The Ultima 6 Mod for Exult Lives…And Needs Your Help!
Or, well, one of them does…which, frankly, is awesome news. You can never have too much Ultima 6.
agentorangeguy’s Ultima 6 Mod for Exult is now known as the Ultima 6 Remake for Exult, and has moved away from its MySpace-based website over to a subdomain of Zygon Dragon’s Realm of Ultima website. As yet, no downloads have been posted for it, although there are a few new screenshots to take a look at which demonstrate some of the progress made on the remake since last we heard from it.
Recent news for the project includes a general update detailing some of the changes made since the last time we heard from the project (which I believe was in December, 2010):
- Minoc is structurally complete – all buildings finished. Working on npc’s for Minoc currently.
- Working on moving everything over on the new map. The new map is somewhat complete but still ‘raw’ in many areas, but the structure is there. Some areas such as forests, grasslands, water etc. need randomization.
- Planning a new side quest with a few new npcs that will tie in some loose ends or inaccuracies in the storyline (such as those who were said to have associated with Mondain in U6 as “Mondain’s henchmen” or an adversary of Mondain)
…as well as a worldbuilding update:
…finished moving Britain and Cove onto the new foundations and fixed the foundations for Jhelom,Trinsic, and Buccaneer’s Den, just have to move those (buildings and such) onto the new foundations. I have Serpent’s Hold foundation done, I just have to build the houses and put the NPC’s there now which will probably be my next job after moving the old stuff onto the new foundations
But most importantly: the team could use some additional help. Specifically, they are looking for people proficient in the use of GIMP or the coding of usecode. Interested parties should contact agentorangeguy directly.
Seems like this kind of project could benefit from a conversion utility. I get the impression that a lot of this, if not all of it, is being done manually.
Now there’s an interesting question: would it be possible to create a utility that could take a map from an earlier Ultima game and re-create it in the Ultima 7 engine?
Maps and objects. I’m no expert, but I think a common format could be created to describe all objects/data and used as an intermediary in the conversion process. Writing 1:1 conversion code for every input/output format would require a shitload of code and redundancy.
Ultima -> Common
Ultima II -> Common
Ultima III -> Common
Ultima IV -> Common
Ultima V -> Common
Ultima VI -> Common
Ultima VII -> Common
Ultima VIII -> Common
Ultima IX -> Common
Common -> Ultima
Common -> Ultima II
Common -> Ultima III
Common -> Ultima IV
Common -> Ultima V
Common -> Ultima VI
Common -> Ultima VII
Common -> Ultima VIII
Common -> Ultima IX
If a complex format was moving to a simple format, no problem.
If a simple format was moving to a complex format, use templates. Or “chunks” as I think they called them in Ultima VI.
I think the main problem would be absolute knowledge of the file formats for the games. As long as that was known, it would be a matter of coding parsers for input, writers for output, and accessing a conversion table for the input/output logic.
U8 and U9 will create issues, given the area-based world of the former and the 3D world of the latter.
And the dual-scale worlds of the first five will also cause problems. A U6 -> U7 parser might work, but moving outside of that limited set introduces a lot of complexities.
I somewhat agree, as Ultima VIII and IX are no doubt massively different games from each other and previous Ultimas as far as data files and asset/object logic is concerned.
The dual-scale issue I think is a non-issue, however. As long as the boundaries of a single-scale town are defined it could be converted to a dual-scale town. The problem is if the dual-scale town must be constrained to 32×32 tiles (or anything, really). File formats are one thing, but saying an Ultima VII town can be converted to a 32×32 tile town that will work in Ultima IV is something else entirely. I was talking more about engines other than the original executables for deploying the converted data files.
I always work by putting forth the big idea, building a foundation around it, defeating the low-hanging fruit, then slowing working toward the original goal. Leaving Ultima VIII and IX would probably be a good idea until the project was well under way.
Maybe this is one more thing that could be added to the feature request list of an “Ultimate Engine”.
I agree. At present I’m doing the basic NPC conversion and its all cut and paste work. Agentorangeguy is then taking this and adding the correct usecode. Takes a while but he’s got it down to 30mins per basic NPC and 1 hour for the complicated ones like mages, shop keepers etc. The map is pretty complete. Loads of foundations are in and I’m doing some forest randomization. This project is alive and kicking…We’ll post an update tomorrow on the website.
I’m surprised you can’t automate the npc conversions. Is it really case per case?
It’s pretty different. I guess someone expert in Exult usecode and good knowledge of the U6 code could write a script or something. But I don’t think anything exists. Were making good progress and agentorangeguy is hammering away at the code. Hats off 🙂
This is good news. I tought the project long dead (Exult forum dates to what, 2007 ?). Looking forward to (finaly, and not kidding) playing Ultima6. I could never get into it because I hated tjhe “new graphics” after Ultima5, and I didnt feel going back to it after U7 and U7.5.
This is going to be sweet.
/cheers !
FYI, Ultima IX maps would probably be easier to port to Dungeon siege than to older Ultimas.
@Zygon: if you’ve got the specifications of both, I can take a look at it. Or even just a couple of the U6 original and their Exult usecode counterparts. We can go from there if you like. I’ve done similar things and it isn’t generally very complicated.
U6edit can be used to disassemble the u6 converse files.
http://u6edit.sourceforge.net/
A doc on the u6 script format can be found in the nuvie docs svn repo.
http://nuvie.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/nuvie/docs/trunk/ultima6/u6converse.txt?revision=936
Regards,
Eric