New Exult patch available: Quests and Interactions

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:08 am

Hi all,
I have just released a new usecode patch for Exult 1.2/1.4.x. Well, two patches, technically:

Quests and Interactions
-------------------------------
This patch adds a bunch of new item interactions and creature behaviours (Milk cows! Churn butter! Grind wheat! And more!) It also adds a brand-new quest, and a new way to make money through servile labour. See the readme file inside the patch for details.

Get the patch from: http://www.washboardabs.net/exult/quest ... ctions.zip (294kb)

NOTE: Because this adds new objects to the gameworld, you will need to start a new game for the quest to work properly.

Just Plain Interactions
----------------------------
This contains just the item interactions from the above patch, without the extra quests or conversation dialogue, for purists. There is still some added dialogue, but it's item-related rather than part of conversations.

Get the patch from: http://www.washboardabs.net/exult/interactions.zip (63kb)

This has one main advantage over the first patch: it's compatible with your current savegames, since it doesn't add any new objects to the world.

---------------
These patches are beta-quality. Everything works, but there's probably bugs, which being good people you will write and tell me about

I'd also love to know what you think about the features and added dialogue themselves, and any improvements/corrections/additions you think would like. I shall be adding more to them in future.

I'm also on the lookout for better names for the patches

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:13 am

Just to clarify: This patch is for the Black Gate only, and is not compatible with the Serpent Isle. Nor will it be, at least not by my hand (AFAIK Serpent Isle removed most of the objects this patch operates on anyway).

Both patches also contain the source for all the usecode. In fact, the header files are written to provide a good basis for your own usecode projects, with a full set of constant declarations and new generic functions which should come in handy.

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 6:53 am

Hi Alun,

That sounds excellent, I'm definately going to try it out (can't right now, at home and don't have Exult/U7 here).

I'm caught between using Black Gate and Serpent's Isle myself. Black Gate was always my favourite (felt more like a whole world) but Serpent Isle has a few Usecode extras that I'm drawn to like SI_run_path_usecode to move NPCs - might have mixed this one up a bit, still learning (BG has a version but I've heard it only works for the Avatar).

Would you add them to ES Guides? It has a File Repository and your work would make a great start for the site (download speeds are very good too). Feel free to link to it once you upload there too (if you do

.

Take care,

Tawn

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 7:02 am

Sorry Alun, hadn't realised you already submitted them.

Ok, all approved and ready.

Take care,

Tawn

Tristan de Inés · Post by **Tristan de Inés** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:50 am

Wow, this is soooo cool....

How long did it take you to make?

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:20 am

Thanks for getting those uploads approved, Tawn! You can now view and download the patches from ES Guides at:
Quests and Interactions:
http://www.wiredentertainment.net/exult ... ilecatid=2
Just Interactions:
http://www.wiredentertainment.net/exult ... ilecatid=3

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:24 am

Tawn: Yeah, I must say I've been casting a bit of an envious eye at some of SI's available intrinsics, as BG's has some quite glaring omissions. For that matter so does SI's I suppose - hopefully if more people start coding in Exult, then more usecode features can be thought up and and added.

BG's world took me much more than SI's did as well - and the setting is so much more at home to just-plain-screwing around stuff, like slumming it in Britain and making a living baking bread

I think most of the interactions in this patch would just seem out of place in SI.

Tristan: I've been working on it off and on for about 5 weeks I think. There's a lot of code there, but most of it is just reimplementations of decompiled original functions, in order to add in the tidbits of extra behaviour and conversations that were needed.

Post by **drcode** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:41 pm

You know, it wouldn't be that hard for us to make some of SI's intrinsics available to BG.

Ethan · Post by **Ethan** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:34 pm

How long did it take to implement the quest by itself? I don't have coding knowledge, but I think it'd be a lot of fun to write quests, etc.

Ethan

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 12:15 am

Ohhh SI Intrinsics in BG????

That would be awesome!!!!

I'm especially looking for ways to control NPCs (for scenes and such), so the likes of si_path_run_usecode would be great to have in BG.

Take care,

Tawn

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 12:44 am

Ethan: The quest took quite a while, since it involved new dialogue for 5 NPCs and the conversation/egg logic required to keep track of the quest state was quite complex. The more factors in your quest, the longer it will take to write, the more flags it will need and the more that can go wrong - this is probably why a lot of the dialogue for the original quests simply ignored the fact that you completed them, because writing the code to hide every response was too much like hard work

One Exult change I would like is to support global flags higher than 1024, just like supporting shapes higher than 1024 (how's that going, by the way?). At the moment the BG questflags go up to 836. While 188 flags seems like plenty, it's handy to give quests certain offsets (e.g. quest X is from 0x850-0x870) to keep things organised.
Static function variables would alleviate this, but they're buggy at the moment (haven't quite tracked down the problem though).

