Exult Forum

I need to figure out how to change the title screen for the Black Gate, like TFL did. I looked at the TFL code but couldn't figure out how they changed the title screen. I'd like to change the title screen for my U6 mod to the U6 title screen, or at least one that says Ultima VI Any ideas? What files do I look at?

He used ipack to create a patch for mainshp.flx that contained a new intro graphic and palette. I'm not sure how to edit .pal files.

You can extract BG's mainshp.flx to see what you can replace.
The mainshp.flx I created for new games had the following (based on SI but might be the same for BG).
The ipack scripted in an old TFL was located at tfl\patch\src\ipackscripts\new_mainshp.ipk

i keep getting an error message trying to extract the mainshp.flx file. I read the text file but it isn't giving very specific instructions on what constitutes as a "script file" or what you actually need in the same folder to extract the file. What files do I need, what command do I need, to extract it, then find otu which files to replace and repack?

To extract the MAINSHP.FLX. You use the command
expack -x MAINSHP.FLX (you will need to provide paths to the files. Example c:\exult\tools\expack -x c:\u7\static\MAINSHP.FLX)

There will be a bunch of files labeled like 00000.u7o that got extracted.

Ok thanks, found the files but had to dig in the depths of the Appdata folder for them lol. Now, how do you even edit any of them? Gimp wouldn't load any of them either

The Gimp plugin on the download page (or the compile time option if building on a non-Windows system) will allow you to edit the shape files. You shouldn't even need to rename the file (, but you should anyway). 00002.u7o becomes something like title_screen.shp for easy reference. If you want to edit text files, the txt extension is fine.

After extracting the palette file, put it on the patch dir and edit it in ES. Palette files are not shape files, so the Gimp plug-in can't load it, but ES can.

The palette file, 00015.u7o, will need to be renamed to have the pal extension like intropal.pal used in TFL. Of course, you may not need to change the palette if you have all the colors you need.

How do you install the GIMP plugin in Exult Studio? I downloaded the file, treid to extract but it only extracts the .txt file. The other file won't extract and it gives some directory error. I even change the directory and it still won't extract. I'm using the 2.0 one and havent tested the other

I unzipped it with winrar into the gimp plugin directory, the u7shp.exe file. However, trying to edit a shape in ES just comes up with an error that says "can't launch 'gimp". Is there some specific command line or config file setting it requires? I can't find any documentation on how to install it anywhere

You need to point something in ES to where gimp is. It can't find gimp on its own since it could be anywhere
Malignant should be more helpful in this. I remember him writing something about that ages ago...
I should have it in my ES documentation to-do-notes. Can look it up later...

In exult.cfg, you need to point to GIMP. Below is one example of where it could be.
I think gimp-win-remote (gimp-remote on other OSs) might have been needed a long time ago but calling GIMP directly seems to work fine. Windows with the bin already in the path setting or other OSs would just have to put gimp-2.8 (or gimp depending on binary naming) in the image_editor setting.

Ok here's my current dilemma:

I managed to get gimp to work in ES but when I tried to load the title shape image which I renamed "title_shape.vga" it went bonkers and gave me an error message. So, I shut down GIMP and tried something different.

I opened up the title shape in paint. I made a new title using the same fonts. Saved as both .png and .jpg. the png would not load up right in exult so i loaded up the .jpg just fine and indexed it, used the black gate palette.

I renamed it "2.u7o" and did the command: expack -c mainshp.flx and it created a new mainshp.flx file. I put it in the patch folder, nothing happened. I put it in the U7/Static folder and loaded up Exult. When I loaded BG to the title screen, it crashed and closed before it even reached the title screen.

So, did I do something wrong? Am I supposed to do anything else before I pack it all back up? Is there a certain format I need to save the title screen before I rename it? I'm stumped....

You need to export your file to shp format to view it in ES I think.
As for using expack I think you need a file list text file. I could be wrong though, it's been a decade since I used that

Ok after further playing around with expack, i found that you have to pack every file after renaming the title screen back to 2.u7o. I got my title screen to come up, but the colors are all distorted, and for some reason it double-places my title screen image back to back. I assume it is a palette issue, that maybe I have to index the title screen shape with the same intro palette used.... which leads me to the next problem...

Exult Studio crashes when I load the renamed 15.u7o to intropal.pal or any other combination with the .pal extention. However I try it, ES crashes when I try to load the palette.

Any ideas on what to do now?

sorry, I don't. maybe Malignant...

Any of the TFL peeps around who might know?

Did you use ipack or expack. Says here that ipack can do this.
ipack readme:
Ipack is invoked as 'ipack [-c|-u|-x] [scriptfile]', where:
-c means 'create a new archive'
-u means 'update an existing archive'
-x means 'extract .png's from an archive'
...
The palette name is optional. If provided, and if the file doesn't
yet exist, ipack will create it as a Flex file with the first input
.png's palette stored as entry 0, and entries 1-10 automatically
generated to approximate what we use in Exult (see palettes.h).
It will also write palette 0 in text format with .txt appended to the
paletted name. This format is recognized by the Gimp.

