Moon phases and wind directions.

[kensuprime]

For those who have worked with the decompiled binaries... Have you found any indications that Ultima VII keeps track of the phases of the moons or the direction of the wind, as the previous 4 games had done? I know they're not displayed anywhere in the game (actually, isn't there a windsock somewhere? or am I remembering Nelson's kite?)

I'm not just asking stupid questions, I'm noodling over how one would go about making Ultima III in Exult, as was mentioned in this thread last year http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p ... 9#p1754719

I have no intention of actually doing this, but am having fun figuring out how one would go about it. (It's a programmer thing, I guess).

Thanks!

[agentorangeguy]

U7 does not keep track of moon phases or wind direction. The kite was in Rudyom's house i think, and it just has the flying animations.

As for UIII in exult... moon phases and and wind direction could probably be done by usecode, initialized when you start the game. probably script it off the Avatar to run every so often to "switch phases" and usecode eggs to have the moongates only pop up when they are in the proper phases

[kensuprime]

There's also Dawn, which would be impossible to do with Exult. Well, not impossible, but you'd have to add a property to every type of object in the game to indicate which phases of which moon it's visible with (including NPCs!).

However it would work pretty nice with the slower mooncycles, in Ultima V and VI each phase lasted, like, 12 or 24 hours.

I remember back on the Prodigy Ultima boards back in the day, we used to joke about how Dawn could actually be in Ultima VI and no one might ever find it. Little did we know, with 7 and SI they would hide stuff in there that they hoped people never found (could you imagine the backlash if the multi-clicking on sheep thing was found back when SI first came out? There would've been a full-blown moral panic, and some people at Origin would've lost their jobs.)

[Gotcha!]

Both Brion (Nelson is the one in the library) and Rudyom have a kite.
I'm very sure there's no windsock in either TBG or SI.

This thread made me very happy, because I never knew the kite is actually a usable item! Was this also the case in the original game? If so, I can't believe I missed that.

I thought I knew about everything there is to know about these two games, so this made me very happy. Simply wonderful.

[agentorangeguy]

Yes the kite was in the original game too. I've thought about Dawn and how it could be implemented (For reasons.... )and my thought would be a ton of usecode eggs to build the houses piece by piece, and when Dawn isn't there, just have the "Dont Render" flags set on all the npcs. So maybe Dawn would be a suspicious empty space, then when you approach it at the right time, it appears.

or...

On your main map, you would have a clearing where Dawn would be, but on a seperate cloned map, create Dawn in that area. you'd need usecode eggs all over the place on the border of Dawn and inside. When you approach Dawn and the time is right, you'd be teleported into the map where Dawn exists. If you're wandering around Dawn and it's not there anymore, you get teleported basically in teh same X, Y coordinates, but on the "main" map where Dawn doesn't exist. That would probably be the easier route maybe

[kensuprime]

Heh, I figured out how to do it. I was playing Ultima III, and was noticing how a lot of fun in the game comes from figuring out things; if you know what to do the game is simple and not much fun. It reminds me a lot of the way that the original Legend of Zelda is, where once you know you can blow holes in cavern wall, move Maoi, and burn down bushes to reveal secret areas it becomes a lot less fun, because you can't recreate the fun of discovering those when you replay it. (In fact, Ultima III is 3 years older than Zelda and was very popular in Japan. Hmm....)

In any case, the way to hide Dawn is to use the Lost Woods approach. Create a rectangular perimeter around the city with teleport eggs. You do this by designating where the edge of the city would be, and place the eggs two screenwidths beyond that. The teleport eggs will only be inactive when both moons are in New phase. Otherwise the eggs will teleport you to a few paces away from the teleport egg on the opposite side (Northern eggs will telport you to within a few paces of the southern eggs will send you north, etc.)

Not only will this hide Dawn, it will make it very hard for the players to figure out exactly where Dawn should be. And unless they kept whipping out the sextant every couple of steps, they won't figure out what's going on.
Now the trouble is determining what happens when the party leaves. Now, I think Dawn would be like Brigadoon, where if you're inside when it "goes forward", you go along with it. So you'd have to set another layer of eggs inside the perimeter which will change the calendar to send the party into the future when they leave. (Actually does Ultima VII even keep track of dates? I know Ultima V and VI did.)

[Knight Captain]

Yes, U7 keeps track of the game date and time. It also has timer functions, used for things like the wolf cloak being ready.

[agentorangeguy]

That would be an interesting approach for sure, probably much easier than having to rebuild it.

[Knight Captain]

Is there a canonical count of hours per each moon?

[kensuprime]

According to the Ultima III map, Trammel has a period of 48 days, and Felluca 16 days (which corresponds to the in-game logic of the left moon changing phase for every three changes of the right moon).
I suspect they kept it as 24 hours in Ultima V and VI. (In V I think it's only Felluca that matters, since every gate appears at night. In VI they changed it so that the moon which is highest in the sky determines the destination.)

[kensuprime]

Sorry, that was supposed to be 24 for Felluca, 72 for Trammel.

[Dominus]

and I presume hours and not days...