Post by **wjp** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:52 am

Alun:
#include only works in ucc currently if the line the #include is on is terminated by an endline. If you put an #include on the last line and fail to end the file with an endline, the #include will get skipped.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 3:03 am

Tawn and Alun: When making patches for BG and SI there is a vital warning you should add.
The patches might only work correctly for the full versions of the games with the add-ons integrated. For example the Sourceforge Island patch is only for BG+FoV and won't work for BG without FoV.

Beryllium · Post by **Beryllium** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 3:08 am

The development and release of this patch is really excellent news. Could it be the start of a whole new Exult Mods movement..... a new section to be added to the site for mods and additions to the basic BG/SI game.

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 4:00 am

Hi Dom,

I've added a "warning" to the Downloads section of the File Repository.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Tawn

Post by **Dominus** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:08 am

Some more notes on the Exult Studio Guide. Seems there is the need to differ between patches and full games. For example the above patches by Alun are found in full games.
I'd say patches are using the original U7 games and only add to the story and/or objects. Full games don't make use of the original usecode and other elements (and the warning should be changed, that full games that make use of U7 files, should specify of which version they used those).

Another notice is that patches and full games are most likely NOT working with official releases. For example if SI intrinsics get added to BG and a patch makes use of those intrinsics, an old version of Exult will probably crash. So snapshots are the only ones that have a chance of working correctly (for Windows download the snapshot binary, for other systems, grab the cvs snapshot and build Exult yourself).

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 8:47 am

Hi Dom,

I took down the whole site and updated to the latest version of Mambo. When I uploaded the files again I picked the wrong category.

It's fixed now.

I understand about the snapshots being the only ones that work, but I would really like to get some SI Intrinsics into BG.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 9:47 am

sure, I wouldn't mind those as well (along with an example usecode for scripted events...). I just meant that an additional note on the download pagewould be best so people don't wonder why the release versions (might) crash on trying to play the patch.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:22 am

Actually those two patches are compatible with Exult 1.2 as well as the 1.4 snapshots, and there was a note to that effect in the file descriptions, but they got cut off by the wordlimit. Will correct those soon (as soon as I get Mambo's ways figured out

Could we move the discussion about how patches should be handled in general to a thread of its own? I'd prefer some feedback about the content of these patches themselves O:)

Tawn · Post by **Tawn** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:02 pm

Heh, sorry about that Alun.

Going to install the patches tomorrow myself, looking forward to it.

Would it be ok to include this patch as part of my own game (which is in it's infancy)? Or indeed for others to do so? With the proper acknowledgements of course

Gruck, curiousis! · Post by **Gruck, curiousis!** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:31 pm

I like the patch, my only problem is I seem to be able to shear the same sheep over and over again despite what sheep.uc tells me.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:04 am

Tawn, I'd be very happy for others to include this patch in their own work, and put a bit in the readme about reuse.

Gruck - thanks for noticing that, it appears the line that flags a sheep as sheared got deleted. I'll release a slightly-updated version soonish that fixes this and a few other bugs that crept in (like sewing always requiring you to be carrying a bale of wool).

PanSola · Post by **PanSola** » Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:30 pm

totally OT, but much earlier in this thread I noticed someone said "at home and don't have Exult/U7 here".

That, greatly amused me (-:

Shaun · Post by **Shaun** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:38 am

That looks great! I had an idea for a future patch, even though I have zero know-how to make it happen, maybe one of you could take this one up.

I have always thought it strange that after Alagner was killed no one on New Magincia even acknowledged it! Seeing as how he is probably the island's most notable resident, and the whole town has probably less than 10 inhabitants, I found that odd. Maybe some dialogue could be added to the NPCs on New Magincia to deal with this.

Another idea is the ability to sell jewlery in SI. Would it be possible to make jewlery a sellable item in BG?

What kind of work is involved in making new items, or in transplanting things from Serpent Isle over to Black Gate? One thing that has always struck me is the conspicuous absence of goblins in BG. Maybe someone could just shuffle some over from SI into BG. Bears and boars would be cool just to make the wilds richer. Plus, new foes! I always thought that BG was technically a pretty easy game. Why not make more enemies lurking around? The "highwayman" character (used for one NPC in BG) was pretty cool, and totally underused. I mean, it's a "highwayman"! It seems like those guys trying to get you in the wilderness makes more sense than all of the hostile "fighters" and "paladins" you encounter.