Example:

archive ../static/shapes.vga
palette ../static/palettes.flx
0/8: flats/grass.png(4 across) flat
1/2: flats/sand flat
783/1: trees/birch

I tried ipack but i have no idea how to use it. I keep getting a "shape # missing" error

I could get stuff to extract and repack with expack though

Looking at the TFL CVS to refresh my memory, this is how I implemented that part back then: the "src" dir has several "sh" and "bat" files for building it; a "src/graphics" dir with images and a "src/ipackscripts" with ipack scripts; and a "data" dir where the new palette file is defined.

The build scripts call ipack for all scripts in "src/ipackscripts" with the command line where indicates the script in question. The build scripts expect you to run them from the "src" dir.

The ipack script for the title screen is called "new_mainshp.ipk", and its contents are as follows: The paths are all relative to the "src" dir, which is where the build scripts expect to be run from. In "src/graphics/Wizardry_Dragon", you will see that the new logo file is called "logo_00.png", and there are no more "logo_XX.png" files.

So, here is the simple version:
Create a file called "new_mainshp.ipk" and paste the following in it: In the same directory, put the new palette (with the name "intropal.pal") and the new title screen (with the name "logo_00.png"). Then create a file called "make_mainshp.bat" in this same dir and paste the following in it: With all that in place, double-click on the bat file and your new "mainshp.flx" file should appear, ready to be copied to the patch dir.

FYI, I found out why some palette files crash ES -- they are double palette files, and ES currently has no support for it. I won't have time to properly fix this until next week, but in the mean time, slicing the palette in half, editing each half in ES separately, then merging the halves back together before running it through ipack as described above will work.

Ok I got all that to work and it created a mainshp.flx file. The title screen I created just comes up black and then the other menu options show up. I tried the steps you listed but I did not have a palette file initially, from what I understand the ipack file automatically generates a palette file from the logo shape right?

Maybe the problem lies with my title screen...so I'll tell you how I created it. The first one I extracted from the original (2.u7o) and modified it in Paint because Gimp wouldn't open it correctly. Saved it as .png, opened it in gimp. I indexed it where gimp automatically generates best palette colors or something like that. Then, I renamed that file logo_00.png and did all the steps you listed above. That file I believe just showed up as a blank square.

The second attempt was just a copy and paste from the original u6 graphics into paint, indexed with gimp into a logo_00.png file. That one shows up blank... is there a certain way I should make the initial file?

Marzo,

On further experimentation, I was able to get TFL's logo_00 to work just fine and make the title screen perfectly just to test if I was doing it right. My title screen will either be completely black, a yellow square in the top left corner, a garbled square, or crash Exult entirely. I've made custom title from scratch and also tried modifying the original title to no avail. I've indexed them in the palette generated by exult, and even in the palette generated by ipack. My last attempt was that I indexed my title screen with Gimp that I made from scratch in paint, into the intropal palette generated by ipack when I extracted the original title and used ipack to make the new mainshp.flx. The original title worked just fine as well. However, when I index my own title screens with the palette, it doesn't work at all.

It has to be something I'm doing wrong while creating the title screen itself, because I can get both TFL and the original screen to work using ipack. I've even used the same 320 x 200 dimensions. Is there a certain way that the TFL title screen was created? Like was there certain palettes used to create it or what? I've exhausted all options I could possibly think of.... :/

Wow this is a tough predicament, now I want to investigate it myself. :/

I'd like to know how the TFL logo was created, which program used and which settings, and so on. When you open it in GIMP, you get a blank outline of a square and diagonal to it you get a square with the alpha channel thing on it, no colors, nothing. It has to be a setting issue or a certain way to create the image.

If you can send me the original title screen image, and the one you want to use, I'll take a look at them. You can send them to viselechnon@gmail.com if you want.

Still having trouble with this is anyone out there knows how to fix it...

*twitch*

Hello,
I've modified the graphics of U7 many years ago, I've used only the two utils expack.exe and splitshp.exe, maybe ipack do not worked well, I don't remember.
And modify the palette can be a problem if the graphic program try to remap it and you must save into raw MSDOS (768 bytes), not all program do this.

I had more success with expack although the screen was garbled a little and had a "double image" of the title screen. I'm still having no luck with the screen issue..

Sorry to hear this, see that this is a huge hurdle for this conversion. I have been highly anticipating this because I easily get frustrated with the original interface thx.

Hey guys, I've managed to figure out how to do it. It's fairly convoluted, but I'll write up a quick run through of what to do and post it here for everyone shortly - I have to run out the door now or else I'd have posted it now.

