Exult Studio Bugs? Or maybe not...

[RonC]

Hi, after a few days of "hanging out" in IRC, I thought it would be best just to post my questions here. First off, i'll explain a bit about my idea. I want to create a new game using Exult. I know this is no easy feat, so I'm going to start out small learning aout ES/Usecode. So, my first goal is of course to create a simple island with a couple NPC whom you can talk to. This brings me to my first problem. When I create an NPC, the usecode and face is always reset to some hex value and a blank face. It's boggled me for days, and I can't figure it out. It would be helpful to note I'm using the Windows port on Windows XP. Finally, I'm having problems with alpha channel in new shapes I'm trying to make. Here's my result after every attempt. I'm using the Photoshop to create transparent PNGs, and importing those into ES.
http://www.assimsoft.com/incoming/temp/p2.png
Thanks for your support. As you know, Exult and ES are amazing! Thanks
Ron Carlock

[gruck]

I've had a similar issue, but I always thought it was related to Windows 2000. Whenever I edit an object or NPC that is preplaced on the world with the object editor menu, regardless of what changes I make to the objects values, the values are always reset as soon as I unselect the character. Have you had the same problem trying to edit objects allready on the world map, like trying to change the frame of a tree thats sitting on the map.

[Dominus]

gruck: Exult Studio and W2k just don't work together (yet?). So your report is kind of "normal".

RonC: Strange, I remember that problem abou the non-sticking face and NPC#.
Some things to check:
-are you using the latest version of Exult 1.1.x and Exult Studio?
- don't assign NPC# that are already "taken" by another NPC
- you might need to have a valid usecode number to assign to the NPC (meaning if the NPC# you try to give is not in the usecode it doesn't work)
(Jeff what do you think?)
- face could be related to that (though notice that you can only use existing faces in faces.vga as exult does not (yet?) support more than those faces, regardless if you edited faces.vga).

I hope this helps somewhat.

Btw, I saw your questions in the IRC log but I didn't have the time to enter the channel and you wouldn't have been there anyway when I read the logs...

[drcode]

Usecode #'s for NPCs: I'm pretty sure you're forced to use 0x400+i for NPC #i (where the Avatar is #0). I'm not sure if ExultStudio enforces that or not. Actually, we did a lot of fiddling with this to make the existing games work, and I don't remember now exactly how it all sorted out.

[RonC]

Ok, I'll anwser all of these one by one...
- I'm using the latest download version of Exult/ES as of this post
- The NPC # was not taken by another NPC
- I'm using the latest "demo island" usecode to test for my NPC. I'm using all the same NPC #'s in there.
- I tried both original faces, and a face I made.
- All of this used to work for me a couple of months ago. I don't know what happened...
So, what should I do now?
RonC