Maybe when one kills a rabbit, it could have meat in it. I'm talking specifically those peices of small, ambiguous meat found in the wolf in the Knight's Test in SI.

Keep in mind, I'm a complete layman when it comes to these things! If my ideas are completely untennable, feel free to disregard them totally!

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:47 am

To add animals & monsters you just have to add eggs that spawn them. (not sure how to do this in ES) You can set how many and with what frequency and under what circumstances they appear. You can probably call usecode to do something special too.
I don't know if you could import creatures from SI using just their shapes and known stats, without editing some kind of monster table.

Natreg · Post by **Natreg** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:11 am

totally OT, but... someone knows if the flying Gargoyle is used anywhere in Black Gate? I never found one.

Btw, I hope I can find time this weekend to try this patch

Gruck, curiousis! · Post by **Gruck, curiousis!** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:42 am

Natreg: Spektran's castle has flying gargoyles

Post by **drcode** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:05 pm

Answers to a few questions above:

1024 shape limit: This was removed several weeks ago, though it hasn't had a lot of testing. You should avoid the first several shape #'s after 1023, since SI uses those for the extra Avatar shapes.

1024 flag limit: Still there, but should be easy to extend.

Static variables: I've only tested these a small amount, so let me know of any problems. They should be a nice alternative to the flags.

Post by **drcode** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:57 pm

I finally took a little time to look at some of the code you wrote, and was surprised at how extensive and well-written it is.

WWWWolf · Post by **WWWWolf** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:08 am

This sounds really nice and I think I might want to try playing through BG third time with quest patches and all =)

A few questions:
- I assume this works with Forge of Virtue installed? I can't live without the Leetsword =)
- I'm a bit afraid of "beta". Will there be issues with upgrading? Can I just stick this in and when this gets "released" put the new version in and it Just Works(tm)?

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:22 am

Wolf: I only have BG+FoV, and haven't been able to test it without the addon installed. So yes, it'll work

But I am interested to hear if anyone with the plain-jane version of BG can get it running fine.

As far as the 'beta' status goes - yes, you will be able to drop in new future versions of the patch and they will work fine. I plan to do updates to these patches every once in a while, so there will probably never be a 'final' version of the patch. The beta status just implies that this version hasn't undergone testing by people other than me

However, and this is a big however: whenever stuff is added to the gameworld itself, e.g. eggs or new locations for quests, then this will require users to start a new game in order for that stuff to appear.
This will only be an issue with quests_and_interactions.zip: I always intend interactions.zip to be 'plug-and-play' with your existing savegames.

Shaun: Those are some great ideas you have there, and I am interested in 'deepening' the experience of the original game by expanding dialogue - for instance, to take Alagner's death into account, as well as just allowing you to sell stuff to merchants.

Now, here's the downside to some of those suggestions:
- You can add new monster spawns, but it means editing the gameworld, and that means breaking savegame compatibility as I explained above. Not a real biggie though.
- Adding all-new monsters (like the highwayman) doesn't appear to be as tricky as I thought, but it does mean adding an all-new shape (and as Dom explained, that hasn't been tested much yet). e.g. If you look at shapes.vga in Exult Studio you'll see there's two "paladins": one is the random-spawning monster, the other is for real NPCs.
- I have *no* idea what determines what gets spawned on the bodies of enemies (e.g. rabbits), but it doesn't appear to be in usecode. I think this is hardcoded into Exult for the moment.

Dom: Is it possible to specify new names for individual frames yet? I know this used to be hardcoded, is it still?

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:35 am

The download links for ES Guides have now changed since Tawn set up a new download system. So, I'm reposting the download links with everything in one place.

Also, it has been pointed out that people might want to know what these patches do before trying them out, so I'm posting the full featurelist for each as well as the download links.

Interactions Pack 0.5beta
==================

Download at:
-----------------
My site: http://www.washboardabs.net/exult/interactions.zip
ES Guides: http://www.wiredentertainment.net/exult ... load&gid=2

Description:
----------------
Adds new creature behaviours and item interactions (Grind wheat! Milk cows! Churn butter! And more!), along with fixes for usecode bugs in the original game. Full changelist below.

This patch also contains the full sourcecode. As this includes a set of header files and generic helper functions, it can be useful as a base for your own usecode projects.

Requires: Exult 1.2 or higher (compatible with latest 1.4 snapshots), and Black Gate + Forge of Virtue. This patch works fine with your previous saved games.

