Is it possible yet to create maps with Exult?

Toasterthief B. Previtera · Wed Apr 28, 2004 11:04 am

For years I've wanted to essentially create another Ultima game using the U7 engine. I figure the first step in doing this would be to learn how to make actual maps. Does exult (or the studio) make this possible?

Radu · Post by **Radu** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 1:24 pm

I didn't try it, but from the documentation, and the discussions on this forum, it is possible to make your very own games, this including making new maps, new art, new plots, etc.

Post by **drcode** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:07 pm

It's possible, but the method can be a little rough. There's a guide in our 'docs' directory called 'newgame.txt'. Note that it's two years old, so it may be a bit out-of-date.

Post by **artaxerxes** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 5:00 am

There is a very quick way to make a u7map, but that's just for the chunks (that is, it won't put items on your map). Using that method, you can get a full u7map with roads, beaches, forests, mountain ranges etc in no time.

Here is the steps to take:
* using your favorite image manipulation program, create a GIF (or BMP) file with the following dimensions: 192x192
* edit it, making it look like a rough map of your game. Use colours that make sense to you. Maybe blue for water, green for forest, gray or brown for roads, some kind of gray for mountains etc.
* Once you are done making your map, write on paper what colour is for what kind of terrain and browse the u7chunks file using exult studio to find out the chunk number that match your kinds of terrain.
* When you have your association colour chunk number, you can use "mockup" (in the CVS under mapedit/tools/mockup) to convert a 192x192 GIF (or BMP) into a u7map.
* you're done!

Also, to help in the process, you could use "smooth" (in the CVS under mapedit/tools/smooth) to process the image before using mockup.
So far, 3 kinds of processing functions exists:
* random: pick a colour in the map and it will alter every instance of it to be another colour (then add to that colour to the association colour chunk number). Very useful for forests for instance.
* streamline: designate a colour to be a road or any kind of stream (like a river) and instruct smooth about what colour to use when the stream is turning or branching. Then update the association colour chunk number to use the right chunk. Very useful for roads.
* smooth (I should rename that one!): makes transitions between 2 kinds of zones: for instance, make a beach between the sea and the land. Pick a colour that represent a zone, pick another that represent the other zone and pick the colour to designate the different way they could meet and update the association colour chunk number accordingly. Works well.

In the CVS, you'll find examples and hopefully a good README to explain what to do and what's going on.

Post a message here if you want to learn more.

Artaxerxes

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:49 am

That can get you the rough geography, and then you can use ExultStudio to add items and NPCs

- Wizardry Dragon

Dragon-Dreams · Post by **Dragon-Dreams** » Sun May 02, 2004 1:23 am

How easy is the whole process to accomplish? I can imagine it would be an incredibly hard feat to pull off.
Also, are there any templates showing this off you may have made?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 7:28 am

I don't think it's really *hard*, just really *long*

It can be time-consuming, but it's fairly straightforward.

Now, usecoding the scripts in, that's another story

- Wizardry Dragon

Mighty Dog · Post by **Mighty Dog** » Sun May 02, 2004 10:47 am

I've been adding a city to the Serpent ISle Map that takes over the sections used for the begininging of the game, its a decnet size. I'm not even done with tbe construction. But it does take a while, especially to get the shoreline just right width if your being picky and making a bay.

My advice is before you undertake such a task as doing an entire map, is to make sure you group you housing, road, and path pieces in advance. I would have probly gotten done 3 times faster if i had known this when i started. Also at least for si I suggest making a blank wood floor chunk, helps a lot when making custom buildings. Some people would also say to setup a combo for roofs (I myself like building every roof by hand). It also may be a wise idea to group items for certain areas, cause it sucks trying to find an item especially with the names some of them are listed as under Exult Studio

Overall, making a map isn't difficulty or too time consuming if you have a good idea of how it all should look, its decorating the buildings, making touches to the land so it appers more natural, placing NPCs, Placing Eggs, and the longest or shortest part depending on the # of NPC's you do, scripting everything.

