Nuvie Celebrates Eleven Years With Its Version 0.5 Release
The…length of time some of the teams working on various Ultima fan projects have been at it truly amazes me at times. Nuvie, for example, has been in development — granted, there have been some dry spells, but even so — for eleven years as of today.
And to celebrate, Eric and the rest of the Nuvie team have released version 0.5 of their Ultima 6 engine. Although I can’t stress enough that despite the relatively low version number, Ultima 6 is entirely playable, and can be completed, in Nuvie. And in fact, it makes the game look amazing; it’s really the best way to experience Ultima 6:
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- Custom sprites for Iolo, Dupre, and Shamino
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- Nuvie in fullscreen mode
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- LOOK AT THAT DITHERING!
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- Houses have roofs.
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- Custom paperdolls.
With over 350 code commits made to the engine since its last release, it would be beyond just about anyone to list everything that has changed in Nuvie since September of 2012 (when version 0.4 was released), but I think Eric does a good job of listing the major advancements:
- Added the U6 end game sequence
- Added in game menus where you can change lots of options without editing the cfg file.
- Added custom paper doll art and custom actor tiles.
- Added new game UI styles. (original+ and original+ full map.) video/game_style is used to choose what game style to use. fullscreen_map got changed to “new”style.
- Added joystick (gamepad/controller) support which included major work done on making key bindings so that they are consistently configurable.
- Added lots of new cheat commands and other key bindings including TOGGLE_FPS_DISPLAY, QUICK_SAVE, and QUICK_LOAD.
- Added new container gumps, wooden sign gump, and a new CommandBar.
- Added new message scroll, Daniel’s new U6 celestial ribbon and original_style CommandBar for new style.
- Added U6 use telescope and use silver horn.
- Added support for spawning mutant (two headed) actors and increase the number of temporary actors in Ultima 6 by 21
- Started work on MD/SE music support
- Added support for SE intro/menu/character creation sequences. (still needs a bit of work)
- Added support for MD/SE portraits
- Added support for lua script based usecode logic.
- Fixed in-game font support for MD/SE, some issues with conversation scripts, and lots of other bug fixes.
The last few line items concerning Savage Empire and Martian Dreams are significant, because the Nuvie team are now going to shift gears and focus on adding support for both of the Worlds of Ultima games.
You can download the version 0.5 builds of Nuvie for Windows and OS X, as well as the source code, from both the Nuvie downloads page and the project entry here.
Eleven years…I think congratulations are in order for Eric and the rest of the Nuvie team, don’t you?
I tried to compile and get this:
kevinfishburne@codex:~/Download/nuvie-0.5$ ./configure
checking build system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking target system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install… /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane… yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p… /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk… no
checking for mawk… mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)… yes
checking for gcc… gcc
checking whether the C compiler works… yes
checking for C compiler default output file name… a.out
checking for suffix of executables…
checking whether we are cross compiling… no
checking for suffix of object files… o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler… yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g… yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89… none needed
checking for style of include used by make… GNU
checking dependency style of gcc… gcc3
checking for g++… g++
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler… yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g… yes
checking dependency style of g++… gcc3
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor… g++ -E
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e… /bin/grep
checking for egrep… /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files… yes
checking for sdl-config… no
checking for SDL – version >= 1.2.0… no
*** The sdl-config script installed by SDL could not be found
*** If SDL was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
*** your path, or set the SDL_CONFIG environment variable to the
*** full path to sdl-config.
configure: error: *** SDL version 1.2.0 not found!
Which components of SDL are actually used here?
I got the Windows version working in Wine. I like these settings:
scale_factor 3
screen_width 640
screen_height 400
game_width 640
game_height 400
On a high-res monitor that looks pretty damn good borderless:
http://eightvirtues.com/misc/Nuvie%200.5,%20Wine,%20Kubuntu%2013.10%20ia64.png
Now if I can get one of my MT-32’s or gamepads working with it, I’ll truly be happy. Ultima VI was possibly the best of the series in many ways. Clean, but still detailed and aesthetically vibrant.
Great work on Nuvie. I’m glad to be playing it now. If I figure out how to get the source code properly compiled on Linux I’ll create an installation script so other may do it more easily.
Also, in case someone doesn’t know, copy or symlink your Ultima VI installation target to “c:\ultima6” (DOS/Windows) or equivalent in Wine (Linux). It does need the source files, although it has additional/replacement assets of its own for some things.
I think you just need the SDL 1.2 development package.
I’m not sure if gamepads work in Wine (I only tested it in Windows but it should work on Linux and Mac too). Change the joystick number to 0, apply it, and see if the directional pad or left stick works. If not you can look at the output files to see if any devices were detected and change it to the ones that are. I was able to change joysticks while in the game.
There’s documentation for gamepads here http://nuvie.sourceforge.net/?page=docs#advconfig. Also search in there for “Custom key bindings”.
*jaw drops*
Indeed. Some of us have been going for quite some time. FW is coming up on 8 years. Redemption (as the Titans of Ether) will be decade old this coming August and it has been around in one form or another for much longer. And Exult still gets attention from time to time, though it has long been in a full release state for… wow a decade this coming June 17.
How did we get so old? :p
So U6 being the next one for me to play should i do it with Nuvie? I’m a bit afraid of problems, bugs or things i may encounter during play that woulf force me to start over with the original.
Is everything in there? All side plots all secrets, everything? If so why is it “only” version 0.5?
Janathan, Nuve has 2 other games to support. It is only 0.5 because Eric wants 1.0 to be more or less complete for all games. There are no game ending bugs when playing Ultima 6 in Nuvie just minor issues that pale in comparison to the improvements. Here is a list http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/nuvie-ultima-6-in-full-screen.70226/page-4#post-3168426