What this patch does:
-----------------------------
* Grind wheat into flour by using it on a millstone.
* Weave cloth into garments by using thread on it (rather than just slicing your beautiful fabric into bandages with the shears).
* Churn butter by using a bottle/bucket/pitcher of milk on a butter churn.
* Fish will plop out of the water occasionally.
* Chickens and sheep will make proper noises (along with some party comments too).
* Cows can now be milked, using a bucket or milk pitcher.
* Sheep can now be sheared to get wool, by using shears on them.
* Fishing with a fishing rod is now easier, with more guidance from party members.
* Fixes the pocketwatch am/pm bug (no more 12am noon!)

Quests and Interactions Pack 0.5beta
===========================

Download at:
-----------------
My site: http://www.washboardabs.net/exult/quest ... ctions.zip
ES Guides: http://www.wiredentertainment.net/exult ... load&gid=3

Description:
---------------
Adds an all-new subquest and a new way to earn money through servile labour. (full changelist below)

This patch integrates the added interactions, creature behaviours and game bugfixes contained in the Interactions Pack. It also contains full sourcecode.

Requires: Exult 1.2 or higher (compatible with 1.4 snapshots), and Black Gate + Forge of Virtue.

Important: This patch is incompatible with older saved games. You will need to start a new game for quests to work properly.

What this patch does:
----------------------------
New features:
* Grind wheat into flour by using it on a millstone.
* Weave cloth into garments by using thread on it (rather than just slicing your beautiful fabric into bandages with the shears).
* Churn butter by using a bottle/bucket/pitcher of milk on a butter churn.
* Fish will plop out of the water occasionally.
* Chickens and sheep will make proper noises (along with some party comments too).
* Cows can now be milked, using a bucket or milk pitcher.
* Sheep can now be sheared to get wool, by using shears on them.
* Fishing with a fishing rod is now easier, with more guidance from party members.
* Fixes the pocketwatch am/pm bug (no more 12am noon!)

New quests:
* Gordon, the fish-and-chip salesman in Britain, will now buy freshly-caught fish off you. Ask him about "business" to get the ball rolling.
* It is now possible to return the Rune of Honor to Trinsic through a new quest (yes, apart from just stealing it from the museum in the dead of night.

Talk to Finnegan about "Trinsic", and then to Candice the museum curator to get the ball rolling.

Gruck, curiousis! · Post by **Gruck, curiousis!** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:31 am

On another side note... trying to install this patch with Black Gate French installed really mucks things up too. But I should have expected that.

Post by **drcode** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:03 am

About the stuff inside monsters:

This is determined by "equip.dat", which has various records describing items to give newly-spawned monsters, and "monsters.dat", where each monster has an index into "equip.dat". I can't remember if ES gives you the capability to modify these (but I think it does). However, if "equip.dat" specifies that "food" is to be given, the actual food type is hard-coded in our "monsters.cc" file (look for "Monster_food"). This is another piece of data that I want to move into data files.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:09 am

Ah yes, Exult does let you modify equip.dat equipment spawning options, but like you say has no ability for you to specify frames, only shapes. This seems to be a common limitation with the original game - I guess they intended to have a lot more shapes than they did, but once they hit the limits they started 'stacking' related shapes into a single shape with lots of frames. Which is a bloody nightmare in a lot of cases.

And thanks belatedly for the feedback about the code quality DrCode, I really appreciate it. The code was written with other people in mind, so I hope it's something other people would actually want to use

I'm cleaning it up further for the next version, and experimenting with implicit function numbers since the compiler seems to support that now. But that's another thread.

Post by **drcode** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:11 pm

A couple improvements to Exult and Ucc: The # of global flags has been increased to 2048; and ucc will now look at the env. variable "UCC_INCLUDE" for an additional directory in which to search for #include's.

The reason for the second is that I like the common files you created under "constants", and would like to combine and distribute these with exult, probably under "data/bginclude.uc", with perhaps "data/bgshapes.uc" as a separate file. Then anyone doing a mod. could set "UCC_INCLUDE" to that directory and then '#include "bginclude.uc"'. Would that be okay?

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 2:44 am

A note about the patch - if anyone has used the sourcefiles as a basis, please send me an email. I have done some major overhauls to the sourcecode for the next version - while no constants have been changed, I have changed the file structure of the headers, altered function names for generics and externals, cleaned up the usecode in general, and in some cases reimplemented functions entirely. I plan to release a new version once some more changes to the compiler have come through that will allow the code to be cleaned up further.

I say this because quite a bit of the original code was crap

and it would be well worth updating if you're using it as a basis or just as a reference (this latter applies especially to the animations). However, this may break your existing code. So, I want to keep track of who is using what.