One last tip, unless you have a very good plan, do your map like Black Gater, very little teleporting, so no basements or multilevel caves unles necessary.

And a plea to the Exult Staff, this is the reason i would like to have some for of multi-player access, so you can have two people working on a map at the same time, get things done much quicker.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 11:00 am

Multilevel castles are possible without much hassle. You jsut have to be sure to plan it out well beforehand.

It would really help if I could set the schedules' Z flag! Also, it would be cool to have no limit on the Z, to make 4 or 5 level castles. Not a requirement by any means, but one of those things that would be cool.

Scripting is the part I find the hardest, but that's only me.

- Wizardry Dragon

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 11:25 am

Hrrmph. Finally decided to try making an entirely new map, followed the instructions to the letter, but I cant get Exult Studio to read the newly created datafiles at all, nor can I get Exult to run with the newly created files.

I tried this under BG and SI, though that shouldn't matter. This is with the snapshot as of Apr 26th 04.

- Wizardry Dragon

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 11:28 am

Scratch that, if I set it to the default game in Exult Studio it works, but not other wise.

Exult still doesn't load it.

- Wizardry Dragon

Post by **Dominus** » Sun May 02, 2004 11:35 am

I was not yet able to do this in Windows. Supposedly it works on linux (for Jeff it works and I think for Artaxerxes) but for Windows I think it is buggy somehow.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 11:35 am

Seems to be a problem with the --game arugment. Doesn't like "ultima7", "blackgate", or "serpent" either.

Am I doing something wrong?

- Wizardry Dragon

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 02, 2004 5:47 pm

Okay, it should be serpentisle to load serpent isle, but still no luck.

- Wizardry Dragon

Post by **artaxerxes** » Mon May 03, 2004 4:45 am

Here are the relevant part of my exult.cfg file:

*** cut ***

*** cut ***

/home/aurelien/jeux/century

/home/aurelien/.exult/century/gamedat

/home/aurelien/.exult/century

/home/aurelien/jeux/century/patch

yes

(default)

1

*** cut ***

*** cut ***

*** cut ***

serpentisle

gimp-remote -n

787

641

0

To start the game, I launch:
$ exult --game century

And off I go.

Artaxerxes

Post by **drcode** » Mon May 03, 2004 7:02 am

This is how I recall it should work:

In ES, you choose the menu entry to create a new game, and you end up giving a direcory name, say, "mygame".

When you start Exult, you say "exult --game mygame --nomenu". If it doesn't start, or crashes right away, there should be something usefule in stderr.txt or stdout.txt about files that are missing.

Mighty Dog: Having a way for two people to work would be a really good feature. I'd guess that the way it would work is to have some sort of "import" or "merge" feature in ES.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 03, 2004 10:39 am

I get:

===========================
An error has occured:
Error opening file .\static\mainshp.flx
errno: 2
===========================

Which doesn't help me at all.

- Wizardry Dragon

Post by **Dominus** » Mon May 03, 2004 11:17 am

As I said, I'm sure it never worked for Windows users yet. I mentioned this quite some time ago on the ML. I just never opened a proper bug report as the only users who were testing a new game were linux users and it worked for them.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 03, 2004 11:35 am

Well, I'm not on Linux right now, as much as I'd like to be

- Wizardry Dragon

Post by **drcode** » Mon May 03, 2004 1:16 pm

I wonder what's different on Windows. Exult should be failing on "mainshp.flx" if it's trying to run a new game. I'll try to look at this tonight.

