Disabling the Die-Off in SI?

[Sir Gareheart]

You know I played the original series and found more plot holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. I just downloaded Exult again for the first time in many years to replay the games with the mods; but after seeing this thread, and knowing how EA hacked the original story-line to bits for the sake of time and greed; I think I am going to wait until you complete your Herculean task of putting the original plot back together. I always hated the fact they killed everyone or that Harna or Ernesto, Ducio etc. acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, even though everyone in their respective towns had been hacked to pieces.

Kudos to you Knight for putting in so much effort. The die hard Ultima fans like myself are going to love your mod. I wish I was literate in regards to coding because as a writer I would love to help out with conversations and plot twists.

Hail to Thee!

[Dominus]

I think you could help anyway with writing actual conversations and collaborating with the storyline, without having to code that in yourself.

[Knight Captain]

On the coding difficulty scale, conversations are quite easy. I've sent an email to thee, Sir Gareheart. The largest UX limitation is with the length of text that neatly fits in a single conversation click-line, being about 150-160 characters. It's not a formal rule, but I believe it looks better.

I'm still in the storyboarding phase but have some solid ideas that I think will be well received. Since we know the least of the intended plot for Fawn I've been writing the most for it lately. To a certain degree I am hesitant to share specifics because I want it to have unexpected surprises to everyone.

Most of the now-surviving NPCs will have new Usecode function numbers to simplify coding for the mod.

With the early stage of development I don't have much in the way of immediate needs. Books to add color would be a good start.

[agentorangeguy]

If i'm not mistaken, didn't the original plot have sort of a die off but not EVERYONE would be wiped out? I vaguely remember seeing something about Moonshade cutscenes where you'd walk in on anti-Shamino publicly executing someone (Bucia? or it took place in her shop?) for breaking his rules.

Monitor had the totem animal thing which was sort of cool I guess but maybe that could be improved somehow... (perhaps a pocket of resistance somewhere?)

[Knight Captain]

Pothos.

In Monitor you could talk to the animals, who would be happy with their rightful new lives.

[Knight Captain]

Part of my goal is to keep with the spirit of the planned plot without being held hostage to it. The released game did not line up with leaked plans pre-Banes, so the exact final pre-cut plans may never be fully revealed. And many of you may have already read those plans, so I want you to be surprised and shocked when you play this mod.

Latest work has been on expanding the ideas for Mad Iolo's Fawn, and converting / changing Batlin's death scene so new improvements can be added.

I've also created a new shape or two, and will be adding more palette swaps as well.

If anyone has any artwork, book text, or other contributions, pleae email them. I'd love to include things like Savage Empire mod art, or anything else that others can also build off of later.

And I intend to add a way to Claw, so the canonical shape artwork can be seen. Map edits will be included as well to fit the plot and map.

I may also add a second layer to Moonshade.

[Knight Captain]

A few technical notes:

Even in DOSbox the original game engine is visibility slower in Fawn, so it would make sense that Moonshade's second layer would have been removed. The Beta doesn't show much more though. Fortunately Exult handles the higher object count well.

There's not much more of post-Banes plot that I've found in the release Usecode. I may need to recheck the Beta, but didn't see much different there.

The original Usecode used multiple autonumber groups, so many functions have different numbers if not tied to a shape, NPC, or egg.

There's two different sprites in the Beta, and the Blink effect has a different color to the non-blue parts. It should be possible to add new sprites.

[Lavacopter]

I did spot a couple beta exclusive post-bane scripts.

MONITOR_07DD
This is super neat, this script paralyzes any npc/monster, /except/ bears, wolves, and leopards that have their ID set. In that case, the first time you hit one with the script, it sets the flag $firstsaved, doing it again sets $secondsaved, and if you do it a third time Anti-Dupre teleports to you and says "Puny mortal!"

MONITOR_08D6
Anti-Dupre attacks a bear. Then it calls:

MONITOR_07DC
This script handles stuff for the Fawn trial and the Moonshade banquet, but has an extra bit in the beta that looks to be Anti-Dupre killing the bear. I can't get these two to work, it just gives the error about not finding a bear no matter what.

[Knight Captain]

Great finds, Lavacopter!

[Knight Captain]

Delin may find safety during Mad Iolo's reign of Insanity in Fawn.


Mad Iolo's Throne Room:

[Gotcha!]

Nice teasers!

[Francois424]

Man this is looking awesome. Definitely will be worth playing (to be fair the last few acts of Serpent Isle isn't exactly interesting IMHO, so this will be a nice improvement). I just finished Isle of the Crypts and I just cant push myself to play anymore... lol.

[Gotcha!]

@Francois424: I feel the same. Of the countless times I've played through the game, every time I arrive at the Wall of Lights I feel kind of sad, knowing the rest of the game will be far less entertaining.
Sure, there are still plenty of nice places to visit, but knowing 90% of the island's inhabitants are dead is such a drag.

Really looking forward to this.

[Knight Captain]

Thank you! There will be new shapes included as well:



statue base
plant monster
chaos monster
wisp
orb with face
cold strike - It doesn't make sense a cold spell would use a red fireball, does it?
paladin in blue and green - Matches up nicely with Elissa's blue and green dress.
paladin in white and green - So Caladin wears his city's colors, also corrects cloth color inconsistencies.
female Ophidian soldier
red bear, cave bear, and black bear - All to help differentiate the animals in Monitor.

While I have shared some of these images before, these are now all packaged in shareable SHP format. More to come!

[Knight Captain]

Someone has survived the attack on the Seminarium:

[Gotcha!]

Whoever made that blockade must have super human strength. Not even a 30-strength Avatar can move them!
I'm guessing Master Ducio, since he should have plenty of muscles from all that smithing. (Or has he become weak thanks to his student and automatons doing all the work?)