Happy New Year!

Cheers
Chris

Don't leave us hanging...

Haha sorry folks, I've been sick the last week or so.
I'm still typing up the whole process end to end, but essentially the missing link here is for the black screen component, you need to set the offsets correctly on the PNGs before including them in the MAINSHP.FLX file.
Most software doesn't have this functionality as far as I can see (Photoshop, GIMP) so I used a small app called TweakPNG (http://entropymine.com/jason/tweakpng/)

Basically, you save out your PNG as normal, then you load it up in this app and insert an offset record by selecting Insert-->oFFs (Image Offset). You then double click the oFFs record in the list and enter in here x and y offset values. The trick here that I've found is that you need to set them to the negative width/height values plus 1.

I.e. Title screen is 320x200 or whatever, so you set the x offset to -319 and the y offset to -199.

Save the file and then add the modified file to the MAINSHP.FLX file using the above methods.

This should get you past the black screen issue.

I'll write up the process in more detail as soon as I can, but it may be a week or two. Would be handy to have an app within the Exult Studio tool set to do the entire process, end to end - guess I could give it a shot if anyone thinks it would be helpful?

Cheers

PS - only found this out by deconstructing TFL components, so thanks to whomever found it out first (Marzo, Peter, etc).

Oh BTW agentorangeguy, I'm almost finished doing up a MAINSHP.FLX file for your U6 mod which I can send through soon if you like. Feel free to use it, or not, I don't mind as it was a fun exercise

Cheers

This is GREAT NEWS! Yes send it over as soon as you can I'm hoping to finish up with the demo testing soon and now we'll have a title screen, whoohoo!

Awesome!

demo plz come soon!!!!!

Don't spam!

sorry :\

It's a shame that with all the great looking mods out there for exult they aren't shared. The savage empire remake with exult has some really cool figures and monsters. I also saw where someone had done a spark's character doll where his body was correct size. Though I couldn't find a download for that unfortunately.

I know this has nothing to do with the topic. It was just wishful thinking. I actually came here hoping to find current news on the u6 exult remake. I hope it's still in production.

welcome to the club. all work andd updates on the website has seemed halted since sept:/

Have no fear, we're still alive and kicking. I've only been lazy about updating the site... because i want to come back with a bang! A lot of great things are still in the works, we've got some help working on a solution to the elusive title screen problem, still beta testing the demo, and we've got graphics artists who have solved our portrait problem!

I hope to update the site soon, but rest assured we haven't gave up

Sounds niiiiiiiice!

goog

Aidanleer, I was the one that was working on the Spark paperdoll.. geeze.. six years ago? I've been poking into Exult again and your post reminded me about the work I was doing and never finished, so, soon I'm going to try and get working on it again and hopefully finish it up.

If I make any progress, I will post about it here: http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=277061#p277061

I know this is kind of premature but do you guys plan to do any other ultima titles once you complete u6 project? Ultima IV or V perhaps? I would love to see those redone in exult.

I thought about that. U4 would be a little difficult to do with the virtue system and all, U5 would be cool but already has a pretty nice remake done. If I were to do another Exult remake, it would probably be either U1, U2, or U3. Where the original games were less developed, it would be easier to make your own stories, npcs, dungeons and fixing certain things like explaining where all the space age weaponry and things went, and so on. I'd probably want to do U3 if I decided to do that. It would be a fairly easy project to do since I'd pretty much have to do things myself like create little things here and there, secrets, npcs and such. More flexibility. Now, if someone else wanted to take the reigns of this idea on any of those games, I'd be more than willing to offer assistance and help get them started. Through trial and error i've learned a lot and could probably get a good U3 map churned out fairly quick.

Doing any older than u6 in exult would be hard because all the towns and dungeouns and castles where in their own maps and o putting them is the same map would mess up the world and map. In addition, dungeons in 4 and 5 had first person 3d as well, addding to the difficulty.

It would not be very hard at all. Towns were tiny in the early Ultimas and you'd just need to take liberties and be fine without 3D dungeons

Anything older than 5 would be easy to remake... you'd have more leeway to design towns, develop npcs more, and add more lifelike locations that back in the day were just a few tiles. Luckily, Exult allows for more than 1 map so it would be very possible to do an overworld and then underworld on one or more extra maps, perhaps 1 map for each level of dungeon ,but put all dungeons "level 1, level 2, etc." on the same map for "level 1, level 2" and so on.

U1 would probably require several maps of entire continents though, npcs and towns created. It would be neat though to see Serpents Isle back when it was.... Danger and Despair? or Dark Unknown? I forget... seeing the Castle of the White Dragon in its heyday, Beatrix, and Shamino in his old castle.

Hmmm, you paint a pretty picture