunk for it. IMO it was just a bit of lazy design... they could have done it much better and saved themselves a good chunk of map.

SI map is littered ilke this however - the "ocean" is actually full of dungeons and other special areas.

[Wizardry Dragon]

...or you could just do it the easy way and use Exult's teleporter

~ Wizardry Dragon
"Not sea shanty again!"

[EvilElk]

I don't know. There's something nice about having sheets of loose paper around your chair. It means that occasionally you hear a name or something and go "Aha! I know it's was here somewhere..." and end up wading through piles of notes. It feels more realistic. Having a journal makes you a bit too omniscient as it means you'll never have to remember anything. YMMV.

I still have my notes from U6 and U7 filed away somewhere... oh those hand drawn dungeon maps

[artaxerxes]

then don't use the feature and keep your papers! Noone is forcing you to use it just as noone is forcing you to have papeldoll support for BG.

Artaxerxes

[Wizardry Dragon]

Maybe writable books? That could serve the same purpose and let you get original too.

You wouldn't have to make existing books writable, but to have an item that is a writable book would be cool

~ Wizardry Dragon
"Not sea shanty again!"

[Ezric]

A writable book would be pretty slick, but any kind of journal would be nice.

[Skutarth]

I'm signing this petition. I've gotten stuck so many times by forgetting clues. I had to start over repeatedly because I refuse to use a walkthrough!

[Wizardry Dragon]

I've been fooling around in Usecode trying to make a book writable.

So far I can let you write the first couple of pages, but I need to come up with some way to save it

~ Wizardry Dragon

[Colourless]

You will have to make modifications to exult to manage it.

[Skutarth]

Or you can just save it to a text file...

[drcode]

Thinking of it that way, you could simply run Exult in a Window and have a text-editor open in another window.

To have an >integrated< journal, you'd need to add some text-editing code to Exult. I'd guess that the rendering could be done on a book or scroll.

[Soul]

Hello, it is called notepad.exe

[wjp]

notepad.exe? Hm, I don't seem to have that

[drcode]

I thought it was spelled "emacs":-)

[Soul]

where I come from we actually call it PICO

[Skutarth]

"Hello, it is called notepad.exe"

I got news, Soul, not all people own Windows. That's because it sucks. Yeah, I'm just forced to use it because most commercial things are for Windows. Windows is the best for software support, which sucks. What I wouldn't give to have the same software support in OS X or any variation of Linux. This is why XWindows (Linux variation that simulates Windows 95) isn't as popular as Windows XP. So, these people have other programs than notepad. It would actually be much more convenient and beneficial.

Good luck to you, Wizardry Dragon! I will surely use what you develope.

[wjp]

> XWindows (Linux variation that simulates Windows 95)

uh?

[Skutarth]

What do you mean, "uh?"?

[drk]

uhm, there's versions of Xwindows.. or something similar.. that simulate windows ME.. my dad uses it under his redhat.. he beta tests it.. if ya want i can find the links for it.. there's also a windows emulator under linux that can run win 2k, xp, me, 98 se, 98, and 95 programs without problems and without having a full copy of windows installed.. they cant run the higher end direct x but they can run 7 i think..

[artaxerxes]

I tried as hard as I could to ignore the comment you said, of fear of sounding condescendant, but I can't hold it anymore.... sorry!

There is no connections at all between Xwindow and Win9x or whatever.

Xwindow is a technology to draw coloured boxes on a screen, regardless of where the screen is (could be local or across the world) compared to who asks to draw the box.
On top of Xwindow, there is a window manager, which will put (possibly) nice little borders around the coloured boxes so you can resize them or move them around. Some even add useful stuff like minimizing/maximizing.
On top of a window manager, there can be a desktop/filemanager which could give you nice tools like icons to click on, taskbars, virtual desktops etc.

Window9x or whatever merge the 3 concepts into one.
There is no Xwindow that looks like Win9X. At best, there is a desktop/filemanager that looks like Win9x and even that, I wouldn't say too loud.

Artaxerxes

[DirtyHairy]

What drk means is possibly win4lin, which emulates the dos layer which win95 through ME run on and therefore can run these systems windowed... As Artaxerxes said: Xwindows got absolutely nothing to do with M$-Windows.

[Skutarth]

Okay, this is going off-topic. Back to the subject!

[artaxerxes]

no, no... let's finish it off while it's still in the egg.

So, "XWindows (Linux variation that simulates Windows 95)".
Xwindow is a added set of programs that enable GUIs for Linux (and actually many other Un*xes). The one usually put in Linux distributions is one called XFree86, which is at version 4 now. In itself, Xwindow is at version 11, revision 6 (IIRC).

"there's also a windows emulator under linux that can run win 2k, xp, me, 98 se, 98, and 95 programs without problems and without having a full copy of windows installed".
This would be Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) which is a set of libraries that offer dos, win16 and win32 applications a way to work on Linux. For instance, whenever a win app calls for "show a diag box saying bla", wine will translate this call into sth Linux (and Xwindow/window manager/desktop) can do.

Otherwise, an integrated journal is indeed an excellent idea!
Artaxerxes

[Skutarth]

I get the point! YOUR job is to say "stay on topic".

[Wizardry Dragon]

All you would need to do is make something that lets you have dynamic usecode

(and I'm sure some of you dev's are saying sarcastically "That's all?")

~ Wizardry Dragon

[Wizardry Dragon]

I figured out how we can do this!

Just have the function able to load and save text to a file and display that text in a book gump. The hard part is actually making the text editable in game but its not impossible.

~ Wizardry Dragon

[Soul]

Skutarth :


Your point? I use many, many operating systems, my primary machines running Gentoo Linux (the real mans linux) and Slackware. I was being coy to make a point, that there are plenty of useful utilities that would work just as well as an integrated journal. No need to get uppity or cocky about it.

[Wizardry Dragon]

It would be a nifty feature though. File under "Cool but not needed"

With file_write and file_read functions in usecode it would be really simple to implement in my opinion

~ Wizardry Dragon

[esw]

I just played through BG.. all the way through, for my first time. Without keeping notes in notepad, I would have had no hope of finishing without a walkthrough. Plus by keeping a journal you don't feel like"cheating". OK, I looked at a walkthrough once or twice..

Having the journal in Exult would be a nice feature, I like the idea of a writeable book Or, a writeable scroll! Sure you can minimize exult and use a text editor, but having it integrated would just be cool.

[Wizardry Dragon]

And it would be neat for other things too. You could become a great Britannian writer ... make Iolo jealous

~ Wizardry Dragon

[Soul]

Iolo has no reason to be jealous... he just blasts you in the back with a triple crossbow once or twice.