Reading the scrolls and books, there was definitely more in

[Oblivious]

for SI. There are like 4-5 scrolls regarding Mad Iolo, 4 of which are by him and addressed to the Avatar. Sounds like you were originally supposed to have a run-in with him at Fawn. Observe.

#5
Oh Great Captains, my Great Captains! So powerful you were yesterday, so pitiful you are today. Rulers of the City are now Prisoners of the Oracle. What a fate you might have met! Iolo is pleased that such powerful creatures as you, Great Captains, have lost power, herein uncovering the fools in them~~Iolo

#6
Everyone is in search of the Lady of Fawn. For the lady hath been lost since dawn. barking their strange tune throughout the city, All of them, townsfolk and priests. Iolo did it, enjoying such feasts. Avatar, is it not pretty?~~Iolo (probably refers to Yelinda being skinned)

#8
Kylista needs must speak with thee, Avatar, now that is interesting...
Heretofore, she was in communication with the Oracle and now she wants thee. Is there any hidden meaning to this change of heart? Thou shouldst know the answer to that, Avatar. When a woman needs speak to one such as thee, thou dost not want her to wait, Avatar, or dost thou? Is there anything we should be aware of? Thy good friend Iolo wants to know, Avatar...

#10
Honor be to thee, dear reader. This piece of parchment is mine only mean of communication with thee. Mad Iolo cruelly removed my tongue, that I might lead by example and not by words!
I am so disenchanted... I cannot bear the face that I could not save the city from further plagues. Moreover, there is absolutely no sign of the return of Batlin. What is going to happen? Thou shouldst tell me, I beg of thee~~Leon

#11
Right adventurous Avatar,
I greet thee well, Avatar, sending thee my blessings and letting thee know that it appears that thou art not paying due attention to my clues. I require that thou dost so.
Faithfully thine, Iolo.

Oh, and for fun, try books (non-serpent) #124 and 125. Dirty, dirty Dupre!
(also book 63 to read Beatrix's love sonnets)

[alagner]

>>also book 63 to read Beatrix's love sonnets
But what for? That one is available in the normal game

[Oblivious]

Oh, it is? I never found it.

Oh, I just finished cataloging all the books, scrolls, plaques, tombstones, and signs in BG. It looks like there were plans for some abominable door maze of some sort; I found these dummied plaques:

*12. Go This Way
*13. Do Not Go this way
*14. Do Not Go in the Wooden Door
*15. Do Not Go in the Windowed Door
*16. Go In the Steel Door
*17. Do Not Go In the Green door
*18. Only One of These Signs Is True
*19. At Least Two Signs are False

I'm rather glad they didn't implement that; it would have been annoying.

[Oblivious]

In other news, at this point cataloging the plaques in SI will take a lot of tenacity and time to waste, because every time I click on a blank plaque, Exult crashes. >:( I'm also finding a lot of signs left over from BG. I was hoping to find some hidden plot nuggets, but so far no go. Lemee see what else I can find in the signs...

[Malignant Manor]

Almost all the text and speech information is pretty easily obtained from the usecode file.

[Crowley]

If Shamino dies after you encounter Beatrix's ghost, she will appear and leave the book. She also forgives Shamino, professes her love and heals him, as I recall.

[Oblivious]

I've had that happen, but she never left the book. Bug?

[Oblivious]

""Almost all the text and speech information is pretty easily obtained from the usecode file.""

How do you read the file, though?

[nissar]

Quote Oblivious

"I've had that happen, but she never left the book. Bug?"

I remember it happening from time to time while playing the game without Exult. Since it´s not necessary (with Dupre's shield or Iolo's lute is enough), i never gave it much importance.

[Oblivious]

So how to I read the dialogue in the source code, using the studio somehow? (again, I'm a technological dumbass)

More interesting scrolls:

#201:
This certificate of thievery entitles the bearer to commit thievery for a maximum of one hour~~Shamino the Anarch

There are also a lot of dummied out Moonshade letters. Sounds like initial intentions were to give you the go-around.

Also check out (regular non-serpent) scroll#101 for an interesting dummied out love letter between Filbercio and Rotoluncia.

(some of the dummied out scrolls include *I think* #2, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, and 211)

[Malignant Manor]

You can run ucxt (from the tools download) in the Exult folder with the following command lines:

for SI:

Code: Select all

ucxt -si -a -oSIusecode.uc -fz

(creates SIusecode.uc)

for BG:

Code: Select all

ucxt -bg -a -oBGusecode.uc -fz

(creates BGusecode.uc)

You could also look at usecode with a text editor (word wrap recommended) and see the messages with less context.

[Oblivious]

I can't get ucxt to run. If I doubleclick ucxt, a Dosprompt pops on for a milisecond then disappears (I'm running WinXP SP1 FYI) Help!

[Oblivious]

And no, I don't know what the prompt says because it doesn't stay on long enough to read a single word.

[Dominus]

You need to run it with command lines, hence you cannot run it via doubleclick. Run it from a command prompt...