Post by **drcode** » Fri May 06, 2005 1:25 pm

Just added several SI intrinsics to BG, and you can see them in 'usecode/bgintrincs.h' starting at 0xa0. It was really quite simple, especially since I didn't test any of it:-)

And: Added 'finish' and 'resurrect' to the scripts support.

Post by **marzo** » Fri May 06, 2005 3:54 pm

Just added several SI intrinsics to BG, and you can see them in 'usecode/bgintrincs.h' starting at 0xa0.

And a nice selection it is, even.

Added 'finish' and 'resurrect' to the scripts support.

Woohoo!

I've updated my guide to reflect the change; we are down to repeat2 now.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sat May 07, 2005 12:09 pm

For my own part I'm interested in the new usecode support for > 1024 shapes. Does the new syntax (funcName shape#XXX) work with shapes below 1024 as well? And was this a compiler-only change, or does it require you to run a new Exult version for it to work?

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 07, 2005 1:07 pm

I'm sure it requires a new snapshot.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sun May 08, 2005 7:28 am

Actually yeah, if I'd thought about it for two seconds I would have realised that Exult itself would need an update to know how to find the appropriate function to call for a given shape.

Post by **drcode** » Sun May 08, 2005 9:50 pm

I wonder if "shape#" was the right term to use. Maybe it should be "shapefun#". Kind of funny (and hard) creating a language.

Also Marzo managed to reverse-engineer the "set_orrery" intrinsic for Black Gate, and that's implemented in the latest snapshot.

Alun Bestor · Post by **Alun Bestor** » Sun May 08, 2005 11:19 pm

Well, when I read "shapefun" I think "Happy Shapefun time!", because I'm used to abbreviating "function" as "func"

I think shape# works fine.

Post by **marzo** » Mon May 09, 2005 6:18 pm

About those SI intrinsics: it would be nice if we could actually use them - UCC doesn't support them yet. Methinks a new version of the exult tools is needed. I compiled my own version, but there might be those who can't.

Verlaine · Post by **Verlaine** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:35 pm

I love this mod it does some of the stuff I always wanted to do in U7!

I'm wondering if you're planning on working on some of the things listed in the readme?

I sadly have no idea how to use usecode so i'm no help in doing it but I have some ideas....

Above someone mentioned making the New Magica NPC's react to the murder would be cool aswould being able to sell jewelry. (maybe even useless gargoyle jewelry)

One idea wouldbe to fix the quest in Minoc to discredit Owen. The BG strategy guide ibought ages ago said you were supposed to be able to and though I found the plans of the ship that sank there doesn't seem to be anything to do with them.

Likewise Iolo mentions that you can sell cloth in minoc which you can't.

I was thinking about the ammunition making interaction it could actually be prety involved. Add a new cauldron frame with a cualdron gump with code that if it's closed with the proper ingreients inside you soon have afrehs batch of powder. Making shot from led would probably be a simple interaciton then marry the two and volla!

That said coding all that would probably be a nightmare. Not to mention creating the new images for the cualdron gump and shapes for salt petere and charcoal.

Yeah very convoluded to make but it would be cool as heck!

Also I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wanted to do blacksmithing in BG. Beyond forgingthe black sword which is already cool!

alagner · Post by **alagner** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:56 pm

>>One idea wouldbe to fix the quest in Minoc to discredit Owen. The BG strategy guide ibought ages ago said you were supposed to be able to and though I found the plans of the ship that sank there doesn't seem to be anything to do with them.

Sorry for offtopic post, but quest with Owen works correctly, and you can show these plans to a particular person and.....well, generally I don't know what's wrong with this quest in your case. I recommend talking to everyone about everything. And not missing some people living in the woods. That piece of advice is big enough for you I hope

TDI · Post by **TDI** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:34 pm

>Also I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wanted to do blacksmithing in BG. Beyond forgingthe black sword which is already cool!

You can already do blacksmithing in this mod... albeit only the same type of sword.

Peter Olafson · Post by **Peter Olafson** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:45 pm

I know Q & I has since been incorporated into the Keyring mod, but is it still available for download anywhere as a separate unit? I'd like to see the doc file to get a sense of what's included. (I've looked but the only file I've found to date is an Italian translation.)

Thanks!

Peter

Verlaine · Post by **Verlaine** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 9:37 pm

Yeah I'd love to try the keyring mod but I can't get it to work

Luckily i think it's being included in the next version of exult.

I belive I downloaded the Q & I Mod right off of the Ultima the reconstruction site it's listed under fan made patches.

And Ooh I didnt' know blacksmithing wwasi ncorporated in it it wasn't in the readme i'll have to go try it!