Post by **drcode** » Mon May 03, 2004 2:16 pm

^should^shouldn't^

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 03, 2004 2:59 pm

I would appreciate it if you did

- Wizardry Dragon

Post by **drcode** » Mon May 03, 2004 7:35 pm

The key is that you have a section for your new game as in Artaxerxes' example for "", with "" set to "yes". Exult has the following code for showing the top-level menu, which say, in English, "If map-editing and 'mainshp.flx' doesn't exist, then skip the menu stuff."

bool Game::show_menu(bool skip)
{
int menuy = topy+120;
// Brand-new game in development?
if (skip || (is_editing() && !U7exists(MAINSHP_FLX)))
{
bool first = !U7exists(IDENTITY);
if (first)
set_avname("Newbie");
if (!gwin->init_gamedat(first))
return false;
return true;
}

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 03, 2004 7:39 pm

I have that code in, that's the first thing I checked. Still no change.

- Wizardry Dragon

Randolpho · Post by **Randolpho** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:37 pm

I, too, have always wanted to create my own U7 game. The U7 engine is by far my fave.

About that 192x192 gif... is that the maximum size for a map? I'd like to use the U7.5 trick of making multiple levels via hidden teleporters, but still have a decent size landmass.

Post by **drcode** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:47 pm

As soon as we release 1.2 ("real-soon-now"), we'll add support for multiple maps. A lot of it's already done.

Post by **Dominus** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:48 pm

After Exult 1.2 we will have multiple map support, so you can use a whole map (without butchering it the way SI did) and still support many Dungeon levels.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:48 pm

Making "new games" work on Windows would be much appreciated.

- Wizardry Dragon

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Fri May 14, 2004 1:35 am

Ahem... Toaster B. What ?? Half-stolen identity alert!

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Sat May 15, 2004 1:02 pm

That was my first assumption. But then I figured you two were in fact the same person all this time (regardless of your ... different... posting styles) and decided not to ask.

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Sun May 16, 2004 2:29 am

It's weird - I didn't think anyone would ever find any good in stealing my identity... not to mention stealing just *half* of it

ToasterThief v. 5 · Post by **ToasterThief v. 5** » Tue May 18, 2004 3:22 am

Actually, I just forgot my old password and have had to make a new name pretty much each time I post. Figured I'd get an old buddy's attention as well.

painful · Post by **painful** » Tue May 18, 2004 5:45 am

Wasn't this topic about making new worlds/games with Exult Studio and not about someone stealing a freaking name? Nice way to go off topic there ya guys.. No wonder none of us can ever carry on a good Exult editing topic ;/

Hamsandwich Previtera · Tue May 18, 2004 9:03 pm

Yeah, please remain on topic

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 22, 2004 12:14 pm

I'm trying to find out what is causing the problems under Windows and therefore made use of my semi-fresh Suse 9.1 installation.
So far the problems I found on Suse:
- .exult.cfg needs the entry yes for the game to load at all (it will crash on trying to load intro.dat)
- it will crash now on me before actually writing to gamedat:

Exult version 1.1.10rc2
Built at: Feb 29 2004 17:04:00
Compile-time options: HAVE_TIMIDITY_BIN, USE_EXULTSTUDIO, HAVE_ZIP_SUPPORT
Compiler: gcc, version: 3.3.2 20031022 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.2-1)

Platform: Linux version 2.6.4-54.5-default
Exult path settings:
Data : /usr/share/exult
Digital music : /windows/H/Spiele/Exult/data/music

Music player: Internal OGG digital music player
Starting 'Xultima4' game
Game path settings:
Static : /home/whatever/Xultima4/static
Gamedat : /home/whatever/.exult/Xultima4/gamedat
Savegame: /home/whatever/.exult/Xultima4
Patch : /home/whatever/Xultima4/patch

Gamedat identity Xultima4
Warning (map-editing): Couldn't open '/usecode'
Support for SI Paperdolls and Multiracial Avatars in BG is enabled.
Loading /exult_si.flx...
Loading default keybindings
Listening on socket 18
Cheats enabled.
Fatal signal: Floating Point Exception (SDL Parachute Deployed)

Possible problem might be that I just used the fedora-rpm for installing exult+EStudio

Also it might be better to ignore some settings for non-BG/SI games (like multiracial Avatar)

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 22, 2004 12:16 pm

now I'm copying the data to my Windows Exult installation. Let's see what I get there.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 22, 2004 12:53 pm

a windows new game misses the following files compared to linux new game:
/patch/u7chunks
/static/pointers.shp
/static/fonts.vga

(oops the last two are due to me having not the correct cvs stuff where Studio looks for it - caused by a not complete "install" option in the mingw studio-makefile)

Strange. The cvs of the data/estudio/new files is different to the ones I get from linux.