[Oblivious]

<:( Not by a prompt.... *shudders*

[MeddlingMonk]

Oh, be a man. Unless your're a woman, then be that.

[Oblivious]

Yes, I am female.
*Eyes become empty as she suffers a flashback of the last time she had to run an Exult-related DOS-prompt*

[Oblivious]

Ugh, I don't remember how to do this. Okay, I type in C:\Program Files\Exult\Tools\ucxt and the prompt says:

"C:\Program is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file." What now? I think I have to type "Run" in there somewhere, but I don't remember where.

[marzo]

This error is partly because of the space in the path (but also because ucxt should actually be in Exult's main dir). Using your path above, start a command prompt (Start->Run->cmd.exe) and do this:

Code: Select all

c:
cd "C:\Program Files\Exult"
ucxt -bg -a -oBGusecode.uc -fz
ucxt -si -a -oSIusecode.uc -fz

That should do the trick; it is likely that you can copy all the above commands and paste them into the command line and it should work.

[Oblivious]

With the quotations and all? (and yes, I realize it's EITHER BG or SI)

[Malignant Manor]

Just make a batch file named ucxt.bat in the Exult folder. Edit it and paste

for BG:

ucxt -bg -a -oBGusecode.uc -fz

for SI:

ucxt -si -a -oSIusecode.uc -fz

Then save it. Run ucxt.bat once for each game setup. As long as ucxt is in the Exult folder and SI and BG are setup in exult.cfg properly, (It is if you can play the games.) then this will do it.

[marzo]

With the quotations and all?

Yes.

(and yes, I realize it's EITHER BG or SI)

There is no reason you can't do both; the code I gave gives different output file names for the BG and SI usecode.

Malignant Manor's suggestion of using a batch file is also good.

[TDI]

>Sounds like you were originally supposed to have a run-in with him at Fawn. Observe.

I'm pretty sure that you were supposed to meet each of your baned companions at one of the cities (Iolo - Fawn, Dupre - Monitor, Shamino - Moonshade) and that they would have the cities subjugated to their will with almost everyone alive, instead of killing almost everyone off and facing all of them together at the castle. The former was replaced with the latter due to lack of time and pressue by EA to complete the game.

[Dominus]

Reading the scrolls and books, there was definitely more in store for SI

I'm pretty sure that you were supposed to meet each of your baned companions at one of the cities (Iolo - Fawn, Dupre - Monitor, Shamino - Moonshade) and that they would have the cities subjugated to their will with almost everyone alive, instead of killing almost everyone off and facing all of them together at the castle. The former was replaced with the latter due to lack of time and pressue by EA to complete the game.

There are already lengthy discussions about the original plot of SI in the forum and proofs and documents on how it was roughly planned. Why not search for that or those threads and read up on it? It's a good read and nice discussion and it makes sense to read all this when you are interested in this.
Just remember that in our search, you should make it clear to search beyond the last 30 days

[Oblivious]

Yeah, I read some of the topics. Interesting. It was already obvious that Moonshade isn't finished because there are no signs to be found in the town.

[Knight Captain]

I am not able to get this usecode export to work, the file outputs only with the text:
Failed to locate usecode file. Exiting.

If I copy my exult.cfg from my AppData to the Program Files folder I get a command prompt message:

Warning: configuration file 'exult.cfg' is being ignored in favor of file '/exult.cfg'.

[Malignant Manor]

There was a change where it now supports more than one installed version of the game and detects whether it has the expansion or not. Replace -bg with -fov or -si with -ss if you have the expansion installed.

[Knight Captain]

I was getting an error with that until I changed the switches to match the order in the prompt help. This worked: ucxt -a -v -oSIexport.uc -dbg -ss -fz

To show the help prompt, use either ucxt -ss or ucxt -fov without any other switches.

Code: Select all

Ultima 7/8 usecode disassembler v0.6.3

Usage:
        ucxt [options] -a
                - prints all of the functions
        ucxt [options] 
                - disassembles single function to stdout

        Misc Flags (any/all of these):
                -nc     - don't look for exult's .xml config file
                -v      - turns on verbose output mode
                -ofile  - output to the specified file
                -ifile  - load the usecode file specified by the filename
                -ro     - output the raw opcodes in addition to the -f format
                -ac     - output automatically generated comments
                -uc     - output automatically generated 'useless' comments
                -b      - only do 'basic' optimisations
                -dbg    - output debugging information if present in USECODE.
                -ext32  - 'convert' function to ext32 format if not already.
        Game Specifier Flags (only one of these):
                -bg     - select the black gate usecode file
                -fov    - select the forge of virtue usecode file
                -si     - select the serpent isle usecode file
                -ss     - select the silver seed usecode file
                -u8     - select the ultima 8/pagan usecode file (experimental)
        Output Format Flags (only one of these):
                -fl     - output using brief "list" format
                -fa     - output using "assembler" format (default)
                -fs     - output using "exult script" format
                -fz     - output using "exult script" format
                -ftt    - output using the translation table xml format
                -ff     - outputs all flags referenced in the usecode file
                          sorted both by "flags within a function" and
                          "functions using flag"