Exult Forum

I can't hardly wait to have Exult Studio running on my w2k system. Any chance you drop an estimated time where the program is going to be released to work under win machines?

Thanks. Keep up the good work!
-- Carlos Sisi

A basically-working version has already been released.

This released version, is the ctrl-alt-m thing? I was expecting something to create my own games... we could start with a blank working area for starters?

not sure what you mean by "the ctrl-alt-m" thing. Yes, Exult Studio is launched when you press ctrl-alt-m, but only if you have it installed. (actually, I'm not even sure the windows version is launched on ctrl-alt-m, but the linux version is.)

You can get the windows version on our download page. It's in the "snapshots" section.

Creating a completely new game isn't possible yet, but will be sometime in the future.

We're working towards that goal. ExultStudio will create most files now from scratch, but there are still about a dozen left to do. That's counting the U7 graphics files (shapes.vga, etc.), which you could start with if you're just playing around.

The way a completely new game will be created, I think is:

0. Add a new section to your 'exult.cfg' file describing the name and directories for your new game.
1. Draw several thousand shapes:-), and use 'expack' to create the various 'xxx.vga' files (although ExultStudio may eventually provide a more user-friendly way).
2. Run ExultStudio by itself to create the files that describe monsters, weapons, armor, ammo (this is mostly done now).
3. Start up your new game, which should give you a completely empty world.
4. Ctrl-alt-m to bring up ExultStudio, then start creating terrain, adding NPC's, objects, eggs, etc.
5. Write several megabytes of Usecode functions and compile with ucc:-)

Hopefully, as it all comes together and we start using the tools more, we'll figure out features to add to make some of this easier.

He heh.. sounds like it will be a walk in the park to create a new U7 huh?
All we need is dedicated fans! He heh..

- Telemachos

From the Rules of Software Development:

#176 - Users are never happy

But You will give us some FAQs, Tutorials, Helpfile for this? plz

wjp: ctrl-alt-m is supported in the Win32 version of Exult.

Teflon1: Uh, no, don't count on it. Not yet anyway.

-Colourless Dragon

Any artistic types planning or working-on a freely redistributable replacement for shapes.vga? I personally don't have the talent to come-up with the art required to do a game using the Exult engine, unfortunately, and I'm sure many others are in the same boat.


-Karl

My suggestion: if you just want to play with ExultStudio, just use the standard ones. If you want to create a new game, you should start by writing a story.
graphics come much later...

I was thinking of some sort of Paris at the end of the 19th century.

The whole map would be the city. The ENTIRE map!
There would be the tracks for the first subway (underground part) and cobbled-stone streets. You could even see the Eiffle tower under construction and Marie Curie's lab !

The plot would involve some kind of gang leader (the avatar) with his team. The gang leader possess a mystical item from the East that he can use to cast spells (some sort of orb or stick or whatever), or that would be part of the plot (raid an oriental exposition to get it).

Maybe some plots would be to help Marie Curie to discover Radium and to help the Eiffel Tower to be build or to prevent an attack against the first subway in the world...

You guys add stuff there if you want...

Artaxerxes

Yes, this is what I would like to see, I like it.
A sci-fi story would also be neat...

Yes, nice idea. I've always liked games with some history, like the Gabriel Knight series. And this is a genre that the big game companies are ignoring.

Gabriel Knight was ^H^H^H is such an awesome game. I loved it from the day I played through it.

I remember being SO frustrated (really really much) when I couldn't go to the right aisle of the castle. For some reason, clicking on the right border of the screen wouldn't do. You'd have to click a little more left...

I even removed it from the HD being so furious I couldn't go the room... until I tried again another time... I also raged a bit when the sound system would cause a crash when you arrive where the ghouls are.

Otherwise the game was really awesome. Even better than the 2nd GK, I'd say.

As for Exult in Paris, yeah I like the idea... but I wouldn't want to see something like Martian Dream that was a bad mix between fantasy and history.

Artaxerxes

Sure, Nadir, I agree: if you're writing a game, it takes a while to write out stuff like story, dialog, etc. I was just thinking that whenever Exult Studio is finished, it would ship with freely-redistributable art that game writers could use for their own games. Story-writing and drawing are two different skills, and many may have the former without the latter.


-Karl

But art is closely related to the story. And you can use U7's art as a placeholder...

Well, much of the art is tied to the story, but not most of it. All of the terrain tiles, roads, clothing, animals, etc. could easily be reused. For me, I was planning on doing a parody of the Ultima games, so quite a bit of the art would be relevant.

Anyway, I wasn't saying that I personally needed something like this right away or anything, I just think it would be great if eventually there was a good amount of free art that came with Studio to help aspiring game creators.

If this never happens, I'll probably personally just use the U7 art, and maybe add a few simple things of my own. This way, only people with U7 could play my game, but it would be better than nothing.


-Karl

I'd rather see one big, community-driven, original RPG, than lots of small incomplete games

maybe we should start a thread about a possible scenario for the upcoming Exult Studio, Inc creation.

How does that sound btw?

"Exult Studio presents....."

"An Exult Studio, Inc creation...."

"Exult Studio, Inc: We re-create Worlds"

Artaxerxes

> "Exult Studio, Inc: We re-create Worlds"

"Exult Studio, Inc: We get Lawsuits"

lol

ExultStudio: YOU create worlds.

Teflon: FAQ and helpfiles will come eventually. As of now ExultStudio is still changing a lot and not too many are using it and are asking questions (so no questions are rated "frequently asked" yet ).
Just getting the CVS-log the last two weeks tells me there has been a lot of additions to Studio that I'm not even aware of at the moment
(Jeff, a little update on what you are doing on the mailing list would be nice, the log looks promising though).

