Resolution Problem and Thanks

[Axiom Dragon]

First off, I want to say how much I appreciate the Exult team's efforts in making Ultima 7 playable. Thanks folks! It's funny how a multi-million dollar corporation can't get their head out of their collective bum for long enough to produce a playable product (see: The Ultima Collection), but when you get a few die-hard fans together; anything is possible!

Now, I haven't played a whole lot of U7 using Exult just yet, but from what I have plyed, it seems great - even better than the original in ways, particularly the graphics (when using 2xsai of Eagle) and control.

I *really* like the feature where you can increase the resolution and see more of the surrounding area, but I am concerned by what I read in the FAQ regarding the increased resolution. According to the FAQ, using this feature may cause "plot-freezing" which, I'm assuming, means that the game can be rendered "un-beatable".

Is there any way to enjoy the beneftis of the increased resolution while avoiding "plot-freezing"? Or would I be better off just playing in the standard (320 x 200) resolution to avoid screwing up the game?

Once again, my heartfelt thanks go out to the Exult team for providing us starved Ultima fans with a way to play one of the best Ultima games ever.

Cheers,
Axiom Dragon (UDIC)
Lord Mephisto (UO:LS)

[Bongfish]

I use the third res option 'up' from the lowest and haven't noticed any problems with the plot. The only problem I've seen is that using the scaling engines causes very annoying corruption of the bitmap used for the pointer. Well, the pointer itself is fine, but graphics in the 'square' that holds the pointer graphic get shifted around by a few pixels when you move it over them. Hard to explain, really, but I'm assuming it's because the pointer graphic is getting scaled along with everything else. It doesn't happen using point and other simple scaling, but with 'super2xsai' or whatever the hell the author named it, it's very noticable.

Forgive any difficulty reading this, I'm quite drunk.

[drcode]

The main problem with playing with a higher resolution is that you'll see things that the authors of the game didn't intend, so it's a form of 'cheating'. Also, in SI particularly, the dungeons were designed with a 320x200 view in mind, so some area will look funny at higher resolutions.

Otherwise, it should work okay.

[Dominus]

yeah, I kept the warning in the FAQ because some problems only occured when running on higher res. In fact I did all my "alpha" testing using the 512x384 and I've found a lot of bugs running in those res' and these got fixed. So I'll probably rephrase it that it doesn't sound too worrysome.

But the "cheating" remains a fact.