That might be the reason for two "different" crashes when loading up the linux-made new game and loading up the windows-made one:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux made (similar to the errors on running it on linux):
stdout:
(snipped not so important stuff)
Static : e:\Spiele\Exult\Xultima4\static
Gamedat : e:\Spiele\Exult\Xultima4\gamedat
Savegame: e:\Spiele\Exult\Xultima4
Patch : e:\Spiele\Exult\Xultima4\patch

Creating 'gamedat' files.
Support for SI Paperdolls and Multiracial Avatars in BG is enabled.
Loading /exult_si.flx...
Loading default keybindings
Created Pipe for Exult Server
Cheats enabled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows made one:
stdout:
Static : e:\Spiele\Exult\mygame\static
Gamedat : e:\Spiele\Exult\mygame\gamedat
Savegame: e:\Spiele\Exult\mygame
Patch : e:\Spiele\Exult\mygame\patch

Creating 'gamedat' files.
Support for SI Paperdolls and Multiracial Avatars in BG is enabled.
Loading /exult_si.flx..

-------------------------------
stderr for both the same:
Warning (map-editing): Couldn't open '/initgame.dat'
Warning (map-editing): Couldn't open '/usecode'
Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed

(on next start the initgame.dat warning is gone)

So it seems that the window one stops earlier than the linux one...

I made the two "games" availlable on http://members.chello.at/dominus/mapedit.zip so others can compare the differences between the two games (I copies /patch/u7chunks to both games).

Post by **wjp** » Sat May 22, 2004 1:03 pm

Most of the files in data/estudio/new didn't have the binary flag set, but I just fixed that. Does that help any in windows?

Post by **wjp** » Sat May 22, 2004 1:27 pm

...and that division by zero should be gone now too.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 22, 2004 2:12 pm

I'll try tomorrow. Thanks for checking. I suspected non-binary-cvs but when I wrote the above I had to leave the pc.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 22, 2004 3:11 pm

had some time to try now.
Making a new game in Exult running on Windows works now.
Willem, thanks for fixing that.
/patch/u7chunks is not a problem as it is created on first successful run of a game.

Some things that are not good at all:
- I suggest when running Exult with the --game option that Exult should ignore a lot of the gameplay options or use other options (like skip_splash, or face_stats (very annoying)).
- We need "generic" options dialogs. For new games the options dialogs for U7 are not loaded and are just black where they should be.
- A generic "exit game? Yes/No" dialog is needed as well (currently Exult crashes on Alt-x in new games).

I'll try to remember to make proper feature requests for these tomorrrow. Meanwhile I'd like to invite the more graphical talented users to create these generic dialogs

Post by **drcode** » Sat May 22, 2004 7:47 pm

Thanks for figuring that out! And sorry about the non-binary CVS files:-(

I'll also second the request for anyone who wants to contribute art for use in ES new games. Along with the dialogs, it would be nice to have an NPC or two with all 32 frames.

Post by **drcode** » Sat May 22, 2004 8:47 pm

Okay, the Exult will now skip the intro. and face stats. when running an ExultStudio game.

One other thought: The palette I checked in for new games isn't any good, and we should probably replace it with something more usable before much more artwork is done. I could import one of the ones that comes with the Gimp. Or does anyone else have a suggestion? I believe the top 32 colors are used for palette rotation, so the colors for normal artwork have to be below that area (starting with 0xe0).