Everybody else: lawsuit is not so far off if art from U7 gets used. As a placeholder yes, but to actually play it, no. (especially as it would require people to own U7 and even then it is pretty sueable )

How would it be sueable to use U7 art if you don't distribute it yourself, but instead require people to own it?


-Karl

It isn't, although if EA decided to be complete and total assholes, it's
not like they'd necessarily let that stop them.

I'd bet on the _extreme_ @!#$ approach. The author of the music extractor program for U9 got a nasty email from a particularly moronic EA lawyer accusing him of distributing their copyrighted material, and demanding he sign a form admitting to piracy, distributing stuff they own, and giving as much detail as possible on everyone else who'd downloaded the thing for further legal action.

I don't think he ever got a reply when he pointed out that he wasn't distributing anything of theirs, just a program which could read their U9 music format and extract it for other music players.

Thing is, even if the original U7 is needed and their aren't any true legal grounds for a suit, from Aquamarine's experience the EA _lawyers_ are quite likely too stupid or ignorant on technical issues (or maybe basic reading comprehension) to realise it. Caution is recommended.

A thought: We've heard nothing from EA, despite a couple attempts to contact them. Maybe someone there feels favorably enough about our project to keep the lawyers restrained.

In RPG terms, perhaps we have 'favorable' alignment with them:-)

Hey, how's this for a (wierd) idea: Create an RPG who's plot is to create an RPG. You travel around, trying to get artists and progammers to help you while you fight off evil lawyers and corporate types.

yeepeee..


my favorite weapon will be action class lawsuit, the equivalent of U7's Armaggedon.

Artaxerxes

SO does Exult Studio really work now? I hope i can start playaing user-made games.. U7 style!

I have begun to make new graphics for building a new shapes.vga.
My target now, is to make one in a style that it can be used to make a game like an 'Ultima X', that doesnt break EA's copyrights.

What i can say at this point is, that it is a lot of work to do to build a complete own graphics-database. So i can need some help from others.
I'm in need of artists that delivers raw graphics material. And i'm in need of textures. Complete sets of animation-sequences will help too.

In the next 2 months i planned to open a webpage for this project.

I'm curious about the way one does artwork for an 8-bit color game. Does one try to create the whole palette first? Or do you create palettes for the individual images, and then merge them somehow?

I'm not shure if i have understanded you fully.
I'll made the artwork in RGB-Mode.
After this they can be converted to whatever palette may be used.

First tests i have done by replacing some of the im my opinion bad graphics in U7 like the orange trees in shape 453 frame 0 and 1 or the apple-trees. I have done it with success and have now more naturely looking trees. For this graphics i have used the palette of U7.


Here are some first impressions of my work:

http://www.4gamers.de/projectx/

(if you have slow connection expect a little loading time because there are 200kb to load)

awesome

Artaxerxes

That is seriously cool, MAC! I definately agree that your trees look better than the ones in the original game.


-Karl

those are good looking trees MAC, better that the originals in my opinion. Looking foreward to seeing some more new artwork.

Any way we can download the shapes?

Very nice!

I'll try to clarify my previous question: Suppose you were creating a new game, and you had NO palette to start with. Would you just draw artwork in RGB mode, and then use a tool to create a common palette? And if so, what tool would do that?

If these things don't exist, or if they're costly, I'm thinking of writing them. Maybe a 'makepal' tool that would take a set of images and create a common palette, and an 'applypal' tool that would convert existing RGB image files to 8-bit color using the new palette.

Thanks for your praise

Trees and plants are not so difficult to make and in my opinion are the poorliest graphics in U7. So i first will make more replacements for them.

@DrCode

The way i will do this is to use a predefined 256 colors palette in Photoshop. When i have made a new graphic in RGB i convert it with Photoshop to this palette.

A tool that will work like you have stated above will be of great advise.
I dont know one for free, but have not looked for yet.

Interesting problem... If you combine all the palettes from a bunch of files, you may end up with more than 256 colors. Then you'd want to combine colors, probably looking for pairs that are 'closest' (min. sum of squares of the deltas), then replace each pair with the average. Maybe I'll browse the Gimp source to see how they do it.

Yeah, those trees look pretty good in UO too

Is it possible with Exult to use graphics with more colors than 256?

Not currently, since we use an 8-bit frame buffer. However, the scalers convert this to 16/24/32 bit graphics.

I can imagine supporting shapes with multiple palettes sometime in the future.

Gyaa! Where can I download your graphic patch MAC?

First let me do some more work. Because these first changes where only some tests and not all of the graphics are made by my own.
And this will be the first requirement for distributing it without to become any copyright problems.

And for the future there is a problem that first must be solved, because i dont know how to distribute it without to get any copyright problems with EA. There will be a program needed that will patch the shapes.vga because the shapes.vga by itself cant be distributed.

I'll do it now with the programs that in the Exult-Tools-Pack. But thats no comfortable way.

The 'ipack' program should do what you want. You'll be able to distribute your artwork as .png files along with a script that says what their shape #'s are, and users will be able to update their 'shapes.vga' files using it.

It's almost done, but I still have to add support for transparency.

That sounds really good
I be anxious upon that tool.

otherwise there is the IPC patching system. It works this way:

to create a patch
ipcit -c original.file newerversion.file nameof.patch

to apply a patch
ipcit -a original.file nameof.patch

You can redistribute a zip that contains the ipcit executable and the patch and it should be all good.

Suraimu has a copy of ipcit and so do I. Let us know if you want it..


Artaxerxes

When i have understand it right, this tool will detect the differences between two files and build the patch from this info. Is this correct?

Yes i want it, it will be nice if you can send it to me or let me know where i can download it.