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OT: U8 "Speech Pack" (and some props)

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2002 9:32 am
by irinotecan
I know this is OT, but I saw some discussion relating to this in the IRC chat logs a few days ago, so I thought I would ask it here:

Does anybody know if the gold box "EA Classics" version of Ultima 8 includes the "speech pack"? I remember seeing this add on for sale a long time ago for around $15. I haven't finished the game yet, but so far, "speech" has been limited to the guardian during the intro ("You have been a thorn in my side for far too long, Avatar..."), and the Avatar occasionally grunting when hit and going "Whoah!" when teetering on the edge of some ledge or cliff.

I saw mention in the IRC logs here that there should be speech for the Titans. So far, I have heard nary a peep from them (I have gotten as far as becoming a sorcerer acolyte, so I have spoken to Lithos, Hydros, Stratos, and witnessed the failed binding of Pyros). Does the speech kick in later in the game??

I can't believe that an add-on that Origin tried to shill for $15-20 would be limited to speech in the intro, finalie, and the Avatar doing his best Keanu Reeves impersonation. I would have expected something more along the lines of Baldur's Gate in terms of speech content. Am I wrong about this?

Finally, I just wanted to give a shout out to Colourless: As a fellow C/C++ programmer, I just wanted to say that that sfx decompressor for Pentagram you wrote is VERY COOL. If I owned a software company, I'd hire you on the spot! Sadly, I don't even have a spare copy of Ultima to give to you, so you'll have to make do with just praise. :-) Did Origin really leave debugging symbols in U8.exe? Otherwise, I have no clue how you would have found the decompression function entry point. Talk about not following "best practices", sheesh. Even I remember to strip debug symbols from the beta/production release :-)

Re: OT: U8 "Speech Pack" (and some props)

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2002 1:14 pm
by Colourless
Yes origin did leave debugging symbols in the U8 exe file. Every single function, class and method is named, provided you know how to decode them. Of course we located the function was before I actually attempted to use the debugging symbols.

If the version of Ultima 8 you have came on a CD it should have the speech pack. If it was just based on the original Ultima 8 CD then there will be 2 installers that run concurrently. One installs U8, the second one installs the Speech Pack.

You should have quite a bit of speech in U8. The 4 titans all speak, the 3 Zealan statues and Kumash Gor speak too and the Guardian likes to say things every now and then like in U7.

-Colourless Dragon

Re: OT: U8

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2002 3:28 pm
by irinotecan
Do'h!!!!!

Well, it looks like I must have bypassed the install.bat file for some reason (probably because it needed a language paramater, and I just double-clicked on it in Windows, so it failed) and went straight to the English install directory, ignoring the "engspch" directory for the speech installer.


